Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

by Theodora Armstrong

  Pushing my way through to the other end of the bridge, I follow hikers along paths that snake through the forest. Down toward the creek bed, I can hear water spilling over rocks and shouts bouncing through the canyon. Jumping! A second of silence followed by a splash. The creek spreads out in front of me through a break in the trees. There are at least forty kids hanging out on the rocks or sitting in teepees made with fallen branches. Clouds of pot smoke hang in the air. A group of guys sit together on a large boulder and scope the girls, who lie on towels spread out side by side. Yesterday was the last day of school — grade eight is over — and there’s a vibe, jumpy and electric, running through the crowd of kids. Last summer, they wheeled one of the jumpers out of here on a stretcher — it happens more than you’d think. They put a brace around the kid’s neck and wrapped him up in a silver shock blanket that looked like a giant piece of tinfoil. It took a while to carry him out on the trails, his friends queuing behind the paramedics to follow the stretcher out of the forest. Sometimes it’s hard to judge the jumps when you’re stoned out of your tree.

  Jumping! Cheers and howls, another splash.

  Kate’s in a pink bikini, baking in the sun on a large, flat rock near the pools. She’s undone the straps on her top and rolled down her bottoms to prevent tan lines. I can see the beginning of her bum crack. She’s achieved that perfect cinnamon brown I can only wish for. She started at the beginning of May, before it was even warm out. After school she’d drag her comforter out onto her back porch and lie there in her bikini, teeth chattering. I’d sit beside her in a sweatshirt and jeans and we’d pretend to study. Her mother calls her a sun worshipper. It makes me laugh. I can’t imagine Kate down on her knees in the chilly spring sun, her hands clasped, her head bowed. I can’t imagine her praying for anything.

  “You’re so skinny it’s gross,” Kate says, squinting up at me from her towel as I hop over the rocks to reach her. “What took you so long?”

  “Don’t ask,” I say, making a bored-to-tears face as I dip my toes into the freezing creek water. “I couldn’t get a ride ’til my sister was ready. It’s like she brushes each hair on her head individually.”

  “There’s this thing called a bus,” Kate says, sitting up and holding her bathing suit to her chest. I can see one of her nipples.

  “You’re flashing the whole world.” I unroll my towel beside hers and flop back with a sigh.

  “I don’t care. Tie it, then,” Kate says, turning her back to me. “Did you bring any food?”

  “Nope.” I pull the strings of her bikini top into a neat bow.

  “Maybe I should get us some.” Kate scans the forest like a 7-Eleven might be hiding behind the trees somewhere, and then lies back down, giving up. She pokes my ribs. “I can see your bones.”

  “What am I supposed to do about it?” I say, running my hands over my stomach.

  “Eat.”

  “I eat all the time. I eat more than anyone I know.” I push out my stomach and pat the bulge. “How’s that?”

  “I hate you,” Kate says, rolling her eyes.

  Another shout bursts through the air. Jumping! Above us, kids scramble up the boulders and dart in and out of the trees. In this part of the canyon there’s a deep pool at the bottom of a narrow chasm — maybe ten feet across — where the water is seven shades, from turquoise to cobalt blue. From the cliff there are three different places to jump, the highest thirty feet, but most kids jump from the ten-foot boulder and a few from the fifteen. There’s a lineup along the cliff, mostly guys, fidgeting while they wait, pulling on their bottom lips or scratching their heads. Some can’t be more than ten or eleven. Sitting among them is Max, a guy from my grade, his long, skinny legs dangling over the edge. Whenever someone leaps from the rock, he tilts his chin to the sky and crows like a rooster. “What’s he doing?” Kate says.

  “I don’t know,” I say, watching him. He’s wearing shorts with Doc Martens and the same Metallica T-shirt he wears at least once a week. Max and I went to elementary school together — back then he was the kid no one noticed until the teacher asked him a question he couldn’t answer. Now he’s the kid who doesn’t care what people think. Last week instead of joining our usual gym class run to the top of Montroyal Boulevard, he stood three feet from school property and puffed on a smoke. There was no point in suspending him because school was practically over; our gym teacher, Ms. Carr, pretended not to see him.

