"Don't come any closer fuckhead, or I'll cut her tits off!"
To punctuate his sincerity, Justin placed the flat of the knife under Eva's right breast and drew a deep red line across her flesh. Jesse cried out in horror. Eva screamed in pain, and one of Justin's cronies punched her in the mouth. She went limp, and Jesse saw red.
"The fucking tide is coming in, Natasha," he shouted. "Tell Justin and his fuck buddies to let Eva go, NOW!"
Jesse saw Natasha's red lips curl in evil laughter, her blond hair whipping across her face in the wind, swept up by the tide. She screamed at him, cursing his name, crying that no one ever chose her.
"I'm sorry no one is nice to you at home, Natasha. I really am. I wish your stepfather and your mother listened to you when you told them your stepbrother was molesting you. But Eva didn't do any of that to you, you know that. Come on. Just let her go, and I'll help you..."
"FUCK YOU, JESSE! You think I don't know you'll just ignore me again? That's what guys do right? Unless my legs are spread you don't give a SHIT about me! None of you do! You think this jackass likes me?" she pointed at Justin, who had the nerve to look a little wounded about being called a jackass. "NO! He only likes me for the booze I can get from my stepdad's liquor cabinet and for the head I give him in his shitty basement. He doesn't care about me AT ALL! Just like that stupid fuck, Alex, didn't care about me in grade school. He said he would tell everyone what he saw me doing with the junior high boys. I told him that my stepbrother made me do it, but HE DIDN'T BELIEVE ME! He would have told EVERYONE! And my mom would have sent me away! Then they could have their PERFECT FUCKING FAMILY without poor messed up Natasha fucking everything up for them!"
She turned to Justin, her make up running in streams down her face, his Mohawk a sad thing in the driving mist of the ocean breaking around them as the tide came in, whipped to fury by the wind. "THROW THAT FUCKING BITCH IN!" Natasha screamed at him, nearly doubled over with the force of her own voice.
Eva
I saw Natasha turn, her mascara running down her cheeks and her perfect hair tossed by the windy ocean air. She shrieked at Justin to throw the little bitch into the water. It took me a minute to figure out that the bitch was me.
They hesitated, probably because Jesse was there to witness it, and she freaked the hell out. She was screaming all sorts of obscene words, asking how I liked knowing that my boyfriend was thinking of her while he screwed me, and other awful things I will never be able to unhear. She strode over to me and pulled me up by the hair, yanking me to my feet and trying to push me over the far edge of Haystack Rock, away from Jesse.
Jesse leapt over the nearly covered narrow strip of connecting land and punched both Justin’s henchmen out cold. I didn't get to see this but I wish he'd had time to kick them in the ribs. The things they had told me they were going to do to me will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.
Justin ducked and ran, jumping across to safety and getting in his car just in time for the cops to show up and arrest him. I missed that part, too, but I was seriously hoping there would be an episode of "Cops" to record the whole thing. Unfortunately, there was not.
The other cops ran out to Haystack Rock in time to see Natasha lose her footing and fall off the rock, holding on to my hair. I remember screaming, the intense pain, and the sight of Jesse lunging for me.
I remember falling off the edge of the rocks and that sickening feeling in my stomach, like the bottom of an elevator dropping out from underneath me, and loud shrieking that I thought was me. The pain in my scalp abruptly stopped, reduced to a dull throb all over my head. I remember hanging there and my fingers hurting like hell and feeling a giant weight hanging off of me and I saw Jesse grab my hands, trying to pull me up, shouting, "Don't look down, Eva!" over and over so, of course, I looked down. I saw Natasha hanging off of my pants and she was the one making all the noise, screaming and trying to climb up me, digging her nails into my skin under my jeans and she grabbed my hair again, pinching and pulling and twisting so I punched her, over and over. I remember that my fist hit her nose with a horrible crunching sound, like the sound your teeth make when biting through celery with peanut butter, which I will never be able to eat again, and she fell, she fell because of me. Fell down, such a long ways, her body twisting over and over, screaming, such an impossibly long way down. Later the coroner said that the fall on the jagged rocks alone would have killed her, but the strong riptide had pulled her under and finished the job.
