Swimmers

by Amy Bright

  Some song came on the radio, loud and blaring, the noise left over from the last time she drove. Lee casually turned it down again, high, middle, low.

  "What do you want to talk about?" she asked, abrupt.

  "Are we cool?"

  "No."

  "I mean, can we go back to normal?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  Lee made the turns, right, left, right, through the residential and out onto the main road. The traffic was backed up, the right and left lanes taking turns going around the cherry picker parked on the side of the street. There was a man up there with a chainsaw, taking down branches from an old tree, the ones that crossed over the entire road.

  "Different people, Hunter," she said. "You changed a lot hanging out with Niall all the time, and I did, too."

  "I kind of changed back."

  "No, you didn’t," she said. "And if you did, you’re an idiot. No one goes back."

  It was our turn to swerve around the cherry picker, the woman in the orange vest turning her STOP sign into a SLOW sign. Lee didn’t go slow. She whipped around the blockage, swerving wildly.

  After that it was a couple more turns and we were at the school parking lot. There wasn’t much left in the way of empty spots. The bell was about to ring and everyone was already parked, walking from their cars to the school. Lee found a space at the back of the lot, squeezed between two asshole parkers who had their tires on the yellow lines. I opened my door hard into the truck next to us and left a good-sized dent.

  "I thought we were good," I said.

  Lee walked ahead of me into the school.

  "So you’re back," Lee said. "But maybe we finally got used to you being gone."

  I went through the motions of my classes. A little Bio, some Math, some Chem, and Spanish. Each one sucked harder than the one that came before it, teachers getting more worn out after lunch. The ones in the morning were bitching about how early it was and making excuses to hit up the teacher’s lounge to get another cup of coffee. I kept my head down and didn’t talk to anyone. Josh tried to get me out of it at lunch, driving us off campus and hot-boxing his car down a residential street. I told him about going to Lee’s first thing, and he barked out his dog laugh and slapped me on the back. I was the only one who forgot how to play it cool.

  At the end of the day, I watched Lee start the drive home, hers the first car out of the parking lot.

  So I ended up stuffing my books and backpack into the bottom of my locker and catching a bus downtown. The buses after school were packed full, standing-room only. There was no bar left to hold onto, only the canvas straps hanging from the ceiling. It was worse than an amusement park ride, stomach going up and then down again a thousand times over until the bus stopped. People pushed past me, and I sandwiched myself between bodies and walls and windows to let them by. The bus driver stopped letting people on when we were halfway to downtown, and we sped up then. I took an empty seat.

  I got off by the big Chapters and then walked down the street to the bookstore Bridge worked at. She was standing behind the counter, scanning a few books and bagging them, slipping in a couple of bookmarks for free. She had been working double time that week, not showing her face around the house. I had this idea in my head about checking in on her, but there was nothing she needed me for.

  I unlocked Bridget’s apartment with the key from Mom’s keychain and I was in before anyone saw me. The apartment was bare. The cupboards were empty. The living room echoed. Bridge’s bathroom had the basics—toothbrush, toothpaste, brush, hair dryer—neatly in order. There was a bed in her room, but the closets were empty. An open suitcase was on the floor, the few obvious pieces of clothing folded inside. I climbed up on her bed and sat on the sheets. The pictures that Mom had forced me to hang up were gone, just the indent of nails still visible in the wall. The dresser we lugged up the flight of stairs was gone. So were the bookshelf and all the books that had been on it. So much for moving her in just a year ago.

  My wallet sat in my back pocket, reminding me about Josh and the gifts he’d been giving me over the last few weeks. Him holding out his Altoids and giving me my pick. I never took them, not after Josh’s trick with the Tylenol. Now I had a good collection, all of those pills lined up on the sheets, white on blue. I went down the row, methodically swallowing one pill after the other.

  I started with one pill and then nothing stopped me from taking another. And another. The empty apartment, the fight at school, how cold Lee was. There wasn’t a good thing to hold on to. There wasn’t anything to pull me up and out of the water and drag me back into the real world.

