Even If the Sky Falls

by Mia Garcia

  “Like professional help,” Emma clarified before I even thought of suggesting that I could help Adam just fine. They knew me too well. “I spoke to my mom about it.”

  “Whoa, you what?”

  Holy shit, this is not happening. How could she?

  “Em, it wasn’t your secret to tell! I haven’t even told my parents—”

  “I didn’t tell her it was about Adam.” Her hands reach for me, trying to calm me down. “I just asked her, like, a hypothetical situation.”

  “Oh yeah, hypothetical situation? Did you mention the army stuff?”

  Em didn’t look at me; her hand stopped halfway down the table.

  “You shouldn’t have said anything. Of course your mom is going to figure it out!”

  Next to me Kara jumped in, “Stop yelling at her; she was just trying to help.”

  I picked up my bag, shoving the stack of papers inside. “We’re done.”

  I stormed off, Em and Kara calling after me, begging me to sit and talk. I didn’t stop.

  AT HOME I took the papers out, dropping them on my bed, unsure of what to do. Should I give them to Adam? Should I give them to my parents? How do I know that Adam has PTSD? What if—what if I screw everything up by suggesting that he does? Maybe he’s just having a hard time adjusting and here I am talking about disorders and seeing doctors.

  I glanced through the pages and pages of symptoms, history, where to find help, but my eyes focused on one particular article: “The Incidence of Suicide Among Those Suffering from PTSD.” I rushed through the article, picking up percentages here and there. My heart was racing and I had to stop at one point to stick my head out the window and get air. I felt like ripping the pages in half, but instead I dropped them in a drawer and slammed it shut. The fear that Adam could take his own life now infected every space of my brain, overloading it. My room felt too small. I started to shake, and I couldn’t hear my heartbeat, it was going so fast. I ran downstairs, building the walls of the dam that would be the beginning of keeping these thoughts at bay.

  I could hear my mom in the kitchen. The smell of store-bought cookie dough, a smell that usually makes me happy, now making me sick. In the kitchen my mom was rinsing out her mug and filling the kettle with water before placing it on the stove. I went straight to her and wrapped my arms around her.

  “This is nice.” She leaned back against me. “What’s the catch?”

  I couldn’t respond. I was still pulling myself together, brick by brick. My stomach settling.

  “Julia?”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “With what?” She rubbed my arm.

  “Adam.”

  My mom stilled, releasing a heavy sigh as she pulled my arms from around her belly and turned to face me, her brown eyes taking a good look, just like Abuela Julia used to do. I held on to the ache of missing my abuela, secure in its familiarity.

  “You’re worried about your brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “¿Por qué?”

  As if on cue my neck twitched and my hand went to scratch at my skin but instead picked up the necklace. “I think he needs help.”

  The kettle sounded; she dropped a bag in, poured, and set the cup down to steep.

  “What makes you say that?”

  I looked up at my mom, her warm brown eyes that now smiled readily and held no hint of a sadness that was there before Adam returned.

  She waited, patient as always, ready to listen when I was ready to speak. My abuela would not have been patient. She would have demanded to know what I was trying to say; she would have make me stand there until whatever burdened me was laid out on the table. Why aren’t you here? I need you here.

  “Just let it go, niña,” she’d say. “What is the point of holding in such things? They fester inside and rot you from the inside.” And they do. They root down to my core, a pit of ache in my heart growing and spreading through my veins.

  “I’m just worried.”

  “You said that. Is there a particular reason?”

  “Just”—I shrugged—“in general. I mean, I don’t really know what active military service is or what it means to come back from it but I think, maybe if he had someone to talk to, he would feel better.”

  My mother nodded, sipped at her tea, and carried it over to the table. “You think your brother needs someone to talk to?”

  I took another sip of mine, forcing the hot liquid down my throat, using the pain to move forward. “I think everyone needs someone to talk to. Don’t you?”

