Content warnings

Drowning. Body image and size mention.

When I first saw her, she was a suggestion lurking amid the seaweed. Back then, she had little-girl fingers like mine, shyly tickling my feet to get my attention. I dunked my head beneath the roiling surface of the Atlantic and blinked my eyes open to see her, but salt and silt blurred her body. I could hear her, though, as clearly as if she were speaking to me from inside my head. I’m you, she whispered. I’m just like you.

In science class I had learned that humans have only explored five percent of the ocean; the rest of it is as dark and unknowable as outer space, with rules we don’t know and intelligences we can’t fathom. “There’s no way to know what’s out there,” my teacher said. “The ocean isn’t your friend; don’t ever forget that.”

I didn’t forget. And the day I heard her voice whisper to me under the waves, I didn’t believe she did so out of friendship. But I was curious, just the same.

***

The girl beneath the water grew along with me, just like me. And also not.

She took shape the way I did, clarified as I developed my sense of self. Her limbs lengthened and plumped. She grew long hair that waved around like a jellyfish’s tentacles. Sometimes, if no one was looking, she’d poke her head above the water and blink at me.

Her eyes were close together, like mine, and squinty in the sunlight. But the way she looked at me was not the way I looked at her. She scanned my body, looking for flaws: the spray of acne along my hairline, the too-wide smile that revealed crooked teeth. The roll of fat beneath my bathing suit, and the slumping shoulders and crossed arms that couldn’t hide it. She dipped back beneath the waves for a moment and when she reemerged, her body had changed to mirror mine. Looking at her, I saw myself anew.

***

The next summer I decided I preferred the warm beach to the icy waves. Shy in my new bikini, I planted myself near the boys playing volleyball. But I knew she was still out in the water, and even though I couldn’t see her, I knew she still looked just like me. That her skin would burn and peel instead of tanning. That her thighs had spread like mine did, and that she’d learned to smile with her lips closed over her teeth.

The volleyball thunked next to my towel, spraying me with sand. Behind me, a girl stifled a giggle. The girl glistened with tanning oil, and when the boy came to retrieve the ball, he grinned at her. Neither of them spoke to me. Neither of them even looked at me.

From out in the water, a voice whispered in my ear: You’ll never be like those other girls, no matter how much you try. Just look at yourself. Too loud, too clumsy, too big, too much.

I pretended to ignore her, and tried to shrink myself down enough to be worthy of notice.

That was the year people started drowning.

***

First a couple of surfers, then a woman who’d taken her paddleboard out on a day that turned rough. Later that week, a college student slipped beneath the water where he’d been horsing around at low tide, and never resurfaced.

They closed the beach for a couple of weeks, searching for sharks, but reopened when they didn’t find any. Just bad luck, people said. Just the ocean being the ocean. But I knew it was my fault. I waded out into the water up to my knees—as far as I could go with my cover-up on—searching. When I finally saw her, it was way out past the roped-off swimming zone.

“Go away,” I hissed.

Her voice carried through the water like sonar. I can’t. I’m you. You’re me.

I turned away, even though I knew she was telling the truth. Her form was my form. Her need—for acceptance, for control—was my need. I could turn my back on the water, but she wouldn’t stay submerged for long.

***

For the rest of the summer, I slept fitfully, dreaming of breaking every dish in our house, waking in the middle of the night smelling seaweed and salt. My damp hands left briny fingerprints on everything I touched. All my clothes felt too tight; everything strangled. Alone in the bathroom, I took off my bra and nearly wept to feel my lungs expand. I spread my lips wide and gritted my teeth and imagined screaming.

That night, I snuck out my window and ran down the footpath to the beach. It was dusk, and low tide had turned the sand to glass, as though the setting sun had melted it, reflecting pink and purple and gray. I knew she’d be there, and she was: stepping out of the mirrored sheen, emerging and descending at the same time.

What makes you think you’re the real one? she said. What if you’re just an echo of me?

She pointed at the sand, where my own watery reflection was trapped between sea and sky. I saw how easily I could slip beneath the surface: not to safety or danger, not to heaven or hell, just to another place, as different and unknowable as the bottom of the ocean.

She came closer. Our reflections blurred, and merged, both of us overflowing, becoming expansive. All of our fear and confusion and anger leached into each other, and we absorbed it like water through our skin. We swelled with emotion, reshaping our boundaries, and flexed our fingers with newfound strength. When we blinked our eyes, we saw ourselves as we were: whole, and perfect, and monstrous.

Unafraid for the first time in years, we laughed like seagulls, harsh and loud and unbothered, and showed our teeth to the world.

Note

This story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the May/June issue of 2022

Jennifer Hudak

Jennifer Hudak is a speculative fiction writer fueled mostly by tea. Her work has appeared on both the Locus Magazine and the SFWA recommended reading lists, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Boston, she now lives with her family in Upstate New York where she teaches yoga, knits pocket-sized animals, and misses the ocean.