In Autumn's Wake

by Maguire, Megan

  I bet his lungs burned for air, as did mine. His muscles constricted and shook, and he had a vacant stare before a silent swallow of gelid water closed his throat. That’s what happened to him. I know because it’s what happened me, except I made it out alive.

  I remember. And I smile knowing this is a better ending to the story. Better Ed than me.

  I’m alive.

  Ed’s dead.

  And I’m free.

  “Here.” Sean hands me my phone. “You must’ve dropped it on the ice when Ed hit you.”

  The screen is stuck on text messages between Heather and me. I can scroll through them but can’t open the keyboard or close Messages to call her.

  I look heavenward, pleading for another miracle, weak with horror that it may be too late. “Sean, give me your cell.” I hold out a wrinkled hand, my entire body shuddering violently.

  “No, Dylan. Get in the goddamn truck.”

  “Take Jake to our place. I’ll meet you two there.” My voice is bullying, as though I’m out of time. Disoriented from the shock of being knocked out and nearly drowning, I’m unable to get from here, to there, fast enough.

  “Don’t go.” Jake hooks his legs around mine. “The fight … that guy at the party … and the crowbar, Dylan. I didn’t mean it. All that blood, and Ed, and the river. The river killed you!”

  “Shh.” Jake is as confused as me. “I’m right here. It didn’t. It didn’t get either of us. We’re alive, Jake. Everything’s over now, Ed’s dead.”

  “Please,” he begs. “Stay with me!”

  “You’re not driving,” Sean says, snagging the keys out of my hand. “I said get in the truck, or I’m calling Pete and telling him his idiot son was playing on the ice like a little kid and fell through. He’ll come get you and take you home.”

  He fights me like a demon, pushing both Jake and me inside the truck. I take the front, and Jake drops into the back, the heat blasting out of the heaters when Sean starts the engine.

  “Being in the river even for a few minutes can kill you. You’re lucky you’re not in shock,” he says.

  “I might be. God, my head was in a fog forever.”

  “Yeah? Did your life flash before your eyes?” he asks, driving out of the lot.

  “No, I saw the future.”

  He laughs. “Tell me who wins the Super Bowl next year.”

  “I’m dead serious, Sean. It was like a year had passed.”

  “A year? You were out for a long time, but not a year. Maybe you had a psychogenic blackout. Remember when my cousin had those after he saw a guy get run over by a truck? He blacked out a couple of times a week. Trauma, man. Clubbed with Ed’s baton and lack of oxygen could’ve—”

  “It was real! I was living in hell!” I retch again.

  “See. See how sick you are. I’m not sayin’ the stuff you conjured up didn’t seem real, but look around you. Jake’s alive, and you’re an ice cube from sinking in the water.”

  “Sean, shut up and get me to Heather’s house. Hurry up.”

  “This ain’t right.” He shakes his head. “Let’s go home so you can change and warm up before you go to her place. The last thing you want to do is vomit on Lona’s furniture.”

  “Jake.” I spin around, wild-eyed. “Did you fuck Lona?”

  “What?” He scrunches his nose. “Gross.”

  “You didn’t get her pregnant?” I ask.

  “What are you talking about? Sean, take him to the hospital. He’s messed up bad.”

  Sean puts his cell in my lap. “Call Heather to meet us at the house. There’s no reason to go to her. Make her come to you.”

  My head hurts so much that I see double. “A year passed. Jake died.”

  “No, you almost died,” Sean says. “Jake’s behind you in the back seat.”

  I find Heather’s number on his cell and tap call. The ring reverberates from my ear to somewhere inside my truck.

  “The passenger-side floor is ringing,” Sean says.

  “Shit.” I slam his phone against the dash. “She left her cell in my truck.” But I knew that. I remember that now. She sent me texts from her Apple Watch. She said I had her cell.

  Sean stares at me in utter bewilderment. “Bust my phone, and I’ll put you back in the river.”

