Meet Me at the River (15 page)

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go in the morning.” Mom’s face relaxes. She waits until I’ve left the kitchen before she exhales, but I can hear that breath—its frantic relief, a bullet dodged—as I head up the stairs.

Just as well
, I tell myself. Maybe I’m wrong, and tonight Luke
will
come to me. Maybe, I think as I climb the stairs, if I stay indoors, the world will know how much I want and need him. And he will come to me.

*   *   *

But he doesn’t. In the morning my room is infused with flat, empty Sunday morning light. Everything settles into its place with heartbreaking sameness. My book on the nightstand where I left it. My worn, woven rug lying flat and undisturbed, waiting to protect my same bare feet from the cold floor when I get out of bed. My mother clanking around downstairs in the kitchen, a domestic and predictable creature, nobody needing to wonder where in the world she might be. The ukulele Grandpa gave me sits in its still-unopened case. If I accepted his invitations for lessons, if I took out that miniature instrument and learned to play, would it be enough of a change to prevent Luke from seeing me? Better not to risk it, to instead keep everything as close as possible to the way he remembers.

“Tressa!” Mom says when I walk into the kitchen. She has done this since I was a little girl, exclaimed over the sight of me, as if I were the last person in the world she expected and the first person in the world she wanted. If only the twins could have experienced this greeting, maybe they wouldn’t be so angry at her all the time.

“I’m making waffles,” Mom says.

“Thanks,” I say, “but I’m not that hungry. I think I’ll go skating instead.”

She pauses as if to protest, but then seems to remember her victory from last night. “Sure,” she says. “You go skating. Work up an appetite. I’ll save the batter.”

Waffles. Private college. A new dog. The things people try to float toward me, to make life tolerable. Walking out to Silver Lake with my skates slung over my shoulder and my boots sinking into the snow, I understand the sadness accompanying their efforts, how they all know only one impossible thing could ever make me happy again. Sometimes I wish I could tell them,
It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. I have this time I get to spend with Luke, and that makes me happy
.

For a moment I try to imagine what it would be like, a different dog walking beside me. I picture Kelly Boynton’s, its gray spotted coat and funny pointed ears. So much smaller than Carlo, it would struggle through this deep snow on the hill, its front legs scratching the surface of the incline. The image fades quickly. He looks like a nice dog, but he belongs to someone else, he doesn’t fit.

At the top of the hill I slow down. I can hear skates scraping across the ice, gliding and stopping. When I get to the edge of the frozen water, it turns out to be H. J. He doesn’t see me at first, and I watch him speed skate in graceful circles, his hands behind his back, his legs kicking out behind him. I like to skate, and I can manage slow, rhythmic circles, but I can’t go fast or even backward. The part of me that feels persistently embarrassed about this deficiency wants to turn around and tiptoe back down the hill. But before I have a chance, H. J. catches sight of me and skids to a neat, expert little
halt. I don’t want him to feel badly about chasing me away, so I sit down on the log to put on my skates.

“Hey,” H. J. says. “Fancy meeting you here.” He glides over and sits next to me as I ease one foot out of my boot.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound friendly. Normal. Despite the weirdness of our last interaction—the palm reading—I like H. J. well enough, and also feel somewhat indebted to him. If it hadn’t been for him, I might never have figured out about my scars.

“Guess what,” H. J. says. “I got fired on Friday. I mean, I knew it was coming, but they made it official. I haven’t told Evie yet. I thought I’d work off some adrenaline and tell her this afternoon, so she doesn’t hear it at school tomorrow.”

I stop tying my skate and sit up. H. J. isn’t wearing his glasses, which makes him squint a little. His eyes are the same hazelish brown as his sister’s. I try to read his face so I can know how best to respond. He doesn’t look sad exactly, just weary. It doesn’t surprise me that he burst out with this personal information without a lead-in. I have figured out that he doesn’t bother with small talk. I’ve also figured out that I like this about him.

“That’s too bad,” I say. “I bet you were a good teacher.”

H. J. shrugs. “I was okay. Maybe I would have been good eventually, if they’d let me keep going.” He sounds more wistful than sad, and I imagine that he has learned to put things into perspective. He knows how to sort out disappointment from tragedy. I feel myself relaxing, not
wanting him to go away anymore. “Anyway,” H. J. says. “It was pretty stupid, how I handled it. Probably they’re right to keep me away from school-age children.”