  Niall was right about checking out. It was the easiest thing.

  I had a seriously heavy head by the time I had taken all of the pills. They pushed me back and I made nice with the pillow, comfy as anything behind my head. I didn’t have working hands to put my wallet back in my pocket, so it sat out on the bed and smiled at me lazily, the two of us waiting for everything to kick in.

  I stared at the ceiling in Bridget’s bedroom for what might have been a half-hour. Pills working their magic on my system.

  I thought about it all the time.

  Just a couple of days before Christmas, I had left the house first thing in the morning. I didn’t take anything with me, just got my bike out of the garage and went over to Niall’s. He was out front, standing at the sidewalk, looking like some kid who was waiting for his parents to pick him up from school. I stashed my bike in his garage. It’s still there.

  Niall lived in the perfect neighborhood, walking distance everywhere. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the beach. We didn’t talk on the way there. Maybe three cars drove by. The sun was barely up but it was going to be shining. December in Victoria. Sitting in boats out on the ocean if you dressed warm enough.

  When the road turned into the marina, Niall led the way to his family’s boat. I followed behind him, no clue where he was taking us.

  "You okay?" Niall asked.

  "I’m fine."

  The beach was right in front of us, sandy, rocks and driftwood. The water was still.

  We lowered the boat into the ocean, fast and smooth, and sat down inside. The motor was a low hum. There wasn’t a reason to talk.

  I didn’t go out on the ocean that much. I’d taken the ferry over to Vancouver a couple of times with Mom and Dad, when we’d family vacation over to the lakey interior. A couple of my friends had kayaks but they paddled close to the shore. Every minute that passed on the ocean with Niall was further out than I’d ever been before.

  He took us out half an hour before he told me to turn off the motor.

  It was so quiet out there. The waves were small and almost still. It felt like we were in the middle of the ocean.

  The sun was up but my hands were freezing. I cupped them together and blew hot air into the gap. Niall did the same. He had on this straight-laced expressed, tied up tight. We didn’t touch the stuff Josh had given us. Instead, we sat drifting in that boat, keeping an eye on the right direction back. The sun made us squint at one another, shooting the shit about nothing at all, end-of-school release gone from my chest.

  So when he did it, I wasn’t even paying attention. I had my arms out behind me, supporting the rest of my body with bent-back wrists.

  Niall shoved all of our pills into his mouth and swallowed them down with water.

  "Shit," I said. "That’s a lot."

  He didn’t say a word. He brought out a tiny plastic bag from his pocket with at least ten more pills in it. I reached for the bag but I wasn’t fast enough. He put the pills in his mouth and gulped them down.

  "We should get back," I told him. "Those are going to kick in and wipe you out, man. You might need to go to the hospital."

  "Hunter," Niall said, giving me a lazy smile. "I’m fine."

  "I don’t think so."

  "Trust me," he said.

  Niall stood up and stepped off the edge of the boat. He hardly made a splash. Just one seco
nd he was there and the next he was gone.

  "Niall," I said, and then louder, "Niall!"

  He didn’t come up.

  I stood up and the boat jerked in its seasick way. I looked into the water but I couldn’t see anything but ripples expanding outward.

  I went in after him.

  The water was so cold and icy. I dropped down, forgetting to take a breath with me. When I opened my eyes under the water, it was green and murky and dark, and then the navy blue color of nighttime sky, all right under the surface.

  I bobbed out of the water for a breath of air. Then I dove down. I threw my arms around, hoping I’d touch him, grab the back of his shirt, drag him up to the surface. I stayed down until my lungs were bursting. I swam down further, panic squeezing at my chest. Niall wasn’t anywhere.

  When I came to the surface, the boat was far away. I swam back to it and tried again, down into the blue murky water, the salt in my eyes. I stayed down longer than I should have. I could feel it hurting me bad under there.

  The boat was even further away the second time. Niall had to be close to it. He wouldn’t have drifted this far away. I swam back and I dove again.

  I did it three more times. Four. Five.

