Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

“You were okay,” I said. “At times.” She smiled. “Yeah. After you saved me from the sharks.” She pulled up her knees and showed me the silver bracelet I gave her that day. She was wearing it around her ankle. Leave it to somebody like her, to think of something like that. I couldn’t believe she still had it. “It’s not like they were going to take you down. I never got why you were so scared.” “Because they’re evil creatures with dagger-like teeth? Why were you not?” “No reason. I’m just not. I like thinking about the ocean, and what all is living in there. It’s like my brain-Lysol. It calms me down or something.” “Seriously. Sharks calm you down.” I could see pieces of the everyday Emmy sneaking back into the conversation, but I didn’t mind. Maybe it meant this thing we were doing now, whatever it was, might not just go poof in the morning. “Not sharks specifically,” I said. “The whole being-underwater thing. I put myself there and float. Just, you know. Inside my skull movie.” “You have a skull movie? You could see yourself drowning. That’s relaxing.” “I don’t, though. That’s the one bad thing that for sure won’t ever happen to me.” “Because what? You took Junior Red Cross swimming?” I laughed. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t ever been swimming that much. In water that was deeper than like, an inch.” “And still you’re drown-proof, because?” I’d never told anybody the weird way I got born. But being awake in the dark with a girl was outside my normal. The whole world...