For a split second, I think I'm hallucinating. A scenario where a boy shows up out of nowhere and takes a chance on the fat, drowning weirdo seems unlikely. More than that, it seems straight up taken from a cheesy chick flick movie. Yet, here he is. Staring. At. Me.

River stole me from the lake, leaving the angry fish all high and dry. I bet they are wondering why he did it. I'm sure if I listen past his wheezing, I'll hear them flapping their fins around while gossiping on his behalf.

"'Why would he do such a thing?" "Doesn't he know better than to mingle with this ferny excuse of a girl?" Nosy fish. I don't blame them. I'm as puzzled as they are.

I avoid his piercing eyes and focus mine on the lake—on its undulating magic. Bet we are the new talk of its watery bed.

Messy thoughts ricochet against the ridges of my brain. Dad disapproved of my idea to let Elsie guide me to him. He was adamant I should come out of the lake and when I was about to, the water refused to let me go. Then River came and meddled. I must think of other ways to find my father. What am I supposed to do with this boy? How do I get rid of him? Do I want to get rid of him?

I pinch my legs several times and watch how my pale skin turns crimson from the assault. When I'm done mangling my thighs, I dig my nails into my palms, welcoming the pain that helps me focus. I don't want to ride my whirlwind in front of him, so I listen to his hitched breathing and try emulating it. The crazy rhythm of his heaving chest makes me dizzy. It goes up, up, down. Up, up, up, down...

What is wrong with this boy? Is he having a heart attack? Is this the part in the movie where the director calls for a scary plot twist?

River's shadow blocks the warmth of the sun and my chubby cheeks freeze, causing my teeth to rattle. I know I haven't blipped out because my nostrils pick up his scent. It's saturating the air. I don't want him to notice the effect he has on me, so I make fists with both hands resting on the grass and dig at the earth beneath it. My nails find comfort in its cool depth.

Blink. I'm still awake.

Blink. I'm here. On this lake. By his side.

Blink. He smells like mint, and earth, and rain too—a heady combination.

Part of me wishes we were characters in a movie, so I could turn off the TV and go about my life pretending none of this happened. I know these kinds of situations only happen in stories. He is a complete stranger. He must have followed me here. I suck in a deep breath at the realization he must have watched me go in the water. Or worse, he must have heard me talking to 'myself'. I do that sometimes. When I'm certain no one is around, I answer Dad out loud. My chlorophyll blood freezes in my ferny veins, my mind reeling from the possibility.

River can't know my dad is alive in my head. I need to conceal my secret. Protect it. What if he told others what he saw? What if Dad gets mad and never talks to me again? That can't happen. Not now. Not. Ever.

What used to be my story is now his too. He's taken hold of the script without my permission, becoming a new member of the cast.

Can this be real? Maybe it's not and I'm safe. But the wind stings my wet cheeks, and his breathing comes in huffs.

I'm positive I'm hanging in the right-here-and-now fragment of time. Therefore, this moment is a scene in our story. A detailed close-up on this screwed up sequence. The breeze drying my ragged, teal dress is another one, and that I'm only wearing a boot because the other one capsized in the lake is part of our damn storyline too.

A cluster of faces I don't know pop out of nowhere and the plot thickens. They saunter over to us saying, "What happened?"

It's an old couple and their labrador retriever. I stare at his rubber snout. It's turning grey. He is also getting old. Time passes for everyone but me. I'm stuck in this limbo where my dad speaks to me in my head and I don't find it weird. Where I wear the same dress every fucking day to remember him, and that's not creepy. The canine nuzzles me because he knows I'm not a loon but a desperate, grieving girl that wants her former life back.

"Do we need to call someone? What's going on here?" they keep asking. I focus on the waging of the dog's tail so I won't lose my shit.

We try to tell them. River tries to explain and I try to explain. It doesn't work. They study us with odd looks on their faces. They take one look at our wetness, his ripped shirt—which is missing at least three buttons because I yanked it so much I tore them off—my clear lack of a boot and pin what happened with their eyes. That is also part of the script.

They think we've been making out, hot and heavy, down at Elsie lake. Two horny teenagers, skipping class, being asses. They believe we've come here to grope each other, without a care in the world. They know we went on a swim because we are all about making bad choices at our age and maybe had sex or tried to.

They don't listen to me when I tell them I was wondering if there were fish in the lake. They don't hear River when he says, "I was just walking when I saw her go under."

They see us together, all flushed and out of sorts, and that's a wrap.

I look at River, who stands like he had done nothing extraordinary. I see how the man nods in his direction while his elderly wife ogles me. He gets the nice-work-young-lad look, while I get the I-didn't-know-you-had-it-in-you-dirty-slut glower.

Saving the fat chick from drowning is nothing compared to rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress, I guess. But it's something, nonetheless. It speaks volumes of this tall, angsty looking teen, whose wet curls glisten as if he'd grown a halo. Damn it! Me? I'm no damsel. My damp dress is sticking in weird places. It displays all my plumpness in plain sight. That's not sexy. Not even to a sixty-year-old man who's watched his wife let go and gain more pounds than gray hairs.

It's not as if River, who is attractive in an annoying hard-pass-for-a-fat-chick-like-me kind of way, had taken a mermaid out of the water. One who sold her voice for a pair of slim legs to be with him. One with perfect hair and not a speck of dirt, even though the lake's water is gritty and stinks. She'd be flawless and fragile and I'm here like a weird female Loch Elsie monster, heaving and choking loudly. Not sexy at all, right, Gramps?

