Leave!I dig my fingernails into my palm, the sharp pain distracting me from the agony of not being able to speak.
“Are you planning on getting into a fight with me?” he asks, pointing at my fist. “I bet you have a hard left.” He imitates a punch and winks at me.
Why is he being so nice to me? This confuses me even more. People are never nice to me, except Mrs. Elliott or old Mr. Tabor from our street. And even when they’re nice, they’re usually up to something. I look away and stare at the long metal struts jutting horizontally out of the bridge.
“Okay, you don’t want to tell me anything about yourself. Doesn’t matter. If you don’t want to talk, I don’t mind doing it for you.”
All I truly want is for him to leave now. Funny, he hasn’t said anything about my wet clothes yet. My jeans feel like I peed my pants. I clumsily move closer to the edge and sit cross-legged, happy I’m no longer standing. Instantly, this close to death, the pull grows even stronger, like a force I can’t resist for long once it takes hold.
“What I was going to say earlier,” River starts again as if we’ve known each other forever, “is I wouldn’t jump here. That’s no fun.” He takes a sip from the cup and holds it out to me again.
I shake my head defensively. Why does he care about me? There’s no logical reason for it unless he’s planning somethingevil. And I doubt there’s such a thing asbeing in a good moodduring a death jump. Above all, what does he know about it?
He leans forward a little, as if double-checking the distance down. “I’m jumping off a highline in Yosemite at the end of the summer… well, most likely.”
For a few seconds, his words seem to hover over the abyss, falling syllable by syllable without me fully grasping their meaning. I give him a sideways glance.
He’s bluffing, for sure, but when he looks at me, he merely shrugs. “Yosemite has cool rock formations. The Lost Arrow Spire goes down almost a mile. That would be a leap! Eternal free fall. As if you could f-l-y.” He spells out the last word for whatever reason.
Maybe he’s a patient who escaped lockup after all. Why else would someone like him have a death wish? He’s good-looking, a total ten, as Arizona would say. He’s easy-going, the kind of guy girls seemingly chase after.
He looks at me again and blows a strand of hair from his forehead. “We all have our reasons, Girl-Without-A-Name.”
Either he interpreted the expression on my face correctly, or he simply wanted to explain himself.
“By the way, the Golden Gate Bridge holds the record: two thousand one hundred jumpers since 1937. One every ten days. Some people tie waterproof farewell letters to their legs. Heartache, unemployment, loneliness, terminal illness, grief, or depression are the main reasons. Someone once even mentioned a toothache.” He chuckles briefly and looks at me for a moment, as if trying to find out why I want to jump.
You didn’t list humiliation and torment, McFarley, and you certainly won’t hear it from me.
He raises his eyebrows as if I’d said something. “A jump from the Golden Gate takes four seconds. Guess it would be less here. Four seconds is about two hundred and twenty feet of free fall. Ifyou jump off the Golden Gate, you’ll shatter on the surface of the water since it’s like concrete. Then the crabs and sharks will eat your remains… if you’re not rescued.”
I swallow.
“Should I continue?”
I don’t want to hear it, yet I nod anyway. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t said anything about my silence or wet clothes yet. Maybe it’s because he’s a bit crazy, too. He has to be if he wants to jump. Most likely, as he put it. Plus, it distracts me from myself when he talks, and he’s still paying attention to me.
“So far, only twenty-six people have survived the jump. One had an epiphany during the incident. He said he realized in those four seconds that everything in his life he thought was unfixable was entirely fixable. Except for the jump.” His eyes are all but hidden behind the blond strands, but the intensity of his gaze burns me as if he were looking through my eyes into the girls’ bathroom at Kensington High. As if he saw all the many humiliations of the past.
“You should think about it again over the summer, Girl-Without-A-Name. Maybe there’s something you can fix.”
He sounds honest and overly confident. Unfortunately, I can’t fix myself— three psychologists have tried and failed.
I look away because I can’t hold his gaze. I think it’s been months, maybe even years, since anyone has looked at me and paid attention to me for this long. For a moment, I stop digging my nails into my palm like a crazy person, happy that he’s here.
Wait, you’re happy he’s here? Has your mind already jumped off the bridge?
Would I have honestly jumped earlier if he hadn’t said,Hey, you!?
He looks at me seriously. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? But before you jump off this decaying bridge and scare a pigeon to death, think about coming with me. We’ll have a greatsummer together, and in September, we can jump off the Lost Arrow Spire together.It’s easier to die together.” He empties the paper cup in one gulp and tosses it into the depths. “Bye-bye, Mr. Daniel.” I watch as it’s carried away by the wind, not understanding what’s happening, what I’m doing here, or why my body has lost some of its usual rigidity. “The last sentence is not mine, but Leo Tolstoy’s, Diary, 1901.” River rubs his nose as if he’s embarrassed that he didn’t think of something that good himself.
Tolstoy again. My face contorts.
River grins. “Oh, a smile, Miss Nameless. Then, our deal stands?”
I shake my head. I can’t go with him. A few minutes ago, I wanted him to disappear, but then he was still a stranger. Not anymore. Not now that he told me he wanted to jump, too. Well, most likely. Something like this connects two people somehow. Just like me and Mr. Spock were united by our speechlessness and went from two strangers to kindred spirits. Still, I can’t just run away.
But why not?
