Reality Boy

Her first reaction is to hit me—right in the chest where my ribs are still bruised.

I start to walk away with the book, and she screams.

“Give me the f**king book!”

“Not until you talk to me.”

She walks over and tries to grab it from me, but I move it around my back.

“Give it here.”

“Not until you talk to me. Look. I said I’m sorry,” I say.

“You’re not sorry enough,” she says.

I stop and look at her. She’s still beautiful, but this whole thing has taken the shine off her. She’s human. Sometimes she can be a jerk. Sometimes there is no why.

I am also human. I toss the tiny book into the river like it’s a Frisbee. Shocked, we both watch it fly in some sort of slow motion.

I can’t believe I just did that. She can’t believe I just did that.

When it hits the water’s surface, neither of us says anything. We just stand there. The waterfalls are loud, but I can hear her breathing to stop herself from crying.

“Why did you do that?” she asks. Then she hits my arm really hard. I don’t mind her doing that this time. I wish she had a silver Sharpie marker and could write ASSHOLE all over my face.

“I don’t know,” I answer.

She stares at me and I look past her toward the waterfalls. I wish I was the water. I wish I was the rocks. I wish I was the gravity that makes the combination of the two so beautiful.

Nature is so lucky.

People can look at it and think nothing. No one analyzes it. No one blames it. No one underestimates it. Most people respect it. When we look at an ocean after an oil spill, we don’t smirk and say, “Well, look at the shithole you are now!” We pity it. We wish it hadn’t happened. We hope it gets better and that the fish who live there don’t die or grow babies who have two heads.

Maybe if we all saw ourselves as nature, we’d be kinder.

Hannah wipes her face with her sleeve. I sigh.

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “Let’s just go back now.”

“I don’t want to go back,” she says. “I want my f**king book.” She strips off her clothes and jumps into the river. Just like that. All I can do is stand there, my mouth open, but nothing coming out of it.

I have a bunch of completely unrelated thoughts. I wonder if she’ll drown. What does Beth look like na**d when she skinny-dips? Are there rocks under the water? Should I jump in and save her? Is that why she did this? Why did I throw her book in the river? Why am I such an ass**le? Should I stay up here and point to where it landed so she can find it? Can she find it? What if it’s fifty feet deep already? What if she drowns?

When she surfaces, she’s laughing. Or crying. Or both. I point to where the book went in and she swims downstream toward something else. She swims out of the light. I get scared that she’ll drown, so I start to take off my clothes, too.

I have no idea if I could save her, but at least if she drowns, I can, too.

And then we’ll have solved pretty much all of our problems, right?

Or I can tell Beth I skinny-dipped and maybe she’ll think I’m cool.

I jump in where Hannah did and there are no rocks. There is also no riverbed to get my footing, so I tread water for a minute and get my bearings. I can see her, about twenty feet away, heading for a series of rocks. The waterfall is about thirty feet behind us. It’s so loud, it sounds like I’m next to a helicopter.

She sees me and her mouth moves like she’s yelling something and then she swims away—toward the rocks. I think about eddies. I learned about eddies in eighth grade, sitting next to Tom What’s-His-Name, before I ate his face. Eddies live near waterfalls and can pull you under in a second.

Hannah starts to scream and I can’t see her that well. I swim to her to save her, but when I get there, all I find is her, clutching her tiny book above her head, crying and smiling—the same way she was when she first jumped in.

This is the first time I realize how cold I am.

I mean cold like the temperature, but I mean cold inside my heart, too. I can feel it beating in there for the first time in years. My whole life, it wanted to beat for real. It wanted to experience what happens after. Even if it was jail. Even if it was Nanny punching me back. Even if it was Tasha finally drowning me. Even if it’s me drowning in this river, right here, right now.

It’s like my life has been a chain of dull disappointments. One after the other. And I grew so cold I could eat What’s-His-Name’s cheek right off his face. I grew so cold because the climate in FS is downright arctic. They say angry people are hotheaded, but we’re not. We’re cold. All over.

I look around at my surroundings. How the hell do we get out of here?

Hannah floats on her back downstream a little. She finds a clearing on the shore. There is a pair of shoes there. This indicates to me that we are not in some way-out place where no one will find us if we drown. We are in a well-lit, popular bathing spot. I guarantee you a few people have broken rule #5 on this very shore.

Hannah sits there naked. Soaked. But still smiling. Even at me, which is weird considering I’m the ass**le who threw her book in the water. As I approach, I see her staring under the surface and I see a familiar look. She’s talking to the fish—even the ones she can’t see and the ones she hasn’t named.

“I’m sorry,” I yell as I pull myself onto the rock where her feet are.

She stares past me into the water.

We sit there, na**d and cold, for a few minutes before I figure out how to pull us back to the edge we jumped off. I stand up and work my way around to a place that seems like a rock ladder. It’s slippery, but it works. Hannah keeps staring into the water, so I don’t even care that my dick is the size of a peanut. I start to climb and in five steps, I am able to pull myself up. I walk over and pick up our clothes and I meet her back where I climbed out. I call her name a few times, but she can’t hear me over the waterfall.

I dry myself with my T-shirt and put on my pants. Then I sit there until she’s ready to go. It seems like a half hour, but it isn’t. She just holds the wet book and stares into the water. And then she gets up, climbs most of the way herself, and then she takes my hand and I pull her the rest of the way.

She gets dressed while she’s wet. Her mood is unclear.

When she starts to walk, I follow her.

“Come on,” she says.

“But—” I say. But what? What are you going to say?

“Come on,” she says again, and she takes my hand and walks me quickly back toward the path we traveled to get here. I don’t understand why she isn’t yelling at me. I don’t understand anything. We get in my car and I drive us back to the motel. She doesn’t say anything and just combs through her wet hair with her fingers and looks at the road ahead while quietly allowing tears to drip down her cheeks. I don’t say anything but I don’t go to Gersday, either. I am 100 percent here.