Before We Go Extinct

by Karen Rivers

  He’s fallen apart.

  Now I’m dizzy.

  Now I feel it.

  It’s like poking a bruise, pressing harder and harder, making sure it still hurts.

  Pink mist.

  I gag, and spit into the bush.

  “You okay?” says Dad.

  I nod, lying. Yes, no, I will never be okay again.

  I pull my phone out of my pocket and type, pink mist. Then I delete it. I don’t have anyone to send that to. I don’t have any way of explaining. I take a picture of my bare feet on the path and send it to Mom. Swooooop, swoooooop, all the way to Antwerp, where the show’s hero will try to woo the women by making them bungee jump from a famous landmark and pose in front of tourist attractions in their bikinis, blinking up at him and crying into the camera about love. What do they know about love? I loved The King. I love Daff.

  But actually, I don’t know anything about love, either. I shiver, thinking about the hammock last night and Kelby lying next to me and all those stars.

  Dear Sharkboy, wear shoes! You’re going to get athlete’s foot. Love, Mom, she writes. I grin.

  It’s not a public pool, I type. It’s the freaking forest. Then I delete it. Love you, too, Mom. I send it and pocket the phone. She won’t answer. She answers once, and then that’s it. The conversation is over. She has abs to delineate with airbrush tools, after all.

  I take a photo of Dad, sweating through his shirt ahead of me, the sun glaring down on his bald spot, which practically twinkles in the light, and send it to The King. Spray hair in can, it’s what’s for Father’s Day, I type. LOL.

  Then I miss him so hard I have to stop for a minute. Bend over. Pretend to brush something off my foot, the pain deep in my stomach like a fist.

  I saw a movie once where the people in the film got to take a pill and it would erase a person from their memory entirely and every memory associated with that person. If I could do that, would I? I think maybe I would. I would lose a lot, but then I’d be free because seriously, my hands are shaking and my breath is rasping and I am thinking of the words I don’t want to think of death love decomposing, a trifecta of Things I Don’t Want to Think About. Not now, not ever. So I do the only thing I can think of and that is to start to climb. I pull myself up the timber frame.

  “Hey,” Dad says. “Careful there, kiddo. It ain’t a jungle gym.” He looks around. “Though it’s not much good for anything else, I guess,” he mutters. He reaches for a beam, does a couple of pull-ups. He’s not in bad shape, for a dad. “Feels good!” he says. “I should do this more often.”

  I look away, blinking. Sweat and everything pouring into my eyes and stinging. Who said my dad could be fun? Who said my dad could be normal?

  The wood of the building is hot and dry because everything has become hot and dry. I center myself over a beam and wobble. Only ten feet off the ground and the vertigo has grabbed me tight. I try to remember why I liked that feeling. I try to remember how to find my center. I try. Everything is trying. There is nothing but trying.

  What did The King’s dad used to say? Oh, yeah. There is no try, there is only do, you fucking imbecile.

  I force myself to concentrate. Ahead of me there is a gap of maybe five feet before the building continues. A wider timber on what was obviously going to be a grand ceiling. The dining room maybe? The wide timber is twelve inches wide, which—in parkour—is a joke. It’s not even hard. To jump from this beam to that. It’s like parkour for preschoolers. Anyone could do it.

  But can I?

  I do a lap around the beam structure that I’m standing on. It’s wobbly but I try to trust. Everything about parkour is obvious when you’re doing it, the moves rush at you in the split second before you perform them. The secret is not hesitating. He who hesitates is lost, Mr. Bills in English Lit class wrote on the wall in black Sharpie. Then beside it in red, with an arrow pointing back at the quote, #truefact.

  I make my focus smaller. I feel the wood under my feet, the air on my face. #justbe I don’t look at my dad, who is digging something in the ground around the back of the building. The structure itself is small except in this context, it’s huge. In New York, this would be tiny. But here, in the woods, it looks like a behemoth. And building this without roads or power or machinery seems ridiculous and impossible, like the pyramids or the Notre Dame Cathedral or Easter freakin’ Island.

  Some of the beams I am lightly running on now aren’t level. A few buckle in the middle from age—this thing was started a bunch of years ago—and probably because they were built wrong to begin with and maybe because the island itself is rejecting it, pushing the building off itself. Abscissing it. I climb up, the highest point being only about twenty feet of skeletal structure but right away I’m dizzy and I drop back down, a quick flip to the ground, my heart hammering.

  Maybe this kind of thing isn’t fun for me anymore. Maybe it never will be again. And anyway, it’s something guys do together, not one guy alone.

  One guy alone just looks stupid, cartwheeling on a splintering timber, his hands slivered and slick with sweat.

  But I have to. That’s the thing. I’ve got to do it, for no other stupid reason than because I can’t give this one to The King. He doesn’t get to take this with him.

  I climb back on.

  I run.

  “Hey,” says Dad. “You’re going to fall, kiddo. No hospitals here, you know.”

  (And there I am again, “Hey, Chief Not Scared of Heights, you’re going to fall.” And that what, stretching so thin, like jungle vines that will never reach the ground.)

  I jump.

  My hands flap at the air, like they can keep me up. Feathers now, I think. There aren’t feathers. Well, duh.

  I miss, but not by much. Enough that I can grab the beam with my hand, splinters ripping into my palms before I drop off, wiping them on my shorts, pretending that’s what I meant to do.

  Dad stares at me. “Kids these days,” he says. “I guess I’m getting old because that just looked idiotic to me. I’d ask if you were okay, but I guess you are, if this is what you do for fun.” He shakes his head. “When did I become such an old man?” He raises his fist to the heavens and mock shouts, “Git off my lawn, kid!”

  I grin, in spite of how I really feel. My hands are burning. There’s a sliver or something in my foot that is throbbing with every beat of my heart.

  “Nothing we can do anyway,” Dad says. “About the fire risk, I mean. Hope it rains. But maybe if this thing burns down then insurance will get paid out and everyone will be happy. But then I’d be unemployed. Hey, did I tell you about this thing here called squatters’ rights? It’s when…”

  I nod, not listening. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on his voice, it’s like my thoughts crowd him out and even though I know he’s talking, I can’t quite grab on to the words. Overhead, an eagle soars low and proud, landing in a tree. Staring at us. Waiting for something to happen. He’s close enough for me to see his eyes, hooked yellow beak, talons made for tearing. Zeus growls and the bird takes off, rising into the air like he’s mocking me and the way gravity pulls me down again and again and again.

  “Yeah,” says Dad. “Anyway, I don’t know. I don’t know sometimes why I’m in charge of this. If it starts to burn, then what? I’m going to call for help and then get out. This whole forest would go up, just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “Most of the time this job is the best, but now it’s pure stress. Man.” He shakes his head.

  I don’t meet his eye. This? This is stressful? It’s not even a job, not really. He’s a placeholder. He does … nothing.

  A small forest of moss sprawls under our feet. A squirrel darts up a tree and chuckles at us. The eagle changes his mind about landing again and soars away in the other direction. I wonder how long it will be before the squirrel is his lunch. Do eagles eat squirrels? They must, right?

  I turn to head back to the cabin, when Dad says, “Hey, you know, Darcy has a lot of … She’s pretty interesting. She’
s a person you might like. I don’t know how … I mean, obviously this is awkward, and I didn’t tell you about her, but I didn’t quite know how. But you and she have a lot in common. More than you think. She was thinking you might want to go out with them this afternoon. She’s really … spiritual. I know I’m not, but maybe she can help you with your…”

  I wait, eyebrows raised.

  “Diving,” he finishes. “They—we—dive for scallops and sell them so they can afford to stay here for the entire summer. She can show you the best dive. If you want. I know you’ve got your—you can borrow my stuff. I have some editing to do anyway. Someone found a mistake in The Greatest Adventure of Our Time #6. I’ve gotta fix that.”

  I nod, fast. Yes. Yes, I want to dive. Yes. But also, something twists in my gut. My dad dives? And he never thought to mention it? The one thing we might have in common? How clueless can any man be?

  I will never understand him. I shift my weight from one side to the other and then, wanting to get away, I raise my hand and start to run back down the steep path. Faster than he can keep up with. Faster than I knew I could go. (“You should be on the track team,” Coach Smithers said, back at school. “You’re a star, kid.” Something The King would never let go. “You’re a star, kid,” he’d mimic. “You’re a shootin’ star, I’d wager.”)

