CHAPTER FOUR
An hour before dusk, I enter Seaside
Cemetery, right on time—thirty minutes before dusk, just like
always. The cemetery is on a rolling hilltop ten minutes south of
Cedar Cove, not far from the bluffs. The sweeping, beautiful
million-dollar views of the Pacific stretch out below me.
I walk down the winding concrete pathways, past the
big, soonto-be bare weeping willow, and to the fourth grave after
the tree. Steven’s. Once there, I drop to my knees next to the
stone, between the body of Steven Goode and his neighbor’s, a guy
named Mathew Pearson. A guy who’d been blessed with sixty-two years
on this earth, more than three times as many as Steven had.
I turn around and lie back on the grass, staring
toward the cloudless September sky. As the pinks and oranges of
sunset begin to seep into the sky, I can’t help but think about
what dusk means. If Steven were lying on top of the grass, instead
of six feet under, he’d be right next to me. We could spend the
next half-hour touching shoulders, intertwining our fingers. The
chill of the grass would disappear under the warmth of his
smile.
Instead, he’s cold and dead, buried beneath the
ground in a beautiful mahogany coffin that cost his mother eight
thousand dollars.
“Hey, Steven,” I say. I dig into my pocket and
produce a tiny Hot Wheels Chevelle. It’s electric blue, like his
was. “I found this at a toy store the other day.” I hold it up to
the sky, as if he’ll be able to see it from wherever it is his soul
resides.
“I know it’s not the same thing. I mean, you can’t
drive it or anything. But it made me think of you, so . . .” I
bought one for you and kept one for me.
My voice trails off, and I drop my arm back to my
side. “The guy who bought your car lives in town, you know. I see
him sometimes. He’s, like, fifty. I bet he has no idea how hard you
worked to restore it. Stinks that you can’t be the one to enjoy
it.”
My voice cracks and catches in my throat. This is
the only time of day I let my guard down. I’m not sure why I come
up here every day, as if I’ll find the answers, as if he’ll tell me
he doesn’t blame me for what happened. But somehow talking to him
takes a tiny piece of the guilt away. It’s just a little ice chip
of a huge iceberg, but it’s something.
I swallow as the first tear brims and rolls across
my temple. As my vision swims with tears, it makes the darkening
sky look like the ocean, like rippling, shimmering water.
And suddenly, I’m there again, standing on the dark
beach with Steven.
I giggle when he slips his arms around my waist,
nervous. We’ve been dancing around this for weeks. I’ve been too
afraid to ask him what he was waiting for. Too afraid I was
wrong.
But tonight everything is different. Tonight we
stopped dancing.
I watch the water roll in to shore, Steven
behind me, his lips brushing across the crook of my neck. There’s
something in the air tonight, something electric that seems to be
setting me on fire. It’s a humid latesummer night, the dark clouds
threatening rain that never seems to come. All they do is blot out
the moon and the stars and make it hard to see more than a dozen
yards ahead.
The air tastes like salt, like summer, like
everything I love, and the urge to get in and swim is
overwhelming.
I twist around in his arms, until I’m facing
him. He leans down, and the kiss is long, lingering. I can’t
believe we’re really here, really doing this. It’s like something
from a dream. I find myself backing up without breaking the kiss,
until I feel the sea lapping at my feet. Steven pulls away for a
second, surprised by the feel of it, but I yank him back down to
me, wanting more.
More, more, more. That’s all I can think. The
need is overwhelming. “Let’s go swimming,” I whisper between
kisses. I don’t know why I want to swim, but I do. Desperately. And
before he can react, I’m pulling his T-shirt over his head and
throwing it onto the beach.
Steven blinks. Maybe I’m moving too fast after
waiting so long. But he wants it, too—I can see that. He watches as
I toss my shirt with his. And when I pull my pants off, he does the
same. And then we’re standing there, in our underwear. I grab his
hand and lead him further into the water.
I’m nervous, but I don’t care, and I can’t seem
to stop myself from dragging him deeper.
