And it’s closer.
Moving toward me in painful inches.
I see the bonfire down the beach, orange flames dancing.
More inches.
Now I hear the low rattle of bass from the party speakers.
We’re still too far to hear voices.
I let myself smile. We’re going to make it.
Because fuck the odds, man.
There’s something to be said for the human spirit, and I’m almost laughing when—
An agonizing pain tears through my lower body.
My knee, calf, feet crash into something sharp and jagged; I feel blood leaving me.
C’mon, Jamal. Focus. Keep going, man. You can’t stop.
I say this to myself.
I imagine Q saying this to me.
I try to regain my form, recapture my rhythm, but it’s gone.
We’re barely moving.
No. No. C’mon, J. Not today. Not like this.
I kick, I pump, I paddle.
I thrash. I thrust. I flail.
But we’re sinking now.
And I can’t tell what I feel more: excruciating pain, or paralyzing dread.
I fight to keep Q’s head above water, even letting my own head submerge.
I cough and I tread until Q shifts, even heavier now, and his weight grapples me under the waves. Eyes wide, I lunge for the surface, but every second pushes it farther away.
I can’t breathe.
I try to push Q’s stomach upward, hoping to throw him into the current. But he barely budges, just falls down harder on me.
And I know this is the end, we’re sinking faster than I can paddle.
The moon shrinks to nothing.
And this is how it feels to exhale your last breath.
90
Eyes open or closed when I die?
Which would be better, when they find me?
If they find me.
Would they say, this guy fought to the end?
Does closing my eyes mean I give up?
Would it mean anything to Whit?
To Autumn?
Are her keys still in my pocket?
It’s her only set—I know because she’d recently locked them in the car.
Her locksmith cousin to the rescue, made her promise she’d make a spare, and I’d reminded her, but . . .
Isn’t that life?
You think there’s always tomorrow?
But then a column of lights injects into the water; there’s something rushing toward us. And my waist is lassoed, Q’s, too, and like a collapsing dream, we’re ripped from the deep.
89
I don’t realize it’s me screaming.
That when they say please, stop fighting us.
It’s me they’re talking to.
And I’m guessing PTSD isn’t a thing that happens literal seconds post-trauma, but.
I mean, who knows, maybe it’s all the water I inhaled—
I’m afraid to open my eyes because this doesn’t feel right.
I don’t feel right.
As if my head and body have parted ways.
And what if this is how you feel when you’re newly dead?
Someone’s repeating my name—“Jamal. Jamal.”—their voice drippy and hollow, like there’s a fishbowl over their head.
A hand touches my cheek like it knows me, and the voice is saying open your eyes, Jamal. Please, open your eyes.
And when I finally do, Autumn’s leaning over me, a terror in her face I hope she never feels again.
I try to smile but instead I throw up on the sand. Several minutes and I can’t stop throwing up, my body exorcising Lake Erie in violent heaves that feel like a giant’s kicking my kidneys.
Were this a cartoon, you’d pounce on my stomach and a fountain would spout from my lips, a distressed fish swimming atop.
“W-w-where’s Q?” I sputter. Every breath, a struggle. Like suddenly if I want my lungs and nose to work, I have to consciously tell them to.
“Where’s Q? Is Q okay? Where is he?”
Autumn’s disappeared, and no one else answers.
But then I see him. Q’s not five yards away, lying faceup atop a blanket, the large quilt barely long enough to keep half his body off the sand.
I start to stand but they pull me back.
“Just relax,” they say.
Except no one else is relaxed.
Kids I’ve known all my life semicircle around Q, hands covering their horror, hands gripping other hands, hands wringing, praying.
I jerk from their grasp, but I’m moving too fast, too soon.
And I nearly topple onto Q, crashing beside the woman now pumping Q’s chest.
And this isn’t TV CPR.
This is bones cracking, wrists popping.
This is watching life empty from someone you thought you’d know forever.
Watching them drain so fast, it’s like there’s a pump attached to their feet, sucking the life with such efficiency that you can actually see it receding, dropping from their head to their waist to their ankles, dipping lower and lower.
He’s still not breathing, she says to the man forcing air into Q’s lungs.
As if just now Q’s made a choice.
But they keep rotating—from his head to his chest, chest to his head—as if it might go on forever. And if it did, if they never stopped, then in a way, it would be like Q was still here.
I beg Q to wake up. I yell at him. I make him promises I can’t keep.
Why’s it so easy to die?
Each of us is a stupid fuse waiting to trip, with no one to flip us back on.
Moments ago, Q’s breaths were jagged and shallow, but they were breaths.
But now—I raise my hand to Q’s nose—and, nearly nothing.
I feel next to nothing.
88
There was this resuscitation scene in, I forget the movie, where the near-victim’s eyes spring open and she’s coughing, and all of the onlookers’ faces go from panicked to relieved because she’s gonna make it, and she even tries to sit up as if waking from a dream.
And I remember Q’s mom, Ms. Barrantes, shaking her head, rolling her eyes. It rarely happens that way, she said. Most of the time, you can’t save them.
So, when Q suddenly gasps for air, I’m happy but stunned.
Not that it should surprise me. Q, he’s always been the type of person who defies all odds.
“Hey, man,” I say to him. But he doesn’t talk back. He just stares at me a beat, before his eyes snap shut again. “He’s okay, right?” I tap his shoulder. “He’s just resting, right?” I ask.
But if anyone knows the answer, they’re not saying.
And by the time they slide Q into the ambulance, he’s fading again.
I pull myself up, curse when my newly bandaged leg bangs into the rear bumper.
“Whoa.” The tall paramedic’s face scrunches. “You family?”
“We’re brothers,” I lie.
“Call your parents. Tell them to meet us at . . .”
Autumn approaches and I’m distracted.
She makes a gesture with her hand that I don’t understand.
“My keys,” she says. “Sorry. Just . . . if you have them . . .”
I fish them from my pocket, surprised they’re still there.
“Thanks,” she says.
And it’s possible her fingers linger in mine a second longer than necessary.