Read Drowned for Free Online Page B

that I would never need to know how to do it, and I think Stella felt the same way. Every holiday when we were little we went to some cottage by the sea, to sandy Swedish beaches shelving gently into the water, saltspray roses in full bloom, stranded jellyfish, coarse gray-green grass and the sand at the water’s edge, solid and compacted, sometimes etched with grooves from the waves in a way that seemed too good to be true, unnatural, as if someone had raked the entire shoreline just like the gravel path outside the church where we had our end-of-semester celebrations. We would sit on thesand right at the water’s edge, where the water is at its warmest, we would walk around with our hands on the bottom, like crocodiles in tepid water, we would play ball and jump in the waves, but I never remember us swimming, I don’t remember Stella swimming even though she was so much older than me. Swimming lessons in school were one long torment, everyone else had already learned to swim during the summer holidays and I ended up paddling around clumsily with a float around my waist, like two great big external orange lungs on my back. I hated the pungent smell of chlorine, and the swimming pool was ugly, I could feel it very clearly even if I was unable to put it into words at the time: water was not my element. I learned to swim eventually, the last in the class and very reluctantly, but I still don’t enjoy it. I don’t know how Stella feels, we haven’t talked about it for years.
    It is with a mixture of fear and pleasure that I close my eyes and sink beneath the surface of the water. I have that same strong feeling now, that I don’t belong in the water, but I think that perhaps it can be changed, perhaps I can become someone else. Perhaps it’s already happening. Even though the water is warm, almost too warm, it feels cool against my face. I think about Gabriel’s kiss, his firm hand behind my head, on the back of my neck. When I open my eyesunderwater my hands look white in the yellowness, my nail polish looks orange, it looks grubby, dirty. I lie on my back instead, feeling my hair float out across the water around my face. A few black alder cones are bobbing on the surface of the water a short distance away, and a dragonfly darts just above, its movements jerky.
    I could drown and die here and nobody would notice, I think to myself, they would have to drag the lake for my body, they would find it down in the mud. I wonder if there are eels here, eels are scavengers, they eat people who have drowned. I daren’t push my feet too far down for fear of touching something disgusting on the bottom, down there where the water is chilly. The alders are standing in a row on the shoreline, the sand has been washed away from around their roots, they are black and slippery, like black snakes reaching down into the water, I hurry out, suddenly convinced that the yellow water smells fetid. I jump as one of my wet curls tickles my shoulder, tumbling down my back, I quickly wrap the towel around my head, trapping them. The alders are reflected in the surface of the water, standing dark and silent in a row along the shoreline, there isn’t a sound.
    I don’t have a change of clothes with me, and have to pull on my dress over my wet swimsuit. Do they usually come here to swim? I wonder. Stella andGabriel. Does he pull her toward him in the same way, forcing her lips apart, pressing himself against her? You could do anything here, no one would see. What would we have done if he had come with me? The thought excites me, his hands on my body, warm against my skin, which is covered in gooseflesh after my swim, one hand fastened around my wrist in a firm grip, the other hand under my dress, touching my thigh. I close my eyes. I would let him do anything he wants, I think, and am instantly surprised by my own thought, but yes, I think it again. Anything he wants, anything at all.
    Stella and Gabriel are standing next to Gabriel’s car when