Page 38 of The Wild Beneath

Evan introduces her to his friends. She keeps a smile pasted on her face, puts her hands in her pockets, takes them out, tries to look normal, even though she’s not sure what normal is supposed to look like. She tucks her hair behind her ears, then tries not to fidget. She pretends she’s listening.

Evan is pulled by the arm into another circle. Annie ends up alone beside the dining table, with an abandoned bag of Doritos and lipstick-rimmed glasses of wine.

It’s too much.

She makes her way to the furthest corner and presses her palms over her ears. The noise is scattered and rhythmless and overwhelming. She needs to cut off the volume but not look ridiculous doing it.

“Seashell wine?” One of the girls is holding out an uncorked bottle and a stemmed glass. Annie thinks her name is Courtney from a prior introduction, thinks she’s the one who this cabin-estate belongs to, thinks she’s the type of girl who knows what to do at parties like this—­what to say, how to look. Casual and cool and hot all at the same time. Her eyeshadow is glittery, with eyeliner applied in thick swoops.

“No thanks,” Annie says.

Courtney pours a glass anyway. Evan is at the far end of the living room, a beer in his hand, laughing, not looking at her. Annie’s even angrier than before. How is this fun? She doesn’t want him to drink.

Courtney hands her the glass. “We make it ourselves,” she says.

Annie feels stranded on Goose Island, at this Brillo pad of a party, half her brain hatching escape plans, half wanting to fit in, for Evan’s sake. For her own sake? The wine in her glass is amber and syrupy and smells faintly of dirt.

“Might take the edge off.” Courtney raises her glass to cheers her, and smiles with a thin-feeling niceness. She looks like she’s had braces and teeth-whitening treatments. Their glasses clink with an uncomfortableping. Annie takes a first sip. The wine tastes sour, with something gritty underneath.

“Like it?”

“It’s great,” Annie lies, her head swimming instantly.

“So how long have you known Evan?” Courtney leans in closer. Her sun-shiny perfume stings Annie’s nose.

“Since forever.” Annie sips again.

“Might want to slow down with that. It’s stronger than you think.”

Behind them, a pinball machine makes ading-ding-ding-ding, mixed with the hollers of the boys playing. Who has a pinball machine at their house? Annie turns to watch them, these boys talking to each other in exclamation points. They’re handing around a joint and a bag of Skittles. A rainbow of colours in crinkly plastic. The machine lights up with a new high score and one of them launches the plunger again. The silver ball shoots back and forth, zigzagging down ramps and into bumpers. Time slows, each second pulled longer by the maze of the ball in the machine, the repetitive hammering of the flipper buttons. More chimes and bells that seem to sway and bump into each other. Annie can’t stand it.

“I need to sit down,” Annie says, but Courtney is long gone, swept into the sea of Evan’s friends. The people Annie is expected to like. She can’t see Evan anymore, either. How long was she preoccupied with the pinball? She takes another sip of the grimy wine, which she’s beginning to suspect may not be wine at all. Her tongue feels swollen and hot. The music blaring from the speakers gets louder. Annie swears she can see the sound waves exiting a subwoofer under the console table in the hallway. Her brain mushes around the edges.

Is she tilting off to the side? Is the floor moving?

She needs to get outside.

She exits alone, back onto the walkway toward the dock, past the swingy overhead lanterns and the manicured garden beds. The moon is fuller than she remembers and its halo pulses, morphing into wavy rings spreading out across the sky. The ferns glow an otherworldly green. They furl and unfurl unnaturally with Annie’s breath—­why are they breathing with her?

The reasonable parts of Annie’s brain start to fall away. In their place: Something is breathing into her ears, a low-pitched rumbling in her thigh bones, and she slides into a familiar drum rhythm. She can’t find the moon any longer... only an obsidian sky descending overhead.

Behind her, the voices from the house are a distant constellation of stars.

At the end of the walkway, Annie climbs down onto the beach on wobbly legs. She wishes she did not have legs at all but fins, or wings. Finally, on her hands and knees, she reaches the waves. The sand feels fuzzy-soft. The sea reaches for her with its own voice, the one that will tell her the real-actual-beautiful-truth-about-things. Its pitter-patter whisper begins, but Annie can’t decipher it... what is it saying? It’s an entrancing radio-station song but she can’t tune past the static.

Annie’s jeans are soaked. Sand pushes up between her toes and fingers. She has to lie on her back. That will help. Water seeps under the hem of her shirt; her bra and underwear are drenched. The back of her brain shouts,Standup and get out!But it’s a far-off instruction. Her limbs do not listen. A velvety mist covers her eyes. Her bones expand, the fluid between her joints swells, her skin becomes more pliant, juicy. Her shirt sticks cold against her belly.

Water seeps into her ears and brings with it another orchestra: thepat-pat-patof an otter trotting to the water’s edge, the languorousness of a starfish stretching its legs over hours, mid-verse hymns from undersea caverns, calling her to come for their secrets. Schools of fish swim out and back around her arms and legs, cooing and shushing, trying to tell her out-and-back things, nibbling her shoulder blades, lighting up the tips of her fingers.

The burning in the pit of her stomach reminds her she has a stomach. Her mouth tastes acidic. She rolls over, trying to focus on the right muscles, and clambers back up on unsteadyhands and knees, vomiting everything into the sand, as the far-off constellation of voices approaches, hooting and laughter surrounding her. Who are these people? Do they understand their lungs are like tree branches, that we’re breathing with the same leafy vessels as oaks do? Annie tries to stand but she’s pulled back down by nausea and the spasming of her organs. Vomit pushes up in her throat.

The sound of her name: “Oh god, Annie.”

She feels stretched out. Her body is too big for this place. Do they not know how big the ocean is? Her hands shake. She opens her eyes: Shadowy silhouettes are circling around her. People without wings, or fins, raising eyebrows, whispering, laughing in unison.

What is she doing? Who is she being?

“Stop it,” Annie says to everyone. She tries to stay calm but is struck by a flashback to that day in kindergarten, under her desk, Evan pushing Liam away.