I stopped a few feet from the edge. Then I heard him laughing.
“Come on!” he shouted.
I was more comfortable just watching antics like these, turning them into a myth in my mind, a legend. I watched life so that I could find the story inside it—it helped me make sense of things. But sometimes I got tired of my own brain, perpetually unsettled as it was.
This time I didn’t just watch. I backed up a few steps, shook out my trembling hands, and burst into a run. I ran straight off the edge of the cliff, shoes and jeans and all.
A heart-stopping moment, weightless and free.
Wind on my ankles, stomach sinking, and then I sliced into the water like a knife. The current wrapped around me. I kicked like a bullfrog, pushing myself to the surface.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Matt said, as I surfaced.
As our eyes met across the water, I remembered where I really was. Lying in a hospital room. Unaware of how much time had actually passed.
“I like this memory, too,” he said to me, smiling, this time in the visitation instead of the memory. “Except for the part when I realized my dad’s old wallet was in my pocket when I jumped. It was completely ruined.”
“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “You never said.”
He shrugged. “It was just a wallet.”
That was a lie, of course. No object that had belonged to Matt’s father was “just” something, now that he was gone.
He said, “So this is your favorite memory?”
“It’s … I…” I paused, kicking to keep myself afloat. The water was cool but not cold. “I never would have done something like this without you.”
“You know what?” He tilted back, so he was floating. “I wouldn’t have done it without you, either.”
“It’s your turn,” I said. “Favorite memory. Go.”
“Okay. But don’t forget, you asked for this.”
* * *
I had always thought he was cute—there was no way around it, really, short of covering my eyes every time he was around. Especially after he cut the floppy mess of hair short and you could see his face, strong jaw and all. He had a dimple in his left cheek but not his right one. His smile was crooked. He had long eyelashes.
I might have developed a crush on him, if he hadn’t been dating someone when we first became friends. And it seemed like Matt was always dating someone. In fact, I counseled him through exactly three girlfriends in our friendship: the first was Lauren Gallagher, a tiny but demanding gymnast who drove him up the wall; the second, Lacey Underhill, my friend from first grade, who didn’t have anything in common with him except an infectious laugh; and the third, our mutual acquaintance Tori Slaughter (an unfortunate last name), who got drunk and made out with another guy at a Halloween party shortly after their fifth date. Literally—just two hours after their fifth date, she had another guy’s tongue in her mouth. That was the hardest one, because she seemed really sad afterward, so he hadn’t been able to stay mad at her, even while he was ending things. Matt never could hang on to anger, even when he had a right to; it slipped away like water in a fist. Unless it had to do with me. He had been angry at me for longer than he was ever angry with a girlfriend.
For my part, I had had a brief interlude with Paul (nickname: Paul the Appalling, courtesy of Matt) involving a few hot make-out sessions on the beach one summer, before I discovered a dried-up-booger collection in the glove box of his car, which effectively killed the mood. Otherwise, I preferred to stay solitary.
Judging by what Lacey had told me while they were dating, girls had trouble getting Matt to stop joking around for more than five seconds at a time, which got annoying when they were trying to get to know him. I had never had that problem.
* * *
I heard rain splattering and the jingle of a wind chime—the one hanging next to Matt’s front door. My hair was plastered to the side of my face. Before I rang the bell, I raked it back with my fingers and tied it in a knot. It had been long then, but now its weight was unfamiliar. I was used to it tickling my jaw.
He answered the door, so the screen was between us. He was wearing his gym shorts—his name was written on the front of them, right above his knee—and a ragged T-shirt that was a little too small. He had dark circles under his eyes—darker than usual, that is, because Matt always had a sleepy look to his face, like he had just woken up from a nap.
He glanced over his shoulder to the living room, where his mother was sitting on the couch, watching television. He drew the door shut behind him, stepping out onto the porch.
“What is it?” he said, and at the sound of his voice—so hollowed out by grief—I felt a catch in my own throat. In the memory as well as in the visitation. It never got easier to see him this way.
“Can you get away for an hour?” I said.
“I’m sorry, Claire, I’m just … not up for hanging out right now.”
“Oh, we’re not going to hang out. Just humor me, okay?”
“Fine. I’ll tell Mom.”
A minute later he was in his old flip-flops (taped back together at the bottom), walking through the rain with me to my car. His gravel driveway was long. In the heat of summer the brush had grown high, crowding the edge, so I had parked on the road.
Matt’s house was old and small and musty. He had had a bedroom once, before his grandmother had to move in, but now he slept on the couch in the living room. Despite how packed in his family always was, though, his house was always open to guests, expanding to accommodate whoever wanted to occupy it. His father had referred to me as “daughter” so many times, I had lost track.
His father had died three days before. Yesterday had been the funeral. Matt had helped carry the coffin, wearing an overlarge suit with moth-eaten cuffs that had belonged to his grandfather. I had gone with Lacey and Jack and all our other friends, in black pants instead of a dress—I hated dresses—and we had eaten the finger food and told him we were sorry. I had been sweaty the whole time because my pants were made of wool and Matt’s house didn’t have air-conditioning, and I was pretty sure he could feel it through my shirt when he hugged me.
He had thanked us all for coming, distractedly. His mother had wandered around the whole time with tears in her eyes, like she had forgotten where she was and what she was supposed to do there.
Matt and I got in the car, soaking my seats with rainwater. In the cup holder were two cups: one with a cherry slushie (mine) and the other with a strawberry milk shake (for him). I didn’t mention them, and he didn’t ask before he started drinking.
I felt struck, looking back on the memory, by how easy it was to sit in the silence, listening to the pounding rain and the whoosh-whoosh of the windshield wipers, without talking about where we were heading or what was going on with either of us. That kind of silence between two people was even rarer than easy conversation. I didn’t have it with anyone else.
I navigated the soaked roads slowly, guiding us to the parking lot next to the beach, then I parked. The sky was getting darker, not from the waning of the day but from the worsening storm. I undid my seat belt.
“Claire, I—”
“We don’t need to talk,” I said, interrupting. “If all you want to do is sit here and finish your milk shake and then go home, that’s fine.”
He looked down at his lap.
“Okay,” he said.
He unbuckled his seat belt, too, and picked up his milk shake. We stared at the water, the waves raging with the storm. Lightning lit up the sky, and I felt the thunder in my chest and vibrating in my seat. I drained the sugar syrup from the slushie, my mouth stained cherry bright.
Lightning struck the water ahead of us, a long bright line from cloud to horizon, and I smiled a little.