Deeper (19 page)

“Just, let me get through this.”

“Okay.”

“We were friends since we were kids. I loved that girl, I loved her more than my own life. I would have died for her.”

“I know,” I say, because I can hear it in his voice. The guilt of someone who would rather have died than let someone else die.

“But I didn’t even get that option. One night, we fought. She went to a party. I went there, she yelled at me, I left. I shouldn’t have left. She said I was stalking her. But it wasn’t a good party.”

“Oh no.”

“She was raped that night. I picked her up outside the house. Everyone was gone, she was there in the lawn, in the dark. Bleeding. Looking at me. Not even crying. I can hear her voice right now. So broken.”

“I’m sorry, Knight.” It’s so cold inside me right now, I hurt so badly for him. I can’t believe how much I must have hurt him by putting myself in the same danger with the pedophile. He must have thought it was all happening again. It would be like him purposely breaking rules on the slides even though I begged him not to because it was how I got effed up.

“Still, I thought I could make it up to her. I didn’t think that much had changed. I thought we’d make it.” His voice goes hoarse, then cracks, and I can hear him popping his knuckles against his own forehead. “We didn’t make it, Rain. We didn’t make it.”

“So she killed herself?” I ask, remembering the story Amy told me. It’s a hard way of saying it, but it’s a hard fact to face.

He nods, taking a long gasping breath. “She died. My fault.”

I want to tell him it’s not his fault, but I have to think it over for a minute. In the silence, I hear a choked noise from deep in his chest. Like he can’t breathe. But I can’t go to him yet. I need to think. “Knight, give me a sec.”

“I just, when I met you, I wanted to try again. It’s been so long. I wanted to try. I wanted to try. But you’re just so independent. I didn’t know when to be there for you, and when to let go. When you let that man take you, when you put yourself willingly in front of a sex offender…”

“It’s like I was throwing everything away,” I say, too ashamed to face him.

He nods and rubs his forehead. It seems to help him recover his masculine coldness and wipe some of the pain away. Back to Knight again. He laughs. “But you weren’t. You just can’t help watching out for other people. I’m realizing that’s one of the things I like about you.”

I nod, but don’t turn to him. I can’t face him. While trying to protect everyone, I hurt the man that I was closest to in the deepest, most painful way possible. No wonder he dumped me. I feel like crap.

“So how about you watch out for everyone else, and I’ll watch out for you?” He’s up on his elbow again, closer now, looking down at me.

“Are you sure you can do that? It’s painful, isn’t it?”

“Most worthwhile things are painful babe. Most things worth doing have the potential to hurt like hell. We just have to dig in and hope for the best. I wouldn’t have traded a minute with Camille for any less pain. And I’m not going to abandon you just because sometimes you make things hard on me.”

“Knight…” I trail off because I’m still not sure what to say.

He comes closer, puts a hand on each side of my head. His eyes are blazing above me, and he looks lighter somehow, like he’s let some baggage go. Maybe he has.

“So are we good princess?”

I put a hand up on his arm, pull myself against it. “Yeah, we’re good. And stop calling me that.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.” He pulls me close, and being on his warm, big chest feels great. I can’t believe he’s having to comfort me after telling me what he’s just told me. Maybe he’s stronger than me after all.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” I say, because I feel like I need to defend myself when I’m experiencing so much undeserved happiness.

“I know,” he says, putting a hand in my hair. “I didn’t either.”

“Yeah but you didn’t. I did. Last summer.”

He pauses, his hand frozen against my face. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Someday then.”

“Yeah.” Maybe the day we kiss underwater.

“Rain, is that why you hate letting anyone get hurt?”

“No. Maybe. Don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know.” But I do. Damn it.

Didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

I didn’t.

I close my eyes and remember.

“He’s dead,” Kristy says next to me, clutching my arm.

Yeah, it looks that way.

I stare down at William, as Kristy lets go of my arm and slumps on the ground, holding her still bleeding nose.

The EMTs are still working, still doing what they can against all odds. Despite how things looked, I had hope. Even as the EMTs ran over, and Brandon, our sup, bent over him, trying to figure out how to do CPR on someone so broken.

