He felt it, the momentum that would have ended with a splash and oblivion.
He shouldn’t be here anymore.
He captures every detail of this scene, savors every single thing that he can still sense as an alive person. It all feels so tentative, this edge between living and dying, and he tunes in to the way the breeze, gentler down here off the bridge, brushes through his hair.
He begins to laughsobhyperventilate. He bends at the waist and tries to expel the crazy pent-up energy from everywhere it’s been hiding in his body.
Behind his eyes.
His toenails.
Every inch of his skin.
On the other side of Manhattan, the Upper East Side, Britt is practicing her routine to Cardi B’s “I Like It” in the living room. She’s wondering when Tillie will be home. She cannot wait to show her older sister her new moves. She has this thing where she turns her body away like she’s shy, and then she jumps to face forward and does this shimmy thing. Tillie is totally going to love it! When Tillie watches her create her dance moves, she always pretends like she’s a talent scout trying to decide if Britt makes the cut. It’s fun. And Britt has this new joke she heard in her fifth-grade art class that will make Tillie laugh, and making Tillie laugh is the best because when Tillie’s dimples come out, Britt can’t help but be happy, too. Her sister is the only one who can make her feel that way, and she tries really hard to make Tillie feel it back.
Okay, Britt thinks. Back to practice.
She wants it to be perfect for when Tillie comes home.
Across town, Molly Tobin languishes in her comfortable bed, in her comfortable home, feeling bored and pissed. She’s been stuck inside basically all day, which is what happens when you get suspended.
Spence has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying. But what Molly did? It wasn’t meant to be bullying. If she was laughing in the video, it was in a this is so wrong way, not a make this girl’s life a living hell way.
She was just trying to … whatever. She was there, Gretchen and Isabella were there, and the group mentality kicked in. This is how the Nazis happened, she realizes, and she hates that she’s so easily swayed, but more than that she can’t get over the injustice. Gretchen’s sex kitten video never got leaked, and it was way over the line. Way worse than what Molly did minutes later.
God. It was just too easy. What girl who has even a slight weight issue, let alone an obvious one, does a spoken word poem in which she likens herself to a cow? And now Molly’s suspended, and she can forget Brown, forget Michigan (probably).
If she had to do it all over again, obviously she wouldn’t.
But it’s not like anyone’s offering her a do-over.
In his bedroom on the Upper East Side, Amir Rahimi stares at a spot on the wall.
Tomorrow, he’ll do it. Not it it. He can never do that. It would kill his mom. But what he can do is text Tillie. She deserves that, at least, and maybe it will help him feel less ashamed, because the feeling is too much.
He can trust her with the truth, can’t he?
She’s a very cool girl, after all. The coolest he’s ever met.
“How was your day?” Aaron’s father asks when he gets home from work at 8:45.
“Good,” Aaron says. He is eating a bowl of Froot Loops.
“Did you eat?”
Aaron points down at his bowl, and his dad rolls his eyes.
“Did you eat anything with nutrition?”
Aaron shakes his head.
“Was I wrong to let Magda go?”
Magda was the latest in a conga line of Columbia University graduate students Aaron’s father had given free room and board in exchange for adult supervision for Aaron. Magda was from Israel, smelled like sweet melon, and had once interrupted Aaron’s homework to say, “I’m going out with my sweater. See you in a few hours.” Now, sometimes when Aaron and his dad go out, they text each other, I’m going out with my sweater.
“Nah,” Aaron says, focused on the one surviving Froot Loop, attempting to rescue it from the milk. He shivers, thinking of the nameless girl somewhere in the Hudson. Did she sink to the bottom? Did they get her body out? Could she possibly still be alive? Could he have possibly saved her life with that call?
Don’t be stupid, he berates himself. She’s dead. You’re not. You failed her. Jury’s out on whether you failed yourself.
He picks up his phone and retypes the words into the search engine: girl rescued Hudson George Washington Bridge jump. Still nothing from today. Maybe not every attempted suicide is covered? Maybe there are too many? And what does that tell you about the shittiness of this particular world?
His dad sighs, puts his briefcase down on the kitchen table, and says, “Check in?”
Aaron nods. His father has been insisting on check-ins ever since he went to that Warrior Weekend thing a couple years back. He came back filled with passion for life and regret for the times he had put work before fatherhood. He’d promptly quit his job at the bank and went back to school to become a social worker. Now Aaron and his dad are cash poor, apartment rich, and they check in every night.
Of course, Aaron doesn’t tell him anything. Or at least not the kind of things that lead to a bridge.
“You first?” Dad asks.
Aaron shakes his head, and his dad relents and goes first.
“Physically: bone-tired. Who knew that a freakin’ practicum would be more taxing than investment banking? I tell you what: I can’t wait until I have my own practice and I don’t have to do the endless rotation at Montefiore. Emotionally: joyful and angry. Mostly joyful, but this prick in a BMW ran a red light even though there were about a hundred of us waiting in the crosswalk, just about to cross, and you know that stupid, selfish drivers make me homicidal. Spiritually: somewhat connected. I meditated on my second break, but that doesn’t always last through a spate of bulimic teens. Mentally: pretty sharp for nearly nine o’clock, I must say. How about you, bud?”
Aaron puts down his spoon and stares at his father’s forehead. That’s as close as he can comfortably get to his eyes, but he makes sure to make intermittent contact because if he doesn’t, Dad will ask questions. Aaron cannot answer questions today.
“Physically: okay. My legs itch. Probably the grass allergy because I went to Riverside Park after school. Just to hang and do some writing.”
His dad smiles that inimitable smile he has, the one where his right dimple rises perhaps two millimeters higher than his left yet his right eye stays still—a leftover from the Bell’s palsy he had in his twenties.
“Emotionally: fine. Good. Joyful and a little sad, I guess.”
“A little?” his dad asks.
“Okay, sad,” Aaron says, rolling his eyes.
His tone is playful. It is complete bullshit and it makes him sick of himself.
Sad?
Sad is hearing about a jumper on the news.
Sad is not seeing it right next to you.
Sad is not knowing it should have been you.
“Go on,” Dad answers with an impish grin.
“Spiritually: the same as yesterday. Not sure what to believe. Mentally: sharp as a tack. Done. Fini.”
The fini gets stuck in his dry throat. It comes with a series of images of the falling girl and the gentle smack when she hit the water, a smack that was in reality anything but gentle. His dad is looking directly at him. Aaron averts his eyes.