  “This sucks. I have to talk to her!” I send her a text. No response. I call the Andersons’ home phone, but it goes to voicemail. “Heather … pick up if you’re there. Please, baby.” The line clicks and then falls silent. I try again, and the same thing happens. “Someone keeps cutting me off.”

  “At the party, you said you guys fought.”

  “That doesn’t mean she has to hang up on me.” I swing my legs back and forth, for warmth and because of the agony of not knowing if she’s okay. “I’m worried. She’s never snubbed me before.”

  Vague memories of our argument dribble in. The tears on her cheeks were unsettling. I remember feeling ashamed. But then when she left my truck and looked back at me like I was a cold-hearted bastard, that, THAT was far worse.

  “Drive faster!”

  He sighs. “No. I’m not speeding and getting pulled over. Can you imagine? A black guy heading into that wealthy neighborhood, a white guy next to him with a gash on his head, and a kid crying convulsively in the back with blood next to him on the seat. Forget it. No way.”

  “This is nerve-wracking.” I grip my hair with both hands, gasping for air as if I’ve just reached the surface of the water.

  We drive under a streetlight, and the faded remnant of a heart sketched on the passenger-side window appears. I touch it, recalling Heather drew it earlier on the fogged glass before she got out of my truck. It was while she was talking about Autumn.

  “What the hell happened?” I lean forward and drop my head between my legs, queasy again. “Is she dead?”

  “Who?” Sean asks.

  “Heather.”

  Agitated, I sit back in a huff then turn around to make sure Jake is still behind me. He’s alive. She has to be, too. It’s not too late. It’s not.

  Sean puts his hand on my shoulder. “Heather’s fine. Ed’s the one who died. The river knocked you around and turned you upside down and inside out. Bet you won’t be able to move in the morning. You’ll feel like you’ve been in fifty fights.”

  “Autumn,” I whisper.

  “It’s winter, dummy. Look at the blinking Christmas lights all around the city. It’s dreadful. I’m tired of the holidays, totally burned-out.”

  I gaze out the window at red and white flickering lights on trees and houses, green wreaths on doors, decorations in every window—an excess of bright colors—colors I couldn’t distinguish under the ice with insufficient light.

  “But it’s February,” I say.

  “What?” He gives me a side-eye. “Jake’s right, I should really get you to a hospital. It’s the end of December. Christmas was four days ago.”

  “Dylan, it’s been a long December,” Heather said.

  “A long December.” I groan and lean forward, this time closing my eyes. “Dear God, what have I done?”

  Sean taps the wheel, evoking the sound of Jake’s stick on the ice moments before Ed arrived. I tell him to stop the repetitive noise, then reach back and grab Jake’s leg, asking him if he’s okay.

  “You’re not dead,” he responds.

  I turn around, confused by a feeling of déjà vu. “What?”

  His eyes are swollen from emotional exhaustion. He watches me watching him for I don’t know how long.

  “Jake?”

  He lifts a gloved hand to tuck his hair under the sides of his hat, the ends around his neck hidden by a burgundy scarf. “You’re not dead,” he repeats, staring at red spots on the seat.

  I pull off one of his gloves and hold his hand, remembering a dream of a girl in the alley next to the bar. Like a ghost, she replaced the body of a man who had collapsed at my feet. Her burgundy coat caught m
y eye first, spread out in the snow like a picnic blanket, black gloves on either side suggestive of monstrous ants. Wind snaked through the alley and fluttered her hair over blood spots encased in crisp white snow. I fell into the wall when she turned over. She was alive, and I was surprised my eyes were so easily fooled.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

  She told me then, and I didn’t listen.

  29

  Heather

  For a year, rain and snow were a burden. Wind hounded me like a ghost. I’d woken up in bed, screaming, unwilling to let go of Heather and Jake, spending days in a life as black as coal, the taste of death on my breath thicker than whiskey. Alone, stuck between reality and illusion, each second was a day that spun into a year of depression, failures, and gloom.

  I experienced the opposite of life flashing before one’s eyes. I saw my future, and it sounded an alarm. Jake can’t go down the same road I’ve been on, and Heather … well.

