Spoiler.

Gilbert-Collins, Susan M.

The end of this story is when Angela's best friend from high school, Madeline, is dragged by a bull shark beneath the sunrise-dappled waves and carried out to sea on a riptide.

If Angela, who is forty-five when she witnesses this, had known that Madeline would end her days thus, she would not have bitterly coveted the 5,000-square-foot vacation house that Madeline and her husband Orrin had just built in the Florida Keys. As it was, she returned home after the memorial service to the modest 1,700-squarefoot house that she and her husband had bought, used, over fifteen years ago in Omaha, Nebraska, and found herself newly grateful for the house, for the husband, for the two children, but plagued by the thought that she should have been bitten by the bull shark and carried out to sea on a riptide, since she had been so very envious of Madeline and Madeline had only been unhappy. Accompanying this thought, however, was the belief that it was not for her to ordain who gets bitten by a bull shark and who does not, and eventually Angela was able to accept the gift of life thus extended, gratefully and humbly.

The other end of this story is when three months after Madeline's death, Angela's painting of a bowl of goldfish wins first prize in the Nebraska Watercolor Society Show, and she is invited to show at an exclusive gallery in downtown Omaha.

The beginning of this story is when Madeline calls Angela and invites her and her husband for a weeks holiday at their new house in the Florida Keys. Angela declines the invitation until she receives a strange, brief note from Madeline in the mail. Madeline, who has not written Angela anything but a Christmas card in years, comments briefly on her latest promotion, asks after the children, and then in a stunning non sequitur, adds that sometimes she thinks she will die soon. Angela hastens to accept the invitation she had previously rejected, although her husband is unable to come. For the first time in years, she believes Madeline needs her.

The very beginning of this story is when Angela and Madeline meet their freshmen year of high school and swear to remain best friends for life. In many ways they are very different: Angela is small and dark, Madeline is large-boned and dark; Angela is talkative and makes friends easily, Madeline is quiet and angry. Angela is not always sure what Madeline is angry about, but she respects her passion. And that is the main thing they have in common: passion. They each hear the call of destiny, they each know and have known for years the vocations to which they are called. Angela is going to be an artist, and Madeline is going to be a marine biologist. Madeline admires Angela's sketches; Angela assists Madeline with the water changes in the twenty-gallon aquarium where she is breeding pearl-dot gouramis. Madeline tells her about gouramis, and Angela begins to see that they are not dull, but quite beautiful. Sometimes she sketches them. Angela and Madeline plan to be roommates throughout college and beyond. They will be bridesmaids for each other's weddings and will settle in the same city, which, for the sake of Madeline's career, will be coastal.

Except that Madeline gets a scholarship to Iowa State and Angela gets a scholarship to the University of Nebraska.

One of the middle parts of this story is when Angela descends the spiral staircase of Madeline and Orrin's 5,000-square-foot house late the first night (having left her purse downstairs) and overhears Orrin talking to Madeline in the kitchen. They are laughing; Angela hears her name, and Orrin speaking: "... but I really like her." For the rest of the night--the rest of the week--she obsesses about what preceded that statement. She's a bit of a country cousin, but I really like her? She doesn't fit in with our friends ...? She's delusional if she thinks she's an artist ...?

An earlier middle part is when Angela lacks the money to study abroad after college. She is nominated for but fails to receive an Abbey Art Association Fellowship. She begins teaching art in an elementary school, pursuing her painting in her spare time. But she has no spare time. She loves the first-and second-graders. She digs her nails into her dream of being an artist and refuses to let go.

Madeline graduates with honors in biology, but marine biology internships are scarce, and she fails to secure one, thus graduating without any field experience. This weakens her graduate school applications, although she manages to get into a program at the University of Southern Mississippi. She drops out when the research money in her lab dries up, because, as she writes to Angela, she cannot bear teaching undergraduates. Her degree in biology lands her an entry-level job as a lab tech for a medical supplies company. For a long time, Angela senses Madeline's anger draining away.