I’m always so cautious, so carefully controlled.
But tonight I’m reckless, taking what I want without regard for the
consequences.
An overwhelming sense of desire spirals inside
me as our feet leave the sandy bottom. He goes to kiss me, but a
wave splashes into us. We throw back our heads and laugh.
I’m giddy and euphoric, so exquisitely happy
it’s uncontainable.
I laugh again and flip onto my back to float and
paddle out further. Steven’s saying something, but the water
filling my ears makes it impossible to decipher. I laugh again, and
it comes out strange, melodic. It bubbles out and changes, fills
the night air with a hauntingly beautiful song.
It can’t be me, singing it, but it is. The notes
ring out, stronger and stronger as I pick up an urgent paddle. I
don’t know why I’m doing this; I only know it feels right.
As if I’ve waited my entire life to sing this song.
Soon, I stop thinking altogether, my arms
paddling steadily, until I’m propelled faster and faster, gliding
along more rapidly than any other creature in the water. Vaguely, I
know Steven is out here with me, but I can’t seem to think clearly.
The song grows, intensifying, louder, vibrating in my
chest.
But abruptly, as I reach for another stroke, the
melody dies in my throat. Silence rings out.
Suddenly, the urge to sing is gone. My head
clears, the fog lifting all at once.
What am I doing? Where did Steven go?
I swim upright, treading water, trying to make
out the beach in the distance. Did he get out? Swim to shore?
I peer into the darkness, but it’s impossible to see beyond
twenty feet. The swells rise around me, and I bob along the
surface, waiting.
The desire to swim has vanished. The memory, now
faint, of my laughter twisting into a strangely wordless song
rattles me. I want to get out, and I can’t seem to remember why it
seemed so important to swim in the first place. It’s nearly
midnight, and a storm is sure to roll in soon.
I flip onto my back and kick my way to the
shore. I knock into something with my head, so hard it seems to
echo inside my skull. Quickly, I right myself, get my feet
underneath me.
The inky darkness makes it impossible to see
what is floating in front of me. I reach out, the water rippling
with my movements. At first, I’m not sure what I feel beneath my
fingers. But then, I know.
Hair.
Skin.
I jerk back, so fast I bob under and inhale a
mouthful of water. I have to kick hard to keep my mouth above water
as I cough and gasp.
I reach out again, my heart thundering in my
chest, my hand trembling as I pull the body around, squinting into
the darkness.
It’s . . .
Steven.
A scream rips free of my throat and, for a
moment, I’m frozen. My legs no longer kick. I slowly sink. But then
I cough up more seawater, and it occurs to me to tread. I watch his
body bob along the surface, the waves swelling around us.
My mind clears and spurs me into motion. I hook
an arm around his chin and kick hard, propelling myself toward the
shoreline. I glide through the water faster than any human could
possibly swim, faster than I ever knew I could. It seems to be just
seconds before I am hauling him up onto the sand.
But he hasn’t moved, hasn’t struggled in my
arms.
No. No, no, no, no.
I lean over and try to breathe life into him. I
plug his nose and give him everything I have. I press on his chest,
trying to force his heart to beat. He can’t be that far gone.
He can’t be. It seemed like only seconds we were
apart.
I desperately pound on his chest, try to force
the air into his lungs, but it doesn’t work. Tears clog my
throat.
“Steven!” I scream at him, pound at his chest,
sobbing.
His eyes are blank, glassy. Haunting.
I lean over and cry. For everything he was. For
everything we’ll never be.
A truck rumbles by on the street above us, so
loud I jump back. It brings reality screeching with it.
Help. Someone can help.
I scramble up the sandy bank, reed grass slicing
into my bare feet, until I’m standing under a streetlamp. The night
air is no longer warm on my bare, wet skin. The rain that has
threatened for days sprinkles down as I step foot onto the
pavement.
Headlights swing toward me as a car comes from
around the bend. I stumble into the middle of street, waving my
hands above my head. The lights beam right onto me, blinding me,
until I have to shield my eyes. I must look crazed, soaking wet and
half naked.
