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by Danielle Unis

Sun Moon Sea

The moon is waning. It is only a crescent and the stars glitter coldly in the sky. From the other cabins comes the murmur of girls’ voices. Layla listens for Allie’s but cannot hear her.
Allie has a full-throated laugh that dims to a chuckle. She is freckled and fun and loved by everyone. Layla loves her, and tonight she needs her.
Layla’s face is damp as she wipes at her tears. She can’t go inside, not like this. She looks at the window screens, which are propped open.
Allie, Layla whispers, Allie, it’s me. Her voice is a whine. It’s obvious she’s crying.
There’s rustling in the cabin. Someone says, Allie. They will all know now, but Layla is desperate.
Allie, she calls. And Allie comes outside, a blue sweatshirt over her white pajamas.
How can she tell her? About the itching on her wrists, the desire this time to really do it. She is sobbing, and Allie hugs her.
What? What is it?
I hate myself. I really hate myself.
She wonders if the other girls are listening, what they can hear. Tomorrow they will treat her differently. She will never come back to this camp, not for years. The rumors will follow her, the pitying looks.

I play at the water’s edge, chasing the white foam up and down, shrieking as it chases me. I dig moon-shaped moats, and my swimsuit sags with sand. I know that the drive home will be miserable: the scratch of sand in my shorts, salt itching my legs. But right now a breeze licks my limbs and the sun warms my skin. I can feel myself browning like a poptart. I flatten my hands on the wet, gooey sand. They are outlined with giant impressions.
I am used to sunshine. I spend all summer in my swimsuit, burning my feet on the hot cement of our backyard or splashing in the warm, aqua-blue waters of the swimming pool. The pool seems safe to me. Light ripples and sways on the water, and I can see everything through its shimmer.
The ocean is darkened by seaweed and sand, and maybe lobsters and sharks. My imagination draws fins on the horizon and I race back to the shallows, my feet kicking saltwater up my legs as the sand slips backwards, drawing me with it.
My sister Dora is swimming. She likes to ride waves, to pump her arms furiously until she catches the rim and pulls herself over it, tumbling quickly to shore. Dora floats past on the edge of a wave, giggling and shouting, and then splashes back out, hollering for me to join her. Dora is wearing a yellow swimsuit, her body is tan and strong, her long hair dark with water. When it dries, it will be golden as the sun, all of her is golden and strong as sunshine.
I am dark and small. The ocean is bigger than me, it is stronger than me, I know it, I have tangled with it before. I followed my sister out and pumped my arms until the rim of the wave caught me and slammed me to the ground, holding me under as water and more water pummeled my body, pushed into my throat, choked me with salty fingers. When I got free I swam for shore, but the waves followed me, one after another pushing me under, pulling me backwards, they would not let go, they gripped me and tortured me until at last my feet caught sand and I splashed onto shore, my legs shaking, my whole body shaking for hours afterwards despite the hot sun, despite the soft safety of my towel.
I don’t tangle with the ocean, but there is my sister beckoning me, teasing me. She washes toward me, skittering to a stop and wading up to me.
Come on, Layla, the waves are great.
I shake my head. I am wearing a bikini, the one with the green frogs that used to be Dora’s. I’ll lose it, I say.
Come past the wave break. Then you’ll be fine.
But I don’t know how to do that without getting knocked around.
You just duck, Dora tells me. Come on, I’ll show you. If you duck, the waves pass over you.
And Dora does, she shows me. She leads me out into the water, and a couple of times I fall down. Even knee deep, there are waves whose blunt edges topple me, lift my feet and wrap around my neck. But my sister waits, legs braced against the flow, and I catch up.
It drops down here, Dora says, and sure enough, in one step I am swimming.
A wave is bearing down on us, its top edge thinning, balling into white fists as we drop toward its base. Duck, Dora shouts. She disappears and I feel my body rising, tilting. Above me the wave curls its knuckles. I hold my breath and duck. My body lifts. It falls. I surface and the wave is gone.
See. Dora smiles, and ducks another. I duck, too.

My littlest one used to cling to me like a monkey. She was scared of everyone, of everything unless I held her. She watched the world with big dark eyes, one hand cradled in her mouth, the other one gripping my blouse.
She liked playing make believe most of all. When I left her alone, she talked to stuffed animals or drew in the sand, swaddled in her magical universe. One afternoon she climbed to the top of our jungle gym and lay flat across the bars. I remember I was terrified. I thought she was stuck, that she might fall, but when I ran outside, she was grinning with her arms spread wide, calling, I’m a bird. I’m a bird.
My husband worried. Layla wasn’t interacting with the other kids; she spent too much time alone. We put her in a private school where she did better. These last several years, she’s grown braver and more positive. She seems to have made good friends, and yet there’s something going on that she won’t tell me. Her spirit is waning; she’s turning in on herself again. She has that old expression now, that frightened, overwhelmed expression, but I can’t reach her. She retreats into her books, pretends to be happy. When she catches me looking, she grins, her whole face brightening to divert me.
It is probably just adolescence. Her body is changing, maturing much faster than Dora’s did. The more her body matures, though, the younger she seems to me. Her eyes are widening with her hips, and I cannot reach her. She wants me to believe, and I can’t.

Years later, after the therapy in the bright yellow room with the sagging couch, after middle school and before high school, an artist will make a bust of Layla. He will do multiple sketches, each a bit different, each depicting a different mood. Her mother will hang one on the wall.
It captures that phase, she will tell her daughter. That lost expression asking, what is happening to me? It’s precious, she says.
The bust will sit in the living room, at least the casting that they buy. The other will travel to exhibits. People in town will recognize her from this sculpture.
From the left the lips will curl into a playful smile; the eye will seem alert. From the other she’ll look dreamy, melancholy. If bronze can be vulnerable, this right side will manage that.

In middle school they learn about the ebb of the ocean, the cycles of the moon. The battle of light and shadow, Earth’s gravity.
At lunch Layla boasts about her sister. My sister’s got a new boyfriend, she says. They’re going to Homecoming together.
She talks all the time about Dora’s new life at the high school, brags as if it is her life. She hopes it will be someday, once she gets out of this private school.
Dora is popular. She rides around in cars with friends, goes to the beach and to parties, meets cute boys who actually like her, too. Dora doesn’t have time for her little sister, not anymore, she forgets private school completely.
Layla only knows from Dora’s talking on the phone. Their dad is getting them a new phone line because Dora is on it so much, gossiping to all her new friends.
Layla has Allie. She’s her only real friend, but the other kids listen when Layla talks about her sister. They are envious. They are envious when she reflects her sister’s glow.

I hold my breath and wait for it to pass, the rush of water and sand no longer threatening. It is a caress, a murmur. If I open my eyes, I might see fish and seaweed, but I won’t open them. Better not to look.
I am at peace as I dip and rise, breathe and float. I am nearly weightless, free of gravity. I could stay here forever and maybe survive, or maybe disappear. If I don’t rise, don’t breathe, if I let myself sink into these whispers, I could vanish. It would be as if I never existed, never burdened the earth with my weight, my shadow.
But I do rise. It is part of the cycle to move toward the sun, the heat. To shine for a moment before returning to shadow.