Whisper to Me(124)

I looked down into the shifting murk. Water was still falling from the sky, baptismal, epic in its scale, the day pretty much midnight black now, lightning occasionally floodlighting everything, this whole stage for … what?

What was I doing here?

“A very good question,” said the voice.

And then I saw it.

I looked down, and there in the water was a white shape, and I leaned closer. My toes were over the edge of the wooden structure, and for a second I thought of Paris standing at the edge of the pier, just before your truck arrived below, and how she thought we were playing Dare, how she thought the game was to get close to the edge, to play with death, and I’m seeing Paris in my mind’s eye, losing her balance, nearly falling and then—

FLASH.

I was seeing Paris below me. Her face, looking up at me through the water, it was her body down there, floating, I knew it; her hair was billowing around her face, haloing it, her beautiful black hair framing her skin, the paleness of it, spreading around her, and her eyes were looking up at me but seeing nothing.

Boom.

I was so startled—though not afraid, never afraid of Paris—that I took a step back, and the plank cracked beneath my foot, and then the whole thing must have been rotten because the next one along broke too, and then there was a creaking that I heard even over the thunder that was just echoing out of the sky, fading, and the pier fell away beneath me, and I was weightless, just for a moment.

Then





I


fell.

And as I fell, I twisted, or something, I had no sense of the orientation of my own body or what had collapsed, whether it was just part of the pier or all of it, or even if I was facing down or up, and anyway the important thing is my head smashed against some object, hard, I mean smashed hard and the thing was hard too, and stars burst out of the storm-curtained sky, where there was nothing but rain clouds, and I blacked out.





And then I was in the freezing water, plunging under, feeling it enveloping my body and head, my eyes half-open so the world was suddenly darkness and bubbles.

I tried to swim up to the surface, but I was too weak, and my head was nothing but agony now, a sensation in place of an object, a sensation of gripping, vice-like pain.

My eyes were still open though, so I could see up through the thin layer of water that was going to drown me—it doesn’t take much water to drown you—and I could see that the clouds had tattered, just for a second, the wind whipping open a vortex in the sky, exposing for a moment the glow of the half moon and the icy sparkle of the stars.

I looked around me. Half the pier was gone, and I was in deep water. I turned toward the beach. But it wasn’t a beach.

Why didn’t I check when I started?

Behind me, the ocean smashed into a tumble of rocks, which lay between me and the yards of the houses, a barrier of rubble.

I dived down, looking for Paris, eyes open and searching through the murk, but I couldn’t see her, and I couldn’t hold my breath either, and I had to push myself back up to the surface.

How was I going to climb out over those rocks?

I had no idea. But I had to try.

I kicked toward them and my head ripped open and light flooded in, or lightning flashed, or both, I don’t know, and for a second I may have blacked out again; my mouth and nose were underwater, breathing in water, then I lifted myself up, coughing, spluttering. My arms were lead; my legs were marble.

I felt stickiness, a sting, on my forehead, and I raised my hand and touched it to my head—big mistake, I went under, a wave hitting me, and for a moment was in the blackness again before I desperately trod water, got my head above water.

And big mistake too, because I realized I was wounded. Whatever had struck my head, whatever I had struck my head on, had hurt me badly.

I managed a couple more strokes, but I saw straightaway, even from this distance, the steepness, the angle and smoothness of the rocks between me and the shore; there was no way I was climbing them.

“Swim south,” said the voice. “To the main beach.”

Four blocks, I thought. I couldn’t even talk out loud, I was so cold, and my head was a bass drum going bang, bang, bang; what an irony, when your voice can speak and you can’t. I can’t make four blocks.

“The rocks might end before that,” said the voice.

Can’t do it, I thought.

And then, cold as the ocean surrounding me, I realized something.

I was going to die.

I was going to die right here.

It had always been waiting for me, this time this place, and now it was here.

I tried, Paris, I thought.

I was so very cold. My whole body was shaking.

For a moment I thought about your swim training, about how you had been trying out for Nationals, and I imagined you surging strongly through the water toward me, knifing through it, swimming the crawl, to take me under the arms and hold me up. Or my dad, I mean he was a Navy SEAL, maybe he would be there suddenly in the water, maybe he had followed me in some way and he would— But this is not that kind of story, and this is not a movie, and you weren’t there.

My dad wasn’t there.

“It’s okay,” said a voice in my ear, a quiet voice, thrumming muted through viscous water.

But not the voice.

No.

Paris’s voice.

“It’s okay,” said Paris again. “It’s okay; you did try—you did.”