One day we were talking. She would never hide her talking much about anything, but she was struggling now. We were there by the lake, the one by the billboard right out in the middle of the highway. The billboard that cast that big square shadow that we would sit beside of with our skirts covered in the little flowers that appeared out of the grass. Maisie would be sticky with sweat, and today she was prodding her skin, pinching the little fingerfuls of it as she went around her words, and with us both by the lake and with the mosquitoes spiralling around her and the lake and her talk every now and then getting drowned out by the cars. The whiz-whiz of the cars. Like the sound of all that outside air brushing through the windows to the inside air.

Sitting by the shadow, Maisie would most times play with the grass or sometimes with her hair, but today she was squeezing small handfuls of her skin. Like she was scratching at something. Like she was there by the lake just so those mosquitoes could suck all that talk out of her. And Maisie would always talk to me, but there were things she wouldn’t say much about, so I was excited and getting fidgety waiting for her, with her moving around all her words. And when she started I knew she’d be talking about the boy. The one that came in his red- and-white car from the city. The one that Maisie would meet when she climbed out the window at night, where you’d hear her climb and leave and sometimes see just her eyes reflected in the dark when she’d go. When she’d look at you in the dark and feel you staring, though you’d pretend you were asleep. And then it would be that there weren’t just Maisie’s eyes staring but all the possible eyes in the dark. Like all the points of black in the world had eyes and were all staring back at you.

She was so much bigger than me and here she was talking about the boy. Maisie told me how they’d driven off in his red-and-white car, feeling his eyes on the road and then on her and how the eyes and the way they lingered had made her feel old and smart. And I liked hearing her talking about the boy and the car because it made me feel old and smart too. Even with the way she spoke then, with the scratching and her eyes looking all big and wild it made me feel old and smart. And I was listening and feeling old, but I was noticing the eyes because I thought they should have something in them but they didn’t. Like you could hear hot salt in her words about the boy, but the salt couldn’t reach the eyes. Just like I thought the scratching should be from mosquito bites, but it was from her talking. And Maisie was telling me that the boy had taken her somewhere nice. She’d had something new in her hair, a ribbon, and he’d liked it and said she was pretty and I think she’d felt pretty. (I knew she’d been pretty because I’d seen the ribbon surrounded by all those dark eyes as she left—just grinning there in the light of the streetlights.) He’d said she was pretty and Maisie had liked how fast they were going.

We were hardly ever going anywhere in Dad’s car and here was Maisie riding along in the boy’s. They’d gone way out of town together, down to a place by the river that the boy knew. The boy had parked his car right near the bank where it was dark and you had to use a light to see your hand in front of you. And Maisie never did like the dark much and she said she was nervous there with the boy, with everything kind of dark and dead and with the water flowing all the way down beneath them. The boy had gone crawling his hand near Maisie’s first, just like she’d been telling about before, and then their hands had been touching a moment, and then she’d been crawling her own hand up his hand, which she said she liked, and she said the boy had liked too. She was smiling a bit with the corners of her lips as she told me that. And they were crawling, crawling like that when they heard the big truck drive up on the opposite side of the river. Big men in orange overalls climbing out of the truck, bringing out these boxes that they were crowbarring, pouring out of them these long slimy trails of something into the water. The sound of it had made the hands stop crawling. It made Maisie and the boy climb out and onto the bonnet of the car to watch the men. It was dark, but the stars were getting brighter and they could see the orange of the overalls but not the faces. They watched, but their hands weren’t touching and the boy told Maisie that these men were refilling the river with fish. That the fish came from far away and had to be brought here because of all the fishing. And Maisie could tell then, once he said it, because she said she could smell the fish everywhere in the air and she could see the seagulls coming by the crates and maybe the fishes struggling to breathe in the air. She could hear the men dropping the wiggling slime into the water and the sucking sounds of all those scales bouncing against the top of the water. It had made the air taste funny, Maisie said, and there’d been all the scales and squelching sounds, and she’d been nervous and talking, babbling, and while she’d been talking the boy’d grabbed her and kissed and then they were together again, Maisie said, kissing together again, and there’d been more squelching sounds. She smiled more when she said that too, and her lips curled more and she blushed and there were more colors in her cheeks.

