Pretend

“Have we met before?” the girl asked me, her white teeth glinting in the midday sun, her perfect green eyes dancing like leaves in the breeze.

“No, I don’t think so,” I muttered dumbly, a smile of my own creeping onto the corners of my lips.

We stood on the end of a dock crumbling upon itself, creaking with every wave of water that lapped on its supporting beams. The engulfing Arizona sun beat down on us heavy as an anvil, the sun enfolding us in her burning embrace, pulling the sweat out of our pores unceasingly.

There we stood, two teenage girls dressed in tank tops and jean shorts and flip flops that melted on the pavement, same as everybody else. And yet…

“Huh,” she replied, “I swear I recognize you from somewhere.”

I shrugged. She smiled wider.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Me neither. We’re here for my brother’s soccer game, but I managed to escape.”

“I’m staying with my aunt, but she’s working today,” I explained.

She nodded. We stood in silence. In the distance, two lone children on the shoreline shrieked as they splashed each other with water and taunted each other with seaweed.

“Ice cream?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

I had never had a sister, but she was exactly what I imagined a sister to be like. Or all I wanted in one, at least. Her name was Maya. Oh, how I wished for a name like that. My name is Gertrude, I had replied, but please don’t call me that.

“What should I call you, then?” she asked, her tongue flicking across her cone of mint chocolate chip.

I shrugged.

“Hmm,” she mused thoughtfully. A middle-aged man, with only a few wisps of hair left on his sunburnt head, walked out of the ice cream parlor. He held a giant banana split with eyes full of boyish eagerness. “How about Cherry?”

I wrinkled my nose.

“Banana, then?”

“You’ve got to be more creative than that,” I said, and we chuckled.

She glanced towards the horizon, eyes roaming the people walking by on the dilapidated brick sidewalk, the velvet mesquite trees that shadowed the edges of the lake, the low, golden mountains that stretched endless out into desert beyond. Laughter echoed from a table next to the wooden bench on which we sat. A group of wrinkled, time-worn women were recalling old memories. The building’s generator shut off, leaving a space of empty sound that I hadn’t noticed was filled. A light breeze trickled through the tall grasses that grew on the edge of the sand, gently bending them to bow this way and that, and kissing my cheek with a tickle of heat.

Her eyes were mirthful and gentle, as though everything she looked at was a gift just for her, as though the smallest details were significant and enjoyable. I wished I could be as content as she was, and looked around in confusion at what could please her so much.

“How about Mave?” she asked after a moment, something nostalgic ruminating in her look.

“I’ll take it,” I said, then tested the sound out on my lips, “Mave.” I liked it a whole lot better than Gertrude. Mave and Maya. Maya and Mave. For a day, I could play pretend. We were sisters, by something stronger than even blood. For a while, we were letting ourselves be taken up by our chance encounter and pretend like this was the climax of our lives.

Maya scaled the wide, ancient mesquite tree and I stayed curled up in a branch low enough to the ground to feel wrapped up in its branches but still safe. I took a fallen limb in my hands and slowly plucked off its leaves.

I glanced up and saw her stretching her arms and legs out like a cat settling in for a nap in the sun.

“Y’know,” she began, her sunbaked legs dangling over the branch, “it’s not my favorite place in the world, but I love how Arizona’s heat just…wraps around you. It feels like a tight, never-ending hug.”

I nodded, twisting the barren limb between my fingers. The heat even radiated off the branch I held, the sun it had been absorbing all day now flowing to my fingertips.

It felt almost isolated here, on a side of the lake that was apart from the small town and its inhabitants. A trail looped around the whole thing, a sure sign that we were still a part of civilization, but we didn’t have to pay any mind to that.

“I don’t know why,” Maya continued, “but I always feel like magic comes out in the heat. When the world stirs awake from the quiet solitude of winter and everything’s dethawing. I think that’s more magical than any storybook. Or maybe, the storybooks get their magic from that feeling.”

She spoke like a mage, a wizard, an oracle, and a girl all in one. But there was no voodoo behind her words; she saw the world and spoke of what she saw without twisting it for attention’s sake. It felt like a breath of rain-soaked air through the crack in a window.

