The Year They Fell

by David Kreizman

  This was more than a glitch. My body was shutting down. My heart couldn’t keep this up. I was running out of air. I was going to pass out and then I was going to die.

  A knock at the door. Mr. U’s voice: “Harry? You okay in there?” I couldn’t answer him. More knocks. I tried to call for medical attention, but all that came out was a soft wheeze. After a while, the knocking stopped. That was it. I was going to die here, alone on the floor of the janitor’s closet among the mop and the cleaning supplies.

  As my vision started to go blurry, the door creaked open and Mr. U stood over me. “I know you said not to tell anyone, but she’s your friend, right?” Mr. U moved out of the way to reveal Dayana standing behind him.

  “Thanks,” said Dayana. “I got it from here.”

  I heard Mr. U leave and Dayana close the door. I tried to say something to her, but she told me not to speak. As I gasped for air, she grabbed a mop bucket, flipped it over, and sat down next to me.

  “Nice place you got here,” she said.

  “I didn’t … get in … to Harvard,” I gasped. “They didn’t want me.”

  Dayana didn’t say anything. She just took off a few of her rings and dropped them into her bag. Then she put her hand on my head and stroked my hair. Her hand was soft like Mom’s. I closed my eyes and we stayed like that, listening to my ragged breathing until the hallway was quiet and the glitch had finally passed.

  When I was able to stand up, Dayana grabbed me by the back of the neck. “You need to eat something. A butt load of sugar and grease.”

  We walked together into the cafetorium and she bought me two packs of Pop-Tarts and a plate of fries. I followed her to her table, where Josie and Archie were already sitting next to each other. They looked up when they saw me. I could see on their faces that I looked as shaky as I felt.

  “Our boy had a shitty night,” said Dayana. “His dad hit the road. And some other stuff.” I was so grateful she didn’t tell everyone else about Harvard. I definitely wasn’t ready for that yet.

  Josie asked if I was okay and pushed a chair toward me. Archie opened his sketchpad and asked about the email from the NTSB. I sat down and started to explain, when suddenly a shadow fell over us. We all looked up simultaneously to see Jack towering above us. He’d never been over to this table before.

  Josie immediately got tears in her eyes. “You’re coming here to sit with us? You’re on board?”

  Jack swiped a hand over his head. “Do I believe that the government plotted to eliminate our parents?” He took a moment to consider it. “Who the hell knows?”

  I said, “There is evidence that—”

  “Harrison, let him talk,” said Archie.

  “I don’t know about military contracts and national secrets and shit like that,” Jack said. “What I know is I’m stuck. And I can’t get unstuck.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “What I’ve been doing, it’s not working. I sit in the house. I get in the car and I drive too fast. I treat my girlfriend like crap. I send these fucking texts to a ghost like they’re going to do something.”

  “What texts?” asked Josie.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Jack. “I think the problem is that it still doesn’t feel real. After all this time. Maybe it’s my head, but … sometimes I feel like it’s a dream. Harrison, you want answers about the crash. I just want … I just want to feel that it’s real. Finally. I don’t know if this will fix anything. But I think we need to go. I think we all need to go.”

  “Go?”

  Jack reached into his bag and pulled out some papers. “It’s four hundred twenty-seven bucks per person round trip for spring break. We’ll cover the cost of the flights and the hotel.”

  “You want us to take a trip? Together?” asked Josie. “Where?”

  “Anguilla,” said Archie. “You want us all to go to Anguilla.”

  16

  JOSIE

  Operation Sunnies Go to Anguilla was over a week away, but I’d started packing the day Jack bought the plane tickets. Or at least planning to pack. At this point, it was just a mountain of clothes on my bed. Maybe that’s why I woke up every morning feeling so tired. I was definitely coming down with something. Nothing new there. My whole life, I’d always gotten sick before big events. Every test, big game, or family vacation would bring with it a cold, flu, or other random virus. As a little kid, I’d learned to pretend I was okay. Jack was the sickly one. He was the one with all the doctor visits and the late night trips to the hospital. Mom worried enough about him. So I’d always just acted like I was fine, and nobody seemed to notice. And I did the same when my body turned on me the week before we headed off to the island where Mom and Daddy died.

