2020 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing Second Runner-Up
Floating
by Sarah Rossiter
Elizabeth Sims Simpson knew from the age of three that she was not only born into the wrong body but she had been given the wrong name. It was not that she wasn’t meant to be a girl. She was indeed a girl. She was happy to be a girl. Well, maybe. But not THIS girl with THIS name. And not just ONE name but all the many names that even by the age of three she was called.
“Beth, come sit by me.” That was her grandmother with her blue hair and missing front tooth who smelled of moth balls.
Her parents only called her Elizabeth when they were angry. When they weren’t angry her mother called her Liz and her father called her Eli even though everyone knew Eli was a boy’s name.
Lizzy is what her younger brother Leo called her, and her BFF, Cordy, called her Sims. “It’s gender neutral,” Cordy said.
Cordy was very smart and if she liked the name Sims, then so did Elizabeth, but to have so many names belong to just one person was confusing. Not that she didn’t know the names belonged to her but who was she? That was the question, not only at three, but at five and seven and ten.
On the outside she looked like any normal ten-year old girl. She had brown hair, cut short but not too short and freckles and bony elbows. She didn’t mind wearing dresses when she had to but she preferred tights. She felt better when her body was hidden. There was something wrong with her body but she wasn’t sure what, only that she didn’t like it that much.
But she liked climbing trees and riding her bike as fast as she could down the hill behind her house in the Midwestern suburb where she lived. It wasn’t a big hill but it was the only hill in town and she was proud of it as if it belonged to her and her alone.
“You’re going to be a beauty when you grow up,” Cordy’s nanny said once when Elizabeth was over for lunch. Not that Elizabeth cared about that. Not that she even believed her. It didn’t matter. What Elizabeth cared about was right now! Who she was now. Or wasn’t. At ten!
It was confusing. It had always been confusing. One of the reasons Cordelia was her BFF ever since first grade was that Cordy–as she was called–understood in a way that no one else did what Elizabeth meant by “confusing”.
The problem was this: ever since the age of three Elizabeth saw things that others did not. Except for Cordy. Cordy, like Elizabeth, lived in two worlds at the same time. There was the world of trees and peanut butter sandwiches and pajamas, and there was the world of Otherness. That was the word Elizabeth and Cordy came up with to describe the Other World. It wasn’t a perfect description but it would have to do.
“It’s like there’s a door,” Cordy said when she came for a sleepover. Elizabeth had only one bed but it was big enough for two, especially two ten–year old girls. “A door that’s closed and then suddenly opens.”
“Yes!”
The bed felt safe and warm with Cordy beside her in the dark. Cordy was turned toward her so Elizabeth could smell her breath. It smelled like chocolate, warm and sweet. A good smell.
“What do you see when you open the door?” Cordy asked.
Elizabeth blinked. Out of the darkness she saw figures. Silhouettes, the color of new leaves floating toward the bed.
“Ghosts. I see ghosts.”
“What else?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. She could still see them. Only now there was one. Getting taller. Bigger. Closer. Closer. Her legs disappeared. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t speak.
“Sims! Quick! What else?”
It was Cordy. She was safe. Her throat opened.
Stars, lots of stars. And wings. White wings. Birds maybe. Big ones. Eagles maybe. No, angels! Lots of angels.”
Elizabeth didn’t go to church but Cordy did. They both believed in angels, though. And ghosts.
“I see them,” said Cordy. “They have swords. They’re on our side!”:
Elizabeth and Cordy were BFFs for several reasons but one was they both liked make-believe. No one else their age did, not that they knew, so they kept quiet about it, but whenever they were together, they made up stories and acted them out. Sometimes they used plots from movies or TV shows like Stranger Things or Wonder Woman. But books were best. Magical books. They both believed in magic and they loved reading. The Girl Who Drank the Moon, The Wonderling, and Harry Potter. Harry Potter was their favorite because the story went on and on and on. They’d read all the books and seen all the movies and knew all the characters, the bad and the good. There were many bad people but most dangerous of all was Voldermort. To outsmart him required cunning and courage.
But just as often they didn’t use books or movies. They made up their own stories which was easy to do because both of them had good imaginations.
The stories were almost always the same. They were in danger, or someone else was. If it was someone else like some dorky good person, they set out to rescue her, but if it was them, they fought like tigers in order to free themselves, sometimes winning or sometimes dying a very sad but always brave death.
They were, however, always careful to act out their stories where no one could see them. It was important to keep their Other World a secret, though Elizabeth was never quite sure why. Sometimes they went deep into the woods behind Cordy’s house, or down into Elizabeth’s basement, and sometimes they rode their bike all the way to the outskirts of town where nobody knew them.
But at night in the dark what they liked best was what they called “floating” because that’s what it felt like. She often floated by herself at night but whether alone or with Cordy, she never knew if she was floating as Eli or Liz or any of her other names. It was as if she had no name and no body either, but It didn’t matter. In fact, it was better not to have a body.
And that’s what happened, like magic really—she was somehow lifted out of her Elizabeth body to float away from it like a cloud. It was like being wrapped in a cloud too in a way that made everything hazy and slow and quiet. Very quiet as if she was far away from whatever was happening down on earth.
Sometimes she could make floating happen but other times it seemed to happen all by itself. It wasn’t scary but it wasn’t really fun either except when she floated with Cordy.
“Let’s float, Cordy”.
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“There is no reason.”
“Yes, there is. It’s fun.”
“It’s not. But it’s sometimes imperative.”
Cordy came from a family that used big words and talked about politics and art and literature at the dinner table. Elizabeth’s family talked about what they were eating that night and how much it cost.
“Imperative?”
“Necessary, Sims. Like it isn’t now.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about the president.”
Elizabeth giggled. Cordy was teasing. Cordy’s family talked about the president a lot. They knew all about him but Elizabeth didn’t. She didn’t want to. He sounded awful.
“He’s awful,” she said.
“Yup. A total narcissist.”
“What’s a narcissist?”
Even if Elizabeth didn’t know what it meant, she was pleased she’d said it right. At least she hoped.
“Someone who thinks he’s the greatest person in the world but really is the worst.”
“Like your brother Arden?”
“We are not talking about him. Ever! I mean it, Sims!” She was practically shouting. “You know that!”
“I do. I know. I’m sorry, Cordy.”
She wasn’t sure why Cordy hated him so much because Cordy never said why. He was creepy, though—anyone could see that. It wasn’t only the way he looked but the way he looked at Cordy, and Elizabeth too whenever she was over. He smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was a secret kind of smile, mean. His teeth were yellow and his arms were long and lumpy and strong. Like an ape, Elizabeth thought but didn’t say because they never talked about Arden.
“So are we floating or not?” Cordy said.
“I thought you didn’t want to.”
“Well, now I do.”
Cordy had two much older brothers, Arden and Linus. Linus had graduated from college and was already working in New York City making tons of money. That’s what Cordy said. Linus was nice and even though he was far away he sent Cordy funny texts and Facetimed with her. Cordy missed him. “He protected me,” she said once but she didn’t say from what, and Elizabeth somehow knew enough not to ask.
Arden wasn’t nice at all. He should have been away at college but there was something wrong with him. It was hard to say what but you could see it in his eyes. They were small and hard like polished black stones. When he looked at you, he stared right through you as if he didn’t see you at all. He didn’t blink either. He called Cordy ‘Mistake’ because her parents had her by accident when Cordy’s father was old enough to be her grandfather.
Elizabeth was glad that at least her parents were the right age for parents, and that she only had Leo who was younger and not mean at all. He was, in fact, cute, and he loved Elizabeth who loved him right back. “We’re a team,” she said to him, and Leo grinned. He had red hair and a missing front tooth and he always grinned when Elizabeth talked to him.
But even though Cordy’s father was really old he was nice to Cordy and to Elizabeth whenever she came over. “Good day, Madam,” he said, bowing which always made Elizabeth blush but she liked it too. Because he was so old he had old-fashioned manners so she pretended she did too.
“Good day, sir,” she said, blushing, and he always chuckled.
“That’s my girl,” he said, gently patting her head.
“Father, stop! You’re embarrassing me!”
“Nothing new about that.” He winked at Elizabeth. “Is there?”
“No,” she said but only because she knew that’s what she was supposed to say.
“Your father’s nice,” she said to Cordy. “And smart.”
Cordy shrugged.
“He doesn’t know everything.”
Elizabeth wasn’t sure what Cody meant by that but she knew enough not to ask.
“Parents don’t,” she said, which was the right thing to say because Cordy nodded.
“That’s the truth!”
The truth was Elizabeth’s parents didn’t know anything either. They didn’t know much about Harry Potter and Hermione or Lord Voldemort or about “Wormwood” by Christina Rossetti which they found in Cordy’s father’s library and read together because it was all about death. They didn’t know about floating either, but then nobody did.
“Are you floating?” Cordy asked as if she knew Elizabeth was thinking instead.
“Now I am.” Which wasn’t really a lie.
They stopped talking. They closed their eyes.
Elizabeth heard the bedside clock ticking. A friendly sound. From far away she heard laughter. Even from far away it sounded loud. It was Saturday night and her parents were having a dinner party. Their dinner parties were always loud, not in the beginning but later. It was one of the reasons she liked sleeping over at Cordy’s. She hoped Cordy was already floating and didn’t hear the grownups downstairs.
Cordy’s parents never gave noisy parties. They never even gave parties, and never watched television either except for the six o’clock news. At night after dinner they read. Cordy’s father was a writer, and sometimes he read out loud what he’d written to Cordy’s mother as she worked on her needlepoint in front of the living room fire.
Elizabeth once told her mother that, and her mother said ‘Good God!’ as if that was the craziest thing she’d ever heard, so Elizabeth knew better than to tell her anything else because she wouldn’t understand.
Elizabeth covered her mouth with the sheet and put her baby pillow over her head so only her nose was sticking out. It was how she always slept. She felt safer that way. But floating was different than sleeping so once she was all covered up she took three deep breaths and let her mind float up and away from her body. It was easy to do, kind of like a magic trick except it wasn’t magic. It was real.
She floated higher and higher and higher, leaving her body behind. She could see it though, the tiniest speck below her hiding under the covers. She could even see right through the covers to the flannel Lantz pajamas and the wart on the right knee and the faint scar on her wrist where she accidently on purpose cut herself with the Swiss Army knife her father gave her. She even saw the tuft of hair on her big toes. She hated that hair. It made her feel like a monkey.
She could see the body all right and she knew the body but she couldn’t feel it, as if it wasn’t her body at all, as if it wasn’t anybody’s body, just a bunch of pale skin stretched over a bag of bones. The long skinny body of a ten-year-old girl.
Some nights floating slipped right into sleep and some nights it didn’t but with Cordy lying beside her, her breathing warm against Elizabeth’s cheek and her foot tucked under Elizabeth’s thigh, it was easy to fall quickly to sleep, and that’s exactly what Elizabeth did.
It wasn’t long after that something strange happened, not at night but during the day. Even that was strange but what made it stranger is that for the first time ever Elizabeth couldn’t understand why Cordy did what she did.
“I could fly,” she said to Elizabeth after she missed three days of school and showed up on Friday with a black eye and purple bruises all over her arms and face.
“You mean floating,” said Elizabeth but Cordy gave her a funny look as if Elizabeth didn’t understand anything, and Elizabeth felt a shiver all through her body, she wasn’t sure why.
She was confused as well as a little bit scared because how could her BFF since kindergarten who she knew inside and out almost as if they shared the same body, jump out of her bedroom window thinking she could fly to the nearby giant oak tree when everyone, including Elizabeth, knew that only birds, and maybe flying squirrels, could actually, really without pretending, fly.
Cordy shrugged. “Okay, floating then,” she said without looking at Elizabeth, who knew right away Cordy was lying because flying was NOT floating no matter what anyone said.
Besides, Cordy didn’t fly. Instead she fell straight to the ground from her bedroom on the second floor of her house. Her mother was downstairs reading in the library and looked up just in time to see Cordy flashing by the window into the bushes below.
But maybe it was a little bit like floating because Cordy was hardly hurt at all except for her black eye and bruises. Maybe instead of falling like a rock she fell more like a snowflake or a feather.
Elizabeth didn’t know and she didn’t ask either because for the first time ever she felt afraid of what Cordy might say.
She didn’t know why she was afraid or even what frightened her but after that everything felt different. Well, not everything. Cordy felt different which made Elizabeth feel different, especially when they were together, which was most of the time just like before.
In school they sat next to each other and in the afternoon they took turns going to each other’s houses. On weekends they had sleepovers on Friday and Saturday night. Sunday was the only day of the week they didn’t see each other.
Cordy had church and Elizabeth had what her mother called ‘family time’.
“We never see you, Liz,” her mother said. “Your father wonders what you’re up to. You’re always with that friend of yours.”
“Her name is Cordy.”
“I know her name. Her real name. Cor-de-lia. From Shakespeare, I imagine.”
“I like her name,” Elizabeth said, more out of loyalty than liking. Nowadays the nickname Cordy reminded her of wood, not a person.
“Of course you do. Best friends forever stick together. But I wish I knew her better. She never looks me in the eye. She’s like a zombie. She never smiles.”
It was true. Well, hardly ever. Not that she would tell her mother.
“She smiles all the time with me.”
“I’m glad,” said her mother as if she didn’t quite believe it. “But I don’t know. She seems so sad. Or angry. It’s hard to tell. Anyway…” Her mother shrugged. “What do you want to do today? Your father wants to hike the Trail.”
Which meant that’s what they were going to do. Her mother talked a lot, but her father was the boss. It was her father who said Elizabeth couldn’t have a smartphone even though all of her friends had one, including Cordy whose father let her decide what she wanted, or didn’t.
Cordy’s father didn’t make her clean the kitchen sink to teach her a lesson about hard work, or tell her she was lazy and selfish, or sometimes suddenly show up in her bedroom without knocking even when the door was closed, even sometimes at night when she was almost asleep. “How’s my girl” he’d say in a funny whisper like they shared some secret, and from the way he said it Elizabeth knew he’d been drinking.
But she didn’t want to think about that, and anyway maybe it was just a dream.
Besides, Cordy’s father never took her on hikes, or fishing trips, and never went sledding with her like Elizabeth’s father did. Cordy’s father was nice but he wasn’t fun like Elizabeth’s father could be, not all the time but sometimes.
Cordy’s father was old and fat and did crossword puzzles and talked about books while Elizabeth’s father was young and handsome with white teeth and dark thick curly hair like Elizabeth’s, and he was super strong. Even though Elizabeth was ten and tall for her age, her father could pick her up and fling her over his shoulder as if she didn’t weigh anything at all.
He thought that was fun but Elizabeth didn’t. Not that she said. She didn’t dare. Her father could get very angry. She knew he wanted her to like it so she pretended she did. She was good at pretending.
The Sunday walk was fun, though. It was a new part of the trail with a stream beside it, and she and Leo built a dam and caught a frog and had a stick racing contest. The water was clear and fast and bubbly, and her parents were in a good mood so they let them play without telling them to get a move on which is what they usually did. Instead they sat side by side on a big fallen tree trunk and talked. Actually her mother talked and her father listened. Or maybe listened. Elizabeth knew when he was only pretending because he got a faraway look in his eyes and said ‘uh huh’ a lot.
It was a pretty day with blue sky and little clouds that looked like baby pillows floating above the tall green forest trees. The water was cold but the air was warm and Elizabeth felt sorry for Cordy who was stuck inside a church and whose parents would never ever take her on a Sunday hike.
She missed her too. But the Cordy she missed was the ‘old Cordy’, her BFF Cordy. The ‘new’ Cordy was different. Even though she looked the same, she felt different, as if there was an invisible fence around her that was somehow keeping Elizabeth away. Her eyes looked different too, a little bit like her father’s ‘faraway look’ but scarier somehow as if the invisible fence was in in her eyes too.
Elizabeth wanted to talk with Cordy about it but she didn’t know how to explain it without sounded silly. Cordy was smarter than Elizabeth, always getting good grades and being on the honor roll, so Elizabeth tried hard not to say stupid things.
She was smart enough but not that smart, which is why the best part of being BFFs with Cordy had always been making up stories, and floating. Things that required imagination and had nothing to do with being smart at school.
The trouble was the “new” Cordy no longer wanted to do either of those things. “It doesn’t work,” she said to Elizabeth the following Friday when she came for the night and Elizabeth said “Let’s float.”
