“That’s totally something I’d say,” I say, and my gut squeezes again.
“I know,” Saff whispers. “Now I know where you get it. You’re a thousand times more irritating though.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Mom picks up the laptop or the camera—whatever’s filming her—and leans it to the right, so the image shifts. On the couch beside her, snuggled in a patchwork blanket, are three-year-old Saff and four-year-old me, totally asleep. Saff has one thumb in her mouth, and the other wrapped around my shoulders. I rest my head on hers, my hair spilling onto her cheeks.
“Aren’t you adorable?” Mom shifts the screen back. “I could watch you sleep for hours. In fact, I was. Only then I got this brilliant idea to create a game for you. So you can remember how fun I am. And so I can tell you all the things you’re too young to understand now. I mean, it would be wildly inappropriate for me to give you dating advice at this age. But who will tell you those things if I don’t? I can’t rely on Tina—her high school boyfriend sure isn’t a winner.” Mom leans toward the screen and whispers, “Wait! If Tee’s still with Brett when you’re watching this, don’t tell her I said that. If she dumped him years ago, go right ahead.”
I can’t help but chuckle. I remember Brett. He had a huge head. I think I called him SpongeBob.
“Making this game is the first thing I’ve been excited about since my last doctor appointment, and the best part is imagining how much fun you’ll have with it.”
Saffron unlinks her arm from mine and reaches for a tissue from the box on the table. She offers me one, but I’ve been swallowing and compacting so diligently that I don’t need it. Although I do have a homicidal urge to squash this fly that buzzes in, circling the bowl of fruit like a helicopter trying to land. For all that chopping work Micah put in, we haven’t touched the fruit. Apparently, the fly intends to have its share.
“Here’s how the game works. There will be seven gifts—one in each video. Why seven? Because if I add up your ages, I’ve had seven amazing years with you.”
“Wait.” Saff freezes, her tissue unused. “There are only six videos in the folder on the laptop. Why is she saying seven?”
“Who knows?” Maybe it’s that fly buzzing around my head, but I’m irritable. “It’s not like we can ask her.”
“Sometimes I’ll make you work hard to figure out the gift, sometimes I’ll make it easy on you. Your first one was just handed to you. It’s the journal that was in this package. I’ve been writing in it since I got diagnosed. I’m leaving blank pages in between my entries so that you can write back to me if you choose.”
I flip through the journal. She’d written on every other page.
“My entries will focus on the things I want to tell you that I didn’t get a chance to. The advice you never got to ignore, my thoughts on how to live in this crazy world, random facts about me that you probably don’t know . . .”
“Do you think she’ll tell us who our fathers are?” I murmur. Neither of our birth certificates list a father’s name, and Saff and I are so different, I doubt we have the same dad. “If she knows who they are, that is.”
“I don’t know if I can handle this,” Saffron whispers, her lower lip quivering.
“We don’t have to do it,” I whisper back. “It’s not like she’d ever know.”
“Why are we whispering?” Saffron asks.
We both stare at the image of our mother on our screen. Because as impossible as it sounds, it feels like she’s in the room with us, like she can hear what we’re saying.
“There’s a pretty good chance at least one of you is rolling your eyes just about now. But here’s the thing. You literally cannot argue with me. I’m dead, you’re alive, there’s just no opportunity for negotiation. I know you’ll play this game and I know you’ll follow these guidelines, because this is all you have left of me.”
“She’s right,” Saffron says, dabbing at her eyes. “We have to.”
“We don’t have to do anything.” A spark of defiance ignites in my gut. How dare she barge into our lives and guilt trip us? I stare at the fly, which has now landed on a piece of pineapple and appears to be preening itself.
“We do. We have to.” Saff is almost pleading.
“Okay. That sounded sad. No more of that! I promise this will be fun. It’s way too shitty that I’m leaving you so soon, but I’m past cursing at the sky and beating the walls. It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it. And now, all these years later, hopefully you’ve accepted it too.”