  My lungs were trapped in my chest, useless and empty, when I found him. I got a hand around the hood of his jacket. Bringing him out was quicksand slow. My eyes blurred and refocused, the sun waving at us both from above.

  I broke the surface, flipped onto my back, and kicked backwards toward the boat, holding Niall under his armpits. His face kept sliding under the water. I tried to keep him up and he kept sliding down.

  In water, everything is supposed to feel weightless. Hair, arms, legs, they’re supposed to float to the surface. Niall wasn’t floating to the surface.

  I finally heaved Niall into the boat, his head and shoulders followed by his legs. There was almost nothing left for me to get myself in, and then to start the motor and try to remember the direction we were going. My eyes were blurry with salt water and my mouth was so dry.

  Niall still wasn’t conscious when he finally arrived at the hospital in the back of an ambulance.

  "Hunter? Hunter? Hey, are you okay? Hunter?"

  I heard Bridget’s voice and remembered I was in her apartment. I felt something soft underneath me. Behind my eyes, the VHS kept playing. Niall’s smile. The boat tipping. The green water. The absence of light.

  Niall’s body in the boat …

  Then … white walls, narrow bed, IV needle in my arm. I needed about three seconds to figure out where I was, and then feel my body parts to remember why I was there.

  It came back in pieces when I saw Bridget sitting on a hard-backed plastic chair, her neck cricked to the side, out like a light. I pushed back against the pillows and, inch by inch, I got back into a seated position.

  I took inventory. There was my white wristband. Ryan, Hunter. DOB. Telephone number. Health insurance. No date of entry. No idea how long I’d been in or how much longer I’d have to stay.

  Either I had been in the hospital overnight and Mom and Dad just went home to catch up on some sleep, leaving Bridget covering, or else this had just happened and they hadn’t shown up yet. It was gray and overcast out the window, no way to tell what time of day it was.

  "You over trying to kill yourself?"

  Bridget scooted her chair forward so she was next to the bed, the legs scraping the floor.

  "Took the red pill," I said. "There’s no going back from that one."

  I made a joke of it. Really, in the pit of my stomach, I wondered: Is that what I meant to do? Was I actually trying? I didn’t know.

  Bridget punched me in the arm, the one opposite where my IV was running. It was hard enough to hurt, to throw me back against the pillow.

  "Don’t joke."

  "I’m not."

  "Do you remember what happened?" Bridget asked. "Because I’ll tell you what I know, since I am now an expert in finding someone unconscious for unknown reasons, until the doctors at the hospital say ‘overdose’ and start talking about pumping your stomach."

  All of Josh’s gifted pills in a line on Bridget’s bed sheets, taken from that Altoids container like mints. Any flavor. Choose your own adventure.

  "Shit, Bridge."

  "Starting to come back to you? Because there’s still a few things we’re kind of confused about." She talked, staccato and angry, words, packaged accusations slowly unraveling. What next. What next?

  The doctor, my doctor, came in and interrupted. Checked on my veins. Was the IV still in there doing its thing; how was my blood pressure/pulse/heart rate holding up; was I nauseous or sick or messed up? He wasn’t asking about the where who what when or why. Doctors specialize and this one wasn’t there to talk about my mental health.

  Bridget didn’t take her eyes off me. When the doctor left again, she jumped right back into her interrogation—bad cop, angry cop, ugly cop—extracting answers.

  "Where’s Mom and Dad?" I asked her. She looked like she was going punch me again, or else start crying and leave the room.

  "You’re lucky they aren’t here. They’re meeting with your psychologist. Way to tell us about that."

  "Penner," I supplied.

  "They’ll be back soon. They didn’t even want to leave."

  "I bet."

  "Stop joking about this. Do you know how stupid you are? Giving up everything in three seconds, or however long it took for you to shove enough pills down your throat to almost kill yourself. It’s not a joke. It’s not funny, ha-ha, that’s a good one. Don’t you get that?"

  "Look, I didn’t try to do anything. I didn’t know what I was taking. I took too much, I guess, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Bridge."

  "Why were you at my apartment?"

  "No clue, dude. Don’t read into it."

  Bridget did something funny then. She picked up my hand, the one with the IV, and she held it tight. Her thumb went back and forth over the skin puckered by the needle. Her nail polish was chipped. She asked me if I wanted some water and brought me a plastic cup.

  "You’re coming home when Mom and Dad get here."

  "Great," I said.

  "Yeah."

  She looked out of place in my hospital room. She was wearing the brightest sweater that day, light red.

  "Bridge," I said. "What happened to your place? Where’s all your stuff?"

  Her hands went back to the bed sheets again. She had a nervous tic that made her look like a crazy person, the one who should be in this bed, obsessing over life and death and dying.

  Bridge looked up at me. She had this half-smile on her face.

  "Dude," she said, "don’t, like, read into it."

  Quick as that, she was the normal one, giving me a little glass of water, turning on the hospital TV, and making the bed sheets straight again.

  Then she said, "You don’t tell Mom and Dad this, I mean, especially while you’re in here."

  "Yeah, okay."

  She tapped her feet on the floor. "I applied for a work visa a couple of months ago. Stuff’s not really changing for me here. I’m working at the bookstore; I’m going home; I’m sitting all alone in my apartment; or I’m spending all of my time at Mom and Dad’s. And it’s not going to change. I’m kind of realizing that."

  "Work visa where?"

  "Australia." She smiled. "Accents."

  "Yeah?"

  "Look, I started selling stuff online a while ago, so if I decided not to go, I wouldn’t just lose everything. I went piece by piece."

  "There’s nothing left, Bridge."

  "Yeah, well, I’m thinking it’s just about time."

  "Oh."

  "So, you can’t keep doing this, okay? Mom and Dad? They don’t take this stuff so well."

  "And you do?"

  She shrugged. "Better than them. Just wait."

  Bridget leaned back in her chair. She put her feet up on my hospital bed and pushed at mine where they were hanging out under the sheets. My
mouth was dry, but I couldn’t remember if I’d smoked a joint at Bridget’s. She probably would’ve said something if the smell was there when she found me. Must have been the tube stuck down my throat, bringing those pills back up.

  "Can I have a glass of water?"

  Bridget passed the glass across the bed. I took a long drink, estimating the chances that I’d do it again.

  Half an hour later, Bridget went downstairs to wait for Mom and Dad and give me some privacy. After a few minutes on my own, Josh came in, my second visitor of the day.

  Josh jammed his ugly yellow Nikes into the metal bed frame. My hospital bed. Closed my eyes for a second and I almost forgot I’d tried to kill myself.

  "Dude, you out of the woods?" he asked. He was on the back legs of his chair, the front legs rearing.

  I was in my open-backed hospital gown, bare ass against the bed sheets. The IV pulled on my wrist when I gave Josh a thumbs-up.

  "Sick of the world?" he asked.

  "Who isn’t?"

  He leaned forward. Hospitals did things to your hands. They got restless. Josh was too messed up to realize that he should have been hanging onto the chair or sticking his hands in his pockets. Instead he rolled a joint.

  "You took all that shit I gave you?"

  "You bet."

  He stuffed his bag of weed back into his pocket. He made a halo of smell hang around the bed. The joint was rolled fat and tight.

  "I’m going outside to smoke this," he said. "You tagging along?"

  I had seen what happened next in movies. Some cancer patient hobbling down the hallway with the back of his gown just barely hanging on by its loosely tied bow. I checked out my IV. It was connected to a metal stand with wheels. I was mobile.

  "Check if there’s a wheelchair."

  Josh tossed me his sweater and went out with his T-shirt on. He came back with a wheelchair and I dropped in. My stomach reminded me what I’d done to it and stirred up the emptiness. The whole room tilted to the side, my eyes went blurry, and the space in front of them turned white. Etch-a-sketch, shaking back out again.

  I stuck out an arm to make sure the metal stand and my bag of clear liquid came with me, walking the dog. Josh pushed me down the hall. The open doors to the rooms were windows into some depressing-looking lives. I didn’t look long.