The boy had told Maisie that his dad owned a company that was owned by the company that was filling the rivers. The men were going up and down the county, filling all the waters with new fish. The boy had been proud saying that, Maisie said, and then there’d been some more crawling, with the bonnet feeling hard where she’d sat and the boy’s hand and lips feeling soft and hot against hers. Maisie told me that it was like that for a while, being in that sort of wonderful, and then it had been over and they weren’t there anymore, and while Maisie was saying that you could begin to notice the hot salt again, and then it was us on the lake again, Maisie and I, where ahead there were the lilies in the water that didn’t have eyes and there was us watching the water. Maisie’s shadow where we sat together edged out further than mine and hugged the edge of the water. And across the water there were the lily pads and the dragonflies and the ripples from the ducks that broke the reflections in the water. And all the midges that dripped from the sky and into the water. And the rubbish thrown from cars that made its way into the water.

We were waiting for something and Maisie was half speaking something, caught somewhere in the crawling hands and the bonnet and the water. And I was waiting and Maisie was waiting. And it all stopped then, like all that time we were in was getting trapped by Maisie’s words, with Maisie quieting herself and the wind quieting and the water quieting and everything getting slower and slower until there was just the long second of us both watching the water. With all Maisie’s murmurs falling out of her and filling the water. And there was only so long that I could be in the waiting so I started thinking to get out of the quiet. I thought how there wasn’t a time with me in it when there were fishes in that water. How Maisie had told me that when she was little, Dad would take her and fish in the lake with her. She would go right to the edge, near the first island of lily pads, and below that edge there’d be the water, Maisie’s face in the water. Maisie’s face’d get broken by the fishing line or a fish and then Dad and Maisie would be fishing together, both of them holding the rod together because she wasn’t big enough to have one of her own. By the time I was here, Dad and Maisie had already taken everything from the lake and Dad had always been sad about that. About how empty it was. And then because we were still in the long second and because Maisie had stopped all her murmuring, I wondered how Dad’d be knowing the lake might be filled again, with all the fishes moving around inside it like they did on those nature programs he watches. Those big balls that move together so that the fishes can become a single thing.

And I was about to ask Maisie, but she was back then to talking about the boy. She was hooking her lips in the way she does when she’s smiling and the shadow of the billboard was beginning to cover us both, swallowing me and then Maisie and then the lake. The whole of the world hidden away from us and the billboard hiding us and its shadow growing longer and longer and its blackness going into the lake. She was scratching and half saying things about the crawling hands and the squelching sounds and not talking anymore about the fishes. Looking wilder now as she was scratching. Like all those eyes in the darkness had got inside her and were watching out of her insides. And I was waiting for something and the lake was looking all blueblack with the shadows inside it and Maisie was dancing around all her words, sitting with her skirt up over her legs. Me moving mine so I looked the same. Maisie getting lost in those words and saying the same things about the boy that she’d said before, even with the colors of the words shifting with her saying them. And I thought she might be waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what so I asked more about the orange overalls and the river and whether the fish could come to this lake. But Maisie didn’t much seem to care about that. She looked through me and for a moment there wasn’t anything in those eyes and then she was saying she didn’t know and saying it didn’t matter and sighing and saying that if I cared enough I should go down and check if there were any fishes now. And I didn’t know what to say so I did go check. I went down to the edge of the lake and splashed a rock into the water and broke the water with the sign and the sky in it. The water rippling but with no fish in it. And the splash sent the water crawling upwards and scared a duck and sent it squawking to the other side of the lake. Right up into the trees and then back to near the water.

