The Here and Now

PROLOGUE

His dad had to work, so Ethan had gone fishing alone. Usually he just followed his dad through the woods to the deep bends of the creek, slapping at the prickers around his ankles. This time he was confounded by how little he knew his way even though he’d been here again and again. After today, though, he’d know.

When he finally came upon the river, it was a different part than he’d seen before, but same water, he thought. Same fish. He put his pack down, baited his hook and made a good cast. It was different when he was alone and his cast was for catching a fish instead of showing his father he knew how.

He listened to the water and tended his line and considered the stillness of the air. Except for that one part over there. Downstream it seemed like the air was moving. He squinted
at it, then opened his eyes wide and closed them again, wondering if he’d wash out the strange impression that the air was rippling over the stream. But it still looked like that, more like that, air moving and scattering in a way that he could see.

He edged downstream, pulling his line along. As he walked he could see far past the bend to a footbridge. And at that distance the air and the leaves were still. But here the air moved faster and seemed to quiver like the water. As he moved slowly toward it the air took on a strange texture. He squinted again and saw in amazement how the sunshine seemed to refract into colors around him. He walked a few more steps and felt the air moving faster over his skin, almost like liquid but softer. He wanted to focus on pieces of the splintering light, but it was all moving too fast.

He lost hold of his fishing rod as the liquid of the air seemed to blur and blend with the liquid of the stream, pulling him inside the brew. He lost his hold on what was above and what was below, what was sky and what was earth, what there was to breathe, or even where his body began and ended. The odd thing was, he didn’t feel the urgent need to find out. It was like a lucid dream in that he occupied no part of the world he’d seen before, but he knew he would wake up from it.

He had no idea how time passed, whether there was a big cascade of it or almost none at all. But at some point the spinning churn of river and air coughed him onto firm ground, and slowly the elements went back to their ordinary places. He closed his eyes for a time, and when he opened them again, the river was mostly in its banks, and the air went back to being invisible and the sunshine had reassembled itself. He sat up and gradually reoriented himself to basics like up and down.
The storm produced a scoured, sparkling look through the trees, and it also produced a girl.

She was almost certainly part of his dream in that she was not quite made of regular-girl substance. The outlines of her weren’t quite distinct. She was the kind of girl he would dream up because she was approximately his age, her skin was bare except for the dark wet streamers of hair around her body, and she was supernaturally beautiful, like a mermaid or an elvish princess. Because he imagined her he felt it was okay to stare boldly at her.

But as he did it dawned on him that her arms were clutched around her body like she was cold and also embarrassed. Her legs were muddy up to her knees. He could hear her rough breathing. The longer he stared, the more details she accumulated, the more distinct her lines became, until he began to suspect she was real and that he shouldn’t keep looking at her like that.

He stood up, trying to keep his eyes mostly down. A couple more glances convinced him that, though the air around her remained oddly charged, she wasn’t a nymph of his invention, but a shivering skinny girl with muddy feet and a weird bruise spreading from the inside of her arm.

“Are you okay? Do you need help?” he asked. It was hard coming back from the dream. She’d been swimming maybe, and had gotten pulled downstream by the storm. It was awfully cold to be swimming.

She didn’t say anything. He tried to keep his gaze fixed on her face. Her eyes were big and her mouth was pressed shut. He heard the drip, drip, drips from the leaves around them. The sound of her trying to catch her breath. She shook her head.

“You sure?”

She shook it again. She looked like she was afraid to move.

She was real, but she was faintly different from anyone else, and not only because she wore no clothes. She was still beautiful.

He unzipped his damp New York Giants sweatshirt and held it out, taking a few steps toward her. “Do you want it?”

She shook her head, but she hazarded a look at it and then at him.

He took another couple of steps. “Seriously. You can keep it if you want.”

He held it close to her, and after thinking a bit longer she shot out her arm and took it. He now saw that the blotch on her knobby arm wasn’t a bruise at all, but a scrawl of black writing. There were numbers, five of them written by hand with a marker or something.

He looked away as she put on the sweatshirt and zipped it all the way up to her chin. She took steps backward, away from him. In his mind a dark feeling was coalescing that she had been though something difficult.

“I have a phone. Do you want to use it?”

She opened her mouth, but there was a space before any words came out. “No.” Breath, breath. “Thanks.”

“Do you need help?” he asked her. “Are you lost?”

She looked around anxiously. She opened her mouth again but again hesitated to say anything. “Is there a bridge?” she finally mustered.

He pointed downstream. “If you walk that way, you’ll see it right after the bend,” he told her. “Do you want me to show you?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” She looked sure. She stole one more glance at him, as though willing him to stay put, and took off toward the bridge.

He wanted to go with her, but he didn’t. He watched her stumble off through the trees in his blue Giants sweatshirt, looking overwhelmed by the tangled branches and the knotty roots and the mud and the bushes grabbing at her.

Once she looked back at him over her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he heard her say faintly before she disappeared.