Kate - 2018

---

Wes tugs on my phone. “Don’t look.”

Good advice. But I can’t not. The camera shakes. The picture fades to white as a floodlight glares to life. And then it’s back: the concrete tower; the dark figure on the roof. Could be anyone, male or female, young or old. Could be anyone, but it isn’t.

Wes reaches for my phone again. I turn my back on him, protecting it with my body. It’s Dev up there. I have to watch. It’s the least I can do. Too little, too late, the absolute least.

He rises on the balls of his feet. Reaches for the stars. And then he steps back.

That’s right. Keep going.

Dev covers his face with his hands like he can’t bear to look.

What are you thinking?

Whatever was going through his head, it’s lost forever. Dev steps back for a running start. Raises his arms and executes a perfect swan dive. He plummets like a stone, floor after floor after floor, windows blurring as he picks up speed. The camera falls behind just before the streetlights. We’re spared the sight of the impact, but not the sound, not the screams, not the chaos. Not the cops waving the crowd back, the fire department rushing in. Not that wailing woman in the background, and who does she think she is? Did she know him? Did she care? Did she do a single fucking thing to intervene?

This time, I let Wes take my phone. He sets it face down on the end table. “You’ve got to stop torturing yourself.”

I can’t. I grab for another tissue, and Wes hands me the box.

“How many times have you watched it?”

“Too many.” Over and over, since this morning. As if the ending might change, if I cried enough, begged enough. I sniffle and wipe my eyes. “Did you...had you talked to him?”

Wes sighs. “I sent a Christmas card. I think.”

I didn’t. Haven’t in years. “You know when I last talked to him?”

“Hm?”

“Two summers ago. When his mom died. And we didn’t even talk about that.” I draw my knees up to my chest. “People had been calling all day. Wall-to-wall condolences. So we talked about home. Stupid stuff. Mr. Warburton’s algebra class. That time Carson ate a spider. Sneaking that frog into the Breakfast Spot.”

Wes frowns. “I don’t remember that.”

“Oh—that was freshman year. You were still at military school.” I smile vaguely at the memory. The frog hopping into Mrs. Aldershot’s salad. That waitress with the spray tan chasing us down Amherst. Rachel kept throwing change at her, like the size of her tip was the problem. Carson and Kyle were still trying to pretend it wasn’t us. Dev couldn’t stop laughing, and Max....

“Think you’ll go back for the funeral?”

Funeral. Dev’s funeral. The words don’t fit together at all. “I hadn’t thought about it.” But I am now: Dev laid out, cold and waxy in his best suit. Or, no. It’d be a closed casket, after...after....

It’s there every time I blink, that graceful, fatal dive, playing out behind my eyes. He never made a sound. Not that I heard, at least. Maybe he was picturing water down there. Maybe he closed his eyes and thought of Diver’s Rock, Lake George below. Children’s laughter, instead of shrieks. Summer sun on his back. They said he was in his swimming trunks.

Summer on the lake—our best memories and our worst. Surely, this couldn’t have been about—

“Kate?”

“Hm?” Oh. Right. The funeral. “Would we even make it?” It’s already been two days. Carson left a message, but I only got to it this afternoon.

Wes is still poking at my phone. “Says here it’s tomorrow.”

“So...no.” I tilt my head back. The skylight’s bright, bright, bright. My eyes water, but I refuse to look away.

“You think this was about...you know. Back then?”

I’m not going down that road. It’s too much. Too awful. “It’s been eleven years.” I close my eyes, and Dev stretches out his arms. He hangs in the air for a moment, back arched, smiling. He’s scrawny and beanpole-tall, like in high school, with that dumb frosted hair. It’s high school Dev, our Dev, who closes his eyes and plunges into darkness. Our Dev sprawled on someone’s Prius, blood trickling down the windshield. Great. Now, my mind’s filling in details that weren’t in the video.

Wes sits down next to me, and I let my head drop onto his shoulder. He strokes my hair absently, gazing out at the London skyline. “I was thinking, on the way over, how we let so much slip by. Dreams, opportunities, things that might’ve been nice.”

I hum noncommittally. Maybe that was it. Disappointment with life. But it doesn’t fit with my memory of Dev. Or with his reality. He was famous, and not in a fifteen-minutes kind of way. He was red carpet royalty. The new Brad Pitt. Guess he could’ve made it to the top and realized he’d climbed the wrong ladder, but....

“I almost kissed you last year. At New Year’s.”

That gets an actual laugh out of me. “Why?”

“Why?” For a moment, I think I’ve offended him, but then he laughs, too. “Sonia was about to break up with me. Didn’t want to start the year with a goodbye kiss. And you were by yourself. Right over there—” He gestures at the window seat. “—staring into your champagne. Smiling this little smile....”

I remember that. Not the smile—the champagne. Watching the bubbles burst and thinking about Mom. How she slipped me a glass for my nerves, the morning of my wedding. How I’ve hated the stuff ever since.

“I thought about it a few times, too,” I admit. “Kissing you, I mean.”

“Oh?”

“When you first showed up. In London, I mean. I was so drunk, and you were, hell, the first friendly face I’d seen in months. You showed up at that bar, and I was like.... It was like a slap in the face. The good kind. Snapping me out of my trance.” I elbow him lightly. “I’d never have picked myself up off the floor if it wasn’t for you. So I thought about it, but...I mean, we’re best friends, right?”

“Always.” Wes gives me a squeeze.

“And now, it’d be weird.”

“Totally.” He shifts against me. “You need me to stay over, or...?”

I do, but Sonia’s on her way with the fabrics for the fall collection. Doubt Wes feels like making nice with his ex. “I’ll be okay. Call me, though?”

“Sure thing.” He unfolds himself from the couch, stretching till his back cracks. “And if you need anything....”

I nod. If I need anything. A cosmic rewind button, maybe.

Wes lets himself out.

When I close my eyes, it’s still there: Dev’s final performance. Only this time, they’re all watching—Carson, Kyle, Rachel, Max, faces frozen in horror.

Maybe I’ll run again, even farther this time. Australia. New Zealand. Antarctica. Somewhere beyond the reach of phones and wifi and social media. Because of course this is about back then. Why else would he have dressed for summer on Lake George?