“I had accepted it,” I snap at the laptop. “Three hours ago I was just fine.” Of course, five hours ago I was dodging Betty-the-locomotive, but that’s beside the point.
Saffron elbows me sharply. “Shhhh.”
“What? It’s not like she can hear me.”
The fly must have had its fill of pineapple because it flies around in a circle again and dives back in toward a strawberry.
“Of course I know a sense of loss will stay with you forever—but hopefully the wound isn’t raw anymore. Hopefully it’s all in perspective. With this game . . . I want you to celebrate me. And more important, I want you to celebrate yourselves. You are the only living part of me left on this earth. You must enjoy it. That is an order!”
The fly grooms itself on the strawberry, and I swear it turns to look at me.
The fly must die. I slip off my shoe and hold it at the ready.
“And with that, here are your instructions. Over the next week, start reading the diary I’ve left you. You can write back to me if you want. Give yourself a week or two to let this all sink in. Then you can move on to video number two.” Mom brings her hands to her lips and kisses them with a big smacking sound that I remember instantly. Mom always kissed with a juicy noise. “I love you two so much.”
I smash my shoe into the strawberry, knocking the fruit bowl off the table. Pieces of fruit roll around the floor. The unsuspecting fly is flattened. His death is surprisingly satisfying.
On the screen, there’s movement from behind Mom’s body. A sleepy four-year-old me sits up, confused.
“Who are you talking to, Mama?” four-year-old me mumbles.
“Somebody very special.”
Mom blows another kiss at the camera . . . and the image freezes.
“Well holy shit.” Seeing my mini self, sweet and innocent, deflates me. I stare at the fly smushed onto the table amidst pulverized strawberry and feel suddenly sorry.
“Tell me about it.” Saff focuses on the frozen image of Mom.
I focus on the mess I can manage. The Mom stuff is way too complicated. “We’re not going to be able to find all the pieces of fruit. A strawberry is going to get all rotten in the corner and no one will know it’s there until they have an ant infestation.”
I kneel down on the rug, which sort of bristles into my knees, as though many a drink has been spilled right there, then wiped up but not properly cleaned. I start crawling around on my hands and knees, collecting slimy bits of strawberries in my hands.
Saff touches my shoulder. “Cayenne, be serious for a minute.”
“I am being serious. We seriously can’t offend our hosts.” The odor of fertilizer and oil paints is suffocating, like a heavy blanket over my head. “Listen. Let’s clean up this fruit and get out of here. I say we take the diary with us and we can read it . . . or not. We have some time until we have to decide whether to watch the next video.”
“What if one of us wants to and the other doesn’t?” A red tint crawls over the tip of Saff’s nose, something that always happens when she gets teary.
“No one can make us,” I point out, piling all the dirty fruit on a paper plate and covering it with a napkin. What I really mean is no one can make me.
“Yeah but she said we have to do it together.”
“She won’t know.” I shut down the laptop. “I’m done. I need to leave.”
Chapter 5
My bare feet connect wi
th the dirt by the shore. I step gingerly, anticipating a sharp rock underfoot. With the sun sinking in the sky, I can scarcely see my toes. Anticipation jacks my heart rate up a few beats. With Axel’s fingers intertwined with mine, the thumping of my heart feels just right.
I texted him right after I dropped Saff off at home. She’s staying in tonight, which is strangely comforting. I have no idea why I worry about her being out at night—maybe just because we don’t have a mom to do that worrying, and the anxiety needs to land somewhere.
Me, on the other hand, I need a distraction. Preferably the Axel kind. Axel makes me feel important and exciting, so just being next to him is intoxicating. The wind whisks past, flipping my hair behind me and inviting a layer of goose bumps to bubble up along my arms.
I peek over the edge. The Bluffs are a series of high and treacherous cliffs that hang over the lake, accessible by a variety of trails. The smallest cliff, Baby Bluff, is twenty feet off the ground, and if you jump it’ll make your skin sting and then go numb when you smack into the water. Mesa Ridge (middle cliff) and Pinnacle Peak (largest cliff) have WARNING and DANGER signs plastered all over them. We don’t know exactly how high they are, but based on their appearance we’re thinking maybe forty and sixty. Axel and I aim to tackle them both eventually.
