We All Fall Down

by Natalie D. Richards

  I feel myself hitting her, my fist slamming into flesh.

  I have to force myself forward. This is the bridge, not us. It’s feeding us every awful moment of that night. But she is so much better than that, and between the two of us, there’s got to be a balance. We can be more than the sum of one shitty night.

  I’m close enough to see that she’s holding something in one hand and the other is by her face. She has her phone, and she’s looking out over the river. My shirt is by her feet.

  None of it makes sense. Is she calling me? My phone’s been dead for hours. My boot scuffs on the walkway and she turns. My whole body tenses.

  She’s crying. Even in the shadowy predawn light, I can see the hitch of her shoulders and the shiny tear tracks down her cheeks. My heart plummets as she drops my shirt and holds up a pale fist. It’s a warning. I smell lemons and brackish water. Lilacs and rot.

  “Paige?”

  “Stay away from me.”

  I hold up my hands, ice sliding up my spine, under my skin. “Okay.” And again. “Okay.”

  “Stay back!”

  “I will.”

  We stand there, her fist shaking and stretched out in front of her. She’s holding something else; she’s got her fingers curled strangely around it. Whatever she has, it isn’t good.

  Her teeth chatter. I hear whispers slithering down from the trusses overhead, voices circling the support beams and snaking through the railing too.

  “The police are coming,” Paige says, lowering her phone.

  I’m not sure if the police can help us, but I have to be steady for her. “Okay.”

  “They’re coming!”

  Her voice cracks, and it breaks me. More voices push up from underneath the bridge. My ears pop and buzz, and Paige whirls with a shriek, dropping her phone. It clatters on the walkway, but it’s intact. I remember another phone shattering; someone dropped one here on the night of the party.

  Paige’s eyes go wide—she’s seeing something I can’t see.

  This has nothing to do with him.

  She shudders, so I know she’s heard it too. Heard herself. My head swims, but I push myself off the railing and inch forward. Paige slams into the railing. For one terrifying second, I’m sure she’ll break through and fall.

  I reach for her and she draws back, so I pull back, hands wide.

  “It’s the bridge, Paige. Its bad energy messing with us.”

  Her laugh is sharp enough to draw blood. “The bridge.” I watch the way she looks past me, sucking in a tight breath.

  “There’s nothing here,” I say, schooling my voice to a steady rumble. “I’m not judging you, I feel it too. But we’ve got to be stronger than whatever’s out here with us.”

  “You! You are the only one out here!”

  “What?”

  She shakes her head and looks down so I can’t see her face. Then she makes a choked sound that I hope is a laugh. But when I touch her shoulders, I know it’s a sob.

  Voices—they’re everywhere. I can’t just hear them; I can feel them, a thin ringing behind my ears and a thickness to the air that sticks in my throat. My head fogs over.

  “Talk to me,” I say. “What happened tonight? What brought you here?”

  Another sob. No, this time it is a laugh, and it’s terrible.

  She lifts her head, eyes glittering and smile manic. Somewhere far away I hear the whine of a siren. She holds open her fisted hand enough for me to see what she’s holding—two little rocks. Pieces of plastic maybe?

  “Paige?” I reach for her again, gently. “Try to take a—”

  She hits me.

  I don’t even see it coming, or believe it, until she hits me again. Pain bursts along my left eyebrow, my whole head screaming an instant after the initial impact. There’s wailing, thin and shrill in the distance. At first I think it’s her and that my ears are messed up again. But it’s the sirens. They’re getting closer.

  She hits me again. Sobs. Tires crunch up the street below the bridge. Lights, blue and red, strobe across her pale cheeks. Holy shit, she really did call the police!

  My hand is at my head, covering the throb between my eyes. My smeary vision clears in time for me to see Paige rear back again.

  She punches me hard, in the chest this time.