“I don’t know…” I muttered. “I think when the snow has just coated itself over a thicket of trees and the sun shines across it to make it glitter... There’s something so secret about what lies within those woods, covered by something untouched by human hands. That’s magical.”

“Hm,” she replied receptively. “Maybe we’re both right, Mave. Maybe it’s everywhere.”

We pondered that for a moment, listening to the cicadas buzz and sing and scream at us, watching the water bugs spring across the water and send out little ripples. I was certain she was right, as I began to think about it. If two strangers from completely different lives and places could meet in some rinky dink town and find so much to talk about, I was sure magic was in everything. Even us.

“What’s your favorite color, anyway?” Maya asked and I chuckled, amazed at how easy it was to switch from speaking of enigmatic, thoughtful things to simple things like my favorite color. They coexisted so easily, it made me revel in life’s flexibility.

Or maybe, like we had concluded about magic, complexities and depths were in everything, even colors. So, I replied, “My favorite color is green. The earthy kind, like corn fields and pine trees. I love how it’s everywhere, how you can almost associate it with a scent. Like when the sun bakes a forest and you can smell the heat all around you, or when it’s just rained and all the plants are fragrant with the droplets.”

“That’s a good one,” Maya said distantly, as though she was busy walking through my words.

“What about you?”

“Well, I like purple,” she replied. “But I’m not sure I can be as creative with my why.”

“I can imagine enough if you just try,” I replied with a short laugh.

“Ok,” she began hesitantly, laughing too. “I like purple because of plums…and the curtains at my grandma’s old house, and my mom’s favourite blouse. It sort of has a smell for me too, like home. Rich and soft and sweet.”

Her tone said enough, if not her words.

“What about your favorite movie?” I asked, and we went on for hours talking of all the evidently simple things that defined ourselves, that really weren’t simple at all.

We eventually climbed down from our nook in the hospitable tree and walked around town, through the outdated main street, through homely neighborhoods that, what they lacked in wealth, they made up for in charm. Sometimes we spoke, sometimes we watched in silence as life went on for a hundred other people in the tiny populus, and took everything in. For a moment, life slowed to a crawling pace I had never known could be so thrilling.

When the sun began to slide its way down the horizon, we knew it was time to part ways. We had ended up on the dock where we had begun, sitting there with an unwilling sense for the coming separation, as though we hadn’t already spent our lifetimes apart.

“You know,” Maya said softly as we sat there on the edge, “I didn’t know why you seemed so familiar when I first saw you, but now I know.”

“Really?” I asked curiously.

“You remind me of my grandmother. You have the same look in your eyes, almost as if you’re daring the world to give you a challenge, because you know you can take it,” she answered, and with a gently forlorn smile added, “She passed away a year ago. A year ago today, actually.” She glanced down, blinking quickly.

I didn’t know what to say, so I only hoped my eyes and my silence would tell her how sorry I was.

“That’s why I recommended Mave, as a name,” she continued. She paused, and for a moment, we could share the weight of her sorrow.

“Thank you,” she mumbled. “For being my Mave for a while.”

I smiled bittersweetly, because I had never known she needed me just as much, or perhaps more, than I needed her.

“I’ve always wanted a sister,” I said quietly. “But I was a miracle baby. My parents tried and tried for another kid…but it never worked out.”

She nodded, her eyes shining with the same sympathy mine did.

“Thank you,” I said. “For being my Maya for a while.”

She smiled, too.

“So, Gertrude,” she said, “I’ll see you someday.”

“You will,” I replied with a calm surety.

And we walked together off the dock, then parted our ways, each heading away from pretending for a while. But the change we felt was no imaginary thing.

I squinted across the restaurant where I was eating, practically a shack in the middle of nowhere that was on the way to California, where I was going to move in with my son.

An old woman, all dressed in violet, her snow white hair long and braided, scanning the place contently as she waited for her meal. For some reason, I put my fork down and crossed the short distance to her booth, my cane aiding me, my knees aching though she was only a few steps away.

“Excuse me,” I said, and she looked up at me with leaf-colored eyes that twirled around her irises. “Have we met before?”