It’s my fault. I let go. So why am I the only one who wasn’t hurt?

The moment where my hand lost his tube, his disappointed face telling me it’s okay, insincerely I think, as his tube leaves mine, keeps flashing through my head. But I’m numb. I’m just so numb. It happened some time between the point where he was purple to the point where he was yellow. Now he’s green.

I didn’t think it was possible for people to turn green. That can’t be the face that moments ago asked me out.

For a moment, we belonged to each other.

The other guards gather round, leaning on his tube, watching, calling his name in no particular direction. Their grief seems to carry on the morning wind around me, but I don’t feel it with them.

It’s hard to comprehend. Sixteen. A future in swimming. Maybe Olympics. Invincible like the rest of us. Dead at yellow. Yellow is when people start to say “dead”.

The other girls are crying. Even Brandon is. I don’t know why tears don’t come for me. Maybe they will. Maybe later. I just wish there was something I could do for him. I can’t even tell if he’s in pain, because his face is so frozen.

His mouth is stretched open in a grotesque parody of the smile he made when I said I’d go out with him. He must have been happy right up until he hit the ground. I wonder if he felt terror.

A pulse of pain penetrates the shell around my heart, like someone is using a defibrillator on me. Then quiet again. The sobbing comes back into focus.

It’s a sunny day, beautifully bright, and the trees are rustling merrily around us as cars start to pull into the lot in the distance. No one is aware someone has died here.

The EMT sobs as he works on William. He was William’s friend. Not a single person here wasn’t. We’re a tight crew, and all of us have memories of switching posts with him, or training with him. I have a few more than most. He wanted me so much.

Still, even though I should be the most devastated, everyone seems more distraught than me. It’s like I’m watching a video game and wondering what my next move is. Why aren’t I crying like everyone else? It’s so wrong, so wrong that I’m not crying for him. The same calmness that has made me a good lifeguard is making me hate myself right now. It feels disrespectful to William, that I can’t feel anything for him.

The day is sort of frozen for me. Everyone is moving around me, but my mind is trying to deny any of it is happening. They aren’t gingerly loading William onto a stretcher. His face doesn’t grin at me one last time. His chest doesn’t make an awful creaking noise as they nearly drop him while lowering him onto the stretcher.

Ten minutes later he’s gone. Nothing is left but the crying guards and a small pool of blood, clean and dark against the white cement. Reflecting the sun.

It beats down on us as morning turns to afternoon. The supervisor for rec swim is here.

“Are any of you working today?”

They look up in shock, as if they can’t believe she’s even asking such a thing. Except for me. I meet her eyes warily, weighing my response.

“No,” Brandon says harshly. “None of them are. They’re just in for training. You know that’d be too long a day. Even if this hadn’t happened.”

She meets his eyes and nods, but her jaw is tight with stress. The water park still has to run, even when tragedy hits. Otherwise one tragedy will turn into another.

“But, William wasn’t supposed to train today,” she says, her hands clutching her clipboard. “He traded with someone. He was scheduled. I can’t get anyone in last minute. Pete’s determined to open. People won’t be safe.”

“No Cynthia, there’s no way. Get anyone else.”

“They won’t be here in time.”

“I’ll work it.” My voice croaks up somehow from my rigid chest. It’s my fault he came in today. He must have wanted to be in training with me. It’s a small step towards making up for what I’ve done, but it’s all I can think of right now.

“Rain, are you sure?”

“Someone has to work it. Give me a minute to call my mom and tell her not to pick me up.”

I walk away from them to the front office, feeling like a robot, not sure what’s moving my body so efficiently when everyone else is still collapsed on the ground. When I get there I ask calmly to use the phone. My mom picks up.

“Rain?”

“Yeah. I’m working today. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Extra shifts are always good. Are you okay?”

My voice starts to break, which is odd, because I’m fine. I’m not sad. I feel nothing. Nothing. “Yeah. No mom, there was an accident.” My voice cuts off. I can’t say any more because just acknowledging it with those few words allows grief to hit in a monstrous wave. It’s everywhere, like water, deep and dark and fast moving in a suffocating way, and I can’t breathe. “Bye mom.” I drop the phone and run to the bathroom where no one can see me lose it.