  “True.” She reached over for my hand, and I placed mine in hers. “And it sounds like a good idea, amor. I’ll talk to your father about it, and we’ll look into it.”

  “¿De veras?”

  “Of course.”

  Of course! How could I have been so silly? After all the fear, the crying, feeling like I was utterly useless, it was done.

  Of course my parents will fix this, I thought. Of course they could see that Adam needed help.

  This was the moment.

  The change in the tide that shifts everything.

  The point in time we would look back on and mark and remember. From here on, everything was different. From here on nothing was the same.

  So simple I should’ve done it earlier.

  Washed Away

  I AM NOT HALLUCINATING. MY WRIST IS BARE. AROUND ME, THE wind picks up every piece of scrap whirling it like a blender. Sound is a banshee, hunting and beating on us; alive, screeching in our ears as the rain chills us to the core. This is why hurricanes have names—they are alive, beasts of anger, power and force. Gods reshaping the world as they please.

  “You okay?” Miles tugs at my hand, and I keep looking back at the space where his bracelet used to be.

  “It’s gone.”

  “What?” He inches closer, unable to hear me over the sound.

  “It’s gone!” I point to my wrist. “Your bracelet. I just had it.”

  There’s a flash of sadness in his eyes before he shakes his head. “It’s okay, it doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s not okay.”

  Miles trusted me with it. His grandfather friggin’ made it. It was full of his memories and now our own, and I let it slip away from my wrist.

  I reach to my own necklace, imagining the loss I would feel if it disappeared. “Please.”

  Miles seems to understand that I’m not going to move until we at least try to find it.

  “One minute,” Miles says, knowing we might have less than that. We both drop our heads, searching the area around us. I panic; the wind is grabbing every little leaf, cup, and torn newspaper that isn’t nailed down and twisting it up to the sky—what if it took the bracelet with it?

  Miles spots it first, a glint in the middle of the pier, just a few feet from us.

  “There.” Miles drops to his knees and pulls the delicate chain out from between the planks, fixing it back on his wrist.

  “Time to go,” he reminds me.

  I nod and he moves to rejoin me. One step and his foot breaks through the wood, caught on a rotten plank. I move toward him, but he holds up his hand to keep me at bay. He tugs his leg up, ripping his jean. The pier creaks, a death gurgle, whatever resistance it had against the storm gone.

  It gives, shattering into the rage of the Mississippi and swallowing Miles whole.

  This isn’t happening. Miles was standing in front of me and now he’s gone. I hurtle myself to what’s left of the pier, not caring that it could take me with it. All I see is darkness, muddy water, hundreds of ripples across the surface.

  No, no, no, no.

  I want to scream and shout but I am silent, searching for something, anything. This is my fault. I should’ve kept going. I should’ve sucked up the blame and guilt over the bracelet and gotten us back to the hotel.

  I shake off the voices, concentrating on the water. Where are you, Miles?

  Then a flash of color. Miles’s shirt.

  It’s all I nee
d to dive in after him.

  I don’t think—just wish to be stronger, faster. The water wrenches him away from me—dangling him like a prize out of my reach. I wish I was a better swimmer—I’d hoped I was a better swimmer.

  I want to scream for Miles, but the water invades my mouth before the words can come out. I carry dirt into my belly with every stroke. The water rushes in my ears, covering up the yowl of the wind before it bleeds back in at full force. I can still feel the ground below my feet but I can only balance for a second before I’m carried farther out.

  Then Miles is next to me, and I can reach out and touch him and he is real. The Mississippi is playing with us, but I won’t bite.

  We try holding on to each other as we swing toward the shore, but we can’t. We knock against each other, slowing down. We have to let go.

  “Sunshine,” I hear him say, a brush of a hand.

  “No,” I reply. “Keep swimming.”

  We inch forward. Progress. Before we were slogging. My foot touches the ground underneath and relief comes like a flood, before a wave drags me under. I sputter, continue paddling. I hear Miles calling my name somewhere. The sound is too far away, and I’m too afraid to turn my eyes away from the shore.

