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There was a time in my life when, during a specific summer, anyone who would try approaching me would be blocked off by my own fear of vulnerability. I had not one companion – which I admit, was deliberate. I figured I may as well stay that way for my own good. My own definition of stability. Still, I found an angel had befriended me one chilly august day.
I was lying on my back, off the shore of some dispiriting shoddy town where, to my uninterest, a quaint abode had just sold a block or so down. Not that the detail of the house had been significant to the sight, but just that a few days before when I first met this radiant one, I noticed a Brittany-Spaniel dog had been running loose around the woods, and it made me feel inquisitive. Still, not enough of a coincidence to urge me to revisit the thought.
The sunlight pierced my eyes. The water flowed between my toes as my legs dangled off a wooden kayak. It swayed side to side as ripples distorted the liquid's surface. It seemed many families were out on the water today, engines and paddles passing by every minute or so. I closed my eyes to the splish-splashing sounds of activity around me. Alright, I thought, maybe the water isn’t so bad after all…
Splish… splash… Splish… splash… I let my eyes open.
Splish, splash, splish. Was the sound getting closer?
I had only half a second to process the thought before a large, furry figure hurled towards me, and suddenly I felt myself gradually sink. My dark hair floated in a wavy pattern above my head until I found my flip-flops had traveled meters out of reach, and my kayak was above me.
I darted my hand outwards, hoping by some chance I could pull myself up, maybe grab onto something, lunge myself up, process what just occurred, but it contributed no use.
Frantically, I threw my arms out in an attempt to swim up what felt like an endless distance to the surface, and I felt my palms make contact with skin. I almost slipped off of whatever it was I grasped on to, but as I looked up I saw the narrow sliver of orange in my vision grow bigger before I processed the smooth arms wrapped tightly around my chest, the stimuli startling me as instinctively, I reacted with a kick to the mystery-figures shin.
“Calm down!” the voice ringing behind me pleaded, “please, keep still!”
I caught a glimpse of a gold blur of something silky behind me, and with a tug my head was lifted out of the freezing crystalline, onto warm stone.
“Are you alright!? God-a-moddy, that scared me!”
“Holy wah…” I waited a few moments until I stopped feeling so dizzy. “God a–” I hacked water out of my lungs before I started again, “God-a-what?”
“I’m so–sorry, I didn’t think–I thought Stokely’d be alright off leash this time, I hope he didn’t hurt’cha bad!”
I swept the sopping hair in my face out of my view, and before me was a girl, appearing my age, with her hands grasping at her long, wavy golden locks of hair, nervously gnawing at her lip. Donning her body she had on a flowy linen-colored dress, the sleeves drooping over her hands and the ruffled hem kissing her ankles. Her teeth were clenched as she frantically continued on, apologizing for some sort, I noticed she had a gap in her front teeth and with her skin doused in freckles, she looked ethereal.
“I mean–I was sure the hound knew better but golly he can be dumb as a door-nail sometimes! I guess daddy was right about–are you okay?”
The question interrupted my zoning out. “Huh?”
“You’re a-lookin’ at me like you just seen a ghost.”
“Oh–no, I–ah, thank you. For savin’ me and all that,” I stammered, “I just haven’t seen ya ‘round here before… a tourist y’are?”
“Naw, I moved here a few days ago. Into the little blue cottage on Fishery Drive.”
“Ah.”
“Stokely!” the blonde sprung up. I looked up, perplexed.
“My dog! I gotta find my dog!” she cried out before scurrying away.
The next morning, I had brushed off the interaction as a dream – maybe a nightmare – I must’ve made up, and carried on the rest of my morning with the usual routine of mine. Looking back, I was exhausted after the near drowning experience, and most likely slept through the rest of the eventful day. I stepped out onto the porch with my leftover salmon to eat as breakfast, sitting with my thoughts atop the coarse and weathered wood railing. Gazing into the lake where the sun just barely kissed the horizon, induced in me a newly found sick, unidentifiable, nauseous sensation in me.
A few moments, and a voice called, “Good to see you out here this early!” I found myself surprised.
She continued, “Feelin’ alright?” So it was real, I thought.
“M’feeling fine, how about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’m fit as a fiddle!” the angel gleamed.
I pretended to know what she meant by the phrase. “Rrright… and what’re you doin’ finding me again?”
“Well, I thought I may as well let Stokely apologize for the… horsin’ around, that is, if you’d like to walk to my place,” she offered.
“He doesn’t–you sure?”
“‘Course I am, it’s the least I could do.”
“If you say so,” I accepted, reluctantly, “I just need to know, what should I call you? I just… sorta need to let my mom know where I’m at, I guess.”
“I’m Flossie Pearl. Though… you can call me Pearlie, I say.”
While we walked, Pearlie started, “So, what d’you do ‘round here? Any friends you hang out with?” small talk had never been easy for me.
“I dunno,” I mumbled, “I mean, I’ont really–not much of a people-person… I guess.”
Pearlie only contemplated me in return.
A few more minutes of walking, and behold us; a little blue cottage, just as she described.
“Sure better’n a trailer.” Pearlie gestured for me to stay just outside the door, before she held her fingers together between her lips and let out a thick “fweet!”
