How Far We Go and How Fast

by Nora Decter

  “What’s it like working at the Cal?” Drew asks. “When Ivy told me you worked there I didn’t believe her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…” He looks around the room for something—words, I guess. “I don’t know. I guess you just seem too soft to be hanging around there.”

  I let my eyes go dark. “I’m not soft,” I say in my best menacing tone, and they laugh again, because, despite what any of them might know about me, despite the neighborhood I come from and the bar I work at and the torn jeans and the combat boots, I know my timidity is louder than all that, and it’s what they see.

  Graham reaches into the beer fridge and pulls out four more bottles in one giant hand. We retrieve them from between his fingers, and he sits down beside me on the little couch, which curls around us under his weight. “If anyone ever gives you any trouble, let me know, okay? I can meet you after work and walk you home.”

  This feels like the greatest kindness I can ever remember being given. This boy who hands me beers and says he wants to protect me. And yet, as he puts his arm around my shoulders and talks on to Ivy and Drew, I feel myself shy away from him. Fear rises in my chest and threatens the place I’ve found, and I shoo it into the back of my mind. I find an empty room and put it there.

  “What about you? I ask Graham. “Do you have the Tuesday blues?”

  “No,” he says. “Quite the opposite.”

  Wincing at his mushy tone, Ivy gets to her feet. “I’m going to the roof for a smoke.”

  “You can smoke in here, you know,” says Drew, who has recently dropped a butt in an empty bottle, swirling the last drops of beer around to put it out.

  “I know. I just want to see how cold it is.”

  “Cold!” we all say at the same time. Then, all together again, we raise our bottles and drink to celebrate this consensus.

  “Okay, okay,” she says, pulling a can of spray paint out of her bag and backing toward the door. “I also wanted to do some painting.”

  “Cool,” says Graham. “See you soon.”

  Drew grabs his jacket and goes after her. “I better make sure she doesn’t fall.” But he wags his eyebrows at us like he knows we want to be alone.

  It’s not that simple though. What we want. I get up and go back to the fridge, to get away from him, to get another beer. I drained most of my drink with our toast. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m drinking all your beer. I should have brought some.”

  “That’s okay. I bought some whiskey too. For when we go out later, to keep warm.”

  I see the bottle on the floor next to the beer fridge. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” he says, eyes on his computer, where he’s choosing another song. I take a swig that burns down my throat and turns my stomach when it gets there. But then I go warm and take another. Now that we’re alone again I can feel it there. The fear I put away. It’s at the back of my mind, burning brighter. Now that we’re alone again I feel it between us, what we did the other night, what it meant, how much it mattered. I don’t think I want it to matter much, but I don’t know. In any case, the whiskey makes it matter less, and the music fills up the pit of my stomach. I sit back down beside him.

  “I’ve been thinking about the other night,” he says, and my body goes rigid. “I think I should record an EP of your songs.”

  Oh.

  “No pressure,” he says. “You don’t have to play shows or promote it or anything. I just want to capture the way you sound right now.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “I have all the gear we’d need right here. I could play drums on some of the tracks if you want, or keys or more guitar even—but only if you want, of course. They’re your songs. And obviously I’d do it for free, and if you hated the result you could just delete the files and never show anyone. What do you think?”

  I don’t think. That’s not what I do.

  “You think it’s a stupid idea. You hate it. Don’t you?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to lose this feeling by speaking, by making plans for a future that may not come, so I do the easy thing and kiss him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  When the others come back, we break apart, straightening clothes and cushions and hair, me quickly, him less so.

  “So are we going to this party or not?” asks Ivy.

  None of us know. We break the decision down.

  Ivy checks her phone. “Katie will be there. And Kyle and Trevor and those guys.”

  “The first band is probably playing now, but we can make the second and the third if we go.”

  “Where’s the party?” I ask.

  “St. Boniface,” Graham says. “It’s probably, what? A half-hour walk?”

