(A/N): I am forcing myself to publish this, otherwise it would languish forever in my Word files and wither forlornly away. This piece has been formatted as a series of sequential vignettes. While other characters will make regular appearances, we will focus most heavily upon Skye. Feedback is, as always, welcome. I'm genuinely interested in, and appreciate hearing about, your experience as a reader.
This is the story of Skye Penderwick's lifetime told in moments.
I hope you enjoy it.
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...
Steam swirls from beneath the closed bathroom door. Jane has been in the tub for twelve and half minutes and Skye is growing aggravated, tapping her foot upon the carpet with hummingbird impatience.
She checks the clock on the wall, eyes swinging upward to track the slothful passage of time, and looks back at the bathroom door. The steam is coming faster now, filling the hallway with tendrils of vapor that make her hair cling to her forehead.
She twists her arms across her chest and scowls, because why does Jane always have to be so slow, why can't she just shampoo her hair and be done with it, why does she have to sit in the tub each night and make up stories about far-flung universes that only exist in her own head?
Skye calls Jane's name and there is no response, so she calls again, louder, verging on a yell, and still there is no answer and it occurs to her that the cheery splashing of water stopped a while ago and suddenly her heart is pounding and she is flying to the door and shouldering it open and stumbling over the threshold into a cloud of fragrant mist so thick she can't breathe and running to the bathtub and crying out, because Jane's face is pressed to the tub's enamel and she is completely submerged—
"Jane—!"
Skye wonders if she will have to do CPR, something she read about once on a pamphlet in the pediatricians office. She plunges her arms into the cooling bathwater and grabs Jane around the waist, wrestling with the slippery expanse of skin as she drags her over the edge of the tub and plunks her clumsily on the rug.
For a moment, Jane looks utterly insensible. Then she jolts to life with a strangled gasp and rolls onto her side, coughing so hard she vomits.
The smothering horror eases, only to be replaced by molten fury.
Skye is livid, unaware the screams echoing off blue and yellow tiles are her own.
"What were you doing underwater like that? You could have drowned! What's wrong with you?"
Jane struggles upright and Skye throws her a towel. "I'm supposed to watch you while everyone else is at Tommy's! How do you think it would have looked if you'd died?"
Jane wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She blinks her brown, bloodshot eyes and mutters something Skye can't make out in a voice scratchy from retching.
"What?"
"I wanted to see if staying underwater long enough would turn me into a mermaid."
Oh.
Oh no.
Skye wants to punch her, strangle her, rip that hopeful look right of her interminably stupid face, because how could anyone be such an idiot?
She plucks one of Jane's plastic princess dolls from the floor and hurls it at the wall with an overhand that would have put Babe Ruth to shame.
"Don't do this again," she says, the words ripped from her in a fearsome growl. "Not ever."
Then she hauls Jane to her feet and they hobble down the hall and into their room, trembling and breathing funny and more terrified than either of them care to admit. It's the first time Skye has ever saved a life.
She is seven years old.
