Golden Minnows
Emily Behnke
To catch a golden minnow in Harrow Lake is a rite of passage. The reasons why are murky as the water we squat shin deep and wait in. Tori tells me rites are all about the same thing. Holding onto something you can’t. Just as she says it, there’s a shock of gold against beige sand and I lunge for it, the force of me knocking her back. She’s stomping in the water, making waves like thrown rocks and I’m closing my eyes so hard against the grainy splash that I hardly realize my hands are empty.
Tori gives me a look that says what the hell did you just do? And I don’t say anything because it should be obvious. I’m trying to catch a minnow for her. To share the rite with her. We spent the last three summers lying in the grass with stolen Smirnoff Ice making plans. Luring out Brad and Mike down the road at night to take the kayaks people forgot to chain up out on the water. She stole me donuts from Bobo’s when she worked, and I hoarded pamphlets for all the colleges around for us to look at. She told me about a beach up north, and I figured out how much we’d both have to save to stay for a week and do the things we did here somewhere else. She always made friends with people from other towns, and I somehow got them to like me, too, because before Tori, I had no one.
The shimmering water pulls me out of my own head just to stuff me back in. It looks like my old heirloom necklace, a glass vial filled with gold dust, the kind of thing no other thirteen-year-old had, the one that got Tori talking to me in the first place. The one she smashed weeks later at a sleepover thinking I wouldn’t know it was her. I did. But I never told. Because Tori didn’t mean it—not like that. Not to me. And even if she did, it didn’t matter. So, I’d lost an heirloom. But I got Tori.
I’m hunched over, still waiting. The shimmer rises like a wave and then we’re surrounded. Golden minnows swish like metallic streamers, and I dart at them so fast my shoulders crack and Tori yells stop stop stop you’re scaring them and a strange mewl slips between my lips, says I’m afraid of them, and when the splashing finally stops and we’re empty-handed, flushed, breathing hard, she asks me why.
By the time the water has really settled, I still haven’t answered. My toes sting. Wisps of thick translucent skin are starting to peel away. Tori bounces from foot to foot, stopping only when the shimmer comes back. Look at me, she says. Look at me. The sun fingers red down the bridge of her nose, her cheeks. She’s scrunched in a perfect scowl. I have to do this, she says, and I say so do I, and she says no, today. I have to do it today. And I know why before she says it. Mike’s picking her up soon. They’re going to live with some others near the beach up north, and she’ll be close to a Bobo’s that has a full-time thing she can take. And I tell her it’s a day trip, that’s all it is, she can come back, she can always catch the minnow if she wants to, I’ll be here. But she gives me that look that says she can’t or she won’t. I can’t decide which. She tells me I have plans. So many plans. The brochures. Money. We can’t do everything together.
The golden minnows only really come out in the early morning, and we’re nowhere near a clock but it’s close to seven. I know because Tori’s frown deepens what feels like every half hour, and I’ve been keeping track.
And doing this, I’m frowning, too. I’m tired of standing. We squat into the water, eventually just sitting full in it, crossing our legs and leaning toward each other the way we used to when we were drunk, lake-soaked, waiting for the moment that would break us apart as the pink sunrise wrapped around us.
Let’s try something, we say at the same time, smiles rippling across our faces. We cup our hands to make one big bowl and rest them on the sand. We wait. My back blisters from the sun, and her eyes water, and I get nauseous, and we’re both biting our lips bloody and holding our breath, and that’s when the wave comes. The shimmer. We count to three and raise our hands, and there it is, pristine against both our fingers—a golden minnow. We rise from the water to stand with it. We don’t look at each other. Don’t take our eyes off it. Everything, even the water, is still until it flaps. And flaps. And flaps. And flaps. At the same time, we let it go. I expect it to dart away immediately, but it stays still. Not dead, thankfully. Just waiting for one of us to make the next move.
Emily Behnke is a graduate of The New School’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Her work is included/forthcoming in Bear Creek Gazette, Peatsmoke, Tiny Molecules, among other venues. She is currently at work on a novel.