“Work?” Elizabeth sad, confused. “It’s just something we do. It’s fun.”
“Not anymore,” said Cordy.
The same thing happened when Elizabeth suggested making up a new adventure for Harry and Hermione. “Something not in the books. Like maybe Voldermort really does kill Hermione, and…”
“It doesn’t work either. You ought to know that.” Her voice was flat. Like an ironing board, Elizabeth thought but didn’t say. She didn’t ask what she was supposed to know either because Cordy would think she was dumb.
It was after that everything changed for good. Not for good though but for bad. And after that for worse. The worst.
But first, when Elizabeth asked her over for the night, Cordy started making excuses. Stupid excuses that no one would believe like her mother had a cold or the dog threw up on the rug.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because,” said Cordy, not even bothering to say more.
Elizabeth was confused. She was also hurt. She felt the hurt inside her like a hole in her stomach. She was even afraid she might cry. She bit her lip.
“Are you mad at me, Cordy?”
Cordy sighed. “No,” she said, sounding, for a minute, like her old self. Her voice was soft instead of flat. “It’s not you. It’s just…” Her voice trailed off, leaving Elizabeth as confused as before, but she felt a little bit better that maybe it wasn’t her fault that Cordy had changed.
“Where’s that friend of yours?” her mother asked that weekend when Elizabeth was home all by herself.
“Busy,” said Elizabeth, which wasn’t true. Or maybe it was but that wasn’t something she’d tell her mother. There was a lot she didn’t tell her mother.
“I’m sorry, Liz. I bet you miss her.” She said it as if she somehow knew what Elizabeth wasn’t saying.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I thought you didn’t like her.”
“I didn’t say that. I like her for you. I don’t like to see you unhappy.”
Her mother being so nice made her want to cry so, without saying anything, she left the room and went upstairs to lie on her bed and stare at the ceiling. She thought floating might help so she tried but floating was stuck too. And Elizabeth was stuck in her body without any way to escape.
That was bad enough, but the next thing that happened was the worst of all.
Three weekends passed and Elizabeth didn’t see Cordy once. She stopped asking her over because it hurt to hear Cordy making up lame excuses. At school they still sat next to each other but there was nothing to talk about. So they didn’t.
Cordy didn’t talk to anyone. At recess she stayed inside reading, and as soon as school was over, her father was there in his car to pick her up.
“Why aren’t you on the bus anymore?” Elizabeth asked once.
Cordy gave her a funny look. “I’m seeing someone,” she said but she didn’t say who and Elizabeth didn’t dare ask because she was afraid the “someone” was a new BFF.
She was wrong about that but didn’t know until Monday morning when her mother came into her room to wake her up for school. But instead of leaving, she cleared her throat.
“Lizzy, I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you.”
Her mother never called her Lizzy. She pulled her covers over her head. “I don’t want to hear,” she said as if she already knew, but she didn’t. Her stomach felt funny and her whole body shivered. Maybe she was getting sick.
Her mother sighed.
“It’s your friend. Cordelia. Her father just called. He wanted you to hear it from him, not at school and not on the news. It was thoughtful of him. You were her best friend, he said. He cares about you.” Her mother paused. “She’s dead, Elizabeth.”
“No.” Elizabeth covered her ears, making her mother go away.
Her mother’s voice was muffled but Elizabeth heard. “She swallowed any number of pills. Too many. They found her last night. Her brother did. He came into her room and…”
“No!” She was shouting. That horrible scary disgusting brother! It wasn’t true. Nothing was true.
“It’s a shock, I know. I’m so sorry. You don’t have to go to school today if you don’t want to.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She waited until the door closed before coming out from under the covers. She smelled her mother’s lavender lotion, a sweet smell that made her eyes sting.
She closed her eyes. She did not know why Cordy had done what she did. She didn’t want to know. She would not know for years.
But what she did know was that Cordy was floating. Really truly floating. With her eyes closed, Elizabeth could actually see her because she was floating too, straight up into the air away from the world, away from everything and everyone except for Cordy. It was the Cordy she knew, her Best Friend Forever. She was floating on her back as if she was floating on water, but her face was turned toward Elizabeth, and she was smiling as if to say, everything is okay, smiling as if she was, finally, safe. Voldermort would never catch her now.