  “Almost there,” I tell myself, Miles, the river. “Almost there.”

  And I am.

  I can just barely stand. Miles is to my right; he shouts my name to let me know where he is. The river carries branches with it; they hit me as I go. I push them away; they can’t slow me down. I will drudge myself through the mud and twigs and every stupid thing you throw at me.

  “We can do this,” Miles shouts from a few feet ahead of me. “We can do this.”

  I feel stones beneath my shoes, and I use them to move forward.

  But the river is not ready. It sneaks around me, branches tangling in my shoe like hands pulling me under. Will the damn world stop kicking? Just let us get to shore, just this one thing and you can keep beating me up, I promise.

  “I’m caught—keep going,” I say. When I don’t see Miles move, “Go!” I yell again—no time to waste on waiting. We aren’t far from the shore and the water is now at my waist. I reach down—blind—feeling for the tangling thing. The rain pounds against the river, against my face, howling, a declaration of power.

  I look up. Miles has turned back and is coming for me.

  “It’s okay,” I say, finding the branch that has its hold. “I’m almost free.” My hands are clumsy and the water is not. It thrashes me down, each wave hitting its target, chipping at what little strength I have left. It wants to rip me from the tangle and take me away.

  The fighting is so hard. My eyes shut and I think of sleep, of drifting off and just letting go. I’m back on that sidewalk, taking that corner, walking into the street.

  “Sunshine!” Miles is the horn, blasting me back to the present. I keep fighting.

  Another wave pulls me down.

  The river tosses me around like paper in the wind, amused, ready to teach me how little I mean to it and the universe: a speck in the current, easily carried away. I slip under the water, bringing my hands forward, then back. Move, move, move. When I come back up, I am no closer to safety but Miles is closer to me. I focus on him.

  The water hits my face. Why do you even try, little girl?

  Please, my muscles say, please.

  “Please,” I say back. I feel the necklace along my neck, the water whisking it back and forth. It holds. “Sigue, sigue.”

  The current pulls me under, my eyes open, the world out of focus, muddy, fading. I think I see Miles swimming toward me. I shouldn’t be able to. I blink and he’s gone, and she’s there. Abuela Julia. She reaches for me, and our hands meet.

  My lungs burn. I swim toward her, and she fades.

  Enough. I yank the branch up and out of the riverbed. When my shoe still won’t budge I pull it off and then the other in case it has any ideas of getting caught as well. I can’t see Miles anymore, just sheets and sheets of rain. If I wasn’t scared I would marvel at the patterns the water makes as it slams down into the river.

  “I’m late,” I hear to my left. Miles is back at my side.

  You turned back, you idiot, I try to say, but only “Idiot” comes out.

  A grin; he spits out water, gripping my hand so tight his nails cut through my skin. The river rips through us, wrenching us farther from the shore. Where is the shore? Oh God, where is the shore?

  Stow the panic. There is still some ground below my feet, and I use it to push myself toward where I think the shore is.

  Miles falls first, dragged away from me by the current until I pull him up. The pattern of the rain shifts, a moment of clarity, and I can see our destination. The shore is so close, so close. And the more I say it, the more it is so. Because that is how life works, isn’t it?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see a long dark shape under the surface of the water, it’s too big to be moving as fast as it is. The word “crocodile” flashes in my mind, and I am suddenly so angry.

  But it’s too misshaped to be a crocodile. Either way it’s coming toward us, but my mind doesn’t understand how close it is, that it’s in our path. The river is all around us. It fights us, we push through, we continue to pay no mind to this shadow, we don’t move from its path. I will keep—I will keep against the water.

  But it is not water, and when it slams into me it takes what little strength I have left, except for Miles. His hand is still around my wrist, keeping me anchored. He would hold me there forever if he could. But the river has other plans. It slips between our fingers, inching them apart, it pushes into me, insistent.

