People Like Us(64)

“Don’t tell me you’re going to jump.”

Her teeth chatter. “That’s the tradition, Kay. You don’t know this spot. I’ve lived here my whole life. There’s plenty of clearance.”

“What about the current? Your bones will be smashed. And I’m not jumping after you.”

She looks hurt.

“Two smashed bodies are not better than one, Nola! Who came up with this grand tradition? Where are they now?”

“My grandfather. He’s dead. He’s been jumping this cliff to kick off Thanksgiving week since he was our age.”

Oh. “Okay . . . Was he the only one to engage in this tradition?”

She shakes her head, her body shuddering so violently that her voice comes out in almost unintelligible bursts. “But when he died and we moved into the house, my family mostly stopped talking to each other, so my cousins didn’t come anymore. So it’s just me now. Well, and my sister. But Bianca’s not coming this year. Meeting her fiancé’s family is more important.”

I take off my coat and put it around her shoulders, but she shoves it at me angrily. I grab for it, but a strong gust of wind rips it out of my hand and hurls it over the edge. I watch helplessly as it flaps down like a large, doomed bird to the sea below and lands lifeless against the rocks before being dragged under the surf. Then I snap.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

She cringes, but it’s not in a really dismayed or apologetic way. It’s in an oops-my-bad-moving-on kind of way.

“Go ahead, Nola, jump. Do it now. It’s tradition, right? Get down there and bring my coat back. Get it back, or I will never forgive you.”

She looks at me uncertainly, but I just point down to the madly churning sea. I tell myself that I’m not in the wrong. She has full agency, and this was her idea. She’s been insisting, pushing, and it is not my responsibility to talk her out of it. And now she’s lost my coat, Todd’s coat, my piece of him that no one can take away. She’s taken it and hurled it into the sea.

“I’ve never actually jumped alone,” she says finally.

“Then I will.” I pull my shirt off and push it into her arms.

“You can’t do that.” An edge of panic has crept into her voice.

“Of course I can. I have to. It’s tradition.” The rocky cliff face digs into my back as I lean into it for support, removing my sneakers one at a time.

“Kay, you don’t know how. The water’s too rough tonight. We’ll come back and look in the morning.”

I slide my sweatpants off and hand them to her and creep to the very edge of the cliff, unsteady on my aching feet.

“You’ll die, Kay,” she finally says in a trembling voice.

I look down at the dark water. She could be right. And even if I didn’t, I still might not be able to find Todd’s coat. I think I see a piece of it caught on a rock, but I don’t know. “Forget it.”

I grab my clothes and begin hiking back up to the house in silence. I can hear her sobbing behind me, but there’s just nothing I can say to her. It was an accident, but she was still responsible. She had no intention of jumping, not really. So why did she drag me out there? It should probably just bounce off me after every other piece of hell that’s been thrown at me this semester, these past few years; but instead, it feels like a fresh splinter in my heart. I want my coat back. I want the worn collar and loose buttons and imaginary Todd smell, the too-long sleeves and the inner pocket I never open—the one that has to remain closed—because if I look at the picture inside, I will fall apart. The picture of Todd and me the day he died, just before the game, him hugging me and giving the camera a cheesy thumbs-up with Mom attempting to spike a football in the background, and me glaring into the camera. I need that picture. I want the coat back, and everything that goes with it. I want to curl up in it tonight and cry over all of the wonderful and terrible things in my life I’ve lost.



* * *



? ? ?

WHEN I WAKE in the morning, the floor is heaped with dozens of winter coats. Nola is sitting on her bed wearing a navy-and-white-striped polo shirt and a pair of khaki pants, no makeup, her hair swept back into a ponytail. She looks like she just walked out of the pages of a J.Crew ad. Family Nola Kent is so different from School Nola Kent, it gives me the creeps.

“I got up at sunrise and searched the water and it’s gone,” she says simply, a matter-of-fact expression on her face. “This is every coat every visitor has ever left at this house. We keep them so people can claim them when they come back. But almost no one ever does. Take whichever one you want. Some of them are pretty schmancy.”

“Of course it was gone,” I croak in a morning voice. “The ocean was dragging it all night.” I wade through the mountain of winter coats. “I don’t want your crappy hand-me-downs.”

“Are you sure? Some of these abandoned items were once the property of British royalty.” She holds up a shabby camel-colored peacoat with tortoiseshell buttons that looks like it was scavenged from a homeless shelter. “Perhaps this is to your liking?”

I shake my head and dig through my bag for my toothbrush. “No thanks.”

She searches through the pile. “Her majesty does have odd taste. May I suggest this mint-condition Burberry wool navy coat? It’s not that different from your old one, just a slightly different shape. And way better quality, to be perfectly frank.”