What if they really were running away, and Julie was too late?
When she saw Reba, Julie stopped, digging her heels into the ground. Reba was walking back and forth across the little bridge. She seemed to be talking to herself, waving a tiny flashlight around as she moved, but Julie couldn’t make out the words over the rushing noise of the river and the angry slapping of the water against the craggy river rocks.
89
REBA
The details hardly matter, once your story is complete. All those memories turn blurry at the edges, and that anger and panic and guilt wears away to something softer. That’s how it happened for me, at least.
Here’s what I remember about that night:
Where is August? I thought. My clothes were soaked, and if he didn’t show soon, I knew I would lose my courage. I waited on the riverbank, and then, when my nerves got the better of me, I started pacing the bridge, careful to stop before I reached the vicinity of the seventh plank. The bridge was a safe place; it reminded me of walking home from the flower shop with Jules, of hopping over the seventh plank as kids.
I held my journal beneath my jacket in an effort to keep it protected from the storm. Giving the book to August wouldn’t do any good if it was too damaged to read.
There were footsteps in the forest, but when I turned, it wasn’t August I saw.
It was Toby.
“Rebecca,” he said in a voice that sounded more like a growl. Thunder roared in the sky as he grabbed me by the arm, and my flashlight clattered onto the bridge and rolled to the bank, and I let him pull me into his wet embrace. His mouth on mine was hungry and primal as rain splashed our faces. The journal was crushed between us, but Toby didn’t notice. It took a breathless moment for me to remember that August should be there any second. It would be difficult enough to pass along the journal and let him read the truth; to let him see the truth with his own eyes would be cruel and vicious, and I didn’t want to hurt him more than I had to.
I pushed Toby away, or tried to, but he held me against him. “I told you,” he said into my ear. “You’re mine.”
Which was the whole point. “Yes,” I said, struggling to take a step back. The bridge creaked beneath us, the boards slippery in the storm. “Yes, but, Toby, you shouldn’t be here now. Later…we’ll talk later.”
“After you’ve been with the other boy again? I don’t think so.” I could feel the heat of his breath on my ear, and I shivered in the darkness. “You know that baby is mine,” he said. “You know it. He’s not touching you, not anymore. Not with my baby inside you.”
I could hear the rush of the water below and the pouring of the rain and the naked tree branches bending and scraping against one another. “Toby,” I gasped, “it’s not what you think…”
“Why?” he said. “What makes him so special, Reba? Why is he so much better than me?”
He kissed me again, hard, possessive.
“Toby, stop!” I said, finally pushing him away and scrambling back. “Stop it!”
“Say it,” he said. “You think he’s better.”
“He is better,” I said. “He’s better than this, than you and me and this…this whole dirty thing.”
He was unusually quiet for a moment, and the sounds of the storm pounded against my ears. His voice was low, hurt, when he spoke again. “Dirty thing, Rebecca? Is that what our kid is to you?”
“No,” I said. I knew I should tell him the truth, but I couldn’t, not yet. “No… I should go… I should…” I backed up, thinking that I was going to run then, run home and avoid it all, at least for the moment. But he caught my arm, and I pulled away, wild, like a frightened animal.
I jerked my arm free and slipped backward, stumbling on the wet bridge. I knew I must have stepped on the seventh plank when I heard the sound of the wood snapping under my feet and saw the horrified look on Toby’s face. I knew then that no matter what games we’d played, Toby loved me. It was written on his face, etched in with the fear.
Toby loves me, still. It’s possible that he loves me more now, when I’m beyond his reach. I don’t know why that is.
I reached my hand to the lone rail to keep from falling, but with my weight against it, the old wood groaned, swayed. Broke.
I wanted to tell Toby that I loved him too—and it was the truth—but I was falling, the journal sailing from my hand. It lodged in brush on the riverbank and was still in one piece, wet but not destroyed, when Nell picked it up later. I watched her do it, even though she couldn’t see me anymore.
I thought of my family as I went, of Mama’s eyes and her good intentions. Daddy and his stupid, stupid beliefs. I thought of Jules as a child, crawling from the backseat of a car with a frightened look on her face. Jules and me with our toes in the cool river water, chasing each other through the field. I fell so fast, but it felt like forever.
The most enduring memory I have, now, is of Toby: lovely, broken, lit up in a flash of lightning, his face the last thing I saw before my head smashed against the side of the bridge and I went tumbling down, the river waiting to swallow me up. Water rushed all around me, and things turned dark.
The fall was horrific. But when I woke up again—if that’s what you want to call it—everything was okay, and nothing mattered all that much.
I was perfect and lonely and beautiful.
90
Toby starts a pot of coffee in the loft and tries to pretend he can do anything besides think of her. But it’s completely futile. He takes his mug and goes back down to the gallery, flopping into a chair and staring at the paintings. The coffee helps his hangover, but not his mood. The painting that draws his attention this time is the one of Reba on the bridge. It’s the hardest one he’s ever painted, trying to capture that gut-wrenching moment when she hovered on the edge, her mouth an O of surprise.
