Left Drowning(103)

“What are you doing? With the buckets. Are you in training for something?”

Chris can’t help but laugh. It wasn’t a bad thought. Maybe he could pretend he is conditioning himself for a triathlon or something. Instead he is training for survival. “Sort of.”

The girl calls out over the lapping water, insisting that he needs a T-shirt because he has a horrible sunburn. She pushes him to at least go get a shirt. Her yelling could be echoing up to the house, Chris realizes, and he glances back to make sure that his father isn’t coming. She refuses to take no for an answer, and when she starts to untie her rowboat from the dock so that she can come to him, Chris immediately yells, “No! Don’t do that!” If she comes to the shore and he is seen talking with her … God, he doesn’t know what would happen. He checks behind him again. Still safe. He feels awful yelling at her like this. She is kind. She knows something is wrong, he can tell, but he doesn’t want her worrying about him. “Just … No. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Chris and the girl stand silently until he suddenly feels that they understand each other. He can’t explain his situation to her, and now she all at once seems to accept that. Chris struggles to fight back tears while they maintain eye contact. Perhaps it’s because he needs something, needs someone, but he is convinced that she is the reason he is not dropping to his knees and surrendering. This girl, he is sure, is his salvation, and he can practically hear the strength that she is sending him, the exact unspoken words that she hurls over the water. I’m here. I’m right here.

Part of him wishes she would leave. Stop looking at him. No good can come of this, he knows. But Chris can’t bring himself to ignore her, or be rude, or do more to push her away than he already has. When he tells her that he has to keep going, he can see her thinking, pondering what his actions mean. She knows he is in trouble, Chris can tell.

“I have to keep going,” he says desperately.

“I’m going to stay with you,” she tells him.

These are the kindest words Chris has ever heard, and it’s all he can do to answer her. “Thank you.”

He refills the buckets of water, walking them from one side of the shore to the other, emptying and refilling them. He treks endlessly through the mud, his feet often digging into shell shards. He recognizes that physically, he is near collapse. Mentally, too. She is the reason he can continue. He pauses once, noticing something in one of his buckets. A sea urchin. He is reminded how much life is out there in the ocean, in the rest of the world, all of it waiting for him. Maybe even she could be waiting for him. Who knows? But only if he can just do this. He takes the little green creature out gently and walks a few feet deeper into the water, letting it float to the bottom. With the current, maybe it will find its way to her.

Chris looks to her as he walks, nodding a bit. She is now in her bathing suit, having tied her red shirt to a life vest. Wait, what is she doing? Chris is moved beyond words when he understands.

“The tide is coming in,” she calls.

He watches as the current carries the life vest to shore. When it is close enough, he stops walking and puts down the buckets. Because his fingers tremble so horribly, it seems to take forever to undo the knots. She made sure they were tight enough so that the water bottle, in particular, would reach him. The red T-shirt that she has sent him feels like heaven when he puts it on, the cold fabric cooling off his shoulders and protecting him from further sun exposure. He glances at the house, and then he downs the bottle of water, raising it when he’s done.

He looks down at the shirt as it drips water over him. Matthews College. He doesn’t know where this school is, but it’s immediately clear to him that he will go there. All of them will go there. There will be college, and family, and joy. It’s a goal; it’s a future. It’s a goddamn plan. He smiles for a moment. Maybe he will even get the girl.

He will not f*cking break. His father will not ruin him. Any of them.

Her voice sails to him once more. “I’m not leaving you.”

The sounds penetrates to his core. He feels partnership and love, and he realizes that he must be delirious because what he thinks so vividly is, She is the past and the present and the future. She is through, and over, and under. He knows this is inexplicable nonsense, but he lets her presence comfort him. So few things are comforting. She sits on the dock, unmoving, for the next hour and a half.

She is his rock and the reason that he is able keep moving until he finally hears the bell ring from the house. Tapping into his last reservoir of strength, Chris throws the buckets as hard as he can against a group of boulders near the shore. He did it. This bullshit, abusive task is done, and he made it. He paces back and forth for a minute, enjoying the brief high from completion. His arms are lighter now because he doesn’t have to carry the weight of the ocean, and he turns to the girl, the incredible girl who has held him up for hours, and he raises both hands into the air, his palms held high, fingers spread.

She raises hers, too, and they reach out as though they are touching palm to palm. Her fingers fold as if they are falling between his, and Chris makes the same motion. She has become part of him, this girl, and he lowers his hands to rest over his heart. He will keep her there always.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


Because Of, In Spite Of


When I wake up, it’s cool and clear, with a bit of fog floating over the water. This is August on the coast of Maine: the opposite of Boston, where it can be so oppressively humid in late summer.