  There are much better things down the way, chéri, we promise.

  The river’s promise feels like a melody. The kind my body, beaten and tired, needs right now.

  The water reaches down my throat and pulls out memories, dangling them before me. When I was eight we visited Puerto Rico with my grandmother. I met far too many family members I could never keep track of. We went to the beach, filled with families just like ours. My parents lazed by the palm trees, and I don’t remember where my grandmother or brother had gone. I skipped off into the water, on my own, a little confident fool swimming out by myself. The waves took me down to the bottom and dragged me for a ways before I even thought to fight them. When I broke the surface, I was farther out than I’d ever been. I was too tired to make it back. But I did, somehow I did. Not all the way, but far enough where they would see me, far enough to matter.

  Come on now, the river says. Come on.

  I am slipping out of Miles’s grip, but I hold. With my other hand, I push away what I can now see is the splintered body of a tree and give it over to the current, certain I am free, when the ground disappears below me. My grip slips, but Miles does not, his hand remains. I am screaming and coughing and screaming, my wrist in agony, ready to pop from its socket.

  “Don’t stop kicking!” I hear Miles yell. I find his eyes, and I can see how scared he is. And then my hand is out of his and I am battling the river on my own. The water, carrying earth and so much more with it, comes toward me. I dive under to avoid the debris and push through. I will make it, and when I win I will be in another state perhaps, but I’ll make it.

  The rain slaps me across the face.

  Jerk.

  I go down again. I push back up. I keep going. I hear Miles yelling, but I can’t place how far he is from me. I am smacked around by half of New Orleans’s trash, which floats with me in the Mississippi. I feel my skin open, water pouring in. It burns and I use the pain to live.

  My feet find solid ground again until something slams against me and pulls me up. It’s Miles. “I’m sorry, I was trying to get to you.”

  I search for his hand and find it. Together we battle the current, feet finding earth, one foot in front of the other. We pull each other up whenever the river decides to play with us. The water is at my waist now, and I can see the shore, the gathering of rocks that will
welcome us back.

  We are there; we are there.

  Then I am under. Miles’s hand tight around me, slamming me into the water and away from the shore. I turn to him, the wave swallowing him, a gash on his forehead pouring blood.

  “Miles!” I scream, but he’s not moving. I try and pull him closer to the shore with me, but he’s heavy and the water is trying to carry him away. “Wake up, wake up.”

  Both hands on him now, dragging him out of its clutches, praying my hands won’t slip, wishing I could get a better hold. If I could just wrap my arms around his waist, but I can’t risk getting caught in the current, ever waiting to snag him back. I feel my way back to the shore until I hit the rocks, almost dropping him.

  We are there, but we aren’t safe. Everything presses against us—the wind, the rain, the debris, pounding, pounding, pounding—and I drag myself and Miles onto the shore.

  I collapse on the rocks, Miles at my side, unmoving but breathing. My vision blurs, the darkness creeps in, but it doesn’t scare me.

  I am good. I fought. I am free.

  A Crescent-Shaped Scar

  WHEN THE GLASS HIT THE GROUND IT SHATTERED MY CONCENTRATION; the stanzas I was trying to remember for AP English shocked right out of me.

  My parents weren’t home—they’d left to visit a friend of my mom’s for the day. It was a few days after my mom and I had our talk about Adam and nothing had come of it yet, but it felt like everything was going to be okay. Like it was just a matter of time.

  I ran down the steps, the smell hitting me first. The closer I got to the kitchen, the stronger it was. Adam was cursing as he threw a hand towel over the spreading amber liquid on the floor. When he saw me he held up his hand. “Don’t come in here—it’s already a mess.”

  “Need help?”

  “No.” He threw two more towels down and moved them around with his foot. “I’m fine. It just fell; that’s all.”

  “What was it?”

  “Whiskey.”

  The smell—I would recognize it now, but then I was still pretty new to the different kinds of alcohol and my repertoire only extended as far as beer and tequila.