I laugh a little. Kelly is about the same age as me, and I don’t exactly think of myself as a school-age child. “I guess,” H. J. goes on, “that I didn’t realize how serious it was. Cutting. I thought she was trying to shock me, and maybe if I wasn’t shocked, she would just . . . stop.”

“Can I tell you something?” I say. A low cloud blows over the lake, giving the early morning a sense of gloaming. H. J.’s face looks sweaty and cold at the same time, pink blood rushing under skin that’s been whitened by chilly air, and I’m surprised by the youngness of it. He doesn’t say anything, or even nod, but I go on. “If I were Kelly. I mean, if I were a cutter.” I close one hand around my wrist, where H. J.’s eyes immediately flicker. I remember Katie saying, “He stands too close and he
looks
too hard. It’s not comfortable.” But I don’t feel uncomfortable, so I keep talking.

“If someone said that to me, what you said to her, about just doing it a little bit? It would make me feel better. Like what I was doing wasn’t so sick. So horrifying. You know? Maybe you gave her permission to do it so she felt less ashamed. Maybe that’s what gave her the guts to admit it to someone who could really help her. It got you fired, which is awful, but maybe it also saved her.”

“That’s a nice thought,” H. J. says. “I would like to save someone.”

His voice catches on this last word, and we both sit for a moment, thinking—I think—of the various people neither of us have managed to save. Then I say, “I saw Kelly in the cafeteria on Friday, and she looked happy. She was laughing.”

“Laughing is good,” H. J. says. But he doesn’t smile. He puts his hands on the log, on either side of his thighs, as if bracing himself for something—a gust of wind, an unwelcome emotion. I think about asking again if Kelly told him why she was cutting, if the reason—as far as she was concerned, anyway—had something to do with Luke. But as soon as Luke’s name forms in my mind, I get this picture, as if I’m looking at myself from across the lake. I see myself sitting on a log with a guy—a
man—
having this very personal conversation. H. J.’s shoulder doesn’t exactly touch mine, and neither does his leg. But both hover close enough that I can feel their molecules, the tiny breadth of space between us. And suddenly I want him to go away, even though I feel more myself with him and Evie than I have with any living person since last spring, even Isabelle. Even my mom.

The thing is: I’d rather feel uncomfortable. I may be obligated to stay alive, which to some extent means fighting against misery, which means going toward the things that make me happy, which I have completely forsworn. It’s an impossibly vicious circle, and suddenly
I feel exhausted. The only thing that ever gives me a break is Luke, and suddenly he won’t come.

Sitting out here on the log, chatting with H. J., feels like creating a friendship, something new. In other words it feels like the thing I refuse to ever do, which is move on. What if someone came upon the two of us, sitting on a log and talking? Even though H. J. is essentially someone’s dad, he’s not
that
much older than me, and it could easily look like . . .

No. I get this horrible feeling of the whole world watching us from behind every one of these bare branches. My mother behind that tree, Francine sitting on that rock. Paul watching too, and my sisters and my grandparents, and worst of all Luke—standing in the middle of the lake. What would he think? I imagine him turning to walk away, Carlo at his side, the two of them disappearing into gray skies, finally gone forever, while I run after them, yelling in vain:
No! Stop! It’s not what you think!

My fingers act before I make a decision. They unlace the one skate I’ve managed to put on. “You know,” I say, without looking at H. J., “I feel really cold all of a sudden. I think I’m just going to go home.” I can feel him looking at me but keep my eyes on my skates. If I’ve hurt his feelings, I don’t want to know.

“But you’ll warm up once you start skating,” he says. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We can race.”

“I’m a crappy skater,” I say.

“That’s okay,” H. J. says. “I just like your company.”

I yank my Sorel back on, then try to tie my skates together as I realize my fingers are shaking. I don’t want him to like my company. I don’t want to skate with anyone except for Luke.

“I’m sorry,” I tell H. J. “I have to go.”

Once my boots are on, it takes all my might not to run down the hill toward Paul’s house. I can feel H. J.’s bewildered gaze on my back, and then I think maybe he’s not bewildered at all. Maybe he understands completely. And I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t know how to protect myself from becoming so sad again, so sad that I want to die; and at the same time I don’t know how to protect myself from returning too fully to this world.