We’re not the only ones. Each year people jump both. Mostly nothing bad happens. But every few years someone dies. They hit the water funny, or they’re too drunk or high to swim, or they slam into a rock, and if they sink down far enough, they drown before someone can haul them out.
Axel and I do not have a death wish. We’re shooting for the ultimate adrenaline high. We’ve been brainstorming a bucket list ever since we met. We’ve already completed two-thirds of it. This is what we’ve got left:
Baby Bluff—in the dark
Mesa Ridge—in daylight
Mesa Ridge—in the dark
Pinnacle Peak—in daylight
Train Dodging (Axel crossed this one off his list after the first try)
Car racing
Skydiving (expensive)
Parasailing (expensive)
Like I said, no death wish. That’s why we aren’t doing Pinnacle Peak in pitch black. The purpose is to defy Death, to take control of that lurking monster and harness it.
Axel’s dad overdosed when he was a toddler, so he’s grown up without a parent too. We totally get the fragility of life. We want to live. Like really live. We want to experience everything, be spontaneous, and create memories that stay palpable. We calculate the risks. We push ourselves just far enough, but not too far. Axel insists we steer clear of drugs and even alcohol. We always go for the natural high. The one thing that scares Axel is morphing into an addict like his dad. He says he’s “genetically loaded” and doesn’t want to play those odds.
Axel’s mature in ways most guys our age aren’t—just the fact that he stays sober speaks to that. Plus, he got emancipated last year and lives on his own with a roommate. He doesn’t want to be dependent on anyone else. “People let you down,” he says. I plan to be the first person to never let him down. The first person he can allow himself to be interdependent with.
“You ready?” He turns to face me, inches from the edge of Baby Bluff. The darkening sky sharpens his features—his ski-jump nose, his eyes that are such a dark brown they’re nearly black, and those chapped lips I always want pressed to mine.
“I’m ready.” Maybe it’s the anticipatory adrenaline kicking in, but I can hardly keep from wrapping my arms around him. “Only I can still see you. It’s not dark enough yet.”
“Guess we’ll have to stall.” He pulls me toward him and those chapped lips are all mine.
I close my eyes and lose myself. As if all the cells in my being consolidate for one purpose, to meld with his. That’s why I love him so much. I don’t have to think when I’m around him. Same with this jump. We did all our thinking ahead of time. Tonight, all I have to do is propel my body off that cliff. The rest will be instinct. Survival. There’ll be no space to think about my dead mom trying to reconnect.
By the time Axel pulls away from me, the sun has retreated further, leaving just the slightest sliver against the hills, like the last bite of an over-easy egg. “Remember to jump out,” he warns. He steps back, leaping out, over . . . down.
My vision hasn’t adjusted to the dimmer light yet. I hear the faint splash of his body connecting with the water. I hold my breath listening, listening, for the sounds of him surging back up through the water for a deep breath, the sounds of his arms connecting with the water to move him back to shore.
I wait forever. The three or four seconds stretch themselves like taffy. I hear the sounds of night in the mountains—bugs singing, water lapping, wind rustling the leaves, the faraway howl of a coyote . . . I can almost hear my own heart, probably because it’s beating so hard it rattles my ribcage. A tiny thread of worry catches like a hangnail on loose fabric.
Until finally . . . “Wahoo!” This comes out almost like a battle cry, and I nearly jump out of my skin. In fact, I nearly fall off the cliff. I’ve been standing so close that any movement could’ve sent me tumbling.
I imagine Axel’s arms slicing the water as he climbs out, heaves himself onto the bank, probably grabs hold of some rocks for leverage. “Your turn. It’s a killer high!”
Don’t-think-don’t-think-don’t-think-don’t-think—I’m airborne.