  The hallucinations started after the trauma of Ed’s assault, heightened by the river slugging me down. Tormented like Ebenezer Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and misplaced like Dorothy and Toto on their quest to return home to Kansas, my goal was to reach Heather—to beg for a second chance and change course.

  On the way to her house, I hark back to an exchange that began hours ago in my truck. Same as the party and the fight with Ed, I remember it now. I know why Heather was upset.

  ~

  “When was it?” I ask her, looking straight ahead at snowflakes melting down the windshield.

  “Autumn,” she whispers, drawing a heart on the passenger-side window. “The day me, you, and Twig raked the leaves for my mom. When he hauled them to city recycling, it was then. I checked my calendar. That day. In autumn.”

  I raise a hand for her to stop and kill the engine of my truck.

  “Dylan, it’s been a long December. Autumn feels like ages ago. Like a year has pas—”

  “I heard you the first time.” I rest my hand on the steering wheel, focusing on the smoke trailing off my cigarette. “I heard you, and I’m pissed. You told your mom before me! What the fuck, Heather?” I smack the dash. “How could you tell her before me? What were you thinking?”

  “Don’t yell.” A tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away, then splays her fingers in her lap. The heart ring that I got her for Christmas gleams, and she twists it as if she’s trying to take it off. “We have until the second week in February. Around Valentine’s Day.”

  “Get out.”

  “What?” She gives me the saddest look.

  “I’m late. I gotta go.” I puff on the cigarette, keeping it pressed between my lips so she can’t kiss me.

  She sucks in a sharp breath. “Since when are you such an ass?” She gets out and slams the door with all her might like our relationship is over for good.

  ~

  Autumn was an event. An experience inspired by emotions. If the season had a gender, she’d be a woman—beauty contained in a blink of sunlight, waning over time into vehement darkness. Love and danger rolled into one.

  My soul is devoted to her, to autumn—the event of her. She coated my body in dense fog that left me bleary-eyed and chilled to the bone. A fear meant to keep me alive, the feeling unlikely to thaw before spring.

  It was in autumn, surrounded by death and the onset of night, that Heather and I sensed the fleetingness of life. She spoke of the maple, diseased after a dry and hot summer, and picked up a wilted leaf spotted brown, twirling it by its stalk between two fingers. Vibrant hues of oranges, golds, and reds stippled the lawn like freckles on the face of the girl between life and death, and the colors swirled like the copper penny highlights in her hair.

  Heather loved the change of seasons, she mentioned it while we raked, but she was sad about the dying tree. I told her she was introspective, and that was a good thing because not enough people are. She smiled, and when our eyes met, I had a sense that we’d be together forever.

  She looked like an angel that day, white scarf and hat, fluffy coat and dimpled cheeks, raking the dead away. I whispered that I loved her, and the wind caught my words, echoing them through the evening haze. I knew Heather felt the same, and I knew just what she was thinking when she sent me a wink.

  I told Jake to finish the job, ordered him to take away the bags of leaves, got rid of him so we could go inside and fuck.

  There was a scent as we left him—a tang of smoke that arrived with the season. It shadowed us through the yard and inside the house.

  Autumn was comfort and reflection, a marvel of beauty. With an air of mystery, she was a representation of Heather, a figure of affection, a balance of radiance and slumbering moods. Autumn Black—nature and melancholic death. The transformation from one to two, she gave a face to that one significant evening.

  Autumn was powerful. Beautiful. And sobering.

  I could say she offered protection, was a shield and an escape from the truth. But she’s gone. It’s December. And Heather is waiting.

  I tell Sean and Jake to stay in the truck when we pull up to the Andersons’ home. Heather is sitting on the front steps in the cold with puffy breath clouds veiling her face.

  The Lexus her Uncle Nick, Northland’s mayor, bought her family for Christmas is in the driveway. It outshines my gift a hundred times over. I don’t have much to offer. Not wealth. I have no financial stability. I’m not cultured either. Even her Uncle Nick’s dog, Trevor, is clearly of well-bred stock compared to me. I can’t even say I’m loyal, or I’ll be around for her, realizing as I walk up the driveway and scroll through our texts that I left her broken in autumn’s wake.

