The Wave by Kristen Crusoe (smallest ebook reader txt) 📕

studios were dark as Clair walked toward the women’s locker room in the community fitness center. Waking stiff, sore, and needing heat and movement, Clair had decided to avail herself of the swimming pool, a close walk from her housing. A sudden remembering of why she was in this new place, so similar to her room on the psych unit but yet, so different in ways that mattered, brought her a moment of panic followed by deep regret, and then, calm. I am awake, alive, and I feel OK, she affirmed, slipping quietly out the door of the shared living space. The morning air was fresh, cool. Early morning joggers, dog walkers, and transients heading towards the daytime shelter for a hot meal were her only company. The parking lot at the community center was empty except for one older model Honda. The smell of sweat and chlorine hit her as soon as she walked in the door. The club receptionist, a young woman with her head down over her phone, ear buds inserted, checked her in. She knew she would be alone. Or should be alone. Whose voice was coming from the locker room, Clair wondered, hesitating outside the door, listening.

‘There is no peaceful war. There is no friendly fire. He killed his three-year-old brother when he was sixteen. He tried to tell them but they didn’t believe him. They said it was his Asperger’s. Asperger’s my ass. I’m talking to my invisible friends because I don’t have any real ones. Now he is one of you too, one of us.’

It was a female voice. Clair relaxed. One of the many homeless, she thought, who pitched tents around the outside of the gym, taking advantage of the large old oak trees standing on the edges of the parking lot. For the most part, they were harmless, people struggling with mental illness, poor decisions, and social isolation. But there was always the risk that methamphetamine addiction and withdrawal caused people to act in crazy ways. She listened a while longer then walked inside, putting her towel bag on a bench just inside the door. A row of lockers lined the wall. To the left, around a slight corner was a hot tub. Not wanting to startle the woman, who was sitting in the hot tub, the water still, without the bubbling jets, Clair quietly opened the door to a locker. The woman turned, looked at Clair, standing in a pool of light shining down from the fluorescent tubes crisscrossing the ceiling. The early morning mist had left droplets of water on her blue hooded fleece. She was wearing a pale green woolen scarf wrapped around her shaven head.

‘Oh, there you are. I was waiting for you,’ the woman said, keeping her gaze on Clair.

‘Ah, good morning,’ Clair answered, without saying more.

She had been around enough mentally ill patients on the psychiatric unit to know that engaging a person with delusions or psychosis was a one-way conversation that could lead to outbursts of frustration.

‘You, you are one of the ones. You crossed over. You made it back. Is he with you?’

‘Is who with me?’ Clair asked, feeling uncomfortable now, wondering if she should go get the receptionist.

‘That boy, standing beside you. Is he with you or is he with me?’

Clair sat down on the bench, in front of the row of lockers. She stared at the woman. The woman smiled, a broad, bright smile. She stood up, her naked torso bright pink from being in the hot water. Her hair, long and dark blonde, cascaded down her shoulders, like sea kelp. Wide set eyes, skin the color of burnished copper, she looked as though she had stepped out of a solution of paint, still dripping, shiny and metallic.

‘We’re the selkies now,’ she said, beginning to walk up the steps, out of the tub.

Clair felt an electric pulse race through her, causing her heart to beat fast. She took in a quick breath.

‘He’s gone now, but he was there. Right there. With you. Is he yours? Don’t be afraid. You have the sign too. The spirits are using you. Don’t be afraid.’

The woman walked up the steps, out of the tub, and across the tiled floor to the showers. Clair’s heart was pounding. Looking around the locker space, she could see no signs of another person. There were no gym bags, towels, clothes either neatly folded on the benches or hanging from the hooks along the walls.

The room was quiet, no shower running, toilet flushing. Nothing but the sound of the radio softly playing nineties music through the overhead speakers. She recognized Stevie Nicks’s ‘Wild Heart’ and smiled, remembering for just a moment how she had loved that song. How she had yearned to act wildly, just once. But she had been too reticent, too fearful of the reprimands that would follow. The shame piled on from her mother; the cold icy stares from her father, or worse, complete disdain and dismissal.

She sat still, waiting for what, she wasn’t sure. She thought about her walk in this morning. Her new life, with its unfamiliar routines. Suddenly, like a traffic jam opening up on a multi-lane interstate highway, women began flooding into the space. Chattering like early birds, eager for the new day, they stripped off sweat suits and jeans, pulling on bathing suits. One woman, walking by towards the toilets, noticed Clair.

‘Oh hey, are you new to class?’

Jolted out of her reverie, Clair self-consciously touched her right upper chest where the infusion portal sat under her skin, saying, ‘No, not really. I was going to swim laps but it looks like you’re all getting ready for a class.’ No sign of the wet woman, anywhere. Had she imagined her?

‘Come join us,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Pat. You’ll love it. Great workout.’

She had been skeptical at first, not believing for a minute that she would achieve anything like her runner’s high bobbing up and down in water. Mary, the teacher, drove them hard,