Because how can I possibly face it, the rest of my life? What am I supposed to do? Grow up? Go to college? Have other boyfriends? That last idea is the wrongest thing I can possibly ever think, and I feel so lost, so hopeless. I wish that forest ranger had never found me at Alta the day I slit my wrists. I wish I hadn’t told Luke to meet me at the river. Most of all I wish that I had fallen down the bank instead of Luke. Leaving
him
on the bank, helpless in that moment, and sad—yes—but so much better equipped than me for everything. Especially life.

It happened toward the end of May. Paul and Hannah had this plan to send Tressa back East to be a counselor at a girls’ summer camp. Tressa took it hard but to me it seemed pretty temporary. In June we’d be eighteen. In August we’d both head to Boulder, something Dad and Hannah didn’t know. I told Mom to tell Dad that I only got accepted at Greeley. I admit it was kind of hard, letting him think I wasn’t smart enough to go to Boulder. But we had to make sure they didn’t try to send Tressa someplace else. The main thing was, soon they wouldn’t be able to do anything about us.

And you know what else? Part of me looked forward to the summer on my own. I could go to parties and hang out with my friends. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. It doesn’t mean I don’t remember the V of her
T-shirt coming down a little lower than she probably realized. It’s not like I didn’t want to be with her. But I also knew how to wait. I’d had a lot of practice.

*   *   *

I walked through the woods past the old, rusted-out school bus to meet Tressa. She was right where she said she’d be, sitting with Carlo in a stand of aspens by the river. She stood up. I could see she’d been crying; her face was swollen and red.

“What’s wrong?” I said. She stepped forward and hugged me hard. Her cheek felt wet. She said something into my neck that I couldn’t understand, but I could guess.

I stepped back and put my hands on her shoulders. “It’s just the summer,” I said. “Eight weeks. And then this whole part of our lives will be over.”

“Or else we could run away,” she said.

I laughed. Tressa stood there looking at me, completely serious. “I mean it,” she said. “I’ve got my Jeep. We could just leave. We could drive away and never see their faces again, and we could be together.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” I tried not to sound annoyed. We both knew summer would be so much easier on me, here in Rabbitbrush. “Look,” I said. “We’ve got one more month of high school. Two months of summer. It would be crazy to run away now. We just have to wait it out.”

Tressa looked away, toward the river. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

I put my arms around her waist and kissed her. She dropped Carlo’s leash. We stood that way, kissing awhile. I really liked the way those jeans looked, and I slipped my hands into her back pockets. In the river, sticks and leaves rode the current downriver. Carlo lay across Tressa’s feet. Finally she pulled away. We held hands and walked by the raging water.

Carlo went trotting ahead in his lopsided old-dog way, his leash dragging behind him. One of us should have picked up that leash. He’d slipped down the bank before, and once he almost landed in the water. But neither of us did. We just held hands, nothing to be afraid of, walking along the Sustantivo River.

How could you do it, to people who love you?

Nobody ever asks me that question in words. I see it in their faces. I hear it in my own head, insistent and accusing. After all, I knew what it felt like, to lose someone. I saw everyone else—parents, sisters, friends, acquaintances—and how that loss laid them low, the empty space it left behind. The disbelief, the horror, and the impossible, unavoidable longing to stop time and wind back the world. Please, please, let me do this over. Let me do it right this time.

How could you do it to your grandparents? How could you do it to your dog, Carlo, who trusted you, who made protecting you his life’s work? How could you do it to your sisters, who had just lost their little brother? Worst of all, how could you do it to your mother, who chose you
again and again—who not only loved you but needed you?

My only answer—there didn’t seem to be any choice. Once as a kid I burned my hand very badly in a campfire. I remember the squirming agony of that burn. It hurt so much, I couldn’t stop moving my feet or my shoulders, like I had this instinctive need to wriggle out of my body and escape the pain. Multiply that times a hundred, and you get how I felt after Luke died. My stupid, stupid impulse to cling to him had clung him right into those freezing waters. Now I wanted to go back. Was that so much to ask? Let me go back and not leave that note in his locker. Let me go back and greet him with a smile—
Yes, I will endure one last separation. I will be as strong as you.
Let me go back and not bring Carlo along, or at least let me hang on to his leash, keeping him safe and sure beside me.