I must have closed my eyes; the next thing I can remember is the feeling of being carried and I cracked my eyes open a tiny bit. I could see/hear/smell/feel Jesse carrying me, his scent of Axe deodorant and hair gel mixing with that smell of just Jesse, a male scent that never fails to make me dizzy. I could hear his heart beating like a giant drum next to my ear, my head resting on his broad chest, and I could see the soft blue material of my favorite sweatshirt of his. It's a baby blue color, worn and washed so many times that the cloth is thin, molding to his body and smelling like him no matter if it's fresh from the dryer at his parents' house or not. I was planning to steal it, and I was outraged to see he'd spilled red paint all over the front of it. I opened my mouth to yell at him but then I don't remember anything coming out. He told me later at the hospital that all that red paint was my blood from the wounds Natasha had given me, pulling out hunks of my hair. The worst was the knife wound from Justin; I'll always have a scar under my right boob. There goes my bikini-modeling career.
Then I'm lying down and seeing Jesse's face looming over mine. He was saying something over and over again but my ears weren't working so I don't know what it was. It looked like he was saying "I love you" but I can't be sure. Everything was so fuzzy, and bright at the same time; it made him have a halo around his blond hair and I almost giggled. My angel, I remember thinking, knowing all the times we had seriously made out and almost went too far made him less than an angel. Me too, I guess.
Jesse
Justin hesitated to throw Eva in the water, and Natasha lost her mind. Screaming obscene shit at everyone, she ran over to where Eva lay on the ground bleeding and yanked her to her feet by her hair, pushing her to the edge of the cliff. Jesse bellowed in anger and rushed them, punching first one of Justin's friends and then the other. Both of them went down like a sack of rocks. Justin ran, ducking Jesse's wild swing, and booked it for the wayside parking lot. Just in time, too, for the cops to show up and throw his ass in handcuffs.
On the rock, Natasha and Eva went over the edge of the cliff in front of Jesse's eyes. He screamed in pain, and fear and grief, lunging to the edge and throwing himself flat, unable to look and see Eva's shattered body below but unable not to look. He saw her though, her small strong fingers clutching the sturdy coastal grasses that covered the rocks and sand, Natasha clinging to her, her hands grabbing Eva's dark hair and trying to pull her down the cliff, intent on Eva's death and impervious to her own.
"Don't look down, Eva!" he shouted and she looked up at him, her eyes enormous, eating up her face. He grabbed her hands, trying to pull her up. Natasha began screaming at him, at Eva, cursing and pinching Eva, pulling her hair, doing anything she could to hurt her and make her lose her grip on Jesse.
Jesse saw Eva double up her fist before she pulled it from his grasp. She turned slightly, her left hand gripping him so tightly his hand hurt for days afterward, and her left fist punching Natasha in the face over and over until her nose broke, and blood gushed everywhere. Natasha howled in pain and let go of Eva, falling over and over down the face of Haystack Rock until her body landed on the sharp jagged rocks below. Jesse saw her broken body in the foamy waves, her blood leaking from her and staining the water at the base of the rock, her blue eyes open to the heavens, staring at nothing.
Jesse wrenched his eyes from Natasha's dead body and concentrated on the woman he loved. He pulled her up, her body limp and unresponsive. He knelt by her, frantically seeking a pulse. A police officer approached him cautiously, glanc
ing over the cliff side at the torn body of Natasha before coming back to Jesse.
"Is she breathing son?"
"I don't know, I don't know!"
"Let me check her, ok?"
"NO! I will do it!"
"You're not doing her any favors son. Let me check her and then you can have her back, ok?"
Jesse nodded but didn't move. The officer leaned down and checked Eva's vital signs. She was breathing shallowly, her pulse erratic. "She's lost a lot of blood. Let's get her to the ambulance."