  “Fifteen if we take the shortcut,” Ivy says. Her phone buzzes. “Katie says the first band, whatever they’re called, was great, and that everyone says we should get our asses over there.”

  “Let’s do it,” says Drew.

  So off we go to the party.

  Except we’re drunk now, and we go slow. The whiskey makes the rounds of the room as we pack beer into backpacks and pull on hats and check pockets for smokes and the joint Drew’s rolled for later. Graham switches off all his machines and locks the room, and we go down and out into the night.

  At first I fall into step beside Ivy. “How are you?” she asks.

  “I’m good.” The whiskey almost makes me believe it.

  “What happened the other night? I shouldn’t have gotten so high—I sort of lost track of you. How did you get home?”

  “Umm. I didn’t?”

  “Girl, we should talk.”

  She gives me a loaded look, because Graham’s caught up with us now. He stays glued to my side in a way that could be construed as an effort to stay warm—it’s not unheard of for total strangers to huddle together at bus stops and the like in the worst months of winter. But that’s not it at all, is it? He talks to me more about how he’d like to record me, something about running my vocals through a particular guitar amp, and I listen peripherally while also tuning into Ivy and Drew’s conversation, because really what he’s saying may as well be a fairy tale. I could never really play for him. That one time was just that—a one off. But the sentiment, the fact that he heard me and what he heard made him want to record my songs, capture my sound, that keeps me warm as we take the street that skirts the river, heading toward the Forks.

  At some point the road veers away from the river to make room for the train yard. That’s the path we take, cutting across the field, following the tracks. Graham doesn’t talk now, and the ground—grass covered in ice covered in snow—is unwieldy enough that I need to hold on to his arm to stay upright. He slips his hand into mine and squeezes it, and my hand surprises me by squeezing back.

  Ivy circles an abandoned boxcar, pulls a can of paint from her backpack and traces a quick bird on its side. “Now you,” she says, handing me her paint. “Draw something.”

  “I can’t draw.”

  “Then write something. You can do that.”

  And I guess I can. I shake the can like I’ve seen her shake it and the write the first thing I think. It’s harder than it looks. The wind carries a lot of the color away. And it takes a while to get the hang of how to make letters. I step back when I’m done.

  “What does it say?” Graham asks.

  “Wish you were here,” Ivy reads. “Right?”

  “Where’s here?” asks Drew at the same time Graham says, “Who’s you?”

  “Shh,” Ivy says. “Jo doesn’t have to explain her art to you.”

  With that she starts walking down toward the river where the train bridge looms darkly.

  I forgot about the bridge. The party is on the other side of the river. We’ll have to cross.

  “Hey, guys,” I say. “Isn’t the footbridge over there?”

  “Yeah, but the party’s just on the other side of the train bridge,” Ivy says. “It’ll save us fifteen minutes if we cross here.”

 
The footbridge is better. The footbridge is not so bad. It’s wide and smooth, and it’s not hard to imagine its paved expanse is any old city street.

  “You cool with that?” Ivy asks, falling back beside me.

  “Yeah, ’course.”

  “It’s super safe. There’s plenty of space to walk next to the tracks if a train comes. I’ve done it before.”

  I stumble, but Graham is still holding on to my hand, and he steadies me. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He smiles and suddenly leans in to kiss me again, and this time I don’t like it. With Ivy and Drew right there, and the look on Graham’s face like he knows me. I turn my face away and let go of his hand, but I’m not sure he notices because we’re at the base of the bridge now. He pulls out the whiskey and it goes around again, and I feel better. Better than better. I feel brave. I guess that’s what they mean by “liquid courage.” I say thanks again and wipe away the courage that’s trickling down my jaw.

  “All right,” Ivy says. “I’ll go first. It’s a single-file affair.” She steps out onto the first wooden plank that runs horizontally across the bridge. Drew follows her. Graham stands back to make way for me, holds out a hand like, ladies first.