  “How could you?” she screams. Car doors open and shut. I hear footsteps, and then Paige launches at me, fist flying wild from the side. My hands go up defensively as her fist pummels my shoulder. And then another—this one into the soft, fleshy part of my side. I deserve this, and I’d take it. I’d take every punch she wants to give me, but the police would see her. I try to reach for her again. “Paige, stop—”

  She keeps whaling on me, panting so hard I think she’ll drop. Dark blurs of police officers are moving up the far end of the bridge. We’re screwed. I have to stop her.

  “Paige!”

  They’re shouting, and Paige is still screaming. “You did this! You found my shoes! My purse! You picked up the pieces of my teeth!”

  Her teeth? “I didn’t—”

  Something drops down from above. A shadowy, shapeless blur slithers down the iron supports, twisting along the ropes of unlit lights. Worse, I can see it rolling underneath the walkway, a thick carpet of black seeping into the cracks between each board. It hums like hornets. And smells like lilacs.

  Still cocked for a punch, Paige’s pale fist stills. She sees it too.

  I’m done with you.

  Who isn’t done with me?

  Her eyes lock on mine, and I know she’s heard the voices as clearly as I have. This time it isn’t me or her. It’s haunting both of us.

  Paige drops her fist and takes a tentative step back from the blackness seeping closer. The buzzing rises. Voices murmur. Officers tell us to put our hands where they can see them. Paige’s lips form around my name, but she can’t find her voice.

  And then I hear something else—a fast, metal click-click-clicking. It’s handcuffs. They’re putting Paige in handcuffs.

  Paige

  My ears are still roaring with voices, both familiar and strange. That dark shadow is still pushing up between the boards, and there are flashes of light all around. Maybe the darkness got me.

  I buck wildly, twisting and jerking. My arms are caught behind me.

  Something cold has my wrists, and strange voices are talking. This isn’t Chase and Theo from the party. These aren’t before voices. They are here-and-now voices. One tells me to settle down. One tells me to take a breath, but he does it with a tug to my bound wrists.

  Handcuffs. The reality sinks in fast. They are handcuffs. The police I called for Theo have come for me. A flash of what they must have seen washes over me. Me punching him over and over. He’s standing across from me, hands raised and lip bleeding. He’s talking fast and clearly trying to explain.

  He’s trying to protect me. Still. After I punched him over and over.

  Because I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I could blame Theo and tie up this whole mess with a tidy, logical bow. I know better now. There is no simple explanation for that monstrosity underneath the bridge. Or the blood in my sink. Or the force that dragged me out here in my sleep. Theo didn’t do it, and my crazy didn’t do it. What did this defies explanation.

  The wind kicks up, extra cold across my wet cheeks. I’m crying. I’m not sure when I started. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s memory and what’s the bridge.

  I just know the police officers are here and they’ve put handcuffs on my wrists and they are leading me to a cruiser. Panic flickers to life.

  “Are you settled now?” one officer asks.

  “Yes.” I sound choked. “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s get some facts here,” the second officer says. “What’s your name?”

  Theo’s eye is sw
elling, and his lip is bleeding. My knuckles sting and ache. I did that to him, and he wasn’t the one behind this. How was I so wrong? How did I go so crazy? I’m supposed to be better now. I’m supposed to be okay.

  “Your name, miss?” the first officer asks.

  “I’m sorry. Paige. Paige Vinton-Young.”

  The second police officer moves in front of me. Between Theo and me. He looks patient but tired, with a puffy face and squinty eyes.

  “All right, Paige. Why don’t you tell us what’s going on out here?”

  “She didn’t do anything.”

  It’s Theo. He’s behind the officer, skin painted pink-orange by the rising sun. The shadows are gone. The voices are silent. But I didn’t dream all this up, and Theo had nothing to do with it. Maybe it happened to us because we’re already crazy. Maybe it’s proof that we always will be.

  I start crying again, and the police officers continue to ask me questions. Theo argues, and I think of the teeth. Not the ones he broke, but the ones I found. I dropped them when I hit him. Were they really teeth or something else? Were they even there at all? I don’t know where my sickness ends and this nightmare begins.

  The police officers are more worried about me than Theo. One’s checking my ID. He’s on his radio using a low voice and codes I don’t understand. The other asks me questions. Theo paces back and forth a bit apart. He pulls out his own phone and starts typing a message.

  The other officer guides me to the back of the car, and I’m quiet.

  “Are you cold?” he asks me. I realize my teeth are chattering, so I nod.

  He turns on the heater and turns off the cruiser’s lights. The world looks very ordinary without the flash of red and blue. Dawn is halfhearted. All that pretty pink from earlier has faded into milky gray.

  Outside the window, the second officer is talking to Theo. Then it hits me. Theo is on probation. He could be in trouble, real trouble.

  “So, are you ready to talk?” the officer in the car asks.

  I take a breath. I know I need to say something, but nothing comes. How do I explain coming out here? How do I tell him I found teeth that disappeared? That I heard voices and saw shadows? He’ll think I need a psychiatrist, and he’ll be right.

  He’ll call my parents.

  My head snaps up at the thought. “I’m eighteen.”

  He looks surprised, but takes it in stride. “You’re eighteen?”

  “You don’t need to call my parents.”

  “Do you have some identification on you? A driver’s license?”

  “I can’t reach it.”

  “I’ll look it up. Spell your name for me please?”

  I recite the information he requests, and then my address afterward. The heat is cranking now. Sweat trickles under my arms, but my teeth are still chattering. Nerves. When isn’t it nerves with me?

  The second officer is still talking to Theo. I’m not sure he’s being as friendly as mine, and it makes me angry. Theo didn’t do anything. I’m the one who hit him tonight.

  “When you called 911, you said this boy was after you,” the officer says, regaining my attention.

  “I was confused. I panicked and exaggerated.” The words fly out as fast as the decision is made. It’s a lie, but I can’t see another option. My cheeks burn with heat that I hope he’ll read as shame.

  “Are you telling me you lied to the police?”

  I rub my chin on my shoulder, wishing I could calm down and stop shaking. “I didn’t mean to lie. I was up too late. I think I was so tired I was imagining things.”

  His kind eyes narrow. “Tired or more than tired? Were you drinking? Were you smoking anything? Did you take anything?”

  I laugh, and he turns with a new, colder expression. Dread pours through my body, but I shake my head. “I’ve never done drugs.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Not like this. I’ve never smoked a cigarette. Never had a sip of beer. I-I can’t.”

  “And why’s that?”

  My face burns. “Because I have issues.”

  He looks at me blankly. He’s waiting for more. My wrists ache at the strange angle of my arms, metal biting into the tender flesh of my wrists.

  “I see a doctor about my anxiety. Sometimes it’s intense. I’m afraid of a lot of things. That’s why I wouldn’t do drugs. Not ever. Too scary.”

  “Keep talking. Tell me about tonight,” he says. Not in a therapist way. More in a get-to-the-bottom-of-this way.

  I shrug. “Tonight, I kind of flipped out. I’m in a program at the college. I think the pressure might be getting to me. It was late, and I couldn’t sleep. I got completely paranoid. It was an anxiety attack, and I didn’t take the medicine I have for that.”

  I’m saying too much and nowhere near enough. He’ll be able to tell. That’s what cops do, isn’t it? I take sharp little breaths, trying to pick and choose each word.

  “Is this medication you’re talking about prescribed to you?”

  “Yes, but I’ve missed doses. I’ve been skipping the sleeping pill too, because it’s been giving me trouble. I have bad insomnia. I should have called my doctor. I’m sorry.”

  “So, you didn’t sleep at all tonight?”

  “No.”

  “And a sleepless night somehow explains why you were afraid of this boy.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. A lot of what I’m afraid of doesn’t make sense.”

  He sighs and looks almost fatherly. “Paige, your history with Theodore comes up on our system here. You’ve never been in any kind of trouble with the law. We’re here to help you. If this boy is manipulating you…pressuring you—”

  “No.” I curl in on myself as best as I can with the cuffs. I feel sick that they would blame him, but of course they would. I haven’t been in trouble. Theo has. “This is not him. I promise you that. This is on me.”

  “Are you sure? Because in truth, this boy shouldn’t be near you. We’ll call his parole officer—”

  “Please.” My voice is very soft, but it stops him. “Please don’t.” I close my eyes. Hot tears slide down my cheeks. “Theo didn’t know I would be here. He works here. I knew he’d come. This is my fault, not his.”

  The officer waits me out, like what I said isn’t quite enough to convince him. But what else is there?

  Outside, the other officer is drilling Theo. And Theo is taking it, shifting back and forth on his feet. He keeps looking over the cop’s shoulder toward the cruiser. I know he doesn’t care about his parole. He’s never been good at thinking ahead.

  All he’s thinking of is me. He’s always been good at that. Because he’s not just some boy who punched me. He’s Theo. He loves me. And I love him. It’s the worst, messiest version of love I can imagine.

  But in this moment, it feels simple.

  “Theo isn’t some awful, violent guy. He has his own issues. ADHD. ODD.”

  The officer’s expression hardens. “Hitting girls is not something you blame on mental illness.”

  “He wasn’t aiming for me.” When he frowns, I shake my head. “I know that doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter to me either. What he did was wrong. He knows that, and I know that.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Which is why he sat in jail that night. And it’s why he’s still on probation. He is being punished, and he would never try to get out of that.”

  “But he did something to make you hit him,” the officer points out.

  “I thought so too,” I say. “But he didn’t. I let myself get worked up over nothing. Just shadows.”

  I think of the darkness under the bridge. I remember the way it pushed up between the boards. Like it was reaching. I force out a sad laugh, because I finally believe the impossible, and I have to sell a logical lie to cover it up.

  “It wa
s just shadows,” I say firmly. “I can’t believe I was so ridiculous. I can’t believe I called 911. I’m really embarrassed. And so sorry.”

  The lies are coming easier. Maybe I should have tried this before. I could have lied to my parents, maybe even my therapist. Maybe my anxiety would be easier to deal with if I could learn to fake my way through it. If only.

  Another person is walking toward the bridge now. He heads past the cruiser. He’s wearing a stained green hat, and he’s smoking.

  That’s how I recognize him. Denny. He’s probably coming in to work. Worry loops my stomach into another tight knot. Theo’s going to get in even more trouble.

  Denny walks straight toward Theo, and he and the other officer don’t look surprised. Did Theo text him? Would he really want him to come see this?

  “Paige?” the officer prompts. “Did Theo call you or initiate contact?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to track back to his question. “No, he didn’t call me or follow me. He’s been very careful not to run into me. He doesn’t want any more trouble. It’s just… I kept finding things that reminded me of us. I blew it all out of proportion.”

  “What it looked like was assault, Ms. Vinton-Young.”

  A new fear slithers up my spine. He could arrest me. Read me my rights and take me to jail. There will be no way to hide that from my mother.

  “Yes,” I say simply.

  The officer doesn’t seem to have any more questions. He tells me to sit tight and steps out of the car. The first officer is talking to Denny now. They look friendly, shaking hands and nodding. Pointing at something across the river that I don’t think has anything to do with all that’s happened here tonight.

  Then the officers move to the front of the car to talk. They leave me in the back and Denny with Theo. I can see Denny talking to Theo. I can’t hear them of course, but I can see the cold fury on Denny’s face as well as the way Theo’s expression shutters.

  Eventually, the officers meet with Denny and Theo again. They talk for what feels like hours but in reality is probably less than a minute. At the end, Denny pumps their hands in a hearty shake, first the tall one he seems to know. Then he greets the one who sat with me. The officers come back to the car and open my door.