Page 61 of Fragments of the Lost
But there’s one piece that doesn’t fit. That makes the whole puzzle fall apart: he didn’t come back.
Max must be thinking the same thing. He’s staring off down the meandering river, the current a deceptive calm, a still blue. “I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know why he took that money. I didn’t understand what was happening.”
“Because he didn’t tell us,” I say.
I stand beside him, on the safety of the road, and he pivots his head. “What kind of best friend was I, then? That he wouldn’t tell me? That I wouldn’t notice?”
I know what he’s thinking, because I’m thinking it, too. We had been preoccupied. We thought we were getting away with something. We thought we were the ones with the secret. And we tiptoed around him, grateful when the conversation slid to anything mundane.
We did not want to hear,I need to talk to you about something.
We did not say,What’s the matter, Caleb?Because we were scared what that might force into the light instead.
“Remember the day you jumped?” Max asks, looking straight down, where his feet dangle against the concrete below the guardrail. I want to reach out and grab his shirt, keep him from falling.
“I didn’t jump,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t have jumped on my own.”
He shakes his head. “We thought we were invincible. That nothing could really touch us.” He looks at me. “I lied to you. You could’ve drowned. Or hit your head. Or broken your leg.”
And it’s then I know what I must do. It feels inevitable. I cannot stop the momentum. I take off my sneakers, placing my socks inside. I strip off my sweater, but leave the rest. I’m standing in the November chill in a tank top typically worn underneath a sweater, and the black pants of my school outfit. I start to shake; I have to move.
I stand on the edge, just out of Max’s reach. “Jessa,” he warns, and then I leap. The cold air beats against my face, and it feels like it might carry me for a moment—and then I fall, and fall fast, the relentless pull of gravity drawing me toward the harsh and bitter shock of water.
I hear Max hit the river a moment after me, the sound echoing under the water, and when I break the surface, he’s calling my name in the shadows of the trees.
“I’m right here,” I say, after I manage a breath. The cold was shocking, and it stole my breath, seized my lungs. I tread water in the middle of the river, slowly making my way closer to shore. But Max swims arm over arm, his face focused in concentration.
He’s angry when he reaches me, when his arms snake around me, so he’s sure he has me.
Max is struggling to swim, weighed down by his jeans and his thick sweatshirt. “You were supposed to take off your sweatshirt first. You’re going to be freezing,” I say. And suddenly I’m the one helping hold him up instead.
He’s coughing. I can’t tell whether he’s laughing when we make it to shore. I pull myself out, and Max stands beside me. My body is covered in goosebumps. I’m shaking anyway.
He steps away, looks me over quickly. “He would hate me right now.”
“He would be too cold to hate you,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself, fighting for some extra heat.
“Fine, then your brother would hate me.” His teeth chatter as he speaks, the whole effect vaguely unsettling, like the words don’t quite count right now. “Remember the party your parents had for the baseball team at the end of the year when I was a freshman? Before you were at school with us?”
But I don’t, not really. Not until he starts telling me the story, and I see the memory playing out, through his eyes. “You were in the kitchen and you poured me a soda and I don’t even remember what we were talking about,” he says, “but I guess I was laughing, because when you left the room your brother stood like three inches from me and just said,No.” He smiles now, thinking about it. “Just that. No. I’ll be honest, it was pretty effective. I was terrified of your brother.”
I reach for his hand, cold and clammy at his side. And when he doesn’t object, I rest my forehead on his shoulder, breathing him in. But all I get is river.
His body is close, shivering, he’s wound tight. I feel his heartbeat against my ribs, but he’s looking beyond me. His other hand rests against the back of my head, and I feel hisfingers move gently through my hair.
I press my lips to the side of his jawbone, and he softens. He lowers his head. “Jessa, I’m not him,” he says.
I run my hand up the side of his face, feel the contours that make MaxMax.
He’s not, it’s true.He’sthe one who got me to jump. The one who drove me home after the breakup. The one who picked me up when Caleb went missing. The one who came back for me when I was lost in the crowd.
“I know,” I say.
I hold my breath. I wait. The trees are hiding us, and the cold is inside us, and I was a girl who just jumped on her own. For a moment, we are not ourselves. Separate from all the events leading up to this, and the ones that will soon come after. The words we say here don’t count. The things we do, only half-real.
Only maybe they’re not. Because as he finally lowers his lips to my own, I think I have never felt something so real.
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