APRIL 17, 3:54 P.M.
Can’t I have this one moment to myself, please?
This thought sears in Aaron Boroff’s mind as the sobbing girl passes behind him. She’s interrupted his solitude as he stares down at the undulating Hudson River from the south side of the George Washington Bridge.
He senses her presence as strongly as he feels the concrete walkway shaking frantically below him. He glances right and watches her walk toward New Jersey, head down. Then she stops maybe a hundred feet from him, approaches the ledge, and stands there, looking down at the empty space below her, just as he’d been doing.
He turns and glares at her. It’s hard to see details from this distance. She’s short, with long jet-black hair. Devastated, definitely. Same reason for being here? Probably.
He wonders: Which one of us is worse off? His gut twists. Her, of course. I’m such a fucking coward to even be thinking of ending my life. People will forget about me because thinking about me is too embarrassing. I’m a failure in every way and I probably won’t even manage to kill myself right.
At the same time, he can’t imagine withstanding this hole in his chest even a moment longer. Too, too much. It’s like when he was eight and he wanted his mommy—only to remember she wasn’t living with them anymore. Thinking this makes him sob audibly, and even though the vehicles and the wind and the buckling bridge are louder and more chaotic than anything he’s ever blared on his headphones, the girl turns her head toward the sound, toward Aaron.
It is too far for eye contact, really. What they share is the basic idea of eye contact. And Aaron feels it for both of them. Awkwardness.
Why couldn’t she have walked just a little farther?
This is Tillie Stanley’s time, and here is this interruption, this lost waif of a boy, his hair blowing in the hectic, wild wind. Tall, narrow, leaning in on himself like a branch about to snap. And she thinks, Does this boy have to be here? And then she thinks, You know what? Fuck him. I am so tired of letting other people dictate my life.
She looks away and grasps the nearly petrified metal railing with her hand and lifts her leg onto the other side so that she’s straddling it. If he even tries to walk in her direction, she’ll let go and end it. That’s how serious she is. Her throat bone-dry. Her chest empty. Her head spinning wild.
Then the boy straddles the railing, too, and Tillie is like, Oh, come on. Suddenly they’re facing each other like they’re playing a deadly game of dare.
Aaron wants to scream at her—Leave me alone! This moment is mine. This is all I have left.
Tillie’s brain is mottled with warring thoughts she can’t quite decipher—she only knows they’re getting in her way. Be a big girl, she berates herself. Pick up your damn thick leg and walk far enough away that he can’t see you anymore. But she’s stuck there. She is too far gone, much too far gone to imagine suffering even one more minute of this life. No. Oblivion is the only answer. Whatever comes after—nothing or a lot of something unknown—cannot be worse than this. It’s time to stop. To end.
They remain that way for a few seconds. Then a few seconds more. Eye contact without being able to see each other’s eyes.
And then, at 3:57—
CHAPTER 1A: APRIL 17, 3:57 P.M.
Aaron watches as the nameless girl throws her other leg over the railing and pushes off. Before his eyes, she is diving, dropping. Sideways, upside down. Falling.
It does not look like Aaron expects it to look. It’s not beautiful or noble or anything that makes sense. It’s a bungee jump without a cord, then a smack into the waves, a hole in the water, and she’s consumed.
No sound comes from his mouth. He cannot breathe. The girl was there. And now she’s not.
He cannot even consider doing what she just did.
Panicked, he pulls his leg back to the safe side of the barrier, his entire body jittering. The whir of cars blitzes his reality and steals his ability to process. This is outside his realm of understanding. He was supposed to die but he didn’t, and a stranger did.
Should I call 911? And say what? How will that help her?
But her family! They’ll never know if I don’t—
Holy shit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit.
He takes his phone out of his pocket and dials.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
He has to scream to be heard and his throat is too dry, too hoarse. “I just—a girl. Jumped.”
“What’s your location, sir?”
He shouts it like it’s a question. “George Washington Bridge?”
“Stay right there. What level? South side or north side?”
He wonders if this happens all the time. It must.
“Upper level—”
“I can’t hear you. You have to speak up.”
He screams it. “Upper level! Um. South side. I—”
“Are you a danger to yourself?” the woman asks, and he thinks, Good question.
He yells, “I don’t know! Maybe?”
“Stay right there. I’ll stay on the line with you. Stay. Right. There. You hear me?”
Nothing freaks him out more than hearing her say these words in this tone. Like he’s in danger.
Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God.
It’s hitting him:
He almost jumped to his death.
So close.
He came so close.
And she came closer.
He starts crying. “Okay,” he chokes out, closing his eyes and feeling the wind chill the tears dripping down his cheeks. He wants hot chocolate. Hot chocolate and a blanket and his dad playing old records. And a window. A window safely separating him from all this.
He stays on the line with her, and she keeps him talking, asking him questions. He gets that she’s only doing it because it’s her job, but it’s nice just the same, and she doesn’t seem to mind his short answers, and soon he kind of likes hearing her breathing and snapping her gum—orange flavored, he imagines. He thinks about asking her what her name is. What if he spoke to her boss and got her a commendation or something? He hears sirens blaring in the distance and thinks about his father being notified. How it would break him. No.
“Shit.”
“What, hon?”
“I can’t … I’m okay. I just. The ambulance. That’s not for me, is it?”
“Just stay on the line with me,” she says, her voice remaining calm.
He hangs up and runs. Back to Manhattan, down the winding, rotting metal staircase. He runs because if he’s not there, then none of this ever happened. He can try to be normal, and make this a normal Wednesday.
He sees her falling. He can’t stop seeing her fall. He can’t stop her from falling. He wants to stop it. He wants it to stop. He wants to stop everything—except, apparently, his life.
When he gets to the park on 178th, he numbly walks east, toward the subway. He replays the back of her sad head as she walked over to the spot. Her sobs. Her eyes that he couldn’t see clearly then—he sees them clearly now.
He starts to ask himself:
What kind of person jumps—
Then he thinks:
Oh. Right.
He puts his earphones back in, taking the time to graze his ear with his finger. It feels spiritual, almost. This skin, these organs. Alive, unalive. The fine edge between the two. It could have happened so easily. He knows it. If she hadn’t shown up and taken his place, this living ear is never again touched by human fingers. It never again hears music, never again hears—anything.