The contents of my stomach swished back and forth. The water below remained calm and currentless. My temples pushed out at the sides of my head, throbbing hard enough to mess my hair. Today my head is bald. Yesterday I was balding but today I am bald.
Just last week, I sat at the end of this very same dock to marvel at the beauty of my hair. It was long and flowing, the longest I have ever seen here at the camp. I was afraid to brush it, so I stroked it with my hand. I feared that if I brushed it too hard it would fall out in clumps. It was so red and soft that in the sun it shone brightly. The reflection of my hair glowed in the water like a sunset. I have never seen a sunset so bright, so reddish-orange.
That day I glowed and I was the sun. Today I am bald, I am dull, I am the moon. Perhaps, I am more ugly than the moon. I am something more insignificant than the moon. I wish I were the moon, I wish people would come and visit me.
In the reflection of the water, I visit myself. I am not a friendly face. The reflection only mimics me. It only repeats my words. I wish it would tell me something new. I wish it would inspire me. I wish to tears the savior lay in the lake at the bottom, beyond my reflection, looking up at me and waiting.
Tears ripple my reflection. I am ugly.
Each day of the summer, I would sit alone on that dock. I wanted an eternal companion.
The next evening, I finally sat with someone other than my reflection. At the bottom of the hill, at the edge of the dock, at heaven's doorstep, Claudia and I sat admiring the world that floats beneath us.
Together we made that leap. Into the lake we jumped, hand in hand. We swam in the darkness of the evening. We swam quietly, but we made a bold statement. Tonight we cared little about making it to heaven immediately. We knew we would go and we knew that we would not go alone.
I cut the water with my hands as quietly as a fish. Claudia creates a mild splash as she kicks up water with her feet.
"Let's go towards the moon," I whisper to her. She nods her head and kicks up more water as she swims with me. Our destination was the middle of the lake. There the moon reflected in the water with an alluring glow. Lakes can be so placid without the current and the moon's image was undisturbed.
As we bobbed up and down, towards the center, we looked at each other. Our faces were identical, teeth glowing like the moon in the darkness. The water glistened on her face as we approached the middle and her eyes sparkled like the stars. Perhaps the stars were reflecting in her eyes. Although we were going against a major rule of the camp, we were still so innocent. We are so young.
My lungs expanded tightly as I breathed in. I could hear Claudia gasping too. The temperature of the water was beginning to drop drastically. The closer to the middle we swam, the colder it got. My strokes switched to a frantic tread. Claudia began wheezing hard.
"Quick we better go back and warm up before we both freeze to death," I whispered, still fearing the councilors would hear us.
"No, it's just like the moon," she said between coughs. "The moon is cold just like this. I feel like an astronaut."
"Goosebumps are overtaking my already scaly skin," I said with chattering teeth.
"Please stay with me. Our AquaGod will protect us. If we go back to the cabin we will be that much farther away from him. We could die in there for heaven’s sake. We could sweat to death. Everything is just too perfect out here. To the moon Tiana...to the moon." Such spirit.
"Now I know Tiana why you wanted to come here the other day when it was raining," she said while swimming up ahead of me. "The water is so pure...and the moon..."
"The moon is ugly," I mumbled to myself.
"I've always felt like an astronaut, Tiana, ever since I got sick. Ever since my family took me to the Kennedy Space Center, I swore to become an astronaut. I was already sick when I went there. But I feel like an astronaut, cancer feels like being an astronaut. Does it to you Tiana?.
Dizziness, dizziness feels like being at zero gravity. The lack of blood reaching my brain, causing a feeling of weightlessness. I like to just close my eyes and float there in the darkness. I like to lie there in space, not on my bed, next to my wheelchair. I really feel as if I'm out there.
The machine feels like preparation for the "walk" on the surface of another planet. The machine makes me sick. The practice zero gravity machine they use at NASA is called the 'vomit comet'. It all seems connected in a way.
I am experiencing something very few people experience, Tiana. We are experimenting with human nature. We are testing the boundaries of earth's diseases. How sick can the atmosphere make us? We are spacewomen, Tiana.
And now we've reached what used to be an unattainable destination. The spacewomen have reached the moon!"
Above us and below us, we were in its presence. Claudia was right. It is cold on the moon. The temperature seemed to reach the freezing level. I thought of what Claudia said about closing her eyes and imagining she was floating at zero gravity. I closed my eyes for almost a minute.
"Can you feel it?" She asked from beyond my closed eyelids.
All I could feel was a sharp pain as if an ice dagger shot to the back of my head. It was a brain freeze. Then I remembered, I am the sun. I can create heat.
I cast rays of hope to the other young patients at this camp. Their spirits brighten and warm me in return. By the end of summer, before our parents take us home for another long sickening winter, I will take them from this earth and into the heaven which awaits us in the bottom of the lake.
Claudia orbited around me in a white shirt and shorts.
"Are you floating?" She asked me from further away.
Yes, I was floating. Floating far above Earth, beyond Mars, far away from the moon of this universe and far away from Claudia. I am not far enough away for my rays not to reach you, I thought. Right now my rays are reaching down on China and in the morning I will visit you.
"It feels like I'm in the sky," I finally responded. I opened my eyes and saw Claudia floating in the water. She was lying on her back, with her eyes closed and a small smirk on her face.
As quiet and dangerous as a shark, I swam up to Claudia's water supported body. Once I was right next to her, I pushed down on her head.
Immediately she sprang up releasing a scream. She looked at me while catching her breath. Her hands sprung out of the water and she placed them on my shoulders. Her body thrust out of the water and forced me down.
I closed my mouth and went down. I pulled her with me. Then I sprung up. Claudia came up again.
We were flirting, flirting with the underwater God.
"Do you want our bodies, oh Aqua God?" I laughed out.
"Take hers first," Claudia yelled out with a girlish laugh. She forced me under again.
"Or do you want us both at once?" I questioned while looking towards the bottom. Only the moon glared back. It was too dark, too mysterious to see the bottom this evening. I could only imagine the beauty in the water soaked heaven.
Our attempts at bringing our souls to eternal life would not begin tonight and we must not continue to damage our images with this silly game. I dunked her head one final time and she loved it.
"Houston to Claudia do you read...over," I said with my hand over my mouth. "I think we’ve got a problem."
"This is Claudia," she answered with her hand over her mouth. "What is the problem Houston?"
"If you look out the window to your left you will notice the moon is beginning to fade and our radar is picking up a strange star coming from the east...over."
Claudia joined me in looking towards the sky. The moon was slowly giving way to the sun. Our magical night had lasted a lot longer than we thought.
"It looks like...it could be...Houston I think that star is the sun," her hand was over her face still. It seemed as if she was talking towards the sun. "We are going to this star. Houston I'm going to the sun."
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