She didn't need to know the sign for drowned. It was like thinking he couldn't shout. Not so much wrong as backwards, as if he were you. He wouldn't need to know the sign for what he was. She wondered if that was what love was, how you thought what the other thought was what you thought or something. The words all backwards. Now she would never know. (It would have been useful to know it, actually, had he come back: Thought drowned: two signs. Smile. Hug. Make the sign for worried and heart. Love.)

She would sit forever on the damp log and haunt him like love.

Though he could shout, he could never know if someone heard, never know the sound of his own voice. She would be his voice, that too was love. Though now it was all over. It was as if she had lost her baby, a blue fetus screaming silently in the swirling dark water, arms flailing like the sign for love.

Once on the eighth grade trip she had seen a painting of a blue Christ the color of sidewalk chalk.