TREADING WATER

The afternoon sun hangs heavy over Juneau, Alaska. The streets are loud with bird calls and car engines. The sky is warm, or at least not cold anymore. It’s one of the days that more people are out walking around than actually live here.

Further down the shore, the only noise comes from the water. The bay is green, dimpled with waves. They splash against the rocky shore and mist up into the blond hairs on Carter’s arm. He takes off his shirt and drapes it over his shoulder. He unties the rope around the dock post and drops it into the canoe. Ezra watches him untie the other end with a curious silence. Carter steps in and grabs the wooden oars. Ezra follows, steadying himself on the dock. They push off, paddling on opposite sides into the emptiness. A breeze trickles through Carter’s curly hair. Behind him, he feels the memory of a girl who was so pretty he almost let her get to know him.

He brought her on the boat last year. They had met at a concert in June, for a band of three guys whose voices sounded younger than Carter's but whose faces looked much older than his. He was standing in the grass, trying to hear their lyrics.

“Who are you with?” she asked him. Her dark hair kissed her bare shoulders, and the sun painted her face amber. He thought about how her lips would taste before he could say his answer.

“I just heard the music from down the street and decided to watch.”

“You’re here alone?”

“Yeah. I didn’t have to pay or anything, right?”

“You think these guys should put up a fee?” She gestured at the stage, clearly proud of herself. He felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to tell her how pretty she was, she already knew it.

He took her on the canoe and they paddled to Douglas Island, and he told her about his work, where he was from, the music he liked. She was from Fairbanks. She gave wildlife tours in the mountains. She liked Fiona Apple. They walked along a trail to an overlook, where the scent of pine filled their silences. They kissed under an evergreen tree, and he played with the fabric of her shirt between his fingertips until it was dark. He felt okay about her. On the boat ride back, she asked why he had moved to Alaska.

“It’s nice here.”

“No one moves here because it’s nice. It’s nice in a lot of places, people come here to get away.”

He stared at the reflection of the stars, swinging in the water. He tried to think of something funny to say.

“You know, you haven’t asked me anything about me all day,” she said.

“Sorry, hmm…” he said. “What’s your name again?”

When they got to the shore she left the boat and asked if he wanted her to go home. He said he didn’t care. She sighed, and they never talked again. He still doesn’t know if she told him her name.

Before Junea, Carter lived in the panhandle of Florida. He grew up playing street games with the neighbor boys, until he learned what the names they called him meant, and then he only hung out with the boy that didn’t say names. He was Ezra.

Carter and Ezra biked to the river and collected rocks. Trees curled out from the mud and hid the river from the sun, but when it was still too hot they kicked off their shoes and stepped through the current. They filled their pockets with the cheapest snacks at Winn-Dixie and ate them by the river bank, and their pockets were heavy with rocks on the way home. They could only fit a few each time, so they kept coming back.

In high school, they ate lunch under the bleachers with Madison. She went there alone to smoke, at first, crouching at the other end of the shade, but she joined in on their conversations and soon became their friend. She liked complaining about her parents, and Ezra liked helping her with her homework. Carter liked listening to both of them. The boys never took her to the river, though.

In the last summer of high school, Madison pulled up to Carter’s place in a ‘92 Ford F-150 and told him her daddy was on death row. It was some of the best news of her life—she had got his truck, and one less person could scream at her for not being more like her Valedictorian brother. Carter fell into the passenger seat and the thick scent of Marlboros reminded him of his uncle’s house.

Cicadas hummed over the engine. Madison was wearing short shorts and a black crop top, a hoodie tied around her waist. They drove to the gas station and grabbed Hot Cheetos and filled up a blue raspberry Slurpee. She told him she forgot her wallet, so he paid.

“You know, I would’ve hid the snacks in my jacket and walked out if I was with anybody else,” she told him.

He laughed, and couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing. Either way, he figured he was someone special to her.

After not shoplifting they drove to the beach. She swerved off the road, flew through the dunes, and stopped just before the sand was stiff and muddy. Carter felt what he imagined whiplash was. They lay in the back of the truck, Carter’s head on her hoodie, her head on his chest, and watched the constellations. She said she never got how people could get animals or gods out of the white dots, then she pointed to what made a cross, the best shape she could find.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” he asked.

She hugged his torso. “I only believe in boys that wear jeans. ”

Carter had jeans on. He slowed his breaths in time with the waves, so her head rose and fell as naturally as he could make it, so she wouldn’t even notice he breathed. He would have done anything to control his heartbeat, but still it drummed right against her ear. Faster and faster.

“Can I tell you something?” he said. “I like you.”

“I like you too.”

“I like you, like, I wanna kiss you,” he said, quietly.

“What?” She lifted her head, and Carter felt the stream of breath break between them. She stared at him while he lay like a corpse on the truck bed.

“I mean, I’ll kiss you, but you won’t like it. Are you joking?”

“What?” he said. His face got hot.

“You like Ezra. It’s really obvious that you’re not into girls.”

Heat rose in his chest, and in his stomach. He jumped out of the truck and ran to the water, his knees hit the shallows and he vomited blue raspberry Slurpee and Hot Cheeto chunks into the ocean. She came over to him and held him. She ran her hands through his hair and kissed his sweaty forehead while he coughed until he was empty. Spicy red bits shined in the liquid like bloody constellations under the moonlight. He wanted to wish on them, but he could only think how, with the bright blue and red puke under the white moon, he had made this sea American.

After graduation, Madison picked up a full-time shift at a diner, and Ezra went to the fancy state college in Pensacola. Carter went to the community college in Pensacola, close enough that he could commute from home. Carter thought the teachers were friendlier in college, they treated him more like an equal. They smiled at him when he saw them outside of class. It was weird to not recognize any students he walked past in between classes. He went swimming in the mornings at the student pool. Campus was right next to the airport, and when he saw the planes so close he wondered if anyone was ever looking through their window directly at him. It felt weird that he could be anyone, and he still ended up the same.

He met Sarah in his second year, a friend of his brother. She thought Carter was funny, and he thought the gap in her front teeth was cute. They watched romantic comedies together, and he hid his tears from her in the theater. On the third one, she caught him, and before he dropped her off at her dorm she kissed him. They started dating. He thought it was a strange thing to become someone who kisses someone, but when he said that to her she didn’t look at him weird. Talking wasn’t a game. When he found out she couldn’t swim, he offered to teach her. She went with him to the pool, and he held her body up to show her different strokes.

“I feel like those turnstiles at baseball games,” she told him, practicing breaststroke. He laughed and said he had never been to a baseball game.

They slept together in his childhood bedroom. He loved showing her things from when he grew up, the rock collection from the river and the medals he won in swim and the shirts that used to fit him but now fit her. She could get to know him without him saying a word.

They dreamed of moving to Juneau, Alaska. They wanted to breathe in cold air and see what the mountains saw from the top of the world.

“All I want is a fireplace,” he said. “That’s how I’ll know I’ve made it. They’re useless but look so nice.”

“My dream is to have a spiral staircase,” Sarah said. She pointed to a framed picture on his bookshelf. “Who is that?”

“That’s me.”

“Well, duh. I mean the Hispanic kid, with his arm around you.”

“Oh, that’s Ezra. The guy I used to be on swim team with.”

“Do you still hang out with him?”

“Yeah, he helps me with homework. He’s really smart. You should meet him sometime.”

She never did meet him. Carter came home early the next day and found her in bed with his brother. He couldn’t say anything to them, he just got into his car.

It was two weeks before graduation, and he drove his ‘99 Corolla to Dallas. Dallas To Albuquerque. Albuquerque to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City to Cannon Beach. Cannon Beach to Quesnel. Quesnel to Jade City. Jade City to Juneau. He drove with the headlights off at night. He went on websites and found free places to sleep in exchange for sharing a bed with men that wanted him. In the morning, the taste of them lingered in his mouth, so he went through a pack of gum each day. As he drove over the cliffs along the coast, he spit the gum into wrappers and flicked them into the sea.

In Juneau he found a job and an apartment. He liked the few blocks of grid streets, and would walk down each one when his head got too stuck in the past. The mountains and the cold air made it okay that he felt nothing. The sea birds still sang, whether he was happy or sad. The snow didn’t ask his permission to pile up on the rooftops. He had to tell himself everything else was only in his head.

Ezra called one day and told him he wanted to visit, but Carter said to wait until winter was over. He picked him up from the airport in late June, and they explored downtown Juneau and got lunch at a café next to the water. Ezra asked if he remembered the days they would spend in Carter’s pool. Carter offered to take him on the boat.

