I left you there, in the hollow. What I mean is, the person who crawled out after me like the white rabbit from wonderland wasn’t you, though she looked like you and sounded like you and said she was you. I could tell the difference.

We took a few things with us into the hollow. I brought the picnic basket and you carried the blanket. That morning we’d smeared peanut butter over bread, picked the least bruised apples and shook out the brown fabric in the front yard, leaving the debris of every other year behind for the birds.

After we ate our fill in the hollow, you wanted to wade in the river. I told you I didn’t think that was a good idea because I’d never properly learned how to swim, and we hadn’t waited sixty minutes after finishing our sandwiches. You told me that was a silly story the grown ups only shared to get us to stay put, and I believed you even though I was nervous still.

I stayed close to the edge of river. I always had one hand within reach of the bank but you went farther, climbed up on a rock sticking out high and spun your arms around you.

“I’m Queen of the World!” you declared, and I believed it, in awe and the only smallest bit jealous that this meant I’d never become more than a princess.

I don’t know if you became the other person then, when your foot slipped, or when you were under water, or some other time between when I dragged you out by your slippery arms and when we finally exited the hollow. There was too much chaos for me to tell the exact moment it happened.

What I do know is, the person who crawled out after me was only a puddle of river water, the kind that might have dripped to the floor after we took a bath. Her eyes tremble when she looks at me. Her hugs don’t reach all the way around, and I know she would burst if poked with a stick.

Our parents know nothing. They spend all their time with that girl now, and never talk about you.

I’ve gone back to look for you plenty of times. The person that followed me out of the hollow never joins; I leave her behind.

I retrieved our blanket and basket, fully cleared of crumbs and cores by anything around alive. Sometimes I wonder if I should have left them, so you could remember which way we came in. But then I tell myself that you aren’t stupid, you know where home is.

With our things gone, I’m not always sure I’m looking in the right place. The hollow looks different in the springtime and I lost you in the fall. I wish I knew how to make a map. I wish I’d paid more attention when we were there, because everything now is fuzzy.

Mainly, I wait for you on the edge of the river, and I refuse to learn how to swim.

Catherine Buck lives in Jersey City with her partner, pets, and plants. She holds an MFA from Rutgers University Camden and was a member of the Tin House YA workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Cotton Xenomorph, Bending Genres, Vestal Review, CRAFT Literary, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction.