I often wondered what my life would have been like if my father hadn’t died. In fact, for some reason, I had been thinking about that a lot on the flight from Amsterdam that morning. Part of the reason I had felt so queasy. Longing for a memory that had never been. 

The night swimmers swim close to the shore. On occasion, one of them swims farther out, out of sight of the others. This is when I rise up from the sand at the bottom of the sea. 

I am a robot. I live in the sea. My skin is metal yellow, though the seaweed makes this difficult to see. It covers me.

"I heard Tanner’s back in town,” Dad says while setting the table. “Do you want to invite him over for dinner tonight?”

We threw eggs—that was our thing. Three years ago, in the tenth grade, I somehow convinced Tanner’s bus driver I was also on the bus route just so I could get dropped off at his house. We’d lounge around his living room, eating Pizza Rolls and not doing homework. Mrs. Wheeler would always come home from work an hour later, complain about our smelly feet, but would still call him her favorite son. She said I was a close second. 

The bartender is starting to hover like she thinks she might need to save me, this indie rocker with an undercut and a pierced lip and one of those tank tops with tasteful sideboob, and I don’t blame her, because she’s probably saved a hundred girls in my position. Still, it’s irritating that she should have to, when I’d been so almost hopeful. 

I, 15 and pudgy with acne-prone cheeks, clutch a Tupperware container to my chest. Inside are gigantic chocolate chip cookies.

I want to hate Craig for screwing me in the backseat of a car. I want to hate the ache deep inside that makes me clench my thighs together and press against my hand when I remember how his hot breath tickled against my neck as he exhaled out my name. I hate that I want. 

My wife’s in a coma, but we’d both be better off if she’d just die already.

It’s been twenty-three weeks since the accident. I was at work when it happened. Might’ve been on my lunch break eating at the Ruby Tuesday buffet, but my exact whereabouts isn’t really that important. What is important is I came home and she was lying on her back next to the china cabinet, a pool of congealed blood on the floor, the whites of her eyes beaming out like spaceships.

Sometime during the fourth week, I brought another woman home. To be honest, I’m not sure if she was a hooker or not, but after hearing the whole sob story about my wife in a coma and me just needing some company, she didn’t bother charging me. She even stayed the whole night and let me hold her. I stroked her strawberry blonde hair and called her Suzie. When she left, she didn’t offer her number. I didn’t ask for it.