  “He’s weird,” Kate says. “Is he with Adrienne?”

  “No. I hate that bitch.”

  Wet and shivering in a black bikini, Adrienne is standing next to Max. She is the only girl on the cliff. Her toes curl around the edge of the rock like she’s a plump bird perched on a wire — a mean bird, a crow. For most of grade eight, she barked like a dog whenever I passed her in the hall at school. Why, I never figured out, but my guess was she didn’t like my hair because it’s wild and red and has a mind of its own. “Watch,” I say. “She’s gonna jump. She’ll bellyflop.”

  “Maybe she’ll explode,” Kate says. Adrienne turns and disappears back into the forest. “Choke,” Kate shrieks and I laugh pretty hard. Adrienne quit barking at me after Kate spread a nasty rumour about her, something about genital warts contracted over spring break. I’m still impressed Kate did that for me, because she could have got her ass kicked, but somehow Kate always manages to float above it all.

  Another guy from our school climbs the rock face, moving quickly, finding steps where I can’t see them, his friends hooting at him from the boulders at the base of the cliff. I can’t remember his name, but he’s a grade up from us and lives near the highway by Mosquito Creek. He was suspended for something this year — something to do with mouthing off or having weed in his locker. He passes the ten-foot mark, his skin translucent in the shadows of the trees, and disappears into the forest, coming out moments later to stand at the edge of the thirty-foot cliff. Beyond him the world is bleached, the sky burning white. He looks down, hands on his hips, to judge the landing, while his friends holler at him from below. People stand on the rocky shore, craning to get a better view; everyone watches when someone jumps from that height. Kate and I sit up, waiting to see if he’ll do it.

  He pauses long enough to take a breath. “Jumping!” He leaps from the rock into the air, legs scissoring before straightening. At first his fall is almost slow-motion — his body bow-shaped, muscles tense, ribs jutting. He drifts, floating like a slip of paper, soft-bellied with pointed toes. Then all at once, his milky skin moves fast as light, brightening the rocks with its radiance. The water swallows him — a small disappearance, no big splash. Standing up, it takes me a moment to spot him in the pool, glowing deep in the water like a rising moon. When he surfaces, he pushes his hair out of his eyes and swims over to the boulders, where his friends are calling out to him.

  “Wanna go in?” Kate says after watching him for a minute.

  “Nah, you go ahead,” I say, lying back on my towel.

  It takes the guy a while to notice her doing laps around him, but when he does they float off together, sitting on the rocks in a shallow part of the pool away from everyone. Joining them now would be too obvious. When they both look in my direction, I close my eyes and pretend not to notice.

  I must have fallen asleep on the rocks, because next thing I know Kate is standing over me, breathless, dripping water all over my legs. “You know Elgin, right?” I squint into the sun bursting behind their heads. The guy is standing beside her, rubbing water out of his ears. “He goes to our school.” He half waves, but looks past me which means he’s only interested in Kate. “Come on,” she says, taking my hand and pulling me up off the towel. “He knows a better place to go swimming.”

  WE WALK STRAIGHT DOWN the canyon, back toward the suspension bridge. In this part of the park the creek bed narrows and it’s hard to hear over the roar of fast-moving water. Kate and Elgin are ahead, climbing over the rock
s quick as mountain goats. Kate doesn’t even bother to look back for me. Under the bridge are the falls where jumpers have died. Signs at the park entrance warn about the dangers with a diagram of a stick man twirling in a vortex. Jumpers have been sucked into whirlpools, trapped where no one can rescue them, their broken bodies drifting out eventually.

  Elgin’s standing at the edge of a natural waterslide carved into the rock. He sits in the bubbling stream before gliding down, dropping into the pool below. Kate follows him, descending less gracefully. “Let’s go,” Elgin yells at me over the rush of the creek. The water takes me quickly, the smooth rock like the porcelain of a bathtub, and then the rock is gone and the water hits me again, this time like a cold tile floor. My head goes under and I swallow a gulp of creek, my limbs scrambling around me. I break through the surface, gasping, “It’s cold.” Kate grabs my feet and pulls them into the air, sending my head under again. I spit water in her face and laugh so hard my ribs hurt. “That wasn’t what I wanted to show you,” Elgin says.

