Learning Not to Drown (31 page)

I look up these stairs, knowing I have never seen a ghost, never watched doors open and close on their own, or lights flicker on and off without a finger on the switch.

Here I am, eighteen years old, a senior in high
school, technically an adult, and I am hair-raising scared because I can't explain or understand my body's physical and emotional clues: get ready to fight or run. Something is askew.

Is it possible, I wonder, for a house to retain the memory of something bad that has happened there? Is it possible for skeletons, still locked in closets, to cause my body to react like this to these stairs?

Here on the steps it feels like broken windows, like bloody trails leading through the living room, like a metal utensil sticking out of a human limb.

It feels like, if I were to guess, something terrible might have happened to my mother on these steps, in this house. An extra chill runs along my spine as visions of my grandfather swirl around me. He's angry drunk, violent. And he is on these stairs.

Mom's family skeleton peeks out of the upstairs hall linen closet, only its skull and bony fingertips. The vision of Papa slips away.

I'll never know what happened to Mom. What makes her protect Luke, even after he did awful things. What makes her mood change like someone has hit a switch. What makes her feel the need to keep her ornaments perfect. Because Mom will never tell whatever happened to her when she was growing up that causes her to need so much control. She'll continue to weave and spin a story of a small-town girl, growing up in an innocent farmer family, complete with eggs for breakfast, collected fresh that morning, and milk still warm from the cow. She'll spin and weave, blocking the closet door
with her web, trying to keep her family skeleton tightly locked away.

But skeletons are resourceful. They don't like to be locked up. It'll peek out, rattle its bones, reminding her of its existence at any part of the day or night.

My Skeleton joins me on the stairs. He taps my shoulder, his eye sockets long and sad. Even though Mom can be a complete nightmare, neither of us wants to think of her being hurt.

Together Skeleton and I start up the steps. Slow, deliberate strides. We will not run. We walk to her family skeleton. We do not push the closet shut, do not try to lock it away.

Skeleton extends his hand to me, and for the first time I take it, feeling a strange gratitude. He is part of who I am. A result of experiences. He has given me sharper intuition, the ability to feel fear, love, hate, sadness, all at once. He has allowed me to see the truth about my family.

Gummy bears fly from Drea's hand onto my lap.

“Shut up!” she squeals. “You are not telling me the truth.”

“Oh, yes,” I say, ignoring the gummy bears. Carefully steering each S-turn. “It was amazing. As she was going out the back door, Mom's bedroom door was opening. Two seconds earlier, bam! She and Peter would have been caught.”

“Good thing he's moving out,” Drea says. “That boy is almost twenty-two years old. It's not right for him to still be living at home.”

“Speaking of moving. I got the sheet from UCLA—” I start.

“Wait. What did your mom say?” Drea interrupts.

“She gave me a speech about how the Ten Commandments command me to honor my father and mother, and therefore I must stay at home and commute to Shithole State. Then she added that I will have no support, emotional or financial, if I still choose to disobey her and go to UCLA.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat? Tell me how that is
different from the last eighteen years of your life.” A gummy bear angrily bounces off the dashboard.

“Her threat may not last. I can tell she likes it when people congratulate her on my acceptance to such a good school.”

“She should be proud. My mom is. And it hits an eight-point-five on my party scale, so I might just have to come up from Long Beach State to visit.”

“What, so you can study on Friday nights with me?” I joke.

“I guess you better come visit me. So what did UCLA send you?”

“All my dorm information. They gave me my roommate's name and e-mail so we can get to know each other first. I hope she's normal.” Even though I have driven this road many times, I flick on my brights to see the turns better in the moonless night.

“Ha. What if she's a clean freak who bleaches the room every morning and requires you to make your bed as soon as you get up?”

“Worse yet, what if she smells? What if she never takes showers?” The headlights illuminate the cliff sides to the right, the metal barricades on the left, lining the edge.

