27 | Stranded

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

He found me sitting in the shadow of the locker room entrance with my arms wrapped around my knees, staring at the dark glassy water.  My hair and dress and face were still dripping.  He stood on the other side of the fence scuffing his shoe against the loose gravel on the sidewalk.  I refused to be the first to speak; I had nothing to say to him.

"Were you gonna leave without saying goodbye?" he finally asked.

"I already said goodbye."

"Nah, you told me to 'fuck off'."

"Same idea."  I dropped my head onto my knees.  Everything was starting to tilt and spin and I felt like I might vomit.

"You're not really going to go already, are you?"

My head snapped up.  "I don't feel like sticking around for more slut shaming, okay?  At least I told the truth."

"What?"

"You didn't even let me explain. Not that I should have to."

Pete climbed the fence, strode over and crouched in front of me.

"You can explain now, if you want."

"There was one guy. He wasn't my boyfriend, but I liked him. And I had the opportunity to get that whole 'first time' over with and I took it."

"To get it over with."

"Yeah."

Pete slowly shook his head. "It's like... nothing is sacred with you."

"Yeah, you're right." I hugged my knees tighter to my chest to widen the space between us and looked everywhere but at him:  at the night sky, the diving board, the cement below my feet.  "I'm the worst.  So how about you just leave me alone?"

"Listen, I'm sorry, Vanessa."

I kind of hated him, but I also wanted to kiss him, thanks to the adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream that urged me to physically act out.  I suppressed it and jumped to my feet instead. 

"Sorry for what?"  I snapped as I pushed past him.

"I'm sorry for what I said you. For how I reacted."

I gripped the pool ladder to steady myself and gazed into the water.

"Don't go yet.  Please."

"I can't. I already tried. I tried three times," I said through chattering teeth.  "It didn't work and now I'm stuck here. I can't believe it. I'm fucking stuck here."  I sobbed and Pete hesitantly reached for my hand.

"Come on," he said softly. "Let's go."

"Go where?  I just want to go home," I said as I backed away from him.  "I am so done here."

"We'll figure it out, we'll get you home." He tried to console me, but he couldn't hide the panic in his voice or the helplessness on his face.

Pete drove a silent lap around town with the windows closed and the heat blowing full blast until I finally stopped shaking. When we reached downtown, there were two black and white police cars parked on Main Street, their solitary red lights circling, flashing against the storefronts.  After passing the police cars, Pete pulled over and switched off the ignition.

"Wonder what that's all about," he mused.

At first when I noticed a section of the black river shining a bright white, I thought the rippling water surface was illuminated by the moon.  But the white section was traveling up the river, against the current.

"What's that light?" I asked.

"Coast Guard, maybe.  Damn."

"What?  What's wrong?"

He got out of the truck and I slid across the seat to follow him.

"Stay here," he instructed, but I followed him anyway.

There were a few small groups of people gathered down by the boardwalk. As we approached their silhouettes, I overheard pieces of the conversation.

"But she was such a good swimmer..."

"Are they searching the tunnels?"

"Has anyone told him yet?"            

Pete stepped in and asked, "What's going on?"

The group fell silent.

"Rose Durand," someone finally said.  "She drowned."

I stumbled backward and fell, then scrambled back to my feet and ran. I had to get away. The red circling lights, the streetlights, the searchlights all began to blur.  If I ran fast enough maybe all of it would blur and disappear.

"Vanessa!" a female voice called out.

Grandma, I thought.  Rose.  She wants to tell me that she's fine.  That this is a misunderstanding.

I slowed down and saw Liz standing in my path.

"Come with me," Liz urged as she slowly approached.  "I know she's important to you. I can explain this. I have dry clothes and a bed you can sleep in."

Pete's feet pounded the sidewalk as he came to a stop beside me.

"I'm going to go with her," I told him.

"Who?  Rose?  Please don't say that.  I'm sure-"

"No, her," I said, pointing at Liz.

He blinked a few times before he noticed her standing there.  "Oh. Do you know her?"  he asked skeptically.  I nodded.  "Where can I find you tomorrow?"