  Back at the cabin, I easily scale the trunk of the tree that Charlie was on yesterday. Past where he went. Past where I should go. The tree curves up and then down like a tipped letter C, its uppermost branches pointing back down to the beach. The trunk of the tree is solid and cool under my touch, the red papery bark of it peeling away easily. I concentrate on not slipping. When I finally stop, I am too high. The highest. Higher than I should be. Down on the beach, I see Charlie and his bucket.

  “Hi!” he shouts. “Hi, you are up my tree!”

  I nod even though he can’t see me, and swing myself partway down on the branches, arm over arm, like a monkey. Then, without thinking, I do a flip and land on the ground beside him. It’s a long enough drop that my feet reverberate with the impact and the pain ripples up my legs and back like the aftershock of an earthquake. His eyes are wide. “Holy cow,” he says. “That was cool. Can I do it?”

  I shake my head hard. No. It’s too dangerous.

  I point at his fish to distract him. In the white of the bucket, six or seven tiny fish are darting behind a piece of seaweed that floats on the surface. The water in that bucket has to be hot. Too hot. I point at the tide pool and then at the bucket.

  “I’m going to put them back,” he says. “I was building them a camp. So they could have a holiday. From their regular place. They probably like it, huh?”

  “Hot,” I whisper.

  “Hey,” he says. “I knew you could talk.” He sticks his finger in the bucket. “Yeah,” he adds. “It’s hot.”

  He picks the bucket up and tips it, the fish and water and seaweed slopping out in too much of a rush into the tide pool. One fish doesn’t make it, lands stunned on the hot rock instead. I flick it into the water. It probably won’t survive, but still, I couldn’t leave it there like that. Exposed. Dying. Hopeless. It floats for a second and then disappears under some seaweed. I will it to swim. Come on, little guy. Flick that tail.

  Dad finally bursts through the trees. “Oh, there you are!” he says. “You move fast. Man, I need to start running again.”

  Charlie rolls his eyes. “He’s old, huh,” he whispers.

  I laugh, inasmuch as I can. Then, sort of as an afterthought, I take my phone out of my pocket and snap a photo of Dad, bent over, clutching his side, his T-shirt drenched with sweat. My old old man, I type. My finger hovers over the Send button, and then I fire it off to The King, the shadow pigeons swooping it to his grave, where what remains of him is going, going, gone.

  I read on the Internet somewhere how the weight of the dirt shoveled back into the grave collapses most coffins. The King’s won’t collapse though. Maybe not ever. Maybe he’ll remain intact forever, reclining on his royal satin sheets, a small fake mortician-made smile playing at the corner of what is left of his lips, an Egyptian king with his most prized treasures, preserved forever.

  But then again, nothing about the way The King died left him intact, did it?

  25

  The water has a loose chop to it and today is blue-gray flecked with those silver sprinkles scattered generously by the sun, gentler than yesterday, but still so dry. Dad’s scuba stuff fits me perfectly but it feels like I’ve put on someone else’s skin and it’s sticking to me in all the wrong places, in all the wrong ways.

  I’m trying not to hyperventilate before I’m even in the water, trying to remember everything I learned, hoping I don’t panic and flail and embarrass myself. It feels like forever ago that I did this the last time, and from here my recollection of it is as hazy as a dream.

  The boat rocks on the choppy waves. Kelby is readying to go into the water first. She looks so hot in that wet suit and my eyes can’t find anywhere to land without making me feel like I’m perving out on her. I settle on her face, but her eyes unnerve me, the way she stares back, unblinking. “Hiya, Snort,” she said when she saw me. “What’s shaking? Here’s the deal. I won’t mention ghosts today. Swearsies, swearsies, double swearsies on a soldier. Is that a saying? I don’t even know half the time if something is a thing or if it’s something weird that Mum made up when we were little. Being a mum must be awesome. You could teach your kids anything! You could teach them a bunch of lies, right, Mum?” She gives her mom a look.

  “What?” says Darcy.

  “Forget it,” says Kelby.

  I nod, staring staring staring. Her hair looks like the down of a baby bird, waving above her skull like that. I mean, that doesn’t sound pretty, but trust me, it is. Like feathers.