  “No, you go,” I say. A bit mean. A bit like I want to see the back of him. He blinks, and in his eyes I see I’ve confused him, and I feel relieved, because that makes both of us.

  But then he turns and leaves me, and I hate him for that too.

  I start to follow and then stop. Graham gets smaller, doesn’t notice I’m not with him. He calls forward to the others, and they shout something back. I feel myself fracture, break away from their dark shapes. There are no lights around, only the full moon above, but it’s bright enough to cast shadows, long ones that beckon and reach across the snow. I have to move now or they’ll be way ahead and know something is wrong. Ivy’s done this before. I can do it too. Think of all the tests I’ve passed lately, all the things I’ve done I thought I couldn’t do.

  The trick, of course, is don’t look down.

  That’s the wrong thought to be thinking as I place my foot on the first plank, because I have to. Look. My heart thuds in four-four time, and I hold on to the railing and take another step. Graham’s back is a flutter in the dark. Between the planks the quality of the darkness shifts as the ground falls away, and I move one foot and then the other out over the river.

  They’re unevenly spaced, the planks, and far enough apart that I think I could fall through if I slipped. It’s not out of the question. This is the time of year people drown. You’d think the river would be thick with ice, but it’s not. It was warm last week, and now it’s moving down there. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. The water. Flickering and winking up at me. And all around me are different kinds of dark. I force my eyes back to the bridge, to the planks I’m walking on. I move one foot, then the other.

  The rumbling starts low, so at first I think I’m imagining it. But then the train emerges from the dark, and it’s deafening. I flatten myself against the railing, but a bit too much—it’s only waist high, and on the other side there’s nothing. I steady myself as the train reaches me. Ivy was right—there is room to walk beside it. I force my eyes down now, make them focus on the planks so I don’t get dizzy from the train surging by beside me.

  I can’t see them now, can’t hear anything over the thundering train. I’m losing them. I’m not even close. I open my mouth to call out, but what could I say? Someone help me—I’m losing my shit? I can’t hear anything but the train anyway, barrelling on and on, so close I could almost—

  I stop. Close my eyes and stand still.

  What am I doing with these people anyway? They know nothing about me, not one thing. Not even Graham, who looks at me like he does know. Like he likes what he sees. But he can’t see. Has no idea what I’ve done, that I’ve broken the most important rule, the one where I always keep my feet on the ground. I’m supposed to keep my feet on the ground. Because we’re not the type to get away with things. Around here anything can happen, and it very often does.

  And then I know I need to take it back, need to undo what I’ve done. I try to race the train back, but the rumbling grows, fills my heart, head, lungs, as I jump from plank to plank without stopping now, without giving a thought to my footing, because I need to get some air, I haven’t been able to breathe in way too long, weeks, months maybe, and I try to go a little longer without it, and then something goes wrong with gravity and I’m falling forward.

  To my credit, I only scream after I hit the solid, snowy ground.

  I crawl uphill away from the river until the earth levels out, and then I empty everything I’ve got into the cold, clean snow, and still the train streaks by. There must be something wrong because it won’t stop.

  And then it does. The caboose quits the bridge and the landscape opens up and I roll away from my vomit and look up at the stars. They laugh down.

  I grab a handful of snow and scrub my face with it, scrub off the makeup that I never wear, scrub until my skin is numb. That’s when I notice my palm, the one I held on to the railing with. It’s completely blackened with soot and dirt from gripping the railing so hard. I rub snow into it too, but it won’t come clean.

  Someone is calling my name. More than one voice maybe. I look back at the bridge and see an outline that could be Ivy coming this way. I get to my feet and run. Because sometimes I operate on instinct. The kind that makes you put out your hand to break the fall.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I don’t stop. Not when I get so winded my lungs seize up and I can’t draw another breath. Not when the beers we packed for the party bang into my back with every step. Not when a rock weasels its way into my boot and starts cutting into the meat of my foot. Not even when the voices calling my name give out. I only stop when the tears come. Then I sit down on the curb, hug my knees and cry.

