Anything but Ordinary(67)

They sat watching the sun set, dissolving to ooze orange in the trees, like an egg yolk in water. Bryce curled up next to Carter, leaning her head on his chest.

“Tell me something,” she said. She did this a lot, when she got bored of the quiet. He usually pulled out some random fact about tendons or neurons.

“Okay. Here’s something you don’t know.” He stroked her hair. “I was there the day you got hurt at the Trials.”

“Really?” Bryce lifted her head to look at him. “Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was totally random. I was about to be a freshman at Vanderbilt, and I didn’t know anybody yet—I had arrived early and I was wandering around campus, checking it out. The door to the natatorium was propped open and I heard cheering, so I went inside. And I saw this beautiful girl, standing on a platform in a swimsuit, so naturally…”

“So you saw me get hurt?” Bryce felt a little stab in her gut. Why didn’t you save me?

“I didn’t see the dive. I was distracted by something…but then I heard people gasp.”

She shook off the wounded feeling. Carter was just a guy in the stands. But it was such a coincidence. “And then you found out I was at the same hospital as your brother.”

“A few years later, yeah.”

“Huh,” Bryce said, her head back on Carter’s chest. There was nothing else to be said about it. Stranger things had happened.

“Want to know something else?” he whispered after a while.

“Yes,” she said.

“I wanted to kiss you the first day you brought me here.”

Bryce answered him by doing just that, so long they had to come up for breath, and then leaned in for more.

The kisses sent spurts of fire down her back and sides, good fire, fire that licked with warmth in winter, melting ice into little wet pools. His hands ran up and down her bare arms, to her neck, her chest.

They were under the branches now, Bryce’s back against the trunk of the tree, Carter’s weight pressed against her. They slid down, locked by each other’s arms, landing in the grass side by side.

Her breaths coming in quick bursts, Bryce met Carter’s eyes, moving down to his nose, to his lips, to the buttons of his shirt.

She unbuttoned them.

Carter reached behind her neck to unzip her dress.

Bryce unbuckled his belt.

He unhooked her bra.

They undid each other.

Soon she was no longer Bryce Graham with the extraordinary head, the weak legs, the awkward hands. She was inside all that. By the look on Carter’s face, he knew it, too. Their lives weren’t in all the funny external gestures, the hands on skin, the lips on skin, one skeleton against the other, one mouth on the other mouth, the flesh hot, the arched back. It wasn’t that.

With Carter, the root of everything was inside. The branches in autumn above her, his head in the crook of her shoulder, Bryce saw the root of everything.

Our lives come from the inside.

“I love you,” he said into the night, his chest no longer heaving. They had wiggled back into their clothes. The chill had come back when the sun went down, and they were covered in sweat.

“I love you, too,” Bryce said, but her breath was still ragged.

Her ears were ringing, morphing seamlessly into a familiar chorus of buzzing.

“Huh,” she said.

“What?” Carter said quietly beside her.

“Bit late for cicadas,” she said.

“I don’t hear any,” Carter said, his voice fading. “Just gonna rest my eyes for a bit,” he said, soon followed by the steady, slow breaths of sleep.

“Okay,” Bryce said, and stood up. The buzzing grew louder, as loud as it could ever get in late July. But it was October. Pain was rising from places it had never come from before—behind her ears, the base of her neck near her shoulders, shooting across her forehead.

She thought about rousing Carter, but another wave brought her to her knees, then to the ground in a crawling position.

Bryce started to list all the things she knew about the ground, to keep from passing out.

Hard dirt.

Blades of grass.

Broken acorn shells.

Twigs.

Soft sand.

Water lapping on the back of her hand.

That’s not right! Bryce pushed up, angry that she had been tricked. Her brain was tricking her. Fear rose along with another wave of pain. She was no longer in control.

Speckled heat and light.

Back to the dark.

Gold light on the surface of the water.

Bryce’s head throbbed, her lungs full of cotton, but at least she could stand.

“Oh,” she realized with a hoarse whisper. She knew somehow, by the darkness darker than any she’d ever seen. By the way the water looked gold, like it was reversed with the sky. It never looked like that. Tonight was it. The vision she had seen. The dive. Her beginning, her end.

Bryce had almost convinced herself that it was all a mistake, that she was going to live. Not forever, just long enough to do more things. To go to college. To be in love for a long time. To travel the world. She felt her face contort as if she was going to cry, but she didn’t know if she physically could.

She was answered with pain so heavy it brought her back into darkness. She fought her way out like she was being buried in the air.