"Dawn! Mind your manners!" There's a sharp edge of annoyance laced in his tone.

Good timing to be back, Daddy. He scoffs and leaves, upset by my bravado and this whole venture. Great. I do not know how to get him to talk to me again. It could take hours, or maybe even days. My forehead beads at the thought, my chest burning with the strength of a thousand suns. I clasp a hand over it as the world spins and turns around me. I'm fading away, I can tell.

Blink. Fear sinks its fangs in my throat. Dad is disappointed in me.

Blink. He's seen through my stupid plan and deemed it useless. Like his daughter.

Blink. Riding my whirlwind never seemed so eas—blank.

"Dawn? Dawn, where are you going?" Blink. River's shivering hands are on my shoulders, their unexpected warmth bringing me back with an electric jolt. He makes me aware. He roots me in this messy, unwanted chapter.

We are alone again. The couple and their dog are barely a dot. His eyes find mine, our gazes lock. He loosens the grip and lets go as if touching me was utterly wrong. There's so much more to this boy than I expected it to be. His face is inches from mine—so close I can stare at the droplets gathering at the end of his curls. They weigh them down and off they fall, glistening rainbows.

Somehow, it makes sense to count them as they cascade and dissolve. I've always found comfort in numbers. Their steady grace. Their exact amount. I work out how many I need for a specific situation and hold them accountable.

Seconds go by and we say nothing. I like this comfortable silence, translucid. If only it would last longer...

I cough some more, spitting out the remains of my stupid attempt to complete my ferny transition. Even the birds fly away from me. They wander to a different oak tree. They want nothing to do with this drama.

I've unfriended the entire forest, for crying out loud! Because I might start crying again, I give my back to River and start toward the edge of the water.

I walk a few steps and see it, my damn boot, floating adrift as if it didn't care for my foot anymore. Maybe it got sick of bearing my pathetic toes and bailed on me too. I bend over to grab it when I hear him calling my name.

"What are you doing? Don't go back in the water, Dawn!" His footsteps grow closer. The atmosphere charges with reprimand. He thinks I've lost it.

I turn around and face him straight on. We are back at being inches from one another. River is taller this time around. Is he taller? Maybe I'm smaller. I'm hunched, trying to shrink into the soil, so I can disappear and he can leave me be.

I want to root right here.

I'm a fern.

I'm the carbon dioxide he discards with each exhausted breath.

And after today, I'm sure I've become the thing he wishes he'd left behind.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on her, seeing what everyone else who was also by this lake saw too. I thought she was asking for it... That it was bad enough to be wearing that faded, teal dress along with those red-framed glasses. Not to mention having a face shaped like an emoji and wild, auburn hair. Wait, no. I'm not being honest. I hadn't thought exactly that. I'd thought... That it was bad enough to have a chubby, freckled face and ungraceful hair.

Go ahead, pin me as shallow, like Elsie's shoreline. Add a tad of disgust while you are at it, too. How stupid was I? Very. She has an adorable face, sprinkled with delicate, caramel dots that decorate her soft cheekbones. The reason I know this is that my face is inches away from hers. For half an erratic heartbeat, my body reacts involuntarily and I lean in. I'm dipping my head as if I'd considered kissing her. The moment passes by and silence surrounds both our frames—hers voluptuous, mine craving her curves. In its eerie magic, my thoughts creep up her features once more.

Heck! It is kind of crazy that people don't pinch her cheeks. My abuela was definitely going to the second they met. Wait... do I want my grams to meet Dawn? Yes, I do.

I want to meet her. I want to get to know her and understand why she acts the way she does. Where she goes when her gaze turns stormy, or understand why her voice echoes in my head even if she hasn't talked to me at all.

I want the entire universe to know about Dawn. The real her, the girl who's standing in front of me with a defiant look in her green eyes. She's kind of crouching a bit, but her chin remains high. Her lashes cast long shadows on her features... I could linger the seconds away, forget the reason she came here and almost drowned. I want to swallow away the thought I could have been too late to reach her in time.

Dawn makes me want to be a man, a worthy one. The guy who can ride her yellow bike and take her places. The one who can bring her back from her daydreams, or daymares, because she looks haunted more often than not. I know it now...

I'll never go back to that moment where I thought it was bad enough that she looked the way she did.

I'll never go back to wondering why she had to carry that weird hobo bag, or why she had to act so different from the rest.

I remember feeling embarrassed for her, wanting to look away.

And now...

There's this fight rising its way up my throat whenever I think of people making fun of her. It had been so hard in that literature class, to pretend that it didn't bother me when Lorna said those things. It was torture to feign how upset I was because I wasn't able to listen to a stupid song.

Once in the corridor, I looked out for her, then she was there, among all my so-called friends... I shoved my hands in my pockets, making tight fists until my knuckles hurt. I wanted to punch Sebastian or kick something. I did none of that. I made it worse for her by not wanting to make it worse for her—if that made any sense.

Now... I want to recover those first five minutes and make them count.

Even if she makes me feel self-conscious. Even if people talk about us because they will. In class, at the cafeteria, in the halls... they will make fun of us. I don't care anymore.

I'm staring at her in front of me, righteous and true to herself, and I can't think about pulling away anymore. I can't think about anything at all.

Except touching her, to make sure she is real.

Except doing whatever I can or have to, to make her smile again. The same smile I saw in those three hundred seconds she was swinging and reading from her thick book. The ones I'm planning on claiming back.

Right here. On this lake. By her side.