Jesse picked Eva up in his arms, her blood staining his shirt immediately, shaking his head at the offer of assistance from the officers now swarming Haystack Rock. The young officer who had first approached him followed him all the way to the waiting ambulance, past the patrol car where Justin Perkins and his henchmen were cuffed and waiting their ride down to the jail.
He laid her gently on the gurney, and clambered into the ambulance with her. There was no question that he was going to the hospital with her. It was unnerving though, to hear the paramedics call out her waning vital signs in their lingo. Her blood pressure tanked, and he saw them exchanging worried glances before applying oxygen and setting up the IV line.
Jesse broke down quietly in the corner of the ambulance, staying out of their way but watching her face for any sign of life. He swore he could see her growing paler and paler, and knew he was watching her die before his eyes.
Eva
When I next came around, I was standing in a room, light headed and dizzy. There were a bunch of doctors standing around body on a blue draped table, all of them wearing those green masks that make them look as if they are trying to avoid the plague. I could see the blue, green, hazel, and brown glints in their eyes above those masks, each one saying something with their heavy glances but in an eye language I couldn't decipher.
I felt a warm hand slip into mine, and I looked over to see a young boy, about twelve or so, with deep, rich brown hair and chocolate eyes taking in the scene of all those doctors clustered around the person on the blue table. I couldn't believe I was finally seeing him after these last couple of months of torment.
"Alex?"
He smiled at me. I noticed how long and dark his eyelashes were, and how there were a slight constellation of freckles spread across the milky way of his nose. He was the most wonderful looking boy I'd ever seen. I felt the warmth of his hand spread along my hand and fingers, up my arm, and infusing me with heat, like the comfort of a fire in the hearth after being outside on a chilly winter's day.
"Hey, Eva. Bad day, huh?" His voice was raspy, like he hadn't used it in a long time, and sounded older than the young face that accompanied it.
"That's kind of unclear right now. That's me on the table, though isn't it?"
He nodded. I'd known, of course, but his confirmation was disheartening. I wasn't ready to die.
"What's it like?"
"It's not so bad, really. I want to thank you, though. If you and Jesse hadn't listened to me, I'd still be stuck here. Now I can go...wherever's next."
"Am I supposed to go with you?"
He didn't say anything for a minute. Then, "Well, that's really up to you, but what about Jesse? You guys have been meant for each other since we were kids."
"You're still a kid," I smirked at the dead boy. He grinned, aw shucks, at me and squeezed my hand. "I want to go back. How do I do that?"
"I can send you back, if you really want to. It's going to hurt a lot, but I think it will be worth it, later," was his reply.
"Oh yeah? And what do you know about it?"
Again, I got that shy, smirky grin from him. It faded quickly, though, and he leaned toward me, closer and closer, until his lips hovered over mine and he said, "I've wanted to do this since third grade," and he kissed me. For a brief moment, I was too surprised to react, and then I thought about Jesse; I guess this wasn't technically cheating since Alex was dead, but I didn't feel the same as I did when Jesse and me kissed. Still, it was sort of sweet.
"Thank you, Eva," he breathed when the kiss ended. And then he blew, gently, into my face and I smelled the antiseptic odor of a sterilized environment and the body on the bed, my body, gasped as the doctors shouted amongst themselves. I glanced over; they'd pulled out those paddle thingies and were shocking the hell out of me, making my body dance on the bed like a marionette. I looked frantically back at the now fading form of Alex, the boy who had been stuck dead in the water.
"Don't worry, Eva. Everything's gonna be ok. But don't tell Jesse I kissed you; he'll be super pissed," Alex grinned as he said it.
I wanted to ask him. You know, ask him what it was like, if there was anything after, worth looking forward to? But I didn't.
"Hey Alex? Thanks for talking to me. And by the way, you can't draw for shit."
The last thing I felt was a final squeeze of his warm hand, and then he let me go and I felt nothing. I heard an echo in my head of a young boy's carefree laugh, and then silence. The next thing I remember, I woke up in my white hospital bed, bristling with wires and tubes, to find Jesse asleep in the chair next to me. His tall body was folded up in the chair like origami and I wondered sort of faintly if he'd been there long. He wasn't going to be able to walk, if so.
