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perfect size. Fit my hand like a baseball. Jake saw what I was planning and lunged at me. I knocked him upside the head with the rock, hit him right in the temple. The blood came fast and covered his face like a veil. His knees wobbled, and I smelled the stench of urine as he pissed himself.
    Ronnie winced and slid away from me. I dropped the rock to show him I meant no harm. “You need to hold me, Ronnie. Don’t let me go in.”
    He looked from me back to Jake and back to me again.
    â€œHe’s going to die,” I said. My voice cracked. I was about to cry, something I usually would have tried to hide, but not this time. This was too real, too in my face to pretend I didn’t care.
    I think Ronnie must have seen this and decided it was time to act, maybe past time. He nodded. “Okay.”
    I laid out on the ground, my elbows sinking into the sand. “Take my feet,” I said, and instantly felt Ronnie’s big hands around my ankles. The pull of the sand was strong, and for a minute I thought I’d plunge in headfirst, and no matter how strong Ronnie was, he wouldn’t be able to pull me out. But the moment passed, and I realized if I was still, the sinking wasn’t as fast.
    â€œI need to go farther out,” I said. “Do you have any good ground left?”
    Ronnie moved me closer. I dug in with all my strength. I was moving my arms through the sand. It felt like moving them through wet cement. I finally touched something, a pant leg. I grabbed it just as my own chin hit the sand. I tasted the salty muck and tried to yell. I’m not sure I made much sense with the sand in my mouth, but Ronnie got the message. He pulled me back just as I got a decent grip on Seth’s leg.
    A few minutes later, the three of us lay on solid ground, panting. Well, not Seth. Seth was coughing up a storm. Each breath he tried to take seemed riddled with sand and grit. His lungs rattled like they were full of broken glass, but he was alive, by God.
    I stumbled to my feet and stood there looking at what was left of my life. Seth—breathing, but barely. Jake—he might be dead—there was so much blood and it kept on coming. Ronnie—shaking hard, like somebody with a fever, doubled over, plumb exhausted from pulling both of us out.
    At the time, I had no idea that what I’d done had set into motion the events that would shape the rest of my life.
    â€”
    T hat night after I ate my supper and kissed Mama on the cheek while she listened to her radio programs, I went to the hall bathroom and locked the door. I heard my daddy outside the window with one of his buddies, popping the tops off their jugs of moonshine and muttering curses about the heat. Nobody had to tell me how that was going to end.
    Thanks to a botched land deal several years ago, we were one of the few houses in this region that had running water. The lines had already been run, and we’d been ready to move—to escape what Daddy called the “city folk”—when the deal fell through, and we were left with the best of both worlds: indoor plumbing and very few neighbors. Thanks to this, I didn’t have to go out to the pond to try my little experiment. That’s all it was—an experiment. That’s what I told myself.
    But like most of the things we tell ourselves, it was a damned lie.
    I stopped the sink up and let the water run until it was almost to the top. I thought about how Seth had been in the quicksand for all that time, and when he came out, he wasn’t drowned or anything. Not even passed out. He was alive, maybe coughing like crazy, but he was alive.
    I closed my eyes and lowered my head. The water came up around my ears and the world took on that echoing, faraway feel. My pulse throbbed in my temples, and I kept imagining hands on my back, pushing me down. I began to count.
    I made it to seventy before I knew my lungs were going to explode. My pulse hammered. Ten more