The air smells of wet wood and mud. Strands of wet hair cling to my face. It’s dark. Staggering steps carry me in directions I fear might prove to be traps. Searching hands brush against rough wooden planks, walls to my labyrinth. My breathing is shallow and rapid.

I’m scared.

Somebody’s following me, I’m sure.

Creak.

“Selena,” a voice sings. “Selena. Why are you hiding?”

Creak.

“There’s no need to run, Selena,” the voice says almost compassionately. “There’s no point.”

I turn a corner and stop. There’s a clearing in the labyrinth, an area about the size of a large room, surrounded by walls. There’s nothing there but mud and small puddles of water that reflect the moonlight.

“You can’t escape,” the voice whispers, suddenly right behind me.

A forceful blow to the back, so forceful I fly through the air and crash into the mud right in the middle of the clearing.

And suddenly the voice comes from everywhere. Dozens of dark nooks and crannies and each of them harbours the same threat.

“Why are you scared?” they ask in kind tones, the layered voices forming a terrifying choir. “Why do you fear us?”

And then it’s only one voice again, right behind me.

“We could have been friends…”

I throw myself around, don’t even care that my entire backside gets covered in mud in the process.

Towering over me in the moonlight is Claire, a sad smile on her lips.

“… Timothy.”

And suddenly my hair is no longer in my face because it is short and my body feels all screwed on the wrong way and God I forgot how much I hated this. I forgot how terrible it feels to be the wrong person.

“We could have been friends, but you had to ruin everything.”

There’s nothing more terrifying than that smile. I’m frozen still with fear and don’t even move when she puts her hand to my cheek.

“You always ruin everything,” she tells me, like I’m a child in desperate need of a reality check. “And it’s not even your fault.”

She shakes her head, then sticks her hand right into my chest cage. I stop breathing, expect her almost to pull her hand back out with my heart in it, but when she retrieves it, there’s nothing. Not even blood. Just her hand.

“Because you are empty, Timothy.”

I look down to my chest and see with horror the hole in the thin layer of colour that’s my skin.

Behind it there’s… nothing. Black emptiness. And then the colour is splintering and starts to dissolve and I want to scream for help but nothing but a whispered “No,” makes it past my lips. And then there’s nothing left of my body and I can feel my face fall apart to dust and the last thing I see is Claire smiling down on me contently.

I don’t wake up with a start. I just open my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heartbeat.

My hair. My body. My room. My bed. Everything normal but… the space beside me is empty.

Right. Isa left. Yesterday. After having stayed with me for almost a week. She has an exam on Monday and she even offered to stay with me instead of taking it, but I told her to go. She already helped me get so much better.

And look at me now.

I sit up and put one hand to my chest, my thumb absently trailing along my collarbone.

I won’t be able to go back to sleep for a while. I know that her words aren’t true. My friends have helped me realise that. It took some time, but they managed. I suppose Reyna helped a lot, too.

My fingers find the metal bracelet and begin turning around around my wrist.

I’m still scared of her, though, and it shows in my dreams. I’m still not quite comfortable around strangers or bigger groups of people I don’t trust.

Reyna said that time should heal that, too. I hope she’s right.

With a sigh, I get up and out of bed. The sky is clear, moonlight falls through my window and lights my room. Good weather for a walk at night. Or maybe…

I open my closet, put out my hand. I don’t need to see to find the two-piece swimsuit. The swimsuit that, in a way, started it all.

Swiftly, I strip off my nightie and the shorts I wear underneath because I’m ‘fucking prude’. Isa’s words, not mine.

Then I put on the swimsuit and yesterday’s clothes. Loose shorts that reach to my knees and a loose T-shirt. The thought of girly clothes no longer makes me sick, but I’m not quite ready to wear them out in public again.

By the time I step out of the house, my heartbeat has mostly calmed.

The weather has gotten warmer, just a little, one last time. Fall is coming but Summer is holding on.

Towel in hand, I stroll along the vacant streets, towards the lake.

