I floated in black water or nothingness for a few seconds or an eternity, and then I was coughing up water tinged with chlorine and blood on a slab of wet cement.   A dark, rusty cloud was dissipating in the illuminated pale turquoise water.  It was nighttime, but birds were chirping.  A pair of warm hands swept over my wet skin.

"Hey Nessie.  You're alright."

I wasn't convinced.  I sat up and inspected myself, lifted and bent my arms and legs.  My left leg was still numb, but that was it.  That and a crushing pain in my chest.  I whimpered, almost wishing I had some physical damage to show how much I was hurting.

I loved you. I really did.

Eric Anderson took the tourniquet off my leg and my calf pulsed and throbbed. 

"What the heck? Whose belt is this?" he frowned.

I took Pete's belt from him and held it gingerly.  Eric grabbed his phone and began to dial a number.  I knocked the glowing screen out of his hand and it skidded across the cement.

"Don't!  Don't call anyone."

"I'm calling 911."

"You said I'm alright. Look!  I'm fine."

"Are you fine?  There's blood everywhere! What happened to you?"

"I'm okay.  Really."

I wiped the residual water from my eyes and face with my hands and saw him clearly.  He was a mess.  His hair was wild, his eyes shadowed and tired, he was shivering in his wet clothes.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Awhile."

"Waiting for me?" He crossed his arms and looked away.  "But, I've been so mean to you."

"You're just acting that way to hide something.  Obviously."  His eyes darted to the pool then back to me.  "Or you legit hate me, but anyway, I don't think anyone else thought to look for you here. Honestly, I felt pretty ridiculous sitting here all night watching for you up until a couple minutes ago."

It occurred to me that after all I'd been through, if Eric hadn't been there and pulled me out of the water, I might have drowned at the bottom of the pool anyway.

"Whoa. Thank you."

"Sure.  So will you tell me what's going on with you?  If it's as weird as it seems, I swear I won't tell a soul.  Unless you want me to, if you're in some kind of trouble or something."  He sat down next to me and dipped his feet in the pool.

"How many nights have you spent here? "

He ran his hand through his hair and shook the water out as he grimaced.  "I guess the first night no one really knew you were gone.  Then your mom called Sophie and found out you weren't with her family.  After Sophie told me you were missing, I came here at night in case you came back, so someone would be here."  He shrunk into his shoulders.  "So, this was the fourth night."

We sat quietly until I finally said, "I'm going to be grounded until I graduate."

Then I wondered if I told Eric the truth, and he did tell anyone else, if it would even matter since I'd likely be on house arrest with no social life until I left for college anyway.

"I should get you home. So your family knows you're alive." 

He shook his head sadly and gave me a long look.  I looked into his eyes, wondering if I had the memory erasing capabilities that Liz and Paul had.  I started to feel warm again.  I was going to tell him.  I didn't have Liz anymore, and I couldn't stand the thought of keeping it to myself.  If Eric Anderson sat by the pool for four nights expecting me to magically appear, he was almost as delusional as I was about to seem.  And if I didn't tell someone right then, I never would.  I'd wake up the next day and my life would be so shockingly normal that I'd doubt any of it actually happened. 

I needed to know that it actually happened.

"Okay.  So, when I'm in the water, and then it looks like I'm not there anymore, I'm still there, but in a different...setting." 

"Is there a trap door down there or something?"

"Not exactly."  Tears were coming again. Was any of it real?

"Hey, it's okay.  You don't have to tell me."

Eric rested his arm over my shoulders and I shuddered under its weight and unfamiliarity. He quickly pulled his arm away and moved over to give me some space. I could still almost feel Frank's arm wrapped behind my neck and I tried to push the memory from my mind.  The white dress Liz gave me to wear was stained with splotches of blood like a field of watercolor poppies.  Pete's leather belt was lying across my lap.  I held his belt and closed my eyes when I said it.

"I'm sorry. Um, so,"  I took a deep breath, "apparently I can time travel?  Through the water.  I went to 1953 a few times. And then 1886."  I reached into my bra and pulled out the wet pack of gum and flopped it on the ground.  "I don't really have any proof, I guess.  You can probably buy an old pack of gum on eBay."  I stood and looked up at the flickering fluorescent street light.  "So do you have the keys to this place or am I going to have to climb this stupid fence again?"

He did have a key and he walked me through to the street in stunned silence.

"My car's in front of Sophie's.  Thank you for... being there. And let me know if I broke your phone, when I hit it. I'm sorry about that. I'll pay to get it fixed."

"Don't worry about that. Come on," he nodded toward his SUV parked on the street. "I'm driving you home." 

"No thanks."  I jogged down the sidewalk barefoot toward Sophie's house.

"Hey!"  Eric was right behind me.  "Someone took your car back to your house.  I'm driving you home."

I had him take me to my dad's house.  I knew from the second I walked in I'd be permanently grounded, but it felt like the right place to go.  We didn't talk and I didn't look at him until he parked in the driveway.  The porch light was on and the sky was beginning to turn cobalt blue at the edge of the field.  Suddenly I worried that my dad might not actually live there.  I brought Rose back, but had I changed anything in the process?

"What happened to you there?"  Eric asked.

I thought about how to answer.  "I got hit by a car.  It was pretty bad, I guess."

"But you were better when you came back."

"Yeah, that happened other times, too.  Smaller injuries, but same idea.  I'm not sure why." I opened the door and slid out of Eric's SUV.  "Thank you for everything. If you tell anyone, I'll-"  I blinked.  I didn't know what I'd do.

"I won't. I swear." With a straight face, he drew a cross over his heart and I cracked a small smile.