  We hike further down the canyon, my skin tingling after the cold shock, shivers running down my limbs, everything heightened — glints of silver in the creek rapids, green-gold needles in the trees, prisms of light radiating through the branches. Around a bend I can see the tourists crossing the suspension bridge and Elgin stops, holding up his hand. “Wait a sec,” he says. He peers over the edge of the glistening rocks before grinning, reaching an arm out to Kate. “You think you can handle this?” I don’t like his grin or the way Kate’s smiling at him. She takes his hand and looks down. “No way,” she says, pulling back from him. Elgin’s smile gets bigger. I walk right to the edge, standing beside them, and look over. The creek spills over the rocks, twisting into a huge waterfall, billows of mist swallowed into the dark water. “Yeah, right,” I say, crossing my arms, waiting for Elgin’s reaction. Kate puts her hand to her mouth, catching a burst of giggles which means she’s nervous. He’ll bluff until we beg him to stop, until we grab his hands and pull him away from the cliff, believing he’s the bravest guy we know. “Go for it,” I say, calling his game.

  Elgin doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even look at me. He smiles at Kate again, then backs away from us quickly, breaking into a run. In one leap he’s gone off the cliff. Not like a bird. Not like a slip of paper. He falls like a rock, like a cannonball. He falls so fast he’s gone like a magic trick.

  “Shit,” Kate says, getting down on her knees to peer over the side. “Where is he?” When she turns back her eyes are huge. “He did it. Holy crap! Look,” she says, pointing, “there he is.” I kneel down beside her. Elgin is in the water, swimming away from the falls. “What an idiot,” I say. I feel like shouting the words so they echo around the canyon.

  “I’m gonna do it,” Kate says, standing. She paces the cliff.

  “What, now you’re an idiot too?” I step away from the edge, shaking my head. “No, you’re not jumping.”

  “He did it.” Kate takes deep breaths, rotating her arms the way swimmers do before they launch from the block. She tightens her ponytail. “Look! He’s fine.” She points again like I didn’t believe her the first time. She’s shaking out her hands. Far below, Elgin’s sitting on a ledge swinging his feet. He sees us and waves. Kate waves back and grabs my hand. “We’ll do it together. At the same time.”

  “Forget it.” I shake her off and start walking away. “You want to go, go ahead. Go smash your brains on some rocks,” I call over my shoulder, climbing up the large boulders leading up to the path. When I turn around I expect to see Kate following me, but she’s still standing by the edge of the waterfall. “It’s like our cliff game,” Kate yells after me, “but there’s something to catch you.”

  “We don’t jump!” I shout down at her. “That’s a pretty significant difference.” I cross my arms and eyeball her while she looks up at me, chewing on her bottom lip. “Brad what’s-his-name died here,” I say.

  “He didn’t jump here.” Kate keeps peering over the edge to check if Elgin is still there. She looks small and breakable from up here on the boulders.

  “He did! He died right there.” I’m practically shrieking now, pointing at the cliff. As I climb further up the embankment, Kate yells, “Hey!”

  I turn back and we stare at each other. “He’s just a guy,” I shout down at her. “What do you need to prove?”

  Kate puts her hands on her hips without saying anything, her mouth twisted in an amused smile. She thinks it’s funny when I get angry.

  “Do what you want,” I say, sucking in my cheeks, and by the time I reach the path and look again, Kate is gone.

  BAREFOOT, IT TAKES A while to get back to the suspension bridge—my flip-flops are still on the rocks by our towels. I push through the cluster of people in the middle of the bridge and scan the pool below for Kate. Just when I start to consider notifying the authorities, I spot her and Elgin swimming together around the waterfall. “Bitch,” I mutter under my breath. People on the bridge are staring at me. My legs and arms start trembling from the cold, so I trudge to the other side to sit on a rock in the sun and scowl.