Angela arrives for her week at the vacation home to find Madeline in the pink of good health and apparent good cheer. She also learns that she isn't the only friend invited for the week: three other couples and a strange man whom the others call Bun are already there. These are friends from Madeline and Orrin's life in Washington, D.C. Angela has nothing in common with them and, unable to find anything wrong with Madeline, regrets accepting the invitation. Angela calls her husband, Nolan, late at night from her cell phone. She is sitting cross-legged in the dark in the middle of the queen-sized bed that is hers for the week. She tells him she is miserable; she should not have come. She's not sure why she was even invited, except as a visual aid of sorts showing how far Madeline has come. She describes the sink in her guest bathroom to Nolan: a white porcelain pedestal sink with emerald green veins running through it, like vines twining round the trunk of a jungle tree. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, she tells him, more beautiful than any of her paintings. She feels like a failure. Nolan is too sensible to truly understand, and he needs to take advantage of the conversation to ask where Molly's favorite hair scrunchies have gone and which friend Gus is not allowed to go home with since the soccer incident.

Back in her first real job, Madeline is too smart to remain a lab tech for long. She excels at every company-sponsored class and seminar that she takes, and soon moves over to an entry-level position in sales. Angela would never in a million years have thought of Madeline as a salesperson, but her focus, her intensity, seem now to suit her for it, and perhaps it is good that she is less angry. For a long time she pities Madeline, who is saving money for a scuba diving expedition in Grand Cayman. If Madeline does not return to graduate school soon, she will never be the scientist of marine biology she has always dreamed of being.

The next time they meet, Madeline is wearing an Armani suit, and Angela stops feeling sorry for her.

Also in the middle of the story is when Madeline is a bridesmaid at Angela's wedding--their friendship being now more mature, and also weaker, than in high school, and easily able to withstand Angela's having asked a college roommate to be maid of honor. When Madeline marries Orrin, a sales rep from a pharmaceutical company, three years later, Angela knows before she is asked that she will be a bridesmaid, one of five, and that it will be a kindly but token gesture on Madeline's part.

Angela turns thirty-nine and realizes that she has won Ingram Elementary School Teacher of the Year twice but is as far from having her own show at an art gallery as she was in high school. She panics, and in spite of the time and expense, Nolan supports her in seeking counseling. Angela learns to set boundaries (no more spending entire weekends pouring Plaster of Paris into molds for her students) and to create a space at home, however limited, for her painting. They clear out their little-used home office (Nolan usually corrects the papers of his high school English students at the dining room table) and turn it into a studio of sorts. Little by little Angela comes back to painting. She tries to attend more openings. She reads about local artists and applies (mostly unsuccessfully) for small grants.

The bull shark that bites Madeline is one of roughly fifty that cruises frequently in the shallow waters of the bay on which Madeline and Orrin have built their vacation home. All fifty or so bull sharks are accustomed to interacting with the many divers and snorkelers who frequent the patch coral reef not three hundred feet from shore. This particular bull shark is average in length for a male, or about seven feet long, and no more and no less interested in the divers than the other sharks, although it once had an interesting encounter with a panicky lady snorkeler from West End, Indiana. It has attacked exactly two dolphins. It has never bitten a human before. It has several times swum within ten feet of Orrin, during the day when the light was good, and once Orrin took its picture with his new SeaLife Digital Underwater Camera. It felt exactly nothing about having its picture taken. It has never known contentment.

