The Drowning Room

Elena lay on the inflatable raft in her sister's backyard pool, the late afternoon sun cutting through the water in fractured gold ribbons. She'd been swimming laps for hours, her muscles burning with that exquisite ache that feels almost like progress. This was day three of her 'recovery retreat' — a week housesitting while Marissa and David were in Cancún.

The black cat appeared at the pool's edge, a shadow against the fence. Marissa's cat, Balthazar, regarded her with yellow eyes that seemed to hold ancient judgment. He'd been watching her since she arrived, as if he knew she wasn't really recovering from anything. Just hiding.

'Your sister asked me to feed you,' she told him, paddling to the side. He retreated, tail twitching.

Inside, she rifled through Marissa's well-organized pantry until she found the vitamin supplements — little amber bottles lined up like soldiers. Women's Multi. B-Complex. Vitamin D3, because even in California, you can be deficient. Elena swallowed three without water, the way she'd watched Marissa do a thousand times. Her sister had always believed in the power of routines, of systems, of things you could control.

That was before Marissa's promotion and Elena's layoff. Before their lives diverged so sharply that phone calls became performance art, each sister curating her narrative for the other's consumption.

She turned on the television. The cable had been upgraded to some premium package Elena couldn't afford in her apartment. Channels scrolled by in high-definition abundance — cooking shows, travel documentaries, reality television where strangers cried about men they'd known for three weeks. She watched a woman sob into a camera about how she'd never felt this way before, and Elena wanted to reach through the screen and shake her. Or join her.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. Her ex-boyfriend's name lit up the screen: *Thinking of you.*

Elena stared at those three words until they blurred. It had been four months. He was marrying someone else in two weeks. Someone who planned breakfasts and took vitamins and didn't spend entire afternoons swimming in her sister's pool, not moving, barely breathing, waiting for the water to finally take her.

She typed *Don't.* Then deleted it. Then turned off the phone.

Balthazar appeared in the doorway, meowing insistently. It was past his dinner time. Some things, apparently, still required attention.

'Yeah,' Elena said, opening a can of expensive cat food. 'Some routines, right?'

The cat ate while she watched. Later, she would swim again, until her body was too exhausted to remember what it felt like to be chosen, what it felt like to be left. For now, she simply existed in the space between, the water still rippling against the pool's walls, and thought about how some things you float through, and some things you drown in, and the difference is mostly just time.