  Almost an hour’s gone before Kate comes running onto the bridge, yelling chicken. People grip the rails, giving her dirty looks as they’re bounced left and right, but Kate’s oblivious, glowing; Elgin trails behind her, grinning like a goon.

  “You guys took forever,” I yell over the glaring faces. The shivers start again. Kate strolls up to me and makes chicken noises in my ear. “Bock, bock, bock.”

  “I went down the waterslide,” I say, jabbing her in the leg with my big toe.

  “That was nothing, right?” Kate laughs, looking to Elgin.

  “You missed out,” Elgin says, throwing his arm around Kate’s shoulder. “It was awesome.” She hands me my flip-flops and my towel, which I wrap tightly around my shoulders, sulking into the terry cloth. There’s a moment of silence as we all stare at each other. Kate gives Elgin a rough peck on the cheek. “See you tonight,” she says, wrapping an arm around my waist and leading us with purpose out of the forest. When I turn to glare at Elgin, he’s standing there with the stupidest smile I’ve ever seen frozen on his face.

  When we’re far enough away I ask, “What’s tonight?”

  “Party at the creek,” Kate sings.

  “Did you kiss him?”

  “Of course!”

  I MET KATE AT Outdoor School when we were ten years old. Outdoor School is a school where you learn about the outdoors. Once a year, they pile kids from elementary schools all over the North Shore into big yellow school buses and take them up past Squamish for a week to learn about animals and archery and canoeing and plants. It’s all kind of confusing; one day you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure out algebra and the next you’re plopped in the middle of the forest, learning which berries you can eat if you’re stranded in the wilderness. Max was my assigned learning partner. I was stuck beside him on the bus, a couple kids behind us made kissy noises on the backs of their hands, and he was never far from my side the rest of the week at camp. We had to share field notes, build a dam, and collect water skaters from a canoe. He called them Jesus bugs. He was strange and I was mortified, the way girls are most of the time when they’re ten years old. Wherever I turned, he was there, lurking nearby. Kate was my salvation from that week forward. We were placed in the same cabin group, and I noticed her because she wore electric-blue nail polish, and also because on the first night, one of the girls in our cabin peed in the top bunk and Kate laughed at her behind her back. I thought it was cruel, but it also made everyone want to be close to her, including me.

  Our second day there we learned about salmon. We learned how they reproduce, swim the stream, and die. Our wilderness instructor held up a flailing Coho, poking and pressing him to get the sperm out to fertilize the eggs. I sat beside Max on the cold hard benches outside, trying to concentrate on the wind turning up the bellies of t
he leaves, but I couldn’t help watching the fish twisting above the bucket. He looked prehistoric, like he didn’t belong in this world, like the bucket was a portal that would take him back to the right time and place. Kate was sitting in the front row. She kept groaning, pulling the sleeves of her sweater up over her balled hands and sinking her nose into the wool. When the instructor asked her if she wanted to hold the salmon, Kate pulled her hands away from her face and flat out said no, her voice as cold as the water in the bucket. At Outdoor School, we were expected to touch everything in nature that couldn’t sting us or give us a rash. I’d already been forced to touch tree fungus and snake skin. As soon as Kate said no, Max started to laugh and couldn’t stop. It was October, but all he was wearing was a white T-shirt and I could see the outline of his bony shoulder blades under the thin cotton. He put his head between his knees and howled while we all stared at him. For some reason the instructor thought I was the cause of all the hilarity, and he pulled me down to the front row, seating me right beside Kate. “Psycho,” I whispered in Kate’s ear, Max hiccupping behind us, and from that point on, Kate and I were friends.

  With the salmon still twisting in the air, the instructor sent Max away on pig slop duty, which I think Max secretly enjoyed, because he had a smile on his face — and some people do like pigs. I felt bad for him — not Max but that salmon, all of us gawking at his thrashing and his sperm. There was nothing there to protect him; even the air was too much. I just wanted the instructor to let him go, to hold him gently in the shallow river and feel the quiver of his body between his hands, a flicker of light through the water.

  IN KATE’S CLOSET I sit on the floor, staring at her clothing piled in cubbies and falling off hangers. “I need something to wear,” I say, digging through a heap of tops on the bottom shelf.