There was a war somewhere and all the posters in all the pizza parlors reminded you never to forget. It was a red tide that summer. The whole gulf – or at least the bit nearest to Vista Verde – turned a biblical red. All the passing poisons of the prior years had trickled down driveways, through tributaries, and made a home in the gulf. Too much, too fast. Egged on by excess fertilizer, algae eagerly bloomed, sucking up all the oxygen and suffocating the grouper, mackerel, and snapper in their own waters. Their sorry carcasses rose to the water’s ruby surface and settled. There they stayed, swollen and still – animated only occasionally by the wake of a passing speedboat. 

As was tradition on the 4th of July, all the families along the Vista Verde cul-de-sac took to the bay to watch fireworks. People anchored their boats next to one other for easy socializing. Pontoons and Sea Rays joined tenuously hip-to-hip in a great stationary caravan. Neighbors passed trays of cocktail shrimp and artichoke dip. Beers filled coolers for the 21+ crowd and the select 9th grader brave enough to steal a Sam Adams.

Mimi’s parents, two teachers at the local Christian K-12, had recently bought their own dinghy off the classified ads. It was an unreliable little thing, adorned only by an ugly yellow and gray racing stripe – an aesthetic choice seemingly greenlit by the Devil’s own Creative Director. 

Hoping to bolster their daughter’s odds at making friends who didn’t eat their own scabs, her parents had really leaned in. They bought the boat. They attended the silent auctions. They percolated french vanilla coffee for the post-church fellowship hall and attended every school fundraiser at Panera. And so here they were, second to last in the line, sandwiched between the Fosters and the Vasileiouses.

The younger set divvied itself into two groups. The little kids wore bugles on their fingers like talons and talked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles while the almost-teens workshopped their best expressions of indifference and tried out words they didn’t understand. At 12, Mimi didn’t know which group she should join. Unsure, she lingered by her Dad.

“Now Miss Mimi, how’s VBS been treating you?” Ms. Vasileious asked, squatting slightly to meet Mimi’s sight line. She’d always been kind to Mimi. She kept her pantry stocked with cheese puffs and never got ornery when Mimi asked to leave the sleepover come 10:00 PM. Beside her, Mimi’s mom and their across-the-street neighbor, Ms. Muñoz, replenished the coolers and talked about the new breakfast place that’d opened downtown. Ms. Caukins fiddled with the speaker system, toggling between too-much and too-little bass.

There was a new woman tonight. There, on the outskirts of the conversation, she nursed a diet Coke and contributed “uh-huh”s and “mm-hm, yes, for sure, yeah”s. She was a grown-up, but younger than the others. More like Shelby who watched Mimi Thursday nights than Ms. Vasileious. Her beauty was a curated one. Mauve eyelids and lined lips. Her jaw was busy with a constellation of cysts, partially hidden beneath a sheath of creme concealer. Steps away, the scent of lemongrass and Deet rose up from her slightly sunburnt skin. 

Mimi had never beheld such a lady. She could feel, in the very marrow of her spine, that there were words for this lady, but she had not heard them yet. 

“You know what’s better?” The lady spoke directly to Mimi now, “for that?” Her mind elsewhere, Mimi didn’t realized how furiously she was itching her inner thigh. The lady gestured at the welt peeking out of Mimi’s shorts.

“Uh-uh,” Mimi answered.

“So what you gotta do is make an X right in the middle.” The lady opened her palm to Mimi, showing a burgeoning mosquito bite of her own. Gingerly, she sunk her baby blue acrylic into the wound, making a cross. Mimi did the same. 

“Give it a sec.” The lady smiled, “Stops the itch. Or it should anyway.”

“Thanks.”

“Course.” The lady responded. She inspected the mark on her palm.

“It’s like when you gotta–” Mimi started.

“Delaware, actually!” Mr. Davis cut in, pulling the lady into the ongoing conversation beside them. Mr. Davis was a friendly man, quick with a hug or a toss of a mini Sprite from the cooler. He owned a dentistry practice off 6th Street, housed between the Suntrust and the MVP Bar and Grille for which he was a part owner. He played bass there on Thursday nights – Eric Clapton, Dave Matthews, The Boss. Mimi had tagged along one night when Shelby couldn’t babysit. 