  The suicide note I couldn’t get my hands on was Heather’s text messages, haunting my thoughts while my brain froze in the river.

  She’s either gonna hang us or shoot us!

  Heather never hanged herself, and I wasn’t shot. My mind was scrambled.

  No more sticks!

  Not hockey sticks. Pregnancy sticks.

  It’s over!

  That final line resounded. Heather was fuming because I was a dick.

  My fears and insecurities caused me to bolt, and I hurt the girl that I love. I could make excuses, like being angry that she told her mom. But what’s the point? I blew it. I did a job for Ed instead of facing the news and acting like a man. An apology isn’t going to cut it this time. I may have to get on my knees and beg for her forgiveness. And I should. My frustration and short fuse triggered the wrong response. My focus should’ve been on her, not her mom, or the party, or the problem at large.

  Problem. No. I won’t call it that.

  We’ve talked about having a family, years from now after she’s finished with school and we’re married. It’ll just be a lot sooner than we thought, but doable.

  She set Valentine’s Day as a cutoff date, but that was panic. Heather wouldn’t opt for an abortion. Lona might insist, but we’re not heading in that direction. I’ll get a second job so Heather can finish school. And Sean can get his own place so she can move in with me. I’m optimistic about the future. It’s not bleak and hopeless like it was when I was in a dead faint.

  I put my cell away and stare at her from the driveway, holding back from breaking down. I want to tell her everything’s going to be okay, but I should’ve said that earlier. And I didn’t.

  Twenty feet away, I watch the sparkling red and green stars from her mom’s laser projector float across her pale face. Fifteen feet away, I see the sadness clouding her features, and I know it’s going to be a tough night. At ten feet, I’m relieved when she looks into my eyes and doesn’t send me away.

  I take out her phone to give it back, recalling the music she played earlier in my truck. A smile reaches the corners of my mouth, knowing the best way to begin to take back the night. I search for her favorite song by Passenger; the one she said reminds her of how easy it is to take the people we love for granted. A so
ng called, “Let Her Go.”

  The phone shakes in my hand, my fingers still trembling from the river. At three feet away, I’m compelled to take her in my arms, but hold steady, a blaze of hurt in my eyes because I screwed up.

  Heather covers her face with her hands when the music starts to play, at first to hide a smile, then to hide tears. Happy tears, which is better than I could have hoped for. The lyrics of a broken-hearted man left with only memories of a woman convey my regret of walking away from her. Mistakes were made, and my horrific dream of a future without her is one I never want to relive.

  The music soothes until it fades. I know it didn’t miraculously change the situation. But it’s a start—a first step at letting her know that the one thing I do have to offer her is my heart.

  I stand still, absorbing what I can from her hollow-eyed face. There’s an unfocused quiet without the music lingering. It’s the first time neither of us runs our mouths off while we’re upset. The first time I imagine myself in her shoes and how scared she must be. The first time the entire world is silent, suddenly overcome by too many emotions to speak.

  The laser light shimmers onto the maple’s branches, outstretched overhead like open arms anticipating an embrace. I stare at her for a long time before she holds out a hand. She knows me now. She knows how awful I can be, and she’s allowing me back in anyway. I go to her side without hesitation.

  Aside from dishing out a short headshake over my wound, she doesn’t ask about the blood or why I’m wet. She is a Northland girl, after all. She’s used to it. But with a reluctant smile, she does squeeze my hand, and I smile and squeeze hers back, looking down at the heart ring I bought her for Christmas, and the “D” tattoo on the base of her pinkie finger.

  There’ll be plenty of time to talk about the events of the evening. To yell, cry, make up, and move on. For now, I’m content when I feel her heartbeats sync with mine, a reminder that we’re alive, breathing the same air in the same place.

  Her head rests on my shoulder, and the sweet smell of strawberry lip balm drifts over me. My favorite sedative—she’s the most precious treasure to hold after being rescued from certain death.