The end of the middle of the story occurs at dinner on Wednesday night, when Angela is struggling against the almost irresistible desire to try to impress Madeline and Orrin and the other guests as they, against her will, have impressed her. The main reason she is largely successful in resisting is the knowledge that she would surely fail. They are cracking open stone crab claws (Madeline and Orrin use local, seasonal ingredients as much as possible) when one of the other guests, a banker named Grant, mentions having bought an Eva Ryn Johannissen on a recent trip to Stockholm. Angela stiffens as Madeline says brightly that Angela paints. The others make little noises of surprise, which offends Angela because it has already been announced that Angela is an elementary art teacher--as if elementary art teachers are only capable of producing macrame plant hangers. The banker named Grant asks what Angela's medium is, and she hesitates: temptation is hard upon her. Finally she admits, watercolor. Looks are exchanged. She feels she might as well have admitted to collecting Precious Moments figurines (which she does not), but doggedly continues to peel the shell from her crab. Grant graciously--patronizingly--says that watercolor is a challenging medium (he used to dabble), that its not just about flowers and French villas and bowls of goldfish. What does Angela like to paint?

This time she doesn't hesitate. She says, mostly flowers and bowls of goldfish. The others laugh. She says no, really, that's what I paint. I he others nod politely, and Bun says that he for one prefers commercial art. He is thinking of papering his walls with Thomas Kinkade. Oh, Bun, the others cry, because they are always finding him hilarious.

Throughout the end of the middle of the story, all of the guests join Madeline and Orrin in swimming in the bay, swimming out to the reef and back, diving in and around a nearby ship that had been deliberately sunk as a tourist attraction. On the first day Angela, a timid swimmer at best, stands knee-deep in the bay and talks with Madeline. She is wondering if there's anything left of their friendship, but there is not enough left for her to ask this question. Instead she comments that having a house on the bay must be immensely satisfying for someone who has always been drawn to the sea. Does Madeline spend her free time studying the local marine life? Madeline looks almost puzzled at the question. It has been years since she has let go of her childhood dream. They built here, she explains, because the weather was as nearly opposite the weather in D.C. as one could get. They built here for the change in scene. They built here for the view. Angela, instead of pitying Madeline for the loss of her dream, feels foolish for having held onto her own, especially because it is increasingly clear this week that she is a two-bit watercolorist whose paintings are derivative, sophomoric at best. Angela does not share these feelings with Madeline. Instead she babbles that the clear blue of the water is almost unreal, would be incredibly hard to accomplish on paper. Madeline listens politely if absently. She has not been unkind once.

Madeline tells Angela and the others, do not swim out past the pier at dusk.

The bull shark has been familiar with the fake sunken ship beyond the bay its whole life but of late prefers to avoid it, without knowing why.

Angela calls Nolan from the middle of the queen-sized bed and says that she is a two-bit watercolorist whose paintings are derivative, sophomoric at best. She adds that Madeline and Orrin have spent more on wine this one week than she and Nolan spend on groceries in a month. Nolan says that he does not understand what the two statements have to do with each other, and Angela sighs because if she has to explain he will never understand. One of the things she loves about him is that he is not wired to understand this sort of thing, the materialism that drives most people.

In the middle middle of the story Madeline has a miscarriage. She cries with Angela over the phone about it, and this is the last time Angela feels needed by her friend until years later, when she receives the note about dying soon. She will later recall the phone call about the miscarriage wistfully.

Orrin makes $450,000 a year selling pharmaceuticals.

Nolan makes $42,000 a year teaching The Great Gatsby to high school juniors.

Both are considered evil by their client base.

Angela, near the end of the story, wakes early from a troubled dream and goes to the window. The sun is not yet rising, but the black of night has lifted from the sea, and a pale late moon illuminates the bay. She is stirred beyond recent memory, stirred out of her self-pity for the first time all week, and since it is very early, she figures she is safe: she takes a pad and pencil and creeps down to the main deck and on out to the end of the pier, where she sits cross-legged and sketches as the sun comes up. Mostly she stares at the water and sky, drinking in the colors, willing herself to remember them for later.

Instead she remembers sitting with Madeline on Madeline's double bed, cross-legged, the room lit only by the twenty-gallon aquarium, listening to Abba and drinking Cokes and talking about Men. They could never stop talking about Men.

