The day Darlene killed the rat was the same day I had my first kiss. His name was Wilson and he kissed me beside the slough, the stench of stale water and dead fish wafting sickeningly between us like expired milk. The kiss lasted less than two seconds. I didn’t even think to close my eyes. I just stared at Wilson’s face, blurry and round, pressed against my own like rain on a window. 

When he pulled back into focus, all of his details were crisp and pink, pinker than the watermelon on the paper plate that was beside us or the plastic cup from which we were sharing a pop. His cheeks, his lips, and the strange peaks of his ears that poked from his sandy hair like the butts of sea snails were all blushing bright fuchsia.

I didn’t know what sort of thing you were supposed to say after a kiss. Was it strange to thank him or give him some kind of compliment? That was nice, I thought of saying. Did he want to kiss again? Wilson didn’t seem to have the answer either. Neither of us spoke and the silence was loud, like we were underwater. We both awkwardly turned away from one another and cast our gaze into opposite directions of the slough. 

I tried focusing on other things — the water, the balding grass, the careless confetti of crushed beer cans, empty chip bags that haloed us like a bad omen. This area must have always been this disgusting — littering and teenagers were not a new thing — but it was only in recent months that I had begun to notice. When I was younger, the slough always felt surprisingly enchanting. My mom would bring me here to feed the ducks and I could have sworn a perpetual rainbow hung over the water. We spent many afternoons ripping stale loaves of bread into hard chewy pieces and all the hungry ducks would come flopping and quacking toward us. 

“We should have brought them some bread,” I said to Wilson, and I nodded at a pair of ducks that were skimming atop the murky water. 

“Don’t you know bread is bad for ducks?” 

No, I didn’t know that. Of course, I wouldn’t have suggested it if I did. Their flapping bills always gobbled the bread up so eagerly. What did bad mean? Was it that they became fat and plump and lazy? Or was it poison inside them? Meaning I may have very well killed each and every duck I’d ever thought I was helping. I was sure Wilson had the answers, but I didn’t want him to think I was stupid, so I kept my mouth closed. The silence again flattened out between us. 

A few moments passed. I wanted to say something else, but I started second-guessing every thought that entered my mind. Even when I finally thought of something clever to say, I would think about it so much that it eventually felt stupid too. 

Wilson didn’t seem as though he was struggling. He just looked bored and stared off at the still water. The slough’s reflection was a dull, little footprint in his eye. 

“Maybe Darlene is around,” I finally said. Her yard backed onto this area of the slough. There were holes in her fence that we knocked in because her parents never got around to adding a gate. “I’ll check.”

Before Wilson could answer me, I was on my feet and was walking along the narrow path that wound behind the fences like the ribbon pulled from a VHS tape. A few years ago, Darlene wrecked one of my old home videos by pulling the tape out after Chloe invited me to her birthday party, but not Darlene. My parents were furious when they found it. I told them I had done it because I was worried they wouldn’t want her over anymore. 

Darlene’s fence was always easy to spot because it was such an eyesore. It was the colour of grape juice and infected with heaps of moss. I sucked in my stomach as I squeezed through the gap in the paneling we had made years ago. From the yard, I could already see Darlene’s hair tied up in a bun right on top of her head, which was bobbing around in the kitchen window. The back sliding door squeaked as I heaved it open. 

“Want a snack?” she asked me as she buttered a piece of toast with a spoon. 

“Wilson just kissed me,” I told her.

“Wilson?” Her voice curled up into a cat’s tail, suddenly on edge. “Whatcha want to kiss that weirdo for? Was it good?”

I shrugged. “It was okay.”

“Sounds hot,” she teased. “Where is he?”

“Still by the water. Want to play a game of stones?” I suggested. “Probably more fun with three.”

Darlene took a gigantic bite from her toast as she chewed over this thought, then finally grabbed a cup from the dish rack. “Fine. First one to hit Willy wins.” We both laughed, though I silently hoped she was only joking. It was always hard to tell when she was joking. 

Back at the water, we found Wilson exactly where I’d left him. He was sitting on the grass like one of the tree stumps. 

“Willy boy,” Darlene sang. He rolled his eyes. It was no secret that Wilson and Darlene weren’t exactly fond of one another. She continued cheerfully, “So we’re playing stones, huh?”

Darlene quickly explained the rules of the game that she and I made up when we were younger while I collected rocks until they chalked my hands, then dumped them near Wilson’s feet. In the water on the opposite side of the slough, half of a rusty shopping cart jabbed the sky. Wedged behind it was one of those plastic children’s cars with the foot pedals. The car was once red and yellow, but after years of rain and sludge, it had become mildewed and sickly green. Though the mud had eaten the wheels long ago, the shopping cart prevented it from sinking any deeper into the slough. Both had been there for what seemed like a lifetime. 

The game was to land the most stones in the seat of the car. As always, the loser had to drink a cup full of slough water. 

Wilson threw his rocks first but only managed to get one stone in the car. I went next and sank three. Darlene, who had always been the best at this game, sank eight of her ten stones. 

“Willy,” Darlene taunted and handed him the cup. “Beat by a pair of girls.  How embarrassing.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’ll actually drink that water. It’s full of diseases and bacteria.” 

“Don’t be such a baby,” Darlene shot back. 

“It’s really not that bad,” I said having drunk a lot of slough water in my years. I hardly ever won against Darlene myself. 

“I’m not an idiot. Don’t you know water like that can kill you?”