She’d been in his arms one second, and the next she was fucking falling—and all he could do was watch as her head cracked the side of the bridge and then she splashed into the water.
“No!” he shouted when he could find his voice. “No!” He didn’t know how his eyes caught Jules when the sky lit up again, but he saw her, hiding behind a tree and still as a statue. “Help!” he shouted to her. “Jules, get some help!” But she just stood there, and Toby wondered if he was imagining her because he needed someone to help him.
He scrambled off the slick bridge and down the slippery bank, screaming the whole way. His feet slid out from under him and he tumbled down the riverbank and he was soaking wet and covered in mud and it didn’t matter. He just had to get to Reba because she was down there somewhere alone in the river, and he was her only chance.
“Reba!” he shouted as he waded into the river, the water up to his knees. His boots and jeans were soaked but he didn’t care. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t feel her beneath the surface. He followed the current away from the bridge, shouting for her the whole time.
“Help!” he yelled again, hoping that Jules had come to her senses up there and had gone for someone, if she was real at all. The water was dark and moving fast, and he could only see anything when the lightning flashed overhead—and where the hell was Reba? How would he find her?
He thought of their crazy relationship, how he’d almost blackmailed her, how he’d waited in her room. But he’d never forced her, even if things were messed up, and he adored her. Damn it, he adored her and he would take it all back if it meant that she would be safe and sound in her bed and not floating down a goddamned river.
Probably those weren’t even tears pouring down his face; probably it was just river water and rain.
He followed the river for what felt like hours, and maybe it was hours, because the sky was growing lighter, even though the storm hadn’t let up. He must have been a mile from the bridge, at least, when he saw it, a soaked tangle of golden hair, and there she was, facedown in the water.
His Reba. His whole damned life.
“Reba,” he said, flipping her over and shaking her. “Reba!” Her blue eyes were open but blank, and he knew she couldn’t see him. “Reba, please…please…” He pulled her to the bank and carried her out of the water, her drenched clothes heavy and sagging, her limp feet still grazing the river. “Reba, Reba…Rebecca…” He settled her on the ground and smoothed her hair. One hand came away bloodstained, and he thought of the awful sight of her head smashing against the bridge, and how he couldn’t even hear the sound of it over the storm and the rushing water. And her eyes, looking at him, except not looking at him, just open.
Molly had made him take a CPR class once, and he hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d done nothing but bitch about it, and now he racked his brain to remember, and then he was going through all of the motions, so systematic…and still, nothing but those watery eyes and no pulse when he put his fingers to her neck—but there had to be, and he just couldn’t find it because he was freaking the fuck out, but it had to be there because Reba wasn’t dead. She wasn’t.
It was evil, it was wrong—the way a person could be there one moment and be completely absent the next. How life could go so easily. How existence was so fucking fragile.
He could see the gray light of the sun tucked into the clouds in the forest, and still she was lying there and he couldn’t wake her up and he couldn’t make her breathe so he clutched her to him, wrapped his arms around her, and held her the way he’d held her in her bedroom that night, the way he’d always wanted to hold her. They were soaked and it was cold and the dirt from the riverbank was clinging to them, and he didn’t care.
Without her, there was nothing to care about.
• • •
He stumbled into the flower shop as Nell was flipping on lights to start the day. She jumped when he walked through the door and then she stared, dumbly, at Toby, who was dirty and soaking wet, and holding on to the frame of the door like he might fall over if he didn’t, while rain drizzled down behind him and thunder rumbled in the dark morning sky.
“Toby, what is it?” Nell asked, her voice wary.
Water pooled at his feet and it seemed natural to sink to his knees, so that’s what he did. He could feel the rough metal bottom of the doorframe scratching his legs through the torn denim of his blue jeans, and the pain felt good. “Reba,” he croaked, and then he was gasping for air. “Call…call someone for help…” and he would have told her more except that he couldn’t fucking breathe.
“Toby!” she shouted, moving toward him and shaking his shoulders as he sobbed. “What happened? Where is Reba?”
He looked up at her and the words were in his throat, but he couldn’t say them because to say them would make them real and it wasn’t real.
“Tell me,” Nell said, holding him by the arms and staring at him. She looked scared and angry and concerned all at the same time, and why wasn’t she calling for help, when he’d already told her that someone should come and help? “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Dead.” The word choked him, and he was gasping again because he’d said it and made it real. “She’s dead… Oh God, she’s dead.” And then he was shaking and holding on to Nell, sobbing on her shoulder because she was there and he didn’t know what else to do.
“Toby,” Nell said. “Toby! Where is she?”
“River,” he sputtered.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Okay.” And then she pulled away from him and he was still there on the floor in her doorway and she was finally calling 911 and telling them something and then she ran out the back door and he was in the empty shop and the rain splattered against the windows and then he knew, really knew that it wasn’t a nightmare or a bad trip. He got to his feet and stumbled out the door.
It was all real, and Reba was dead.
91
Julie remembers that night all those years ago, remembers waking up curled into a tight ball, shivering. She didn’t know where she was, only that the ceiling was made of tree limbs with sharp light stabbing through the branches. Her clothