History Is All You Left Me(69)

I want to know everything about the day you died.

Jackson doesn’t answer me.

We get out of the car. Jackson kicks off his sneakers, leaving them in the front seat, his little life hack to keep sand out of his shoes. (“You can’t get sand in your shoes if your shoes never touch the sand,” he told me yesterday.) I do the same, leaving my socks behind too, and my feet are burning against the asphalt, so I hop over to a patch of grass as if I’m walking on hot coals. Jackson doesn’t seem to be as distressed as I am.

The sky is the same blue as yesterday, nothing magical or noteworthy going on there. But the Santa Monica Pier grabs my attention, its Ferris wheel standing tall.

“We went on the Ferris wheel for the first time together,” Jackson says, as if reading my mind. “Both of us. I don’t hate heights as much as Theo did, but we promised to get through it together.” He pulls out his phone and I remove the sunglasses Jackson loaned me so I can clearly see the photo of you two sitting in a Ferris wheel car, making fake-scared faces. The clouds look so close to you both, it’s as if you could’ve brought one back down with you.

You had a first on the day you died, too, something you did to feel braver and something you were supposed to be able to reflect on when something else scared you.

“We felt untouchable after that,” Jackson says. He throws his phone into the front seat and locks up.

He walks past me and I follow, stepping over a guardrail and onto the sand. He’s not running toward the ocean, childlike—not that I was expecting him to do so—but there is a charge in his step, which I wasn’t expecting. This is the place where you drowned, the place where Jackson watched you drown—there’s no way in hell I could ever hurl myself into this like he is.

We walk past a family of three spread out on a towel. The father is reading from a tablet, the mother is filling out a crossword puzzle, and the little girl—who I’m considering the tip of this odd triangle, her parents balancing her out from bottom angles—is building a sand castle and in desperate need of more sunscreen. I hope her parents will grab her if she wanders away, that they won’t let her get too far, that they’ll be there to pull her out of the waves.

Jackson and I reach the edge of the wet sand. He looks around, crying, his hands trying to speak for him but constantly falling back to his sides.

“I don’t even know the spot where it happened, Griffin,” he manages, his voice strained. “When accidents happen, people know where to leave flowers, but not me. Everything happened so quickly. All I know is the lifeguards weren’t close enough. And I, I . . . I wasn’t fast enough.”

He walks into the ocean, and I go with him. A small wave brushes my ankles and toes, sending chills up my legs, and I almost retreat, wishing my feet were burning against asphalt again. But I stay with Jackson.

You once shared a really weird speculation about water with me. It was when you first got out here and I actually thought you must’ve been stoned. You said every single molecule in all bodies of water—ocean and lake, shower and sink—has a story and reason for existence. You always thought there was more to the world, but this idea about water didn’t feel very conversation-worthy before. What was I supposed to say when you thought a drop from your showerhead was about to fall directly into your drain, missing you completely, and head out on its way toward a greater purpose than cleaning you? College kids smoke weed; everyone knows that. This is what I felt like saying.

But as I stand here in the ocean that stole you away from us, I wonder if any molecule here witnessed your death, if any water splashing against my legs filled your throat as you struggled to breathe.

I wade in deeper, knee-high, and my jeans tense against my legs. I crouch, crying now, too, and punch the water again and again. Punching water hurts. But I don’t stop, even after I’m drenched, even after Jackson calls my name, even after I howl, even after a wave surprises me and takes me under, though now I’m fighting the ocean to release me as I tumble underneath, panicking.

I know I’m not that deep, but I don’t know which way is up, I’ve never been able to keep my eyes open underwater. The ocean gets heavier, pinning me down—no, it’s sucking me up, and it’s Jackson, not the ocean. I inhale a deep breath, spitting out water, and Jackson hugs me and I hug him back.

“What the hell were you doing?”

I lost my sunglasses when I was taken under, and the sun is piercing. I try telling him about your damn water molecules and wanting to fight them all, but I keep crying and crying, knowing what I felt under there for a few seconds is nothing compared to what you experienced when your arms and legs couldn’t fight anymore, when your panic probably got the best of you, when you breathed in water, when your brain shut you down. Thinking of this terrifies me, but I know I’m safe with Jackson—you could’ve been too if he were in here with you.

“Why weren’t you swimming with Theo?” My question comes out in a cough and sounds more accusatory than I mean it to, and Jackson freezes. We’re inches away from each other. It’s still hard to make out his face because my eyes are irritated and the sun is attacking my vision. “I’m not blaming you.”

“I know,” Jackson says quietly. “Theo wanted to go in alone. He had just gotten off the phone and wanted a minute to himself. I stayed at the beach with our stuff, and Theo went deeper than he should’ve.”