“It won’t,” I retorted with heat moving into my cheeks. “I’ll show you.” 

I snatched the cup from Wilson’s hand and marched down to the water’s edge, stooping between the tall spears of yellow grass. I wanted to show him that I was daring and tough. Not just some stupid girl. I’d show him that I could drink the entire cup without getting sick. I’d make him see I was not the girl he thought I was. 

As I dunked the cup into the dirty water, something at the edge of my eye caught my attention. “Guys, come here a sec,” I yelled. “Check this out.”

Slumped on the mud’s cracked lips, only a few feet away from where I stood, was a rather pitiful-looking brown rat. It was alive, but it didn’t move, even with all three of our bodies shadowed around it like a wall. It didn’t even flinch. The rat just stared up at us, helpless and blinking. 

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked. 

“Maybe it ate something poisonous?” Wilson guessed. “Poor little guy.”

The rat looked like a sock after a day in the rain. Its tail weakly twitched. Yes, poor thing indeed. 

“What should we do?” I asked. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“First, let’s get a shoebox,” Wilson said matter-of-factly. “My aunt’s a vet. She’ll know what to do next. Darlene, can I use your phone to—”

Before Wilson finished his sentence, Darlene had bent over and swatted the rat into the water. She hit it hard. There was a small splash. Ripples followed. Nothing surfaced. 

“Problem solved,” she said, wiping her hands on her shirt. 

“The hell is the matter with you?” Wilson shrieked. “You’re sick. You know that? Sick!”

“Screw you. It’s just a rat.” 

“It was a living creature!”

“I put the thing out of its misery. It was mostly dead, anyway.”

 I didn’t know what to say to either of them. I was still holding the cup of slough water and the thought of drinking it now was making me queasy. 

“That was pretty awful,” I admitted quietly to Darlene. 

“You’re taking his side now? The boy who can’t even kiss?” 

Wilson quickly turned to me, obviously surprised that I’d mentioned our brief kiss to Darlene. Inside his eyes, the reflection of the slough had stepped away and all I could see were pebbles of hurt. Without another word, Wilson turned his back and left.

“What’d you go and do that for?” I snapped at Darlene. 

“Just felt like it,” she replied with a shrug, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the rat or Wilson or both. 

***

We spent the rest of the day in the sun, just the two of us.  The summer air was heavy. It hung from our bodies like wet drapes. Neither of us mentioned Wilson or the rat. There were many times I wanted to say something to her but didn’t know what. We went on as though nothing had happened, we stirred packets of lemonade into glasses and folded up our t-shirts to suntan our stomachs. We ate cheese sandwiches and threw our crusts to the ducks. They ate them up, just as they always did, not knowing what was bad for them and what wasn’t.  

At school that week, Wilson didn’t stop by my locker before class or seek me out at lunch, so Darlene and I ignored him if we passed him in the halls. “Forget about that jerk,” Darlene told me with a wave of her hand. 

When word got out that he had told some of his friends I didn’t know how to kiss, Darlene and I dumped slough water through the grates of his locker. After that, I knew there would be no other kisses from Wilson. No other days sitting by the water. 

As the school year bled into summer, Wilson and I still hadn’t spoken. We’d been friends since we were small. My mom would ask me, “What’s Wilson doing these days?” And I would just shrug and say, “He’s a bit of a jerk now.” For the first time since elementary school, he and I didn’t sign our names in each other’s yearbooks wishing each other a good summer. Nor did we sign them several summers later at our graduation ceremony before we bumbled into our own directions of adulthood.

 

***

My adulthood brought me to a new city, miles away from the sloughs and farm fields I’d grown up with. Sometimes in the late evenings with the mountains balanced on the skyline, the world outside my window seems too perfect, like I’m staring at a movie set. On nights when I can’t sleep, I sit on a chair by the kitchen window where the city lights keep me company. And it’s on nights like this after a few glasses of merlot and with some man asleep in my bed, I find myself curiously watching Wilson’s life through the beady eyes of the Internet. 

Wilson starts and ends college, with a few parties and girlfriends in between. Wilson works through the summer planting trees. 

Wilson gets a new job at a biotech company. 

Wilson vacations in Puerto Vallarta and drinks piña coladas from a coconut. 

Wilson grows a beard and then shaves it. Wilson finishes a half marathon. 

Wilson gets married. He and his bride pose on the vibrant synthetic turf of a putting course. They go hiking in Utah together. They always seem to be laughing at something the other has said. Maybe if things had gone differently, it would have been me inside those little colourful squares that make up his life. 

As for Darlene, I see her only a few times a year. We schedule sporadic coffee dates and on days when neither of us cancels at the last minute, we spend an hour and a half catching up on the general arc of our lives — her most recent vacation, my promotion at work, the men we are seeing. 

The last time I saw her, Darlene told me she was thinking about getting married. She and her fiancé had been engaged a year already and he had been pressuring her to set a date. 

 “Men,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. “But he does make me happy, I suppose.” Then she laughed like it was a joke. 

She told me if she went through with it, with marrying him, I simply must come to the wedding. I already knew then, as we sipped from our cooling cups on a bench outside the cafe, I wouldn’t. There’s a narrow river where our lives meet, and it’s filled with all of the awful things we have done. For a few hours at a time, we can pretend it’s not there flowing between us as we talk about our careers and homes and marriage proposals. We can pretend that after everything, we somehow managed to grow into good women, as though we aren’t still those two wicked girls drinking slough water, killing the ducks and rats with our pretty little hands.