"You don't need to find me," I said, the words sticking in my throat.

He grasped my hand and pulled me closer.  Liz backed up a few steps and looked the other way.

"Rose can't be gone, right?  Because you're still here."

I pulled my hand from his.  "I did this.  Somehow. I'm sure of it."  My words came out clipped as I shook my head and started shivering again. "I never should've come.  I messed up.  Everything.  So badly."

"You couldn't have-"

"I risked so much to be here with you," I said, my voice rising uncontrollably, "and I don't even know you."

"You know me, probably better than anyone," Pete said gently.  He lifted his hand to my shoulder and I stepped out of his reach.

"Come on!  I've known you for a few days."

"Ask me anything then," he challenged, "I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

"You want to do this now? Fine. How about you tell me about Grace?"

He blinked and shook his head.  "You know about her."

"Yeah. I do."  He was ghostly pale in the streetlight, his body rigid, his hands and jaw clenched.  I regretted bringing her up.  This wasn't how I wanted to remember him.  Or us. "I'm going now."

He grabbed me by the wrist as I turned away. I clasped my hands together and jerked them upward, breaking free using a self-defense move my mom taught me.

"Stop!" I shouted.

"I think I can explain-"

"It doesn't matter anymore!  This," I gestured wildly between us, "doesn't matter!  It never should've happened and now it's done."

The hurt in his eyes quickly hardened into anger.  I watched the lump in his throat rise and fall as he thankfully swallowed whatever it was that he had to say. I raised my hand in an awkwardly casual goodbye wave, joined Liz and left him behind.

My mind reeled as Liz and I walked in silence down Main Street and crossed over the drawbridge.  The night was so quiet, I could hear the waves lapping against the breakwall.  The gentle sound pounded menacingly in my ears.

Those waves took her, I thought.  She's somewhere in that water.  I shivered and rubbed my arms to warm up, but it didn't help.  I was trembling like my dog during a thunderstorm.  I'm never going to see my dog again.  

I couldn't extend that thought to my family and my friends.  Not yet.  We passed through a cloud of steam near the salt plant that had drifted down to the ground and then turned onto the first street past the boat harbor. Once the gradually sloping hill we'd been climbing leveled out, Liz stopped.

"I have a room in a boarding house," she said.  "We'll have to be quiet going in."

She pushed open the gate and led me toward the huge house that loomed ahead.  With its wrap around porch and steeply pitched roof, it resembled the Victorian homes on the north side of town, but it was simpler.  It was painted a dark color, blue or green, with white accents, like the straight brackets tucked in the gables instead of the intricate spindlework on the other houses.  There was an actual tower that rose above the second floor, with a window on each of its four walls.  I could see the room inside the tower dimly lit by a lamp with an emerald green shade.

"It's not haunted," Liz said, reading my mind.  Can she read my mind, too?  "I don't think."

Inside we tip-toed up the stairs and down a hallway with a creaking wood floor. Liz stepped into a room and pulled the string of a table lamp to illuminate a bedroom with two twin beds and floral wallpaper.

"I don't have a roommate right now," she explained, as she shoved her purse into a dresser drawer.  "I'll find you something to wear."

Once I changed into a nightgown, I silently crawled into the extra bed, pulled the sheet over my head and closed my eyes tight, hoping I would fall asleep and wake up where- and when- I belonged, or at least sleep for a few hours to bring the worst night of my life to an end. I tried to take deeper breaths to calm my shallow, panicked breathing.  But just like when I repeatedly swam underwater in the pool earlier that night trying to escape, nothing happened.

"Let me know when you're ready to talk," Liz said.

I curled into a fetal position, squeezing my knees tightly to my chest.  Then I considered that if I fell asleep, I might never wake up.  If my grandma never lived to marry my grandpa, then my dad's side of the family ended here and I'd never exist.  I pushed myself up and leaned against the iron bed frame.  Liz was sitting cross-legged on her bed, hugging a pillow and watching me intently.

"Is Rose dead?" I asked.

"Maybe.  But for now she's missing."

