“Oh.”
I can tell she’s starting to feel bad for me, which is kind of nice and kind of a bummer because it won’t make her see me as enthusiastic and full of good ideas.
Her words sink into the night air like skipping stones that don’t make it. “It must be a hard thing to get past.”
“I mostly ignore it.”
“How about bridges? You’re not restricted from bridges, are you? That one looks germ-free.” She points to the bridge above our heads that spreads across the Rappahannock River in a broad arc of concrete decorated with a steady red streak of taillights.
“It’s an illusion.”
“It must go somewhere?”
“Only to Warsaw.”
“Have you ever walked across it?”
“Never.”
“First time for everything.” She jumps up and sprints ahead.
My parents gave me permission to spend the night at Mack’s on the condition that I sleep in the basement and nowhere near Mack’s little brother’s bedroom. Not that Roger the Dweeb is sick, but he’s only seven. Little kids are germ factories and Mom doesn’t want me to risk it on account of the lowered immunity that comes with leukemia. By prearrangement, on the chance that we might split up, Mack promised to leave the basement door unlocked. The whole time Meredith and I are walking on the narrow sidewalk and the cars are swooshing up behind us, sailing by like birds escaping from a tunnel, I’m thinking about later, when I can lie on the pullout couch in Mack’s basement and replay the evening. It’s not even over yet and somehow I know I’ll want to savor it.
Meredith’s pointing out stars and talking a mile a minute, so she must be nervous too. Or honestly fascinated with constellations. She wiggles out of the sweatshirt, loops it over one arm. Warm from walking, I guess. I’m too busy analyzing the bumps of her spinal column and her shoulder blades, exposed under those narrow little straps. Those bright white lines against her shoulders right in front of me make her tan darker and more exotic. It’s all I can do to keep from touching her skin to see if it’s as warm and smooth as it looks.
When we get to the highest part of the bridge’s arc, she stops and turns so fast that I run right into her, head-on, because she’s turned before I even knew she was stopping.
“Oh, jeez, sorry.” What a klutz. But the feel of her breasts against my chest has me all choked up.
“Sorry doesn’t mind,” she says. Standing sideways she spreads her arms so that her breasts lift her top just enough to reveal her bare stomach. Also very smooth-looking. And tan. “It’s incredible out here,” she says. Then she slips her toes into the openings in the concrete barrier and leans out over the silvering ripples. Her arms wave at the river, painted with moonlight, so glittery that you’d never know it was brown and muddy underneath all that silken silver coating. “Feel the wind.”
Without the first warning of danger or flicker of disgust that she might be pretending to be Drew Barrymore, I drop the backpack and copy her by sticking my feet into the balustrade holes. My arms rise up of their own accord. My free will is nonexistent. If she asks me to jump, I will.
“Life is glorious,” she yells into the wind.
It’s almost as if you can hear her words soaring downriver. Over and over.
“Say it,” she says.
“Life is glorious,” I repeat and think how much more meaningful it is than the stupid LIFE IS GOOD T-shirts that are everywhere. “Life is glorious, glorious, glorious.” I’m making my own echo. When I look over at Meredith, she leans close and kisses me.
This is the part I will remember when I’m back on the houseboat. Marissa Bennett’s stage kisses are ancient history. I can hardly remember what she looked like. This single salty salsa kiss from Sorry, a girl who knows my sad story and likes me anyway. It’s worth everything that happens after.
Off balance, I lurch. When I rock backward to try to save myself, I lose my footing. One foot slips and I pitch forward. My sandals stick in the concrete bridge behind me.
Free fall at night is mind-boggling. It’s like driving without headlights in a tunnel. And you’re stuck in slow motion, the end of the tunnel never comes. At the high point of the bridge the clearance is huge, commercial-boat height, so I have plenty of time to prepare. Lifeguard class comes back to me, complete with the numbered illustrations. The idea is to make yourself as thin as possible when you hit the water, which they say will feel like a stone wall, not at all like water. I take a big breath and straighten my body, arms at my side, toes pointed. I order myself to think about sliding up through that water and not about going down. It’s like a test; I’m cramming, deep in concentration. No time to be scared.
After the initial shock, the river is surprisingly warm. I hear Dad saying, “It’s like bathwater,” when we did laps together last week before he left for Chicago. “Enough,” he said after once around the boat, even though he knew I used to do one hundred laps along St. Margaret’s beach last summer. And it’s suddenly clear to me as I’m sliding through solid blackness to possible sudden death that it’s not the fear of my getting weak and sicker that haunts him but his wanting to protect me from the disappointment of missing my life. What was supposed to have been my life. It’s the delivery-room promise all over again.
By the time I’ve run through that whole scene, I’m back to the surface, sputtering and dragging air into my burning lungs. I had no idea the channel was so deep. Meredith must have flagged a car, because there are four faces peering over the concrete rail. They’re all blurry from where I am.
Meredith screams, “Daniel, grab something. Is there anything you can grab? They’ve gone to get a boat.”
“I can tread water.”
“Seriously, Daniel, for how long? The man said it might be twenty minutes.”
But all I can do is laugh. The whole situation reminds me of Bill Cosby’s Noah skit, one of Dad’s favorite shaggy-dog stories. God is frustrated with Noah for giving him a hard time about building the ark. So He asks Noah how long he can tread water. But beyond the joke and the fact that an icy weight is beginning to drag at my feet and my lungs are on fire, I think about the fact that the most beautiful girl in the world is rescuing me. Me, Daniel Solstice Landon, the klutz of the year.
The rescue squad with its frantic blue lights screams into the landing in front of Atkinson Fuel Company, and a Boston Whaler with its green and brown Game and Inland Fisheries seal on the side appears from wherever. After they lasso an old docking post next to the one I’m hugging, they use another cross line to ease the boat up close enough to drag me in over the transom without crushing me against the pilings. I can’t help squealing when my anklebone scrapes the gunwale in the process of being hauled aboard like a prize bluefish.
“Daniel Landon?” The duty officer is Mr. Lassiter, who teaches algebra at the middle school. He gave me a B plus and said I was capable of better. At the time I considered that to be incredibly silly. How could he possibly know that about me, if I’d only ever done B work in his class?
“You okay?” he asks.
I grunt because my chest hurts a lot and my ankle is throbbing like a loose muffler.
“This some crazy dare?”
I shake my head and manage to answer. “Just clumsy.”
Meredith is at the dock by the time Mr. Lassiter in his neon orange vest slides the boat in sideways. I can barely see out of the blanket wrap they’ve covered me with like a straitjacket, but I can hear her breathing hard.
“It was an accident,” she volunteers between gasps.
Mr. Lassiter looks up. “You were up there on the bridge with him?”
“Meredith Rilke,” she says. “We’re friends.”