The water is beautiful and calm as ever. It will soon turn grey with bright reds, yellows and oranges around the edges. Beautiful in its own right, but not good for swimming. When it’s already too cold to be out even in a hoody, bathing in a lake isn’t a good idea. Trust me, I’ve tried.

I don’t take cover to strip down to my swimsuit once I’ve arrived at the water. I simply take off my clothes, leave them in a small huddle and walk into the water.

The memory of excitement flares up in me. Oh, how blind I was! I so deliberately ignored everything I’d ever wished for, telling myself lies because I thought that that girl wasn’t me.

Joke’s on you, Timothy. It’s the other way around: you weren’t me.

The water is cold against my ankles, but not freezing. If I don’t stay in for too long, it’ll be alright.

My steps are slow and deliberate now. Ceremonial, in a way. One last ceremony in memory of those days. Days filled with mystery and magic, full of exploration and love.

I’ve arrived in the real world now. The real world that can be fucking nasty, but also beautiful. It’s so much larger than just this little corner of the world, where the water lies undisturbed, waiting to offer solace in times of hardship. No matter where life carries me, this will always be my favourite place. It made me the person I am now, much more so than Claire could ever claim for herself. It gave me Alex, in a way.

Goosebumps spread over my naked arms but I ignore them. Exhaling calmly, I let myself sink into the water that just barely reaches past my belly button and push off.

I’m going to miss this. In winter, when I’ve moved out. Well, I have one last summer before moving out. Assuming that my grades are even good enough to go to university, but I’m sure I’ll manage. I’ve got good motivation, after all, haven’t I?

I feel light in the water and soon enough, the cold fades. Even breaths and steady movements carry me through the water, until I’m far away from shore and I turn onto my back to look up at the stars like I used to.

Myriads of stars shine down on me like tiny friends, happy to see me again. Only occasionally, they’re obscured by a thin veil of cloud. Right now, the moon is hidden behind a thicker cloud, but I don’t mind. It makes looking at the stars so much easier.

This world is beautiful. Too beautiful to waste my time sulking. I wish my younger self had had that realisation. But then again, aren’t I lucky to have made it by now? Isn’t this way better than living with dysphoria for another ten years, letting my best years go to waste pretending to be somebody I’m not?

Nothing to regret.

Except maybe being a dick to Alex.

With a sudden surge of energy, I breathe in deeply, turn and dive. I love the slight pull on my scalp as my hair drifts in the current. I love the slight pressure on my head and the feeling of weightlessness. I love the feeling of my expanded chest, full of air that will allow me to stay underwater for a while.

I dive and dive until the water is heavy around me and then I stop moving my arms and only paddle a little with my legs to ensure that I don’t accidentally drift up.

The world is so calm down here. So silent and simple. I used to prefer that simpleness to the noise from above. Now… I see the beauty in both and value them separately.

Something swishes past my back. I barely register it before there’s a hand, touching, groping.

Another follows, they loop around my belly to hold me and for a moment I’m back in my dream, back in the mud and I scream. Instinctively, my mouth tears open and in a flurry of bubbles, a muffled sound escapes.

But the hands don’t pull me down or try to hold me underwater to drown me. Instead, a body presses against me and I feel legs work with all their power to carry us upwards. It’s just as well, because after having screamed – wondrously without having inhaled water – I find that my lungs rather lack breathable air and my body that had before been vigorously demanding oxygen is now screaming for it.

So I do my best to make it easier for him. I don’t move, concentrate on keeping my mouth shut as my lungs spasm for air.

And then we break through the surface and I inhale the nightly air with such force that I’m sure the noise carries easily to the shore.

Only after my third breath do I finally manage to press out a “What the fuck?” before my body takes over again.

“Yes! What the fuck!” Alex replies heatedly. Because of course it’s Alex who’s coincidentally decided to go for a swim in the early hours of a Monday morning.

This is getting ridiculous.

“What?” I answer in between breaths.

“What are you doing here, Selena?”

“Same as you,” I wheeze. “Going for a swim. What did you think?”

“But what were you doing underwater?” he asks, already losing his emotion.

I give him a look. What’s he even-

Oh wow. “No, Alex! Fuck, no! I might be a wanker, but I’m not an absolute moron, okay?” I want to shout it, to properly tear his head off for even thinking something like that, but firstly, my breath doesn’t last me that long and secondly, isn’t he at least somewhat justified? So, a little calmer, I add, “No, Alex. I was just going for a swim and decided it would be nice to dive a little. Nothing more, nothing less. Granted, I’m awake because I couldn’t sleep, but I’m over that now. And you gave me a fucking proper fright, in case you weren’t aware.”

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly.

“Yeah,” I say with a weak grin. “You don’t get to tease me about this becoming a pattern if you have to save me because you scared me into almost drowning.”

I realise I’m still clinging to him and let go.

“Appreciate the spirit, though.” Because that’s what this is a great show of, isn’t it? His unrelenting readiness to save my life.

Now he smiles too. “I’m glad.”

I look around. The rocks are barely twenty yards away.

I nod in their direction. “What do you say? For old time’s sake?”

“Gladly.”

Not a minute later, I climb onto the rock as Alex heaves himself up.

We take our usual seats but it’s not long before Alex shivers a little. “It’s definitely getting colder.”

I raise an eyebrow and offer an impish grin. “Does that mean that we have to cuddle to keep our bodies warm?”

It’s not the first time that I’ve joked since the whole incident. But it is the first time I’m being flirtatious.

He grins back. “Since we’re already pretty much naked and have neither a fire nor blankets to keep us warm, cuddling seems like the only option to keep us alive in this icy place.”

So fucking cheesy. But I ignore it, opting to simply scoot over, sit on his lap and let him hold me against his chest.

We haven’t sat like that in a while and in spite of the foreign feeling of wet skin against mine, I like it. It feels a little like those first days did. It’s the same tentative excitement, only that back then I didn’t recognise it for what it was.

I’m in love with this boy.

I lean into him further and put my head against his shoulder.

“It’s really a beautiful place, isn’t it?” he says thoughtfully.

I nod ever so slightly. He can’t see my face, but I know that he can feel the motion.

“What do you think would’ve happened had I not been out to swim that day?”

Of course I know what day he’s talking about. “I’d be dead. You saved my life, remember?”

Now he nods. “And in return, you were rude to me.”

I chuckle. “Because I was scared shitless that you’d be able to recognise me. And also, you were asking for a name I couldn’t give you.”

His chest shivers a little as he laughs. “Right. You came up with that on the spot, right? What does it even mean?”

“It’s Greek and means moon,” I tell him in a low voice.

Another shiver. “How fitting.”

I turn a little to be able to see the stars better. “When did you realise that you liked me?”

He gently leans his head against mine and when he speaks I feel the movement in his jaw. “On the second day? Like, after we’d talked for the second time, when I’d gone home, there was this excitement whenever I thought of you. And I wouldn’t stop thinking about meeting that mysterious girl again that was kind of rude and cold and at the same time so easy to talk to.”

“Want me to play rude again?”

He shakes his head ever so slightly. “No. You’re my girlfriend now. Don’t you think that would be a little inappropriate?”

I shrug. “Probably.”

His thumb begins to brush my shoulder where he’s holding me.

“You know what would be much more appropriate at a moment like this?”

“What?”

He takes his head off mine to look at me. He’s so close that I can feel his breath against my skin.

“A kiss?”

Now I look up, too. We’re so unbelievably close. It would take almost nothing.

“But didn’t you say you needed time to… figure all this out?”

He grins. “I’ve had time. And I’ve decided that I don’t care.” His grin turns corny. “I simply love you too much.”

I giggle, sitting up a little so I’m in a better position to reach his face.

“You’re unbelievable.”

His eyes are so close to mine. Our noses just barely don’t touch.

“So? What do you say?”

“Yes! Of course!”

And I lean in and our lips meet and it’s like the first time all over. Magical, tender, kind and soft and so good.

One kiss becomes many and even though we’re not going particularly fast, the cold soon vanishes.