I know which one is your stucco house and I’m not going there to play or to look at your mouth. I am going for a run along the canal path, like women do in the evenings. I’m steady in my white canvas sneakers, dirty laces poking out from where I usually smoosh the ends back in. I cloy to the point of rot in brand new deodorant and heady bug spray. No venom, no vixen would approach me, Mom certified as I choked down her final misting of repellent. Now I can safely chase patches of glitter down the canal, like the kind you roll onto your neck between class periods.

I stick close to the path, veering sloppily into the grass only when I see baby goslings whose mother is bound to be ferocious. I push out my chin and jog past the waterfront developments, the big houses that gave out good candy last October, the cul-de-sac where I fell while racing neighborhood boys. I have spent my life running around this canal town but have never run alone before. I can’t see why people do, if it means fuzz filling their jaws up to their ears and their legs growing floppy. But I know which one is your yard and it’s where I halt, the afternoon sticking me right in the dirt road, wilted forearms blazing down.

I am silent, but your chimney aspirates overhead. Santa has surely long passed it over given your dark laugh, the new bra straps crisscrossing your back. I wonder if you’d think it babyish that I play along even though I know it’s Mom who wraps my presents and Dad who takes a bite out of the Pillsbury slice-and-bakes. I have never unwrapped a bra or a sugary body spray from the store in the mall that makes me avert my eyes wildly. Of course, you’ve been that brand of sticky vanilla sweet since January.

I am turned toward your house watching the gas curl out when the canal splashes open behind me, when I hear you. I remember how you sounded when you pulled a muscle in morning gym because I got to walk you to the nurse. You must not hurt that much now, hissing only slightly when you burst slimed from shallow water and flop stomach-first on the bank, splattering my canvas shoes. You are sparkling wet when we catch sight of each other, and I imagine my sweaty face matches.

Your T-shirt when you pull up towards me is all muddy. From bottom feeding, you will tell me later, in my head, where I’ll dry you down and tend to your bright cuts. Where you’ll show me your gills on purpose. Here I only glimpse them when you tilt and shake the water out of your ears, baring your shiny neck. They could be a trick of the relentless afternoon sun, but I will wish for them to be real. After all, I caught hints of scales from the waist down, the semblance of a gleaming tail while you caught your breath.

You will never tell me what you were doing with your stomach pressed to the canal floor. But you do grab me for support as you come to your feet, and that’s enough. I will relish in the tracks of watery mud you leave behind on my fingers, my clothes, my Gap cargo shorts. The streaks of fresh blood that will remain on my shirt. The natural smell of dirt that permeates, against all odds, my chemical bubble. Soon you will take your hands off me, blurt a quick apology, an excuse, or nothing. I’ll glimpse more glittering spots on your cheeks. You’ll stumble up to your front door without inviting me in, and we’ll avoid each other on Monday. But, for a second: freak Americana nymph, meet bug-sprayed alien. We touch. We’re damp all over. We’re girls.