One day, 12-year-old Ezra and Carter biked back from the river, chasing a hot air balloon with the design of an American flag above them. It was 2002, and he was noticing the red, white, and blue more and more. Carter wondered if he could reach the basket by chucking one of the rocks he had picked up along the river—not to do any damage, just to get the patriotic flyer’s attention.

They got to Carter’s house, and he said they should go swimming.

“I don’t have my swimsuit,” Ezra said. “And my parents aren’t home, the house is locked.”

“You can borrow one of mine,” Carter said. He grabbed his only pair of swim trunks out of the drawer and tossed them to him. While Ezra went to change, he snuck into his older brother's room and pulled out a Hawaiian print swimsuit, careful not to leave any signs he had been in there. He stepped into them and they were a few sizes too big, so he tied them tight and triple-knotted them. They poofed out around his thighs, but at least they stayed up when he tugged on them.

They raced through the heat from the back door to the water. “High and Dry” by Radiohead was playing from his parents’ speaker. The boys attempted flips off the diving board into the leaf-covered pool, sending water stains across the deck. They argued about who would survive longest if they were sent off to Afghanistan, like Carter’s uncle.

“I’m totally stronger than you.” Ezra flexed his bicep.

Carter slapped water into his friend’s face. “But I’m taller than you.”

“So what? That just makes you a bigger target.”

Carter pushed Ezra’s head underwater and Ezra lunged back up at him and yelled, his voice cracking. Carter fell and they both crashed through white bubbles. They threw their limbs at each other in the bright water. Skin glided over skin, dancing through gravity. Muffled guitars and drums echoed under the surface of the pool. Carter opened his eyes for half a second and looked at this boy in a way he couldn’t above water. Through the stinging chlorine, he watched Ezra’s soft body fall upwards to the light. He was in seventh grade, and he didn’t know how to drive a car or do algebra, but he knew he could only look at this boy in this way underwater.

They’re in the canoe. Ezra is looking at him like he’s waiting for him to say something, but Carter doesn’t know what.

Ezra’s upper arms are wider, the inside of his thighs paler. Carter knew his body, but he had never been so long without it, never seen it change so much. Like he had never really known him, like all the memories of him had been dreams.

“I thought you would like it out here,” Carter says.

“I do,” Ezra says. “I’m happy that you live somewhere so beautiful. But I didn’t come for that, I wanna know what’s up.”

Carter looks at his reflection next to the boat. He’s changed too, the sandy hair on his face and the freckles on his shoulders. “I’m thinking of joining the Army.”

“What?”

“Kidding.”

Ezra exhales and drops his oar between his legs. “I knew you so well. I knew what you would order from the school cafeteria. I still notice rocks that you’d pick up if we were by that river together. I know things ended bad with Sarah, but you didn’t even tell me. I had to find out from your mom. I had to get your phone number from Madison. And even before then, something was crushing you and I didn’t know what. I missed you. I missed how we used to be. I thought we could always be like kids, until one day I woke up and I was 20-something, and I had to shave and go to meetings, and you weren’t there.”

“You don’t have to be so sensitive.”

“Why should I be alive if I’m not gonna feel things?” Ezra says, so loud it takes up the whole valley.

Carter leans back, his hip bone slipping out over his shorts. It would be so much easier if this were another boy he could just take his clothes off for.

“Do you want me?” Ezra asks.

“I want a lot of things.”

“Do you want me, Carter?” Ezra’s eyes don’t move off him.

“Do you want me, Ezra?” he says, in the same inflection.

“Why do you think I’m here?”

Carter steps out of the boat, slipping into the water. Icy shock slices through his nerves. Ezra grabs his arm, but he resists.

“Go away,” he says. He lies on his back, shivering, seeing white. The red sun covers his face and chest, the deep blue below him.

“I’m not—”

“If you love me, go away.”

Carter only hears his own blood rushing through him. His muscles stiffen. He’s falling up, keeps falling up with each wave.

He whispers. It’s only in your head.

The sky is heavy and he’s floating in dead glaciers. It’s so cold it burns. He’s in the middle of the world, in a coffin on fire, and he can’t get out. He can’t get out. He can’t get out.

Lucas Zuehl is a musician studying Vocal Performance at BYU.