"Until they find her..."  I tried to shake the image from my mind.  "I tried going back home, but it didn't work."

"As long as she's missing, you probably won't be able to go back."

"Because I don't have a life to go back to."  I squeezed my eyes shut. "Every time I close my eyes, I see this car on the side of the road."

"You saw it on the way back from the drive-In?  After a curve in the road?"

"Yeah, how'd you-"

"That was Walter's car.  Well, it's the family car, so actually it's your great-grandparent's."

"What happened to him?  Is he gone, too?"

"He's fine.  He had some car trouble on his way into town.  So, in a different version of tonight, Pete drove his grandma home after dinner."

I groaned and covered my ears.

"After he dropped her off, Pete stopped to help Walter, who was on his way to meet up with Rose when his car broke down. Walt was pretty anxious about picking Rose up on time, so Pete gave him his keys and they traded cars." Liz paused to take a deep breath and continued,  "Pete was working on the engine when a truck came around the curve too fast and didn't see...anyway, he died. I'm sorry."

I vigorously shook my head.  I didn't want to care about what happened to Pete.  Or what would have happened to Pete if I hadn't been with him.  But that didn't stop more tears from falling.

"Tonight, without Pete's help, Walter walked back home.  Rose thought she was being stood up, so she went to blow off some steam with-"

"A swim in the river," I finished.  "She said it cleared her head.  So I accidentally saved Pete, but I killed my grandma."

"You haven't killed anyone."

"Well, where is she, then?" I snapped.

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?  You seem to know a lot. You know what happened in a different version of tonight.  You've known all along who I am, who my grandparents are, and that I don't belong here.  How did you know all of that?"

"I saw you watching Rose and Walter before I made you fall that day.  The look on your face kinda gave it away.  Plus you have her nose and his chin." I touched my nose as she went on, "I remember that feeling, the first time I traveled back and saw my mom as a kid.  She was playing with a doll on her front porch and I stared at her like a total weirdo until her dog started barking at me."  Liz's blue eyes flickered to mine and down again.  "She told me about you.  She said Pete had an invisible friend- kind of like how I was her invisible friend- that he was talking to at the table one morning."

"Wait, you're Betsy?  You're June's imaginary friend?  And she's your mom?"  She nodded.  "But she shouldn't be able to see you, unless...oh, is your mom-"

"No, you're right, June shouldn't be able to see me, but I try hard to make her know I'm there.  I think she can see me sometimes.  I know she can hear me.  You know how I told you these things can be difficult to get past, but not impossible?  And she's a kid, so she doesn't seem to think it's weird at all that I show up and hang out with her when nobody else is paying attention."    

"Wait, wait, wait.  So, Pete's your uncle?"

"Yeah. The uncle I never knew because he died the day before he turned twenty."

I clutched my churning stomach.

"Is there a bathroom?"

Liz led me down the hall to the bathroom, where I collapsed in front of the toilet and dry heaved.  I caught my reflection in the mirror when I finally stood to leave and curiously stopped to look closer.  Either my appearance had changed somehow, or I had forgotten what I looked like.  If things were different, I might have laughed at the absurdity of being surprised and slightly fascinated by my own face in the mirror, the way I did one afternoon the previous summer that felt like an achingly long time ago.

"What do I do now?" I asked Liz.  I mirrored her, hugging my pillow, sitting cross-legged on the bed.  "Just wait? Or do I try to find her?"

She pulled open the drawer in the nightstand between our beds, and handed me a spiral-bound notebook and a pen.

"First you write down everything.  Your name, your birthdate, the names and birthdates of your family members, where you were born, where you've lived, where you went to school, your friends' names.  Write down all the facts first.  Then write down anything else that might be important to you, things you wouldn't want to forget.  Write down the dates you've been here, in this year."

"Why?"

"Because what you remember can change, or start to slip away," she said sadly. "In case Rose is missing for a long time, or in case she is gone for good.  It's good to have as a reference, and to read and know that at one time you had people and a place."

Her eyes were watery, and I knew there were more questions I needed to ask her.  But she crawled under her bedspread and turned toward the wall.  Not tonight.


You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net