Mr. and Ms. Davis had gotten divorced some two years back. They shared custody of Jessica, their daughter a grade older than Mimi, who was seemingly with her Mom tonight. Mr. Davis placed his meaty palm around the lady’s waist. “But it’s been, what, going on four months now?”

“Now Mimi, I know they got those nerd ropes over there.” Ms. Vasileious gestured to the older kids. “You wanna go check them out yourself?” Mimi could sense herself being shepherded away. 

There were roughly a dozen older kids around the circle. Josh B. held court. He was as perfect as he was perfectly indifferent. All luminous skin and teeth that had never considered growing anyway but straight. Most importantly, he couldn’t care less if anyone there lived or died. They loved him for it. 

Mimi didn’t know what to say so she busied her mouth taking generous gulps from a mini Sprite from the cooler next to her. Her breath knocked against the aluminum, echoing louder than she would have liked. 

“Did y’all know people have been putting acid in these?” Dylan from down the street offered, contemplating the red velvet cupcake in his hand.

“That’s bullshit,” Josh B. shot back.

“No, no, Clearwater, literally Clearwater. It happened in Clearwater and everyone, everyone at Good Shepherd ralphed at a Halloween party.”

“Urban. Legend.” Josh repeated.

“No, Clearwater’s not even a city. It’s like, well it’s not the country, but it’s not–” Dylan said, but Josh interrupted.

“Urban. Legend. Do you not know what that is?” Josh repeated. Dylan paused, stalling for time. Josh continued, speaking slowly as if to a child, “Urban. Fucking. Legend. It’s a story adults tell to sevies who don’t know better and it makes them scared shitless.”

“No, I get it. Like werewolves in London,” Dylan nodded.

“Not city dipshit. Nothing about a city at all. Are you actually not getting this?” Josh said increasingly exasperated. 

“Fuck off, man. I get it. I get it!” Dylan returned.

“No, genuinely, I want to know.” 

“Stop, man, I know this.”

“No, Dylanita, at this point I’m legitimately concerned you’re not processing this. Like, it’s a legit concern—“ Josh feigned concern.

“Dude I get it. That was just an example.” Dylan insisted. The circle was singularly focused now.

“Man, man, Dylanita baby, I’m not messing with you. I—we all—are concerned that maybe you, I dunno man, maybe you have a learning disability or something. Is this something you’ve ever gotten checked out?”

“Yeah, I get it. I get the joke.”

“Explain–” 

“Shut up, man–“

“Explain to the class what an urban legend is,” Josh finished in a faux teacherly voice. Dylan paused. He did not understand, but he likewise didn’t want to admit what he did not know.

The other kids drank it in. They were rapt, overcome by a collective schadenfreude tinged with just a dash of fear. Nobody wanted to be the object of Josh B.’s singular concentration. Mimi certainly did not want that. She busied her self with her Sprite. She couldn’t say anything stupid if her mouth was occupied with soda.

Mimi tore through another two mini-sized Sprites. It was rare that her parents bought sodas, particularly the tiny type that fit perfectly in her little palm, and she didn’t want to let an open cooler go to waste. It wasn’t until she stood up to see over the edge of the boat that she realized she had to pee something wicked. As she’d learned many a time, it was not something she could stop from happening. Raging tickle turned unstoppable and ruined skorts and sandles. Craning her neck, she looked for a bathroom.

“Do you, um—“ she started to ask the older girl next to her where to find the bathroom, but stopped herself. The girl didn’t seem to want to engage. Quietly, Mimi stole away back to the grown-ups. Ms. Vasilious spotted her first.

“I know that dance!” Ms. Vasilious laughed. Mimi at once seethed and felt relief; both embarrassed to be called out and grateful to be granted leave. “Lemme see, yeah sweetheart, go on down to the end and use the one on Mr. Davis’ boat, mmkay? But put on a life jacket if you’re gonna be jumping boat to boat all the way down there. I don’t want your Mama hunting me down.”

Nodding, Mimi suited up in an orange lifejacket, securing the clips across her solar plexus. She hopped from boat to boat. A foot or so of silky black gulf separated each vessel. With each jump, she entered the mini-ecosystem of the clan that owned it. 

At the back of the Fosters’: a mostly eaten veggie and ranch platter (no love for the raw segmented cauliflower apparently). The Burns were working their way through hour two of an Alan Jackson compilation CD. Way down yonder on the Chattahooche, it gets hotter than a hoochie-coochie. One down, the Collins were four sips to plastered, loudly recounting a streaking attempt in 1992 that almost ended in a trip to urgent care. The next two boats were empty. 

Mimi arrived at the precipice of the Davis’ ivory vessel. It was more of a maritime dacha than a boat. The square footage was generous. Unlike the other boats, it had a multifloored, air-conditioned interior. The crowd that had been there before had dissipated in favor of the other end of the procession with a better view of the fireworks. Now the deck was empty spare a mostly full bag of Tostito’s Scoops. The deluxe speaker system played on, audienceless. The lights inside were still on.

Mimi tapped once on the sliding glass door. Nothing. She tapped gingerly again and went in, hunting for the toilet. Mimi could feel the fullness in her bladder turn from tickle to torment. She was too old to still piss her pants, but it seemed increasingly inevitable. She spotted salvation just then. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, the light still on. As Mimi made her way down the darkened hallway to the room, she could see the glowing, glorious promise of an unoccupied toilet and plush hand towels. The sink was even stocked with cherry jubilee hand soap with red scent beads.

“Whore.”  

Mimi stopped. Her face reddened. She thought she was alone, but no. There was another here. Another in this boat with her who used words like “whore.” The word was not new to Mimi, but she knew it only in the Babylonian sense. Mother of Harlots. Destroyer of Worlds. A no-good, gilded lady who leveled empires and never waited her turn. 

But the word wasn’t for her. And it wasn’t meant in the way she had known it. No one could see her. It came from the right, just off the hall. Herself obscured in the hallway, Mimi could see two people moving through a cracked door. Images at the end of a kaleidoscope. 

It was the nail-in-mosquito-bite lady. She was bent; her elbows planted on a countertop, crumpling the pages of an open People magazine. Mr. Davis was behind her. The cadence of their movements was new to Mimi. 

They were naked, her more than him, and sweaty, him more than her. Mr. Davis wore nothing below the waist, but he still had on the kind of expensive athleisure shirt he always wore at fundraiser baseball games. Now, it looked slick, like a lizard’s exoskeleton. 

Mr. Davis could not see the lady’s face now, but Mimi could. Her sounds were wholly new to Mimi but seemingly not unhappy. There was something else though, worn in her expression. Mimi could not name it, but there it was. Just discernable from Mimi’s spot in the darkened hallway, an element of play pretend.

Mimi needed to get away now. She could not be found out. She could not be piss-soaked and guilty on the 4th of July. They’d tell people and the news would travel, boat by boat, down to her parents and Josh and everyone would know she was a prowler and a pervert. Josh B. would turn his perfect, cutting gaze in her direction. Terror.

Moving quickly back down the hallway, Mimi snatched the door handle and pushed. She hurried back out into the evening. She could feel her bladder give out. The first drops, hot and fat, escaped. They coursed down her thighs, her numbed mosquito bite, her calves, her ankles, and began to pool in her tennis shoes. 

There could be no escape more absolute than a plunge into the Gulf past sunset. Mimi threw herself into the water below – its red translated into a sleek black in the night. The water sucked her in immediately, pulling her under as if it had been waiting. She pursed her lips. 

A collective “hey-oh” rose from the boats down the way. The fireworks were starting. Above her, the inaugural blasts ripped into blackness – brilliant fire in the sky.

Buoyed by her life jacket, Mimi bobbed at the surface. You could not see the red tide in the night, only a velveteen black pockmarked by ripples and fish corpses. The fireworks above illuminated them in bursts.

And she heard that night, as it were, the noise of thunder. Something saying to her, “Come and see.” And she saw – what, she could not say. But she could not look away. And she could not get clean.