I found out when Jesse woke up to me whispering his name that Justin and his friends were sent to jail. Well, mostly what I got when I woke Jesse up was his strong arms and his soft lips but we set the monitors off, beeping and screaming everywhere and scaring the bejeesus out of us. Fortunately, we were fast enough for him to get outta my bed and back in his seat before the nurse came in. All she saw was us holding hands. She kinda raised her eyebrow a little bit but didn't say anything, other than it was nice to have me back.
Anyway, after she left to get me some juice, I asked Jess to tell me what happened while I was out. Evidently, Natasha Milligan had been hanging out with Justin Perkins and all his friends, giving them sexual favors and doing drugs with them, paying for everything. She tried to get them to kill me so she could have Jesse back, by drowning me in the ocean like she did to Alex Carmichael. They agreed if she agreed to let them use me anyway they wanted; she was enraged that they wanted me instead of her and then decided that it didn’t matter as long as she got Jesse back.
Jesse
At the hospital, the paramedics wheeled the gurney containing the body of the girl he loved rapidly down the hallway to the ER triage room. He followed, unnoticed, until the blue drapes came out to cover her body while the surgeons closed her wound and began blood transfusions. A doctor came to him.
"Say something to her, she may be able to hear you. It might matter to you, later, that you did." There was no time to sugar coat it.
He leaned over her, kissed her lips, and told her he loved her over and over until they took her away and left him there, the only physical sign of her existence staining the blue of his sweatshirt. Jesse sank to the floor, his mind blank. He couldn't fathom a life without Eva.
He made his way to the small waiting room of Brookings Hospital. After a few minutes, one of the nurses came through on her rounds and found him curled in a ball in the corner of the room.
"Oh honey. Come here," she said sympathetically. Jesse didn't move, so she came to him and wrapped her arms around him. "You have people you want me to call, Hon?"
He handed her his phone. She dialed the one labeled, "Home" and got his mom on the line. She called his father at work, and they both went to the high school to be with Eva's parents when they arrived at the hospital.
Two hours later, the doctor came in to the waiting room where Jesse, his family, and Eva's parents all waited for news of their beloved girl. He spoke quietly and frankly.
"It was very close. Her heart stopped once on the operating table for about three minutes, but we were able to restart her heart. She is in stable condition now, and received a massive transfusion. She's a lucky young lady. She's lost a great deal of blood, but I think she will make a full recovery. There will be a
scar on her torso, but I know a plastic surgeon that can help when the time comes. You may all go in and see her, one at a time, and it's best if someone is here when she wakes up."
"Thank you, doctor," Eva's mother said, her chin quivering but her voice firm. Eva's father cried quietly behind his wife, his hand on her shoulder. Jesse's parents held each other close, their eyes shining with sympathy for their friends.
"Thank goodness she's ok," Jesse's father said.
"Thank goodness for Jesse," Eva's mother responded. She crossed the room to where Jesse sat hunched in a chair, his mind still in shock that Eva was alive. "You saved her, Jesse, in more ways than one. Thank you so much for saving my daughter."
She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed his forehead. One by one, the parents left the room to go and see Eva. It was unspoken but agreed that Jesse would be staying at the hospital. He followed them slowly, Jesse's dad let him know he would come back and bring Jesse some clothes. The nurse had found a scrub top that fit him, but his clothes still bore traces of the day's events. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Finally, after a long time, all the adults left. Jesse's dad had come and gone with the clothes, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder in sympathy on the way out. Jesse was finally alone with Eva.
She lay in the hospital bed, eyes closed and tubes running into her veins under the covers. A cannula was attached to her face, forcing oxygen into her nose and lungs and machines beeped quietly, measuring her vital signs with reassuring regularity.
Jesse sat in the chair next to her bed, his hand holding her still one under the covers. He was so grateful she was alive; he didn't think he could find the words. Finally, he just started talking.
Dead in the Water Page 8