Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

She was tied to the water, my sister. Moods like tides, temper like a hungry shark.

She was born for oceanside bonfires, long gauzy dresses and uncombed hair, the scent of salt like a blanket you can’t peel off your skin. She was born for the smell of water, for the way it sank into your bones, stained your skin, dyed your blood a deep, salty blue.

song. It was a sort of island staple, a dark and moody tune that had been around forever. Nobody knew its origins, but everybody knew it. It was what you hummed to yourself on the walk home from school, in the shower, right before you fell asleep. It was one of those songs that entered your brain and never let you forget it.

The bonfire was bright, yes, but it also made the rest of the night somehow darker.

I felt hands around my waist and knew it was my sister by the dark smell of impossibility.

Aggie was always either laughing or cooking, and often both at the same time.

They looked alike in a vague sort of way, just how two people who’ve lived together their whole lives inevitably start to blend a little around the edges.

“You are my business,” I said. “We’re twins, so people automatically lump us together. When you do asinine things, they just naturally get associated with me.” “Luckily for you I’ve never done an asinine thing in my life,” she said, and winked, because not even Mary could say that with a straight face.

“We’re both losers,” she said. “I don’t think not having makeout partners makes us losers,” I said. “First of all, it does. Second of all, I have plenty of makeout partners.” “What’s it like being so popular? Like just the most popular little flower in the whole world?” “It’s really nice,” she said seriously.

I walked up the steps to the mausoleum, clearing my throat to announce my presence, because I didn’t know a ton about flirting, but I knew terrifying someone in the middle of a graveyard probably wasn’t the best approach.

“No, please, don’t shut up.” Never shut up, never leave my sight, let’s move into the graveyard together, some of the mausoleums could actually be pretty homey with the right amount of sprucing.

I fucking love George, shes #relatable

I glanced back at Prue, and she flashed me a smile so wide I swear the moon got a little brighter.

“I think a person can be a home, sometimes, just as much as a place or a house can.

“She’s trying very hard to sleep with my brother,” she said. “To be fair, she tries very hard to sleep with a lot of people.” “Good for her,” Prue said.

I wanted to kiss a pretty girl on a beach and not have to worry about whether eighteen would come and go and I’d be the first Fernweh woman since my great-great-great-great-great-great-namesake to remain as normal as I currently was. I wanted a hundred million things, but I knew how to ask for zero of them.

the weather was as inconsistent as my own moods. Ups and downs, sun and rain.

Subtle.

the new guests arrived, a young married couple on what they charmingly referred to as a “babymoon.” She looked almost ready to give birth, and I was tempted to tell her that babies born on By-the-Sea tended to always smell like salt, always crave the ocean on their skin, always look for the full moon or North Star to guide them home.

“It’s not easy reading minds. Complicated recipe. Takes too much energy. And besides that, people don’t always think the truth.”

“Well, I can do the rest of this if you want,” Mary offered, which was uncharacteristically generous of her. “That is uncharacteristically generous of you,” I said.

I wandered over to the bouncy castle and found it filled with more drunk adults than bouncy kids, which is how I knew it must be after nine, the unofficial time when the festival dissolved from a place of good, clean family fun (at least in theory) to one of debauchery.

“Hi, Georgina,” she said, and I couldn’t even begin to translate that into anything more than exactly what it was. A simple greeting? A declaration of love? A hello, a good-bye? The secret of the universe and our purpose here on Earth?

In the moonlight Prue practically glowed. A trick of either the light or my heart, I couldn’t be sure.

“Either way, I’m glad I came here. Bird or no bird,” Prue said. “Oh?” A translation of the word oh: WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME WHY TELL ME— “Because I met you,” she continued. “Oh.” A further analysis of the word oh: OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD.

We kept walking. We kept walking WHILE HOLDING HANDS.

And because she had crossed all of that distance, because she had come so close, I thought I could at least be the one to do the rest of the work, and so I kissed her. Lightly. Like how I imagined a bird would kiss another bird. And she kissed me back. Like how a bird might ask for more.

Do you think she was hiding because of the weather? It’s been raining so much lately.”

So my mother had broken the ferry and trapped us all on the island with a bird murderer. Probably not the route I would have taken, but I didn’t exactly have anything to contribute, at least not in the way of magic.

there weren’t any princes on By-the-Sea. We didn’t need princes; we saved ourselves.

“You don’t think she . . .” “Of course not,” I said quickly. We let the sound of the rain drown out the silence that filled the room. Of course I didn’t think that. I just didn’t know what I thought.

Give them a point for considering the obvious. Many protags don't.

I went around and opened every single window in the inn, trying to let out the stench of grief. But grief was stronger than rainwater, so I didn’t think it did much good after all.

“She was just an ordinary girl,” my mother said, as if that meant anything at all. In a family full of girls, you realize quickly that no girls are ordinary.

“Georgina,” Vira said, producing a tissue from a quaint ceramic tissue box, “you always cry when it rains.

AGAIN THIS CAUSE AND EFFECT IS NOT SUBTLE

“At least we’ve ruled out some genders,”

"Some" genders? OMG LENO IS MULTIPLE GENDER INCLUSIVE!!! I officially love her completely. Asexual characters, lesbian characters, now this??? <3 <3 <3

The ice cream was exchanged from Harrison’s hand to mine. A symbiotic ice cream relationship in a graveyard. One could do worse.

My mother picked up a feather and held it between her thumb and her middle finger. She looked at it. She smelled it. She licked it (gross).

“The person who killed Annabella is a man,” I said. “It’s always a man,” she said grimly.

What was it like to be Prue at that moment, quiet and thoughtful, her fingers tapping out some foreign rhythm on the bed. I wanted to hold her hand, to quiet the impulses that made it impossible for her to sit still, but I didn’t want to disrespect whatever music she heard.

“You know I don’t love heights.” “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” But alas, the rules of sisterhood: if your sister took residence in the boughs of a tree, you were obligated to go and visit.

I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference.

His defense—she deserved it because she had already had sex with so many people—made the judge, the Honorable Eleanora Avery, laugh the fuck out loud. As if out of a fairy tale, nobody asked: What was my sister wearing the night she was raped? How much had my sister had to drink the night she was raped? How many guys had my sister previously had sex with? Because—again, out of a fairy tale—they realized that none of those things mattered. Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose what happens to her body.

Did you really think I turned into a bird?” “Sort of, yeah,” I admitted. “Well, yeah, I sort of did,” she admitted back.

The island was back to its usual self, heavy with the thick heat of another summer’s end, a mugginess that could be picked up in your palms and saved for a later day. I filled my pockets with it and kept walking.

“I’m not abandoning you,” I whispered to the island, my island, but of course it didn’t respond. Islands were like that. Always listening. Never replying.

The dead loved promises; the living loved promising.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

“Don’t shoot anybody else with lightning bolts unless they really deserve it.”