Walker
Dude, come on, you can tell me. I promise I won’t say a word.”
I try to keep my face stony, but I can feel the cracks starting to appear.
“I saw Didi come out of your room this morning,” Sanchez says, nudging me in the ribs.
If I could get away from him I would, but we’re tied together. The race is about to start—we’re lined up on the beach in a crowd of jostling people. Sanchez tells me there are about two hundred and fifty of us.
“So, you going to tell me all you did was talk and watch TV?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“You’re walking funny,” he says.
I laugh.
“Ahhh! You did get some. I knew it,” he shouts, pulling me into a headlock. “That’s my man. Finally. Jesus, took you two long enough.”
I ignore him and try to listen out for the starter whistle. When we hear it, Sanchez and I are supposed to dive in off the jetty we’re on, and then we have to swim twice around a buoy, about a mile and a half in open ocean, before we make our way to the beach. Once there, we strip out of our wet suits, climb onto our tandem bike and pedal forty clicks to the second point, where we ditch the bike and have to run twelve clicks more. I’m pumped up, primed, blood roaring in my ears, but that’s nothing to do with the race—it’s all to do with Didi.
Even thinking about her now makes me grin. She’s waiting on the beach for us with Valentina, and knowing she’s there, that she’s not going anywhere and will be waiting at the very end to see me home, is all the incentive I need to win this thing. I hate to admit it, but Doc Monroe was right. Talking it through, reliving it with Didi, did help. I saw it through her eyes, saw that what I thought was a choice, wasn’t. I did the only thing I could do. For the first time in months I woke up without feeling the boulder-weight of guilt resting on my shoulders. I felt light. Free.
“You know the Brazilian soccer coach won’t let the team have sex for a week before the race,” Sanchez says, “so I hope I haven’t destroyed our chances of winning today by leaving those condoms by the bed.”
“You haven’t,” I answer, crouching low, ready to make the dive. The waves slap the side of the wooden pontoon. I’ve had Sanchez describe everything as best he can: the height of the waves, the distance and direction of the buoy, the strength of the tide, and we’ve practiced enough in the pool that we’re fluid when we swim. Sanchez says if we don’t do well in the triathlon, he’s going to enter us in a synchronized swimming contest. So far we’ve only practiced in a pool with no current and no waves and without fifty other guys—the size of our heat—pushing and shoving around us, chopping up the water. Then there’s the cold. My blood might still be pumping furiously around my body, but the second I hit that water I know I’m going to feel it like a machine-gun round to the chest.
“Ready?” Sanchez asks, and I feel him crouch into a dive pose beside me.
I nod.
The whistle blows.
We dive.
Hitting the surface is like hitting a steel wall at full speed. The cold slams into me, bites savagely through the rubber of the wet suit, and when I break the surface I gasp for air, my lungs shrinking. And then I feel the tug on the rope attaching me to Sanchez and I kick hard and start to move my arms. Within seconds I’m powering through the waves, building a steady rhythm, letting Sanchez take the lead, trying to block out the cold and just keep moving. Someone kicks me, an arm connects with my head, but I dig harder, snatch breaths from between icy waves, until we’re finally clear of the crowd and I can tell we’re getting ahead.
But then, without warning, after about half a mile, the rope between Sanchez and me slackens. I veer to the left, thinking I’m about to plough into him, but before I can take a second stroke I’m dragged under. I kick, smack my heel into something hard, break the surface, grab a mouthful of air, but then I’m sucked under again. Head bursting, water rocketing up my nose, I fight my way back to the surface, but something keeps pulling me down.
My brain scrambles to make sense. What’s happening? Sanchez. Sanchez is pulling me down. I kick hard, harder, burst through the surface waves one more time, snatch down a lungful of air and then dive, grabbing for the rope, hauling it through my hands until my fingers snag on the belt attached to Sanchez’s waist. He’s facedown, sinking fast, pulling me down with him like a lead weight.
I try to grab him, but my hands are numb and he slips from my grasp. I lunge for him again, grab the collar of his wet suit and then kick up, kick out, let out all the air from my lungs to propel me upward toward the light.
I burst through the waves, coughing, spluttering, gasping, drawing in oxygen, kicking as hard as I can to try to stay afloat as my arms hold on to Sanchez, whose head is lolling back against my shoulder. His eyes are open. Waves slam into us, over us, into Sanchez’s open mouth.
My eyes are open. I register that I can see—that the world is a spinning kaleidoscope of color—as I simultaneously register that Sanchez isn’t breathing. I roll instinctively onto my back, slide my arm beneath his arms, and start swimming toward the shore, tugging him with me.
Another swimmer—I’m not sure who—grabs hold of Sanchez’s other side and helps me. Panic propels me faster. The shore’s still one hundred and fifty feet away and I can see it, see the people crowded there, can hear the roar of people yelling over the sound of the waves thrashing. It feels as if we’ll never make it, that it isn’t getting any nearer, but then my heel smacks a rock.
We hit the shore and I stagger to my knees. The other person, not a guy but a girl in a wet suit, helps me drag Sanchez into the shallows and I collapse down beside him. I can hear people yelling in my ear, can sense people crowding in, but I shut them out. I’m already covering Sanchez’s mouth with my own, breathing into him, for him, pumping his chest. Breathe, pump for five, breathe, pump for five, breathe.
And there’s more screaming, loud, piercing my eardrums. I block that out too. Focus. Breathe. Pump. Breathe.
Nothing. Sanchez is turning a ghostly shade of blue. Water trickles out the side of his mouth in between my breaths.
“Come on,” I yell, putting all my weight onto his chest. “Breathe!” I yell at him.
“Jesús!”
It’s Valentina. She’s clawing at him. And there’s someone trying to drag her back. How long has it been? How long were we under? How long have I been doing this? I’m vaguely aware that I’m beginning to tire, that my muscles are starting to shake, from the cold, from the swim, but I can’t give up now.
The color has drained entirely from Sanchez’s face. There’s no pulse. No heartbeat.
Someone pulls me by the shoulder, tries to haul me back, but I shove them hard and keep forcing air into Sanchez’s lungs, keep pounding on his chest, massaging his heart. He can’t be dead. I won’t let him fucking die. Not after all this.
“Walker.” It’s José’s voice. He drags me back again, this time using all his strength, and I must be weaker than I thought, more spent, because I tumble backward onto my haunches.
“Let them take over,” José tells me, wrapping his arm around my chest to stop me throwing myself forward again toward Sanchez.
I finally notice the men in green overalls who’ve bent down beside Sanchez. Paramedics. They’ve already taken over from where I left off—they’re pumping his chest, fixing an oxygen mask over his face.
I stare in horror as Valentina sobs over him, rocking back and forth. The crowd has fallen silent. The only sounds are one paramedic counting breaths and barking orders to the other, and the waves slapping the shore.
And then another couple of paramedics appear with a stretcher, and without breaking count, without letting up on the heart massage, they heft Sanchez onto the stretcher and start to carry him at a jog up the beach toward the flashing lights of an ambulance. Everyone follows, José with his arm around a wailing Valentina.
“Walker.”
I glance up. There’s a girl in front of me. Dark-haired, full-mouthed. I know her. I’d know her anywhere.
Didi collapses in front of me, her jeans soaking through in the waves.
“Walker,” she says again, her hand against my cheek.
I blink, fall forward, and she catches me.