  I guess each of us had a different reason for taking this trip. Harrison was convinced that if he confronted the local authorities with his research on the crash, they’d have to start talking. Archie was starting to believe it, too. I thought mostly he just loved the idea of the five of us going away together. Jack said he wanted to get unstuck and that made sense to me. And Dayana. We were sitting at the same lunch table, but we hadn’t really talked since New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure what I believed about the crash, but I knew I needed to be there, to stand on the beach and see where the plane went into the water. So we waited.

  After the night I spent with Archie, it wasn’t like we became an instant couple. I’m sure he was hoping for that, but I wasn’t ready. That night in his house, I asked him if he was scared. I was the one who was terrified. And as good as I felt being with him, that feeling didn’t go away when we woke up the next morning. The snail had lost its shell. I don’t know what freaked me out more: how easily I could be hurt, or how easily I could hurt Archie.

  After I ended things for good with Cody, Siobhan tried her best to keep me in the fold. But the more time I spent with Archie and Harrison, the less I fit in with her and the girls. The Sunnies were no longer the flav of the month. The calls and texts slowed down and finally stopped coming altogether. I was out and I was okay with it.

  I’m sure I frustrated Archie. Every time we took another step closer, I took a half step back. Like when he held my hand in the hallway one morning and I acted like I had to go to the bathroom. Or when he asked me to sleep over, and I said no and then changed my mind four times before finally showing up at his house, after he was already in bed. He never complained and he never pressured me. When I went to my locker at the end of each school day, there was a new drawing waiting for me. When I texted him, he was always there to answer. He was kind and patient and he made me feel special like none of the guys in my life ever had before. And it still scared me to death.

  Stupid immune system. Breaking down when I needed it most. I couldn’t be stuck in an Anguilla hotel room with the flu, so I tried to conserve my energy and let my body recover. That didn’t go over so well with my hardass PE teacher, Mr. Morgan. When I told him I was too sick for field hockey he sent me to the nurse’s office for a note. I sat in Nurse Leonard’s waiting room, checking our flights for the 150th time. Newark to St. Martin to Anguilla. No change to the schedule. When the office door clanked open, I didn’t even look up until I heard a familiar jingling of hardware. Dayana gave an awkward half wave and sat down in the plastic chair next to me.

  “What’re you in for?” she asked.

  “General crappiness,” I said. “Pre-trip stress. Never fails.”

  Dayana nodded. “Like when you got that stomach thing before our Girl Scout campout? That was some nasty business.”

  We both went quiet, staring at a poster depicting the cow-shaped organs of the female reproductive system. It was kinda the same way at our lunch table. When Archie and Harrison and Jack were there, we talked, but if Dayana and I happened to be the first two to arrive—awkward silence.

  On the first day of school after the crash, Siobhan asked me if I was jealous of Dayana. “You know, ’cause her parents, like, lived?”

  It wasn’t until that horrible mo
ment outside Dayana’s house on New Year’s Eve that it really hit me. And it wasn’t because I missed being able to talk to Mom and Daddy, which I did. Or hug them, which I did. What finally got to me that night was knowing that Dayana could yell at her mom. She could call her names, shake her, slap her, demand answers about the affair. Dayana knew for a whole year and she didn’t tell me. And it’s what I needed more than anything now. To confront Daddy, to scream at him for what he did to Mom. To our family. He was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be better than the guys I knew, better than Coach Murph. Keeping all of that inside was probably not great for my health. Maybe the trip to Anguilla would help. But there would be no confrontation, no apologies. No answers. Somehow I’d have to live with that.