When Angela looks up from one sketch of the bay, it is to find Madeline standing over her, staring. Angela covers her sketchpad. Madeline steps off the end of the pier. The water is only four or five feet deep, and warm, but dark, and this makes Angela nervous. Madeline lifts her feet and treads water gracefully, which makes Angela more nervous, until at last she rises to her knees and asks if Madeline should be in the water when it is so dark. Madeline says she has swum here after dusk, at dawn, at all times of the day.

The bull shark that is going to bite Madeline has left several other bull sharks at the sunken ship, and is cruising the bay alone. It is surly, as it always is when it leaves the sunken ship. It has just eaten a young bull shark and is moving sluggishly, no longer hungry but for some reason unconvinced that it has received its full due.

Madeline asks, from the water, are you happy? Angela says please come back here. Madeline has drifted a few feet out. In the dim light she looks twenty years younger; with her hair slicked back, you can't tell she cut off the ponytail she wore all through high school. You're avoiding the question, Madeline says, and asks it again. Angela says if she answers will Madeline come back to the pier, and Madeline laughs, sure. Angela says she's happy sometimes: when she's tucking Molly in at night, when Gus and Nolan duel with rakes. When she paints a goldfish hanging in water, to good effect. Will Madeline please come in now? Madeline says affectionately that Angela hasn't changed a bit, and Angela is offended. Madeline asks, glancing back at her new 5,000-square-foot vacation home, do you ever wish things had been different?

If the bull shark had much of a memory, it would have remembered a recent encounter with a young male diver near the sunken ship, a diver known by his friends to be an idiot. The diver, for reasons unclear to the bull shark, struck the bull shark on the nose. It was a light, insulting blow. The bull shark turned aside in surprise and swam away. Because it did not have much of a memory, it did not know why it was surly for several days afterward, but it was surly because a self-respecting bull shark would have bitten the idiot diver, perhaps several times.

In high school, cross-legged in the middle of Madeline's bed, Angela asks Madeline if she really, truly thinks Angela has what it takes to be an artist. Madeline swears that she really, truly does, and it is this--the respect of her most intelligent, impassioned hiendas much as anything that keeps Angela going in later years, until she sees Madeline in the Armani suit while she herself is still wearing a purple Guatemalan tank dress.

Do you ever wish things had been different, Angela counters? Madeline is treading, treading. Whoa, she says. There's an undertow today.

Come back.

Madeline says, cross-legged in the middle of her double bed, that she is going to spend her life researching and protecting endangered marine species. When she thinks about what people have done to the marine environment, she is enraged. Her dark eyes flame.

The bull shark wishes it had bitten the idiot diver and eaten his hand. It does not know that it wishes this, which adds to the natural malcontent of its nature.

On summer weekends in D.C., Madeline and Orrin volunteer at a local vineyard.

The sun is rising, the water is dark, but the bull shark's eyesight is better than you might think. It knows a human leg when it sees one. It's eyesight is a good deal better than its ability to imagine, which is rudimentary in the extreme. But the sight of that leg stirs something within the bull shark, just the shadow of a memory of the pale arm of an idiot diver.

Angela is dazzled by the reflection off the water of orange and purple. The colors are so true, truer than anything she has achieved on paper or canvas, that Madeline's home and Madeline's friends and the strange man named Bun no longer matter, more importantly her own ineptitude at identifying wine beyond red or white no longer matters, and she is stunned into answering Madeline's last question, though Madeline has not asked it again. Of course I wish things had been different, she says. Of course I wish I were famous. A famous artist. I wish you were a marine biologist and hadn't outgrown me.

Oh, Madeline says. I wish--at this point the bull shark takes her by the leg, finding a deep if temporary sense of fulfillment, and the rest of Madeline's sentence is swallowed by the sea.

But Angela only knows that she has blinked. She leans forward and blinks again, but Madeline does not reappear. Angela rubs her eyes. The light on the water flashes, the water itself is impossible to see, and for a long moment Angela does not even know to scream.