  I can only think one thought at a time, and right now the thought is, I’m too sober, so I pull a beer out of my bag, crack it and suck down the foam. I sit there drinking and crying, crying and drinking, as the cold concrete freezes my ass through the thin fabric of my best jeans. I kill one beer and then another before my vision clears and my tears peter out. When I can breathe again I get up and walk north along the river, stumbling by playgrounds and warehouses and empty lots, dropping beer cans on the ground as I go, like a real live lowlife.

  I’ve been drunk before but not like this. No, not like this, with the darkness I met on the bridge leaping and pawing at the limits of my vision as I walk, swatting it away and chugging down more beer to make it back off and leave me alone, but it won’t. It wants me to remember. And I need not to. When I wake up in the morning I want my brain to be a clean, blank slate, like freshly fallen snow.

  Thoughts pass through my mind and I look at them and then away. It’s not snowing, but the wind is picking up what’s already fallen and throwing it around for good measure. I let my feet walk me through the weather, all bundled up but still wide open to the cold. I deserved this. I was so stupid to think I could belong in their world. When I don’t belong anywhere except basements and empty rooms. Pawnshops and bus stations. In-between places where you can go out in public and still be alone.

  Why is it I can feel very high or very low, but I can’t feel at all in between? I’m such an asshole that way. I think about Graham and how he’ll never talk to me again, how I don’t really care, because the way he looks at me sends doors slamming in my mind, and who knows what that means in the grand old scheme of things. Nothing probably. Not one damn thing. He liked the idea of me that I offered up, but he doesn’t know anything about how I really am.

  It’s like every time I think I know the phase I’m in, something shifts and I can’t tell up from down, left from right, right from wrong. I tried to toe the line, bide my time, showing up at school every day even though it clips my wings just walking in. I tried to hold everyone an arm’s length or two away, but I failed and they slipped by. So I
tried to be cool, to have friends, to let someone a little bit in, but things fell through the way they do, and I’m left with chipped shoulders and glory stories. It’s the day in, day out aspect of life that feels like it might kill me. That’s what it is.

  I turn onto Main, and everything is familiar and oh-so-everyday. I trip over an imaginary crack in the concrete and catch myself. So here we are again. Walking home again. Feeling alone again. Asking the same old questions again and again. I laugh out loud at myself. It’s pretty pathetic. I don’t know what I want or who to ask for it, so I just walk and walk and think and think, and my head is full to bursting with all these thoughts, and there’s nowhere to put them so they just float around, filling me up, taking up all my spaces. I reach out and touch the stucco of the building I’m passing, let my fingers run along the bumpy surface, scraping my skin, adding to the mess that is my blackened hand.

  “Hey! Wanna ride?”

  A car pulls up alongside me. A beat-up blue car with the windows rolled down. Two guys are inside, leaning out to leer at me. I look away.

  Sometimes I realize I’m walking like my mother and I stop. This is not one of those times. Maggie has this “to hell and be damned” way of walking, leaning forward and charging ahead as if into battle. Not the girlie wiggle you’d expect.

  I adopt her stance and speed up, but they’ve parked and jumped out and are after me now. All around me now. One at my side, pressing into my arm, and one in front of me, walking backward. They aren’t guys. They’re men, dressed too young in ballcaps and baggy clothes, wrinkles circling their eyes and stubble darkening their chins.

  “Slow down,” says the one in front. “We just want to talk to you.”

  The other one has my arm tight. I pull, but I can’t get free.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Chill, baby,” says the talker. “We just saw you out walking in the cold, late at night, and thought maybe you wanted a ride.”

  I dig my heels into the ground and use my weight to wrench my arm free, but his fingers dig in deeper, and they back me up against the wall. His spray-can aftershave makes my stomach lurch. “I’m just walking home. My mom is expecting me.” My mouth stumbles over the words, and even to my ears I sound afraid.