"Thank you, again. Like a thousand times thank you," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. "I hope you can get some sleep now. You look like crap."

"You too, Nessie." He scrunched his face up and added, "I mean, not the looking like crap part."

"It's okay. I'm sure I do. Goodnight."

"Good morning."

Eric waited until I found the spare key under the plastic dog poop and let myself inside before he drove away.  Everything appeared normal.  The magnets on the fridge held the same photos, lists and take out menus.  A plug-in air freshener glowing over the kitchen counter scented the house with faux farm fresh apple.  Fozzie the cat poked her orange face around the door frame to the bathroom and eyed me curiously.  The television was on in the living room and Jason had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch.  I turned the tv off and his head jerked up from his chest.  Something was off; Jason never stayed at Dad's house.

"Hey.  What are you doing here?"

He reached up under his glasses to rub his eyes.  "Grandpa Walt died."

~~~~~~

After he told me Grandpa had passed away in his sleep at home, but his funeral was on hold due to another family crisis: my disappearance, I begged Jason to let everyone sleep for a few more hours.  I changed into pajamas, rolled up the bloody dress and hid it in a plastic shopping bag in my closet, and somehow slept deeply in my bed until there was a knock on my door in the morning.  Dad wordlessly lumbered into my room, pulled me into a hug and cried.

"I'm sorry about Grandpa, Dad," I said eventually.

"I'm sorry, too.  But when your mother called me, I thought you were dead, too.  Don't ever do that to me again."

"I won't."

Dad wiped his nose with the back of his tattooed forearm.  Then he pulled my desk chair over next to the bed, sat across from me, cracked his knuckles for added tough-guy effect and began the questioning I'd been dreading.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me the truth about where you've been?"

"Probably not." 

He leaned back and crossed his arms, trying hard to keep cool.

"Was it your own choice to lie to your family regarding your whereabouts and cut off communication for several days?"

"Yes."

"So there was nobody else involved that we need to press charges or get a restraining order against?"

"No."

"Do I need to arrange to get you an electronic tether, or do you understand that you are not leaving home other than to go to school for the foreseeable future?" 

"I understand."

"Your mother's on her way over," he said as he stood up.  "You really screwed up, Vanessa.  Half of me wants to kick you out of my house and the other half wants to never let you out of my sight again."

"I know.  I'm sorry."

"No.  You don't know. You have no idea."

A few minutes later, my mom and I sat in the rocking chairs on the porch, and she asked me basically the same questions, adding, "Are you on drugs?" and "Is there any possibility you might be pregnant?"

"You owe Sophie an apology.  I understand she's been lying for you all summer?  You put her in a terrible position."   Sophie. I was only gone four days but everyone and everything in my real life seemed so distant. And my mom and dad both looked like they'd aged ten years. They looked smaller, somehow.

"We all thought you were dead." She stared at me in disbelief one more time before she dropped her face in her hands and started to cry.

I reached out to touch her shaking shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

~~~~~~

At the funeral home, I felt sad and somehow guilty when I saw my grandpa, but I didn't cry like I expected I would. I hadn't cried yet, because I didn't really believe he passed away.  I had seen him only a few days before.  He was eighteen years old then and I remained in stubborn denial that he wasn't still eighteen somewhere.  But I was wrong.  The evidence was laid out in a box in front of me, unnaturally waxy and motionless.  He was gone. 

Why didn't I hug him before I climbed onto the jet ski the last time I saw him?  I somehow knew that I should but I didn't trust my own instincts.  And I'd never get another chance.  I looked over all the photos of my grandpa that my aunt had taped to poster boards and remembering started to feel like playing with a Jacob's ladder toy.  My memories were the colorful blocks of wood, but with every click they shuffled, reorganized, seemed to appear and disappear.

My grandma had died of a heart attack while swimming along the boardwalk when I was seven, but there was a photo of her and my grandpa at Jason's graduation three years before.  But no, I remembered her funeral two years ago.  I was fifteen, it was in that same room.  The overpowering scent of too many varieties of flowers in one room was the same.

There were photos of my grandma and grandpa together with their bikes.  I never knew either of them were into biking, though there was a lot I didn't know about them.  But then I did remember her saying she liked to bike to clear her head.

Was I fabricating memories from photographs?

I walked away from the more recent photos to the older ones, hoping to find images that wouldn't scramble my mind.

Walt as a scowling pre-teen in denim overalls, standing next to a farm implement. Walter as a baby in a cloth diaper, lying on a blanket under a tree, holding a bottle to his mouth and staring wide-eyed up at the leaves.  As a new dad with a huge smile, cradling my aunt in nervous, rigid arms. The photograph of Walter and Rose in wool coats in front of the tall, snow-covered pine tree at city hall.

There was a black and white photo of Walter and Rose sitting on striped towels on a beach with a white lighthouse in the background.  They were with a group of friends; Bobby, Theresa, Shirley, all smiling at the camera.  On the corner of a blanket nearby,  Pete was caught in conversation with someone out of view.  Without thinking, I pulled the picture off the poster board and flipped it over. 

"Swimming at Lighthouse Beach, August 1953" it said in my grandma's bubbly cursive.

"More like sunbathing at the beach," my dad said from over my shoulder.  He took the photograph from my hand and taped it back up.  "Your grandma never swam.  She was terrified of the water."

"Yeah," I said, looking down at my black sneakers, "I remember."

Then there was a familiar jab between my shoulder blades. 

"Stand up straight.  Don't shrink yourself, Vanessa." 

When I turned around and caught my parents in a teary-eyed hug, I fell apart.