“Almost every day,” he said.
“And she wouldn’t drink it.”
“I shouldn’t have asked her. I just wanted a friend. Someone to share the world with. It had been so long already, and I was so lonely. Just running from one place to the next.”
He was crying, silent tears running down a face already wet with salt water. They were friends, my aunt and Sam. He must have read about her wherever he went; he must have read the Hatter books and known he was her inspiration. He must have known how successful she was, how she had done just fine without him. Without the water.
“Do you come back here often?” I asked.
“Every once in a while,” he said. “Just to see it. I was born here. I miss it.”
“How did you meet my aunt?”
Sam smiled, suddenly a million years away from me. I wished I could step into his brain and remember what he was remembering. I wished it was twenty-five years ago and I was hiding behind a tree watching Sam and my aunt as teenagers.
“She was walking home from school, cutting through a graveyard. She saw me reading with my back against a tombstone and stopped to ask me what kind of person was creepy enough to read in a graveyard.”
I wasn’t surprised. Aunt Helen was exactly the type of person who would interrogate a total stranger to deduce how creepy he was.
“Friends immediately,” Sam continued.
“And me?” I asked.
“What about you?”
“You asked her if she’d drink the water. What about me?”
“I’d never ask you.”
“Would you want to?”
He faltered, and I tried to imagine what it must be like to grow older than anyone you ever met. To watch everyone around you age and change and die. Nobody escaped death. You came to peace with it, maybe, but you didn’t sneak past it.
“It’s different with you,” he said finally.
“How come?”
“With your aunt, I was selfish. It’s easy to be selfish with our friends. We just want them to do what we want, be what we need. You’re different.”
“Are you saying we’re not friends?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said.
Of all the places I’d imagined this moment happening, an under-the-sea cave was not one of them.
His lips tasted like salt.
From tears or ocean water or both, I didn’t know.
We came back to earth.
I put my clothes back on over my still-wet skin, and placed the wooden box in Sam’s hands, making sure he kept it while half-wanting to snatch it back, run away with it, find somewhere quiet and faraway to drink it. I made my feet back away and my hands stay put by their sides. I made him promise that he wouldn’t disappear.
My parents were both home when I walked in the front door, sitting in the living room watching a movie. Dad paused it when he saw me, his eyes widening, and I realized my clothes were still damp, my hair was half dried and frizzed to all hell around my face. My shoes squeaked and tracked small puddles across the hardwood floor.
“Lottie?” he said cautiously.
I got a towel from the guest bathroom and spread it onthe ottoman, then I sat down and faced them both.
