A Drowning
By Sarp Sozdinler
Each of us was supposed to either push the turtles over the pier or jump into the water ourselves.
Jimmy said, “How many turtles?” and we had to explain to him one would do. Though I could tell he wasn’t fully convinced, he took the news in good faith. He checked us out one by one and then gently grabbed one of the turtles from its shell in his last act of mercy. His arms quivered in hesitation before he skewed his hand and tossed the turtle into the lake like a skipping stone.
“How’s this exactly a punishment?” he turned to ask us after the unclimactic silence. It was a fair question. Though the gist of the game wasn’t about punishment, there was something about meeting up this late, far from our homes, that lent the whole ordeal an unmistakable element of sin. If my sister were still here with us, she would tell us all about her own wrongdoings, about how testy the waters could be when provoked at just the wrong time.
But she could no longer talk, no longer breathe.
When it was Cora’s turn, she didn’t move at first. I deep down hoped she’ choose to jump into the lake so we could peek a glance at her newly budding breasts. Since our short stint last summer, I watched her grow into the body of this beautiful girl despite the rumors that she’d switched sides along the way.
“Can turtles actually swim?” she asked to no one in particular. She took a deep breath as if to prime herself into actually doing it. She stepped forward toward the edge of the pier, one of her feet probing the air as if to test the gravity of the waters underneath. She stopped to look at us one last time like she desperately needed some sort of confirmation to her question, but neither of us was really a figure of authority in the matter.
“It’s where they come out from.” It was Cornball who finally broke the silence, who then went ahead to pick up the remaining turtle in her stead and catapulted it into the water as if he had some unfinished business with the turtle kind, or as if he was resolving some unfinished business he had with someone else with turtles.
We all stood like that in a delicate silence before sulking back to the car. The crickets filled the air with their chirrups, another mark of the South. By the time we got back downtown, the streets were deserted despite the dawning light, which made me feel as if everyone was dead and we were stuck in some kind of limbo. My sister, when she was alive and well, used to say that this town looked deader than anything she knew. When I asked her if this included Oreo, our late family terrier, she just scoffed and left the room without saying goodbye.
Just when we took the corner for Main, Jimmy shouted that the community pool was on fire. Cornball jumped to the window in the backseat, and Cora fidgeted by his side like a restless seal. The car lurched to a stop by the curb. In the sudden heat of the moment, I thought for a second it was the pool itself, the actual body of water, that was on fire, the blueness of the flames blending with the artificial blue of the chlorine.
“Let’s bounce,” Jimmy said, lunging forward to restart the engine, but it was Cora who stopped him and tossed the keys out the window.
“What the fuck.”
Before any of us could tell what was going on, Cora opened the door to her side and dashed out of the car. She bolted toward the thickly billowing smokes of fire, oblivious to our protests. The silence in the car had assumed a tactile quality in the meantime, which harbored a different gravity than that of before, all dark and heavy. It should have been me who plunged into the building, I thought in that moment, me who ran after Cora. It should have been me who jumped into the water that day instead of my sister. It should have been me who acted up to save Oreo from the clutch of seaweed or fish or whatever it was that pulled him under.
It should have been me all along.
“Look,” Cornball said, gesturing out the window.
When I looked up, I saw Cora staggering out of the front gates, backgrounded by the flames which by now had segued into the rainclouds hovering about. She was all sooty around the face and coughing interminably. She was holding a black cat in her hands, but either because of the weak light or the animal’s dark fur coat—or both—I couldn’t tell whether the cat was affected by the fire or it was acting like its usually unbothered self.
I opened the passenger door on a whim and ran toward Cora. The distant sirens of a fire engine dubbed my footsteps as I met her halfway down the path and clasped her into a tight embrace.
She mumbled something close to “Dead” as I held her, or maybe it was “that” or “Dad” instead, or something else entirely, her breath strangely cold against the sweaty crook of my neck.
I eased my grip on her, then took off my sweater to drape it over her shoulders. The cat volunteered a purr as if to show its gratitude for the gesture. Cora glanced up at me as we started back toward the car, all sooty and doe-eyed.
“I’ve got you,” I said—to her or myself—or the cat—I couldn’t tell. The towners had started to litter the curbside in small groups around us, their whimpers mingling with the wail of the fire engine. “I’ve got you all.”
THE END
Author Bio: Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Trampset, Vestal Review, DIAGRAM, Normal School, Lost Balloon, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected and nominated for anthologies, including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He's currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam. From Nora Esme Wagner to Kathryn Silver-Hajo, Five on the Fifth has been home to many of his favorite writers and become an invaluable source of literary inspiration.