The crawling water and the squawking duck got Maisie noticing, and when I moved to that side of the lake you could see the duck watching and from the dark Maisie watching. And then Maisie stooping and pinching her skin. And I knew she’d be thinking about the car and the boy, but I knew she was watching now so I hunched forward and the duck was ahead. Its green head was poking out around the lily pads and staring. I pounced at it and the duck jumped and flew again and went right into the middle, floating by the lilies in the center of the lake. And then with the sound and the squawking and the flying and the water suddenly thrashing and no longer showing the sky, all that time that was being trapped by Maisie’s words started again. Maisie started again. And when Maisie laughed, I laughed too. I could hear Maisie laughing and looking wonderful and we saw each other and she quit laughing except for the smiling and the way the lips curled all upwards. And it was a good smile except for the eyes that still looked full of something. Like not full of stars because the stars weren’t out but full of something moving. Her hair hung around and made a picture of her face, with the smile and the eyes in it, Maisie looking so pretty with that face and the sad eyes, with my face and her face and the water and I thought that inside her face was the boy and maybe the red-and-white car and maybe the hot and slimy fish and the men in bright orange overalls bringing the crates into the water.

And Maisie never did hide her talking much about anything, but she didn’t laugh hardly at all so it was nice seeing her like that. I thought then that it would have been nice if the time had been caught now and not earlier. If everything could have been stopped now with Maisie laughing all prettily and the air around turning itself all gray. But then it was all moving again, crawling quickly like the crawling hands, and then Maisie was back to before with the big somethings in her eyes. Like all the fishes in all the lakes of the world had come together and were reflecting themselves in the lakes in her eyes.

I was walking over with the crunching grass beneath me and with Maisie’s face and her eyes over it, and I was thinking about the men and the crates of fish and the big balls of fishes in Maisie’s eyes, and I wondered if there’d be big balls of fishes in the lake once the men came. Dad’d want to fish then and then we’d be fishing and I’d hold the rod below and he’d hold it above and then maybe Maisie’d fish too, but with her own rod because she’d be old enough now, and then maybe the boy’d come too if she ever told Mum or Dad about him, and then we’d all be fishing and then I’d get my own rod and we’d all be there. With the lines all dangling into the big balls of fishes.

It was exciting thinking that. Maisie wasn’t speaking at all when I got back to her, just brushing the little flowers off her as we got ready to head home, with me not knowing what to do so deciding to do the same. Both of us brushing and packing and then hiking out of the square shadow and up near the road with the cars. And it was like she’d said all of her words because she wasn’t talking at all, with everything quiet and getting cold, and once we’d gone a while I started talking to try and stop the quiet. I tried telling Maisie about what type of fish might get into the lake and whether she’d seen what type the fish were when she was by the river. Whether they were like the ones from the nature programs and whether I could be the one to tell Dad about them. Maisie had definitely used up all her words but she got funny at that. She sighed and then spoke a little and said it wasn’t any of Dad’s business what ended up in the lake, her face getting all red with her eyes looking bigger and rounder. Like all those big balls of fishes were wriggling around them getting faster and faster.

“Just be quiet about it,” she said. “You promise?”

There was that new color in her words again, and I said I would be quiet. After that we were just walking. Everything was silent so I thought time might have got caught again, but it seemed just to be getting quicker, the air around turning grayer and all the light in it seeming to be getting sucked into nothing. Like the light was getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared into nothing. And Maisie was next to me but she wasn’t there and she was really climbing out of the window and getting into the red-and-white car. I saw her climbing and thought how the boy never turned on the headlights when he was in our driveway. How on those nights there were all the topless stars that were there but couldn’t quite reach the ground. And I wondered how the two of them could get through the roads when it was that dark and they didn’t use headlights and when the darkness was full of all those eyes. And then we could see our driveway. You could hear Mum rattling pans in the kitchen and Dad out chopping the hedges and Maisie turned to me and said, “Promise, Gracie?” And I did promise. And she said, “You sure?” and I said, “Yes,” and we walked up the drive and the sounds got louder. Dad said hello to us and we said hello back. Then we were all inside and eating and I didn’t say anything about the fish and Maisie kept looking over and wondering if I’d say anything about the fish.

Calla Nell Preece is a trans writer from Birmingham, England. She has publications in the likes of Adelaide Literary Magazine, Qwerty Magazine, and Wrongdoing Magazine. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and currently she works as a fiction editor for West Trade Review.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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