“And has a pet rat that she keeps under the bed.” Drea's laughing hard now.

“And— OH, GOD!” Drea and I gasp. We both saw him at the same time.

Covered in blood, he turns and waves his arms over his head.
Stop, stop.

“Don't stop,” Drea says. “Just keep driving.”

“You're right.” I speed up, taking the turn a little too quickly. Then I slow down to stay on the road. There was so much blood. All over his hands and legs and arms. He could be a murderer who just killed someone. Worst was the blood pouring down from the top of his head. Bright red covering the left half of his face.

He could be someone like Luke, hitchhiking alongside the road, maybe looking for a victim.

He could just be a guy who took a turn too fast and crashed his car.

“Drea, I'm turning around. We need to go back.”

“Clare, are you crazy? He could be dangerous.”

“We might be the only ones who come down this road tonight. I need to make sure he's okay. I'm just going to slow down. Tell him we're calling an ambulance.” I turn the car around, carefully.

“I'm calling right now,” Drea says as she dials on her phone. “We don't have to go back.”

We are nearing the place now. Slow down. Brace myself. I still gasp when I see him. There's so much blood.

As Drea talks to the 911 dispatcher, I pull over on the opposite side of the road. From a quarter-rolled-down window, I say, “What happened?”

“I rolled my car off the side,” he replies.

“We're getting you help. We called an ambulance.”

He is our age. Maybe older, but not too much.

“What should we do now?” I whisper to Drea as she hangs up the phone.

“Drive home,” she says.

“I mean, should we wait with him? For the ambulance to arrive?”

“Listen, crazy. I don't see a car, do you?”

“No.” It could be over the side. Or not.

“All I see is a bloody guy walking on a deserted road through the woods. This is how horror movies start. Two dumb girls who were just talking about their great futures pull over to help someone. He pulls out a knife and cuts them up into little bits, drives away in their car with their body parts locked safely in the trunk,” Drea says.

“What if he's just a teenager like us who got into a car accident? Wouldn't you want someone to wait with you? The woods are scary.”

“Yeah. The woods are scary. Especially when there is a bloody man walking around in them.”

“I need to know that he is going to be taken care of. I'll have nightmares for months if we don't. Besides, I don't want to live thinking there's a criminal inside of every person I come across.”

She's processing what I just said.

“Okay,” Drea says, “but we do it safe. We keep our distance.”

“Thanks for calling,” the guy says. “I have no idea where my cell phone flew. Man, this sucks. Do you have any cigarettes?”

We all laugh, uncomfortably. But it's still a laugh.

“No, sorry.”

“How about some tissues? I tried to clean myself up with my shirt . . .” But it was already too bloody. A strip
of gray down the center is splattered but relatively clean, considering the rest of it. Dark red sleeves. Dark red sides.

“We do have a bottle of water, if that helps,” Drea offers.

I give her the
What the hell are you doing?
look.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He walks step after step toward the car. I check the locks, put the car in drive, get ready to flee.

“I got a bloody nose. Tried to stop it. I didn't realize the turn was there. My car rolled off the side.” Closer and closer. Stop shaking, arm. Don't give away how scared you are. He is close enough now. His nose looks broken, twisted to the side, out of place. Streaks of dark red smeared when he tried to wipe his face clean.

“I think there's a big cut above my eye,” he says. Drea gives me the bottle and I stick it out the quarter-rolled-down window.

His hand takes the water bottle. He backs up as slowly as he approached. I think he knows how frightening he looks.

“Thanks for the water. And for stopping.”

Flashing red in my rearview mirror. As the ambulance parks, its lights reveal a crumpled car. This guy is not a murderer. He is not someone trying to find an easy victim to hurt. He is not someone like Luke. He is someone who got into a car wreck and needed help.

Later that night, on the trundle bed in Drea's room, I try to get comfortable, telling my brain that I don't need to see the guy covered in blood every time I close my eyes, that I don't need a nightmare.