Promptly, the pitter-patter sounds of paws got louder before the head of the same Brittany-Spaniel I had noticed days before popped out of the screen door to the home. Etched in the leather collar read: ‘Stokely Pistol’.
“Now, if you find Stokely forgettin’ how big he is, call me and I’ll put his leash on. I reckon you’ll be alright,” she explained. “As long as you’re in no vicinity of a squirrel…”
A full afternoon of activity, games, and minimal conversation had the hours of available sunlight passing in the blink of an eye. Then, somehow, we found ourselves under the sky settling into gloom. On her dock, we swung our legs over the water in unison to the beat of its ripples.
“Do you like stars?” she chorused.
“Yeah, they’re cool.”
“The water is cool, too. Why don’t you swim in it more?”
“What do you know about that–that I don’t swim much?” I turned towards Pearlie.
“I guess I just assumed–I want to get to know you,” she replied honestly.
“I’ve got nothin’ to share. What makes someone like you care ‘bout someone like me, anyways?”
“I dunno, but I do. I do want to get to know you,” she waited for a response, “like, um, what’s a secret you have?”
“Why don’t you just back off, I’ve nothin’ to offer you,” I muttered, “I met you yesterday.”
Pearlie accepted my request, but neither of us moved. I couldn’t get myself to.
After a few moments, Pearlie chimed in, “Can I have your name?”
I held my tongue for a few moments before replying bluntly, “Yvonne.”
She replied, “Yvonne. That’s pretty, Yvonne.”
“Just call me Eva, or–or something. Nobody calls me Yvonne.” I gritted.
“Does anyone call you anythin’? You said it yourself, you ‘aren’t a people-person’. You never have had a friend, have you?”
“Just stop! Can you not keep just–stop grilling me, please!” I blustered out. “No, I don’t have any friends! I haven’t told someone my name in, what? Months?”
“Eva?”
“An’ I’m terrified of swimming, actually, and I sometimes think you shouldn’t’ve saved me when I fell!” my voice started breaking, as the words spilled out of my head faster than I could think them. Pearlie just listened, her hand resting on mine.
“And–and honestly, I think you’re the most divine girl–angel–whatever you are… most divine I’ve met. And maybe–just that–maybe that’s why I need to make sure you never realize how–how I’m so scared of you realizing how much I–you leavin’ me ‘cause cripes, I–I think I’m a lost cause,”
“Eva!”
“...‘Cause I’d only bring you down with me!”
I stayed slouched in my heap of tears for a few moments, until, without prompting, the girl swiftly dropped herself into the water like it was nothing. Cold droplets hit my face, immediately halting my ramble.
“Why the–what was that for!?”
Pearlie brushed her soaking hair behind her ears. “You weren’t hearin’ me. Please, listen to me,” she urged, grabbing my hands before letting her body hang underwater for a few moments, saying a few unintelligible phrases into the abyss.
“Pearlie, I–I’on’t understand.”
Her head popped out from beneath the surface as she clung to the sides of the dock, still gripping my palm. Gasping for air, she noted the obvious, “You don’t know what I just said.”
“No clue.”
“Right. But you still felt me there, yeah? You held on to me. You kept me in touch with the surface.”
“I wouldn’t just drop you! Gosh!”
“See, you get it! Reckon you could,” the girl smiled.
“See… that you can trust me not to. drop. you,” I said, still a bit dumbfounded.
“See… that while we couldn’t hear each other at all, I felt ya, I knew you were there for me. You ain’t lettin’ go, an’ I ain’t lettin’ go of you either. Not ‘cause of some miscommunication, no.”
I stared off, processing the strange analogy. “You got yourself a weird way of comforting someone.”
“You wanna pull me up or no?”
An outstretched arm met mine, as I yanked her figure out of the water, her body toppling onto mine, accidentally knocking my head hard onto the wood beneath me. I sat myself up dizzily. “Uff da…” I weakly laughed.
“Sorry!” Pearlie held the back of my head in her hands. “Honestly, I can’t blame you for bein’ fit to be tied when I shouldn’ta pushed you so hard like that. Got carried away with wantin’ to get to know ya, I guess.”
“I, uh, it’s okay,” I assured.
“You… sure?” she gave me a concerned expression. “You look a bit faint…”
“Yeah, actually, um… motion sickness. I think I’m gonna be sick,” I grunted before involuntarily hurling over the dock, taking a few moments to spew out my breakfast.
I sighed, “I won’t feel like going to school tomorrow. Cripes. It’s my first day, too.”
“I think we both should be fixin’ to sleep. I’ll walk you home.” Pearlie offered, to my acceptance.
I woke up to a familiar whistle of a friend perching her bicycle in the grass front of my porch, and when I mustered the strength to haul myself up and open the door, there she stood, enthusiastically dropping a warm weight into my hands, wrapped in foil, smelling of ham and beans. It was 6:23 AM, what was the sun doing up that early?
“It’s soup. Daddy cooked it up this mornin’ when I told him about you,” Pearlie offered her proudest smile, in which I offered one in return.
“What’re you gettin’ off to this early in the morning?”
“Well, I’ll be at my first day of freshman year right quick! Guess I hadn’t told ya, we share the same homeroom.”