It’s like having Friend Finder on—you know exactly where your friends are, but still you weren’t actually with them.
I know where Autumn is, but I can’t be there with her.
She shakes her head. “Maybe I’ll catch you later.”
And I should let myself be hurt, but I shrug. I double down. “Yeah, well, maybe I won’t be around later.”
She nods. “Like I said, leave the keys under the seat.”
I break our gaze, glance at her friends. Tip my head like I’m wearing a top hat, like I’m leaving a drawing room. “You ladies have a good night.” Then I’m weaving solo through the entire Elytown High student body, most of whom, thankfully, have resumed partying.
I say a few goodbyes.
Thank the host for having me.
Smile like it’s all good.
Laugh like never better.
Shake the keys in my palm like dice, tell myself, you got this, Jamal. It’s no big deal.
I trudge up the long sloping dune, thoughts stuttering across my brain like ticker tape.
How could Q not even acknowledge what he’d done?
How could he compare his actions to mine?
Yeah, I missed something important in his life—I admit it.
But he was the cause of the tragedy in mine.
And what does it mean that in barely two minutes, I’d lost Autumn?
The absence of four words didn’t mean the absence of love.
Love could be fully present even if the words weren’t.
Didn’t she feel it? Hasn’t she felt loved?
Wasn’t the feeling, the knowing, better than any words?
And also, less importantly:
How am I going to get home?
Whit, the only person in the world I can call.
Whit, my only person.
I’m halfway up the weathered stairs, thinking how, on a dime, a tide could completely turn and level you.
I’m nearly to the top when I hear the screams.
91
I pause.
Because maybe it was a kid playing.
Maybe it was my imagination.
Maybe it was the music.
The wind and lake and waves.
But then I hear it again.
Another scream.
Away from the party.
On the other side of the dunes.
None of the bonfire kids seem to notice.
I scan for Autumn, but she’s nowhere I can see.
I tear back down the stairs.
My hands won’t stop shaking, and then I realize it’s because my entire body’s shaking. I race up the sandy hill, causing a mini sandvalanche, and I lose my footing. I roll halfway down the other side before I catch myself.
I hear another scream, closer but also somehow quieter.
But I see no one.
My eyes sweep the horizon, and that’s when I see it.
An arm or a leg volcanoing, breaching the water’s surface, then slamming violently back beneath the waves.
And now I’m sprinting across the beach, my chest on fire, legs, arms, pumping, firing. I imagine myself a blue flame spiraling toward the water, and I am faster than I’ve ever been.
But still not fast enough.
I attack the crooked, cracking stairs two at a time—slipping halfway from the top but catching myself and pogoing back up—until I’m on the long concrete dock.
Lightning splits the sky into jagged halves, thunder claps, and now rain sluices down my face.
My shirt’s drenched. I pry it loose, let it drop behind me.
I don’t break stride. I run harder.
The loose pebbles and jagged divots punish my feet, but I don’t slow, I can’t slow.
When I reach the end, I can’t tell water from sky, both black and angry.
And were I smart, I’d make sure the water’s clear, that it’s deep enough.
Too shallow and I splinter my neck, snap my spine.
Too rocky and I piñata all over the shoal.
But there’s no look-before-leap time.
And it’s too late to alter my trajectory—the waves already reaching for me, the surface approaching fast and hard—this could be it.
I steal another breath and knife through the waves.
I’m not dead.
I swim like mad, arms spiked, legs kicked; I have to be close.
Only every wave looks the same.
I stop swimming. I bob in the water, turning slowly, scanning the darkness, small fish glancing my toes.
I spin ’round and ’round, tell my heart to please shut the fuck up, stop yelling, stop panicking, just let me—just give me a sec to—
And then maybe fifteen yards toward the moon, movement, something jerks.
It takes everything I have to fight the current.
But when I make it, there’s more nothingness.
I take the deepest breath, inhaling summer air and midges, and plunge into the water. For a moment it’s so dark I can’t tell if my eyes are open.
I drop lower.
Lower.
And there, below me in the murkiness, a body limp and drifting.
I surge deeper, my fingers narrowly missing their arm.
I need air.
But retreat for the surface and they’re lost forever.
I slowly exhale, exhausting every molecule I can scrape from my lungs, a thousand tiny bubbles roaring from my lips; I kick, I thrust, with all my might, diving deeper and deeper.
This far down, I can’t see anything.
I throw my fingers out, groping for the smallest piece of anything.
And then I feel it.
Fabric.
I pull upward, snag more of the shirt, press them to my chest, and with my free arm paddle like mad for the surface.
They knock into my head and I swallow several mouthfuls of water. I grit my teeth, keep paddling, but I’m discombobulated and I’m not entirely sure if I’m swimming up or down. But I keep battling until I see the faintest glimmer of moonlight.
We puncture the surface, and that’s when I realize who:
Q’s choking and retching, and he’s thrashing, dunking our heads, his fear dragging us back under the tow.
“Q, stop fighting me. You’re gonna drown us both.”
But he keeps fighting and I can’t tell you how much water I’ve inhaled.
I smack him hard across his face, and he stops.
Hearing my own ragged breaths scares me.
I study the horizon.
Q slumps forward, his face striking the water. I snap him back to me, like I’m performing the Heimlich.
I slap him again.
“Q, wake up, man.”
Another slap, harder.
“Q! Wake your ass up, man. I’m not playing with you.”
He stirs, just barely.
That has to be enough for now. I can’t do anything for him in this water. Q’s only chance is if I make it to shore.
If I can get us most of the way, the current might do the rest, cough us onto the beach.
Not for the first time I wish I was taller, bigger.
The four inches and sixty pounds Q has on me feels like a dump truck.
I flip us both onto our backs, hook my forearms under Q’s shoulders, and do my best to kick on either side of Q’s body, but I can’t get enough clearance, our progress half what it should be, my strength all but gone.
I can’t do this.
We’re not gonna make it.
Above us a small plane hums through the clouds.
I look back toward the shore.
And somehow it’s closer.
I keep flailing.