•  •  •

I wake up, confused, surprised. Morning's pale gray illuminates the edges of the window, the light barely creeping into the room. Not one nightmare. I nestle back under the covers and fall back to sleep to the
tick
,
tick
of the grandfather clock in the living room.

The scene is almost the same as it was one year ago, bonfire crackling and reaching to the sky, peers idly ingesting their substance of choice, Drea's dark skin almost blue in the full moonlight. And Peter, next to the beer cooler with a new blonde.

“Little Sister,” he says, “you're here later than I expected for someone who doesn't have to sneak out because she has Mom's permission.”

“More like we agreed to disagree,” I say. “She let me leave but first gave me a lecture about being responsible that ended with some crap about hoping I do the right thing and stay in. Enough about that. Beverage, please.”

Drea and I hand our five-dollar bills to Peter, but he waves them away. “Happy Graduation,” he says, handing us each a beer.

I spot Ryan out of the corner of my eye, his wavy hair peeking out of the beanie I made. “I'll be back,” I say to Drea.

“I'll be over there.” She raises her can in the direction of Omar, Chase, and Skye.

“Hey,” Ryan says, his face breaking into a wide smile
as I walk up. Before I can even say hi, he adds, “So. I, um, I kind of have something for you.”

He opens his backpack and hands me a hardcover book.

Soul Escape.
Mandy's photos.

“I noticed that you kept going into the cafeteria to look at these. Mandy made a bunch of books and gave them to her friends. This was mine. I want you to have it . . . if you want it.”

“Thank you.” I practically whisper the words, opening the book, taking in one picture after another, then pausing on the one of Luke's arm.

“So, how is he?”

“Luke?” I ask.

Ryan nods.

I shrug. “Lonely, I guess. I really don't have any contact with him. It's better this way. For me. For now. It's better.” I pause, then admit, “I still miss him. I still love him. Even if I never talk to him again.” I close the book and hug it to my body.

“I get that,” Ryan says, even though he doesn't have to. I know he gets it. He gets me.

“Thanks again,” I say, then change the subject. “So . . . did you figure it out? How to beat the system and just travel and surf?”

“Maybe.” He leans against a tree. The light of the bonfire reflects, making his hazel eyes almost orange. “I'm actually going to college. I'm studying nonprofits, so maybe I can work for an organization like Surfrider Foundation. Something that works with the oceans.”

I hold my can up to his. “Congrats.”

“What school did you decide on? Still thinking of doing something with marine biology?” He leans closer to me.

“UCLA. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life, but I guess I have time to figure that one out.”

“You can probably beat the system. Do something that will get you in the water swimming every day. Speaking of . . . This summer, any chance I'll see you out on the lake?”

“I'm not going to be working there, but I'll be swimming. Most likely in the mornings.”

“Your favorite part of the day,” Ryan says, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear. “So it's a date, then?”

“It's a date.”

•  •  •

Graduation. The field lights are on, my name has been called, and I am walking across the dais.

Tomorrow is the first day of my last summer at home. It's going to be filled with my friends, secret swim lessons for Chris, and teaching the moms at Loving Hearts to knit. Then, in August—college.

After the ceremony, Drea, Omar, Lala, Chase, Skye, and I gather together, hugging and grinning, arms around necks and waists as flashes spark and cameras click. Ryan makes his way over, slipping in our group photo next to me.

“Watch out, world. . . . Here they come!” Tonight Dad has traded in his typically goofy jokes for his awkward brand of sincerity. Mom has even dropped most
of her rules, just for the occasion. My graduation is, in fact, turning out nothing like I had assumed it would be without Luke here to make sure everything is okay.

Luke. He isn't here. It's a quick, passing thought. He's not here. And that's fine with me.

“Let's get a family picture,” Mom suggests as she hands her camera to Ms. P. Skeleton squeezes between Peter and me, his bony fingers somewhat comfortable on my shoulder.