And then a spotlight joins it and the lights
flash red and blue.
It’s a cop.
I play it over and over in my mind, every day of my
life, but every time it ends the same. I’m wrapped up in a blanket
in the backseat of a police car as Steven’s cold, sheet-covered
body is wheeled past me. The bed jostles as they lift it into the
ambulance, and his hand slides out from under the sheet, and all I
can see is his pale, lifeless fingers.
I blink, hard, washing away the memory. You don’t
have to sleep, you don’t have to dream, to have nightmares.
His death was considered suspicious. He was a
vibrant seventeenyear-old athlete who shouldn’t have succumbed to
the waves—he swam in his family’s pool every day and surfed during
the summer. The police never understood why we went swimming on
such a dark night; and at the time, neither did I.
I was brought in for questioning again and again. I
retold the story over and over—leaving out the part where I sang.
Even then, before I really understood what that meant, I knew not
to mention it.
Eventually, the police determined that there was no
way I could have drowned him myself. At least not by any normal
means. Steven was so much bigger than me, so much stronger. When
the autopsy came back clean—no bruising, no skin underneath his
fingernails, no sign of a struggle—the drowning was ruled
accidental.
Reporters speculated that he’d become disoriented
in the dark. Unable to find the shore, he simply got too tired to
keep his head above water. Others said it must have been a leg
cramp, worsened by the growing waves. A sad, tragic accident.
But my friends never saw it that way. They wanted
to know why I led him out of the house, toward the beach. Why I
didn’t save him. And when I refused to explain anything, even to
Sienna, they turned on me.
In the days following his death, I ignored the
intense desire to swim, and I shut everyone out. I pulled the
drapes closed in my room and lay there all night long, staring at
the shadows, pretending I wasn’t craving the feel of the water
against my skin.
With each day, I grew sicker. It was just a little
fever at first, but soon I could hardly stand it. Eventually, I
drove up to an old lake where I used to go swimming with Sienna and
Nikki and Kristi.
I sang all night. And by morning, I felt stronger
than ever. But the feeling only lasted a day.
Within two weeks, I was swimming every night.
I sigh, rolling over onto my stomach and propping
myself up on my elbows. Maybe it’s morbid to be lying here in the
grass, just six feet above the bodies. Maybe someone would be
horrified if they saw me. But I need this time with him—it’s the
only thing that keeps me sane. Luckily, Steven’s grave is hard to
see from the pathways because of a few shrubs and the willow. I
would probably see someone long before they’d see me.
I reach out and trace my fingers over Steven’s
grave marker. Steven Goode. Beloved Son, Brother and Friend.
At the bottom is an engraved football. Steven didn’t even like
football. I never told anyone that. He did it for his dad, who
played through high school and college but never made it pro. That
was when I first began to hope that he liked me—he was telling me
secrets no one else knew. Secrets he trusted me with.
I never got to tell him mine. I spent three years
pining for him; just when things started to shift, just when it
looked as if the romance wasn’t all in my head, I killed him.
I set the Chevelle in front of his headstone. Every
night, I tell him everything, even about the curse I live with.
He’s the only one who knows the truth. Unless I want all my old
friends to end up in the ground next to him, I have to keep them
away.
I kiss my fingertips and then place them on his
headstone. For a brief moment, my fingers linger on the marble, and
I wonder for the thousandth time what it would have been like to
be with him for more than just a moment. My
sixteenth-birthday party could have been the start of something.
And instead, it was the end.
I wonder for the thousandth time if he could have
loved me in that same fierce way I loved him. “Good night,
Steven.”
I get up and wipe my knees off and then step back
onto the pathways. It’s getting darker now and harder to see. I
have another night of swimming ahead of me. Even as I leave his
body to rot in a grave that I put him in, I must return to the
water.
“See you tomorrow,” I whisper, as if someone will
hear.
And then I take the first few steps that will leave
him behind.