  Charlie drops in a marker to show where she is going in, then she’s dangling off the side of the boat like a spider monkey. Like a spider monkey. Clambering up the roller coaster tracks. Tipping backward off the beam, like a diver.

  I swallow instead of vomiting, try to forget instead of remembering.

  Charlie, Darcy, and Kelby have a routine that feels like a conversation I’m interrupting just by being here. I don’t belong here. I belong with Daff and The King. I belong on Coney Island. I belong anywhere but here. I rub my eyes so no one can see that I’m about to cry.

  Darcy has been filling up the empty spaces with a conversation I don’t care about and I can’t wait to get into the water to make it stop. She found God, you know, sometime last year, and wants everyone to know. Look! There he is now, behind that mountain in the distance! Except that’s not God, it’s a plane, flying low. She may be the craziest of us all. She sings. Hymns. No kidding, actual hymns, in a crystal-clear voice and as loud as anything. Her voice is probably bouncing along the strait, floating into passing boats, wrapping around the broken souls of strangers. Hell, maybe she is fixing them. Who knows? But not me. I am not fixable and I don’t believe in God, at least not that version. And now I only want to get into the water. At the same time, I also want to go to shore, claim a stomachache, hide out in the woods or at the beach and escape. Lie in the hammock, read one of Dad’s library of “adventure” books. Cry.

  I want to cry.

  Again, like on the plane. I want to bawl like a stupid fucking idiot, okay?

  But I won’t. I can’t. I take a deep breath. Hold it in.

  “You all right?” Darcy says. I nod. Who me? Oh, I’m just peachy. The rolling of the boat is not helping me feel less queasy.

  She grins and then, “Well, it’s your turn, kid. Go.” I adjust everything there is to adjust and hesitate briefly before I tip backward into the sea. Just for a second, the sky cartwheels and the gulls seem to be flying right at me, the clouds twirling and I can’t help but think about the fact that the sky flipping like that was what he saw. This same upside down, turn over, and then he was under (or gone) and so am I, with a muffled whoomp in my ears, I am under, awkw
ardly, too heavy, limbless, sinking. I bob for a few seconds, adjusting nothing and then the feeling comes back to me. The thing to do. I slow my breathing and let myself sink. Then I find Kelby and follow her flippers down farther and farther than I would have expected to go.

  We are down for as long as we can be. There is no storm that chases us in, there is only us and the reef and the roots of the kelp and more different colors of seaweed than I thought could exist. Purple and red starfish encrust the rocks below the tide line, the seafloor is covered with blue mussels and anemones and fish. This is more like a coral reef than the coral reefs that I saw in the IMAX show about coral reefs. The colors are dizzying and vivid and surreal and it is so beautiful, more beautiful than anything ever has been, and I can feel myself crying behind my mask even as she’s pointing to a huge crab, waving one pincher at us as though he wants to float himself up and take a swipe, show who is king.

  The King is the king, I tell him silently. I push the water down with my flippers and twirl once or twice. This is what it feels like to be free and alive and I want to whoop and yell and say something and do something and I want him to be alive so he can see this, too, and that’s too much to ask and I almost throw up, bile rising into the back of my throat.

  I hope he saw the colors before he was gone for good. Just for a second, a kaleidoscope of life and light and everything.

  I don’t want to ever go up, the sun’s rays filter through from the surface that is wavering above me, we collect scallops in our bags, filling them up easily and quickly. And then we have to go. It’s time.

  I don’t want to talk about it afterward but weirdly I want to talk. It’s like my voice has become unstoppered, so as soon as my mouthpiece is out, whatever was blocking me from saying anything is gone, and without even thinking about it, I say, “That was incredible!” I catch a look between Darcy and Kelby but I don’t care, and then I’m talking and talking and it’s like I can’t stop, about everything we saw and the colors and how I wish I had a camera and how it was better than I thought and about sharks and how there aren’t very many species here because the water is cold but there are at least seven, including the basking shark, which is basically the coolest-looking shark in the world if you are into that sort of thing, which I am. I tell them about the different kinds of thresher sharks and how even, sometimes, great whites come this far north—farther, even, to Alaska—but not in inland waters, like where we are now, and also, actually, did they see Sharkwater because it’s a real thing, a real problem, about the food chain and the plankton and the oxygen.