“I’m sorry to hear about your parents,” I say.
Ella looks away. I think I’ve overstepped my boundaries, but then she offers me a slight smile. “Thank you. I miss them a lot.”
“I’m sure they miss you, too.”
We leave the room together, and I notice she walks on the balls of her feet so as not to make a sound.
At the bathroom sink, Ella grips her toothbrush near the top, almost touching the bristles with her small fingers, making the toothbrush appear larger than it really is. When I catch her staring at me in the mirror, I grin. She grins back, showing two rows of tiny teeth. Toothpaste pours from her mouth and runs down her arm, dripping from her elbow. I watch it, thinking the S pattern it creates is familiar, and I let my mind wander.
A hot summer day in June. Clouds drift in the blue sky. Cool waters ripple in the sun. The fresh air carries hints of pine. I breathe it in and let the stress of Santa Teresa melt away into nothingness.
Though I believe my second Legacy developed shortly after the first, I didn’t discover it until almost a full year later. It was an accident I discovered it at all, which makes me wonder if I have other Legacies waiting to be uncovered.
Every year when school lets out for summer, to reward those of us who have been what the Sisters deem “good,” a four-day trip to a nearby mountain camp is organized. I’ve always loved the trip for the same reason I love the cave that sits hidden in the opposite direction. It’s an escape—a rare opportunity to spend four days swimming in the huge lake nestled in the mountains, or a chance to hike, to sleep beneath the stars, to smell the fresh air away from the musty corridors of Santa Teresa. It is, in essence, a chance to act our age. I’ve even caught some of the Sisters laughing and smiling when they think nobody’s looking.
In the lake, there’s a floating dock. I’m a horrible swimmer, and for many summers I just sat and watched from shore while the others laughed and played and did flips off the dock into the water. It took a couple summers of practicing alone in the shallow water, but the summer of my thirteenth year, I finally learned an imperfect and slow doggy paddle that kept my head above water. It got me to the dock, and that was enough for me.
At the dock, the game is to try to push each other off it. Groups team up until they’re the only ones left, and then it’s every girl for herself. As the biggest and strongest at Santa Teresa, I used to think it’d be an effortless victory for La Gorda, but it rarely is; she’s often outsmarted by the smaller, more wily girls, and I don’t think anyone has won as many times as a girl named Bonita.
I didn’t want to play La Reina del Muelle, Queen of the Dock. I was content to sit on the side and let my feet dangle in the water, but Bonita shoves me hard from behind anyway, sending me headlong into the lake.
“Play the game or go back to shore,” Bonita says, flicking her hair over her shoulder.
I climb back up and rush straight towards her. I shove her as hard as I can, and she falls backwards and crashes into the lake.
I don’t hear La Gorda behind me, and suddenly two strong hands shove me hard from behind. My feet slip on the wet wood, and the side of my head and shoulder smack against the edge of the dock, clouding my vision with stars. I’m knocked unconscious for a second, and when my eyes open I’m underwater. I see nothing but darkness and instinctively kick upward, flailing my arms to reach the surface. But my head smacks against the bottom of the dock, and I realize there are only a few inches of space between the water and the wooden boards of the dock. I try to tilt my head backwards to put my nose and mouth above the surface, but water instantly laps into my nostrils. I panic, my lungs already burning. I scramble to the left but there’s nowhere to go; I’m trapped by the dock’s plastic barrels. Water fills my lungs while the absurdity of death by drowning pops into my head. I think of the others, how their ankles are about to be seared. Will they believe that Number Three has been killed, or will they somehow know it’s me? Will it burn differently than if I’d died at the hands of the Mogadorians instead of my own stupidity? My eyes slowly close and I begin to sink. Just as I feel the last stream of bubbles escape my lips, my eyes snap open, and an odd sort of calm sweeps in. My lungs are no longer burning.
I’m breathing.
The water tickles my lungs, but at the same time satisfies every desperate need I have to breathe, and that’s when I know I’ve discovered my second Legacy: the ability to breathe underwater. I’ve found it only because I was pushed to the brink of death.
I don’t want to be found just yet by the girls diving into the water looking for me, so I let myself drift down to the deep bottom, the world slowly fading to black until my feet finally sink into the cold mud. I can see through the brown, murky water once my eyes adjust. Ten minutes pass. Then twenty. Finally the girls swim away from the dock. I assume the lunch bell’s been rung. I wait until I’m absolutely sure they’ve all left, then I walk slowly along on the lake’s bottom towards shore, my feet sinking into the mud as I inch forward. After a while the icy water begins to warm and brighten and the mud segues to rocks and then to sand, and finally my head emerges. I listen to the girls, La Gorda and Bonita included, scream and splash towards me in relief. I take inventory of myself on shore, noticing a gash on my shoulder is bleeding, leaving a trail of blood down my arm in the shape of a subtle S.
The Sisters make me sit the rest of the afternoon at a picnic table under a tree, but I didn’t mind. I had another Legacy.
In the bathroom, Ella catches me watching the toothpaste run down her arm in the mirror. She looks embarrassed, and as she tries to replicate the way I brush my teeth, even more frothy toothpaste pours from her mouth.
“You’re like a bubble factory,” I say with a smile, grabbing a towel to clean her up.
We leave the bathroom as the others are arriving, dress quickly in the room and walk out of it as the others are coming in, keeping just ahead of the group, as I prefer to do. We grab our lunches from the cafeteria and head out into the cold morning. I eat my apple on the walk to school. Ella does the same. I’m about ten minutes early today, which will give me a little time to get on the internet to see if there’s anything new about John Smith. The thought of him makes me smile.
“Why are you smiling? Do you like school?” Ella asks. I look over at her. The half-eaten apple looks big in her small hand.
“It’s a nice morning, I guess,” I say. “And I have good company today.”
We walk through town as street vendors set up shop. The snow hasn’t melted and is piled along both sides of Calle Principal, but the road itself is clear. Up ahead on the right Héctor Ricardo’s front door opens, and out comes his mother in a wheelchair, being pushed by Héctor. She’s had Parkinson’s disease for a very long time. She’s been in a wheelchair for the last five years, and she’s been unable to speak for the last three. He positions her in a sliver of sunlight and applies her wheel brakes. While the sun seems to bring her some comfort, Héctor slinks away and sits in the shade, dropping his head.
“Good morning, Héctor,” I call out. He lifts his head and squints one eye open. He waves with a shaky hand.
“Marina, as of the sea,” he croaks. “The only limits of tomorrow are the doubts we have today.”
I stop and smile. Ella stops, too.
“That’s one of your better ones.”
“Don’t doubt Héctor; he has a few nuggets left,” he says.
“Are you doing okay?”