  And somehow I’d have to live with Dayana.

  “In case you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said, pulling out her lower lip and showing off an angry red-and-black blotch, “inffctd llllp prrrrcng.” She winced as she let her lip snap back into place. “Infected lip piercing.”

  “Okay, that is vile,” I said.

  “Thanks. You always know how to make a girl feel better.” She offered me a closer look.

  I made a face. “Um, you need to get that checked out by a doctor.”

  “It’s cool. It’s happened to me before. I’m just taking some leftover antibiotics we had in the house. Knock this shit right out. Going to the doctor means I have to take it out and that’ll make Mami too happy.”

  After the mention of her mother we were both quiet again. Finally, she spoke up. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “About my mom and your dad. I thought about it. Even wrote an email once, but I never sent it. You and your dad always got along so well. And it’s not like we were hanging out. We weren’t even talking.”

  “You never said anything to her? Or to your dad?”

  “What was the point?”

  More silence.

  “Do you, like, hate her?” I asked.

  “I hate what she did to your family. Mine was already fucked.”

  I let that sink in. On the surface, my family wasn’t like Dayana’s. We didn’t fight in front of people. We didn’t curse at each other. Nobody locked himself in a bedroom or took a bunch of prescription drugs. We looked perfect in pictures. We had lots of friends. We went on great vacations and hosted killer parties. We had a great life. Except Daddy was having sex with his coworker. Mom just kept on buying herself more things and joining more organizations. Jack walked around angry all the time. And a terrible thing happened to me when I was fourteen. We were the family everybody else wanted to be. But maybe that’s because they didn’t know who we really were.

  “We were pretty fucked ourselves,” I said.

  I stood up and grabbed two ice packs from Nurse Leonard’s freezer. I put one on my head and handed the other to Dayana. “When my earlobe swelled up from a bad piercing in seventh grade, my mom told me to ice it. Fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off. It kinda worked. Get that lip in shape or they might not let you through security at the airport.”

  Dayana took the ice pack and pressed it to her swollen lip. Then she pulled it away. “Hey, about that. It was dope of Jack to buy me a ticket and all. But we all know I shouldn’t be going on this trip with you. There’s gonna be some heavy shit going down. You don’t need me getting in the way.”

  I took her hand and moved the ice pack back to her mouth. “Why do you do that? Why do you always act like you’re not a part of it?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “My parents were not on that plane, remember?”

  “So?”

  “Seriously, you need me to explain it to you?”

  “You did this before there was ever a plane crash. Even before high school. You kept pushing me away.”

  “I pushed you away?”

  “You always had to be on the outside,” I said.

  “I am on the outside.”

  “Says who?”

  “Everyone. You don’t understand what it’s like, Jo. When you walk in a room, you don’t even think about it. You know who you are and where you belong without even asking the question. You have a place.”

  “You have a place, D.”

  “Where?”

  “With us. With the Sunnies. You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been totally falling apart this year. When the heavy shit goes down on the island, we need you. You are a part of this whether you like it or not. Forever.”

  I could see Dayana’s big eyes getting watery. It always killed me when she cried. Even when we were little. Totally shredded my heart. I didn’t want to see what would happen to all that makeup if the waterworks started.

  “Now go see a real doctor before your stupid lip falls off.”

  * * *

  Right after a tragedy happens, when you’re struggling to survive, all you hope for is a day when you start to feel a little better. Some little glimmer of hope that shows you’re not going to hurt this much for the rest of your life. And then when it actually does start to hurt a little less, you feel even worse because it’s like you’re forgetting the people you lost. Like if you admit to yourself that you’re starting to feel happy because you have a great boyfriend and real friends, then your parents didn’t mean enough to you.

  We were a week away from the trip and it was all starting to get to me. I’d gone looking for a new bikini, but I couldn’t bring myself to try any on. I walked into every store at the mall and walked out without buying a single thing. By the time I got home, I was done. I just fell onto my bed right in the middle of all the clothes. Two hours later, I woke up to Jack’s heavy steps on the stairs. I opened my eyes as he walked into my room.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you. Wow, that’s a lot of stuff you’re packing. Mom would be proud.”

  “I just can’t decide. It all feels wrong,” I said. “Let me guess. You haven’t even started.”

  Jack rubbed his hands together. The cuts on his knuckles were mostly healed. He told me he’d punched a wall outside the pharmacy when someone stole his parking spot. Since then, something had changed. For the first time since his concussion, he seemed quieter, more at peace.

  “I’m not going,” he said.

  I sat up in bed. “Not going where?”

  “Anguilla.”

  “What? It was your idea.”

  “I want you to go without me,” he said. “You need it. Archie will be there for you.”

  “You have to go, Jack. You need it, too. You said it. You’re stuck. If I’m going, then so are you.”

  “I can’t, Jo. I can’t go.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “No. I can’t. I mean—I’m not allowed. They just told me.”

  “Not allowed? Who told you?”

  “My lawyer,” he said. “I got in some trouble and the D.A. said I can’t leave the state.”

  “I don’t understand. What kind of trouble?”

  He looked down at his hands like a scared, oversize five-year-old.

  “It wasn’t a wall, was it? You didn’t punch a wall.”

  “Finish packing,” he said, starting out of the room.

  “Stop,” I said. “I’m tired of all the secrets. I don’t want to be protected or lied to anymore.” I jumped up from the bed. The head rush made me wobble.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. I stood up too fast. Listen to me. You can’t do this, Jack. You can’t go around attacking people.”

  “I’m dealing with it.”

  “Was it a fight? Who did you hit?”

  “I said I’m dealing with it.”

  “Tell me what happened or I’m calling the D.A. myself.” I reached for the phone.

  “Don’t. It just … happened,” he said. “I saw him in a parking lot and I—I barely even remember doing it. He walked up like everything was cool. He smiled. Like we were old friends. His car was right next to mine. That goddamned blue car.”

  Jack finally looked me in the eyes and a t
errible wave washed over me. I knew what he’d done. “Coach Murph.”

  “I wanted to hurt him for what he did to you. And for how he made me feel weak and scared. And for Mom and Dad and all those years we did nothing. We said nothing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Jo…”

  “What did you do?!”

  “I knocked him down and I started hitting him and hitting him and hitting him. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to—”

  I grabbed him by both arms. And even though he was twice my size I felt stronger than him. Like there was no fight left in his body. “You shouldn’t have done that. I never asked you to. It was over. He was out of my life.”

  “Soul…”

  “I can’t do my part without you. What if you’d killed him? What if you threw your whole life away? I can’t lose you, too!”

  “I’m sorry, Jo,” he whispered, tears rolling out of his eyes. “I’m so sorry I didn’t protect you.” I’d never been angrier at him or loved him more. I stood on the bed and wrapped him in my arms as best I could. His whole body was heaving and shaking.

  * * *

  When Archie picked me up later that night, I asked him to take me to the Sunny Horizons playground. This time we held hands on the walk to the stump. He didn’t even ask why we were here, which was good ’cause I was not looking to explain.

  “Can I see your sketchbook?”

  “Why?”

  “Please. I just need to.”

  “I could make you copies of any drawings—”

  “I want to see it, Archie.”

  He didn’t like handing it over, but he saw how serious I was and he put it on my lap and opened the cover. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but after a few pages I found what I needed. A couple of weeks ago I’d woken up in his bed and he wasn’t there. I threw on one of his hoodies and walked into the kitchen. He’d obviously been up for a long time because he’d already set out coffee and toast. And cereal and bagels. And bacon and eggs and toaster waffles and microwave pancakes and Pop-Tarts and granola bars and yogurt. It was everything he had in the house, and once it was prepared, this feast barely fit on the table. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted for breakfast,” he said.