If they do, they won’t let me work.

People won’t be safe.

The thought forces a shriek out, but I cut it off with the back of my hand against my mouth, pressing hard. I sob into my hand. Tears fall all around me, but seem inconsequential to the wave that’s still crushing me within it. Suddenly William’s a person again to me, not that grotesque thing on the ground. I’m thinking about his family, about the future he had, seeing his face in my mind, seeing his hand reaching out to me. Letting him go. If only I could have held on a little longer. I’d give anything to go back. Anything if I could wake up and this could be a dream.

Someone is dead, and it’s my fault. I’m only eighteen, but that doesn’t make him any less dead.

The wave starts to recede, replaced by numbness again. For some reason the tears don’t stop falling. It’s like they’re malfunctioning, and linked to the endless William slide show that won’t stop playing in my head rather than to my feelings.

I pull out my waterproof wallet and look inside. Good, there’s enough for a pair of sunglasses at the gift shop. Then the patrons won’t see me crying. I can still do this.

It’s one step towards atonement. But one shift isn’t enough. One shift pays back a shift, not a lifetime. William’s lifetime is over now. I’m not capable of comprehending it, and still it’s breaking me.

The guilt is awful. I’d do anything to switch places with him. I’d give anything to be the one who’s dead. But I can’t go back, there’s nothing I can do now to relieve this terrible guilt.

I sink to my knees on the dirty bathroom floor, my hands over my face.

All he wanted was me. All of those times he tried to ask me out, all of those times I brushed him off. He wouldn’t have been at this training if it weren’t for me. And then when he came, I murdered him. I don’t feel like a murderer, but that’s what I am. Seventeen year olds aren’t supposed to die. Not like this. There’s no way to make sense of it except that it’s my fault.

So many things I could have done differently. I could have turned him down, so that someone else was on the chain next to him. I could have shut him down sooner so he wasn’t there.

My boyfriend is dead. What do I do now?

If I move on, if I go on to care for someone else, to eventually give everything to them, doesn’t that just prove I’m a murderer? Because if William was alive, I wouldn’t be able to love them, able to be with them. It’s like I’ve killed him so I could be with someone else.

I could have grown to love him, given the chance. Maybe it just would have been a fling, or sex, but I could have cared. I can’t have sex without caring for someone. I’ve already decided my first time has to be with someone I love.

Now there isn’t going to be anyone. No one to love, no one to be with like that. It’s oddly calming. It lifts the guilt slightly.

I can’t bring William back. I can’t go back to that moment. But I can let the part of me that I gave to him die with him, so that we both lose. That’s the price I’ll have to pay to not carry the guilt with me every moment of every day. The price of getting up in the morning and setting my feet on the ground. The price of function.

I go to the gift store and pick up some sunglasses. I take them to the bathroom and test how visible I am underneath them. They’re perfect. I start the long walk to the slide tower where the main slides are. It’s where William’s shift starts the day, according to the schedule posted in the guard room. I’ll just be William for the day. But who will be William after today? Remember, no love, no sex. No betrayal.

I climb the long wooden ramps, back and forth. The sun is still beating down, warming the wood and the top of my head as I reach the second level.

I pull on the sunglasses and look over at the Sidewinder in the distance. There’s a full line stretching all the way down the ramp. They aren’t even going to shut it down today. Why should everyone here at the park have to pay for my mistake? Only I should. And I will, by denying myself maybe the two most wonderful things in the world. I’ll still have more than William does. It isn’t fair, and another tear slides past my glasses.

The slide I’m covering for my first shift is the color of Pepto-Bismol and turns in two boring circles before hitting the slide pool. Kids file into a line behind my station, almost like they are part of a stop motion film and just appear one by one out of nowhere. Like time is altered.

One tries to rush past me, instead of sitting in the slide waiting for my signal. He tries to dive down headfirst, thinking I’m not paying attention.