A Study in Drowning

by Ava Reid

She was tired of the memories that swam behind her eyelids at night, those little pieces: the enormous span of his fingers, knuckles whitening as his fist clenched and unclenched.

Even if it was inevitable that it would come crashing down, she wanted to keep dreaming it a little while longer.

“You’re the sort of girl who likes to make life more difficult for herself. If you weren’t so pretty, you would have failed out already.”

The memory of him stung at the oddest times, when she’d done as little as curl her fingers to reach for a coffee mug.

As if stories were not spoils of war.

It was the second time she’d heard him laugh, and Effy remembered how much she liked the sound of it: low and breathy, his shoulder shaking just slightly under her grip.

“Thank you for giving me the chance to die of something interesting, then.”

And changing your mind isn’t foolish. It just means you’ve learned something new. Everyone changes their mind sometimes, as they should, or else they’re just, I don’t know, stubborn and ignorant. Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly.

I know what I am. I know that, deep down, there’s not much else to me but surviving.

There are three men in this story, and none of them ever said they were sorry for anything. They never expressed as much as a twinge of guilt.”