What the Water Took

The pool at the Oakwood Motor Lodge didn't look like a place where someone died. It looked like everywhere else that had given up — cracked concrete, water the color of weak tea, a NO LIFEGUARD sign hanging crooked on the chain-link fence. Leo stood at the edge, clutching the bucket and skimmer net, fighting the urge to walk away.

Three years ago, this is where Marcus died. Marcus, who called himself Leo's best friend though they'd only known each other six weeks. Marcus, who'd pushed Leo into the water fully clothed at 3 AM, laughing like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to anyone. Marcus, who'd slipped on the moss-slickened edge, hit his head, and slid under while Leo was still sputtering to the surface, drunk and annoyed and not yet afraid.

Leo was still running from that night. Not literally — though he'd tried that first, leaving town with nothing but a duffel bag and Marcus's favorite hat, a beat-up thing with a jagged tear in the brim. But the running was internal now, a constant motion away from memory, away from the question that had lived in his throat since: why hadn't he turned around sooner?

The hat sat on his dashboard now. He wore it sometimes, when the guilt got too loud. It was stupid — Marcus was dead, and wearing his hat wouldn't bring him back, wouldn't make Leo the person Marcus had thought he was. But it helped. Or he told himself it did.

"You gonna clean that or stare at it all day?"

Leo jumped. A woman stood behind him — maybe forty, sharp in a way that suggested she'd earned every wrinkle. She was smoking a cigarette, watching him with eyes that didn't miss much.

"Sorry," Leo said. "I'll get started."

"You're not the first guy they sent," she said, exhaling smoke. "Last one quit after two days. Said he couldn't handle it."

"Handle what?"

"The way the water looks back at you." She flicked ash onto the pavement. "Kid died here, couple years back. Some people can feel it. The ones who can't, they're the lucky ones."

Leo's chest tightened. "You knew him?"

"Knew of him. Nice kid. Made people laugh." She studied Leo's face. "You look like you're carrying something heavy. That's the hell of it, isn't it? Being the one left behind to bear the weight."

Leo didn't answer. He put on Marcus's hat, plunged the skimmer into the murky water, and began his work against the ghosts that rose to meet him.