How to Save a Life(62)

I stopped eating long enough to glance at Evan across from me. He was devouring the same breakfast with the same voracity as me. He caught me staring and we laughed when I made oinking noises.

“Am I that bad?” he laughed.

“No worse than me,” I said. “I think I swallowed my fork.”

He laughed harder and nearly choked on his bacon.

It’s all coming back, isn’t it? Him and me?

He told me a story about prison, how one of our favorite movies, Raising Arizona, was a cellblock cult favorite and the movie was shown, by request, every Saturday night in the rec room.

“The most quotable movie in the history of cinema, next to The Princess Bride,” I declared.

Evan put on a drawling, affected southern accent. “We ate crawdad. And when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.”

I picked up the cue. “You ate what?”

“We ate sand.”

“You ate sand?”’

Laughing after a huge breakfast made my insides ache in the best way, like they hadn’t in years. I was full of food and joy. My eyes were full of Evan.

This is a dream. It’s too good to be real.

Then a pair of policeman sidled up to the breakfast bar, their shiny badges and weapons strapped to their waists, reminding me it was all too real. Talking and laughing with the waitress, they didn’t appear to be scoping the place. Evan met my eye and reached for his wallet. He dropped some cash on the table and we slipped out of the diner casually, but quickly. In his truck, I shut the passenger door and locked it, my pulse a little jumpy from the cops, but the good feeling hadn’t left me.

We stopped at a local country store to buy lunch for the road. On impulse, I threw in a red-and-white checked picnic blanket. Evan drove us north along a quiet stretch of highway bordered by shrubbery and trees. The land was green with summer. The sky pure blue and empty of clouds. It felt like Evan and I were the last two people on earth.

I stole glances at him: his large hand as he searched for an Oldies station on the radio and the way his arm muscle stretched the sleeve of his t-shirt. His presence filled the cab of the truck. He exhaled a sigh and I breathed it in. I smelled his skin, warm and clean and familiar.

We drove north for another hour and a half, then Evan turned off the main highway toward Catoosa.

“Are we stopping?” I asked as he paid the toll at the end of the exit ramp.

Evan’s eyes had a faraway look to them, as if he were seeing something beyond the road in front of him.

“I think there’s something I want you to see,” he said.

“You think or you know?”

He didn’t answer. I saw a sign reading Route 66 Roadside Attraction! On the horizon ahead, a blob of pale blue began to emerge against the green landscape. Squinting into the sky, I gradually realized it was a whale. A giant metal whale beached alongside a small swimming hole. Cartoonish eyes and a gaping mouth big enough to walk in.

“What is that?”

Evan pulled in and parked. He smiled as he shut off the engine. “It’s why we’re here.”

I climbed out of the truck, gaping. The little swimming pond was cut from the natural earth. The whale was about twenty feet long. Its mouth yawned open, inviting kids to come inside and play. A slide started at the pectoral fin, winding out and dropping into the water below. A small diving platform had been built on the whale’s tail. Though the sign had made it sound like a somewhat famous Oklahoma landmark, there was no one here swimming or picnicking in the summer heat.

I looked over at Evan, shielding my eyes from the sun. “We’re taking a break from our run from the law to have a swim?”

He grinned. “Why not? Seems like a good place for it.” He reached behind to take hold of his collar and then stripped off his shirt.

I hadn’t seen the whole of his naked torso in four years. My breath stuck in my throat as my gaze traced the tight lines of his abdomen and swept over the broad, smooth plains of his chest. Evan’s eighteen-year-old physique had been impressive enough, but now it was the solid, powerful body of a man in front of me.

Dry-mouthed, and I sank down on one of the multicolored benches lining the swimming hole’s tiny, makeshift beach.

“Aren’t you coming in?” he asked, now stripped down to his boxers and taking off his watch.

“No bathing suit,” I managed. “I’m good right here, thanks.”

He flashed me a smile, either oblivious to my torture or enjoying it. “Suit yourself.”

He waded down the little man-made beach in long strides, his skin bronzed in the sun, then dove in. With long-armed strides, he swam to the center of the swimming hole and treaded water. The fading sunlight glinted off his hair, turning it gold.

“Want me to time you?” I called. “For old time’s sake?”

“Sure,” he said.

I took the wristwatch he’d set atop the pile of his clothes. It was an old watch; I guessed the waterproof one I’d bought for him before prom hadn’t survived our separation.

I waited for a new minute to roll around. “And…go.”

Evan disappeared beneath the surface, and the seconds began to add up. This was nothing like Funtown. This pool was a natural hole in the ground. No lights, no white cement, no clear blue water. Evan went under and vanished.

One minute. My leg jounced and I gnawed my lower lip.