Control and surrender swirl together as I hang in the air, as my stomach drops out beneath me then floats up above me, as my heart puts the brakes on, as I’m enveloped by that feeling of falling-falling-falling.
I plunge deep. Deeper, deeper, deeper, the coldness of the water shocking me.
My heart gets its act together, and I slowly remember to move my arms and legs, to swim up. The lack of light means I have no sense of how far away the surface is. I haven’t timed my breath right—wasn’t able to get enough oxygen before I went under—so my lungs burn. Aching-aching-swelling . . . until my head breaks the surface. I waste precious seconds realizing I can now breathe, before I actually inhale.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
The world rushes in along with a surge of adrenaline, setting my body on fire. Axel wasn’t kidding. Because the falling takes longer than the jump from the train, this high is more intense. I whoop in my head long before I can muster the lung power to make any actual noise.
Axel’s cheering on my right, and I swim in that direction, powering through the water as easily as if it’s air. When I bump into a rock I grab hold of a ledge to haul myself out. I lie on my side, shaking, all my muscles vibrating.
“What’d I tell you?” Axel asks from above.
I have no words.
He reaches down to help me up, then pulls me to his chest and covers my mouth with his. I haven’t regained enough breath for a long kiss, but it doesn’t matter. No kiss could feel as good as my body feels right now, as if every cell has downed a triple shot of espresso.
“I love you,” he whispers in my ear, and his breath against my skin multiplies my goose bumps to the thousands. I love him back, more than I could ever put into words.
I tighten my arms around his neck and wind my wet legs around his waist, so that he stands holding me in his arms. We drip lake water from our hair and our ears and our noses. I can feel his muscles tighten as he moves, and the firmness of his body makes me feel safe.
He walks with me in his arms for a full minute before he lowers me to the ground. “This way,” he says, lacing his fingers in mine and pulling me along.
“How do you know you’re going the right way?”
“The location of the moon. Just trust me.”
“I do. I trust you with my life,” I say, and I mean it. Axel is the only one I can trust in this way. He can take me right to the edge of the world and look over it with me. He can tempt fate and deny her.
We don’t have much trouble finding the truck—named Churro, at my s
uggestion, after Axel’s favorite dessert. Axel left the keys hidden in some bushes nearby. He reaches behind the seats and brings out two plush towels. I wrap myself in one, climb into the truck bed, and pull my dry sweatshirt and pants out of my duffel bag.
I slip off my suit and slide into my sweats, grateful for the darkness. I know it’s ridiculous to be shy in front of Axel, but I can never seem to shake that middle school self-consciousness that took hold before I grew breasts. Mine came in later than most—I truly didn’t need a bra until eighth grade (although of course I wore one anyway), and I remember how I tried to hide myself behind my locker door when I had to change for PE. Now of course, there’s no doubt I have boobs. I’m petite, so even though my breasts are average sized, by some optical illusion they appear large on my frame.
Axel’s great for my self-confidence. Still, I like the lights off when I change in front of him. He prefers the lights on, for obvious reasons.
Axel groans when he grabs me. “Sweats? Seriously? Way to kill my rush.”
“Oh, please,” I scold him . . . nicely. “You can’t even see me, and I knew it would be cold out here. You’ll have to find a way to warm me up if you want something different.”
He chuckles, and the laughter rumbles deep in his chest. “Oh, I think I can manage that.” I think he can, too.
Chapter 6
Saff is waiting up for me on the couch, sipping tea. Her hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, and I wonder if that gives her a headache. I bet her chill quotient would multiply if she could just let her hair down now and then. “Where have you been? I want to read the journal. And I know we have to do it together.”
I’ve seriously forgotten about the journal. The jump from the Bluffs wiped my memory clean. And now I feel detached from it, almost, like it’s a balloon floating away from me and I don’t care enough to grab it. I sit down next to Saff on the couch, folding one leg in so I can face her. “It’s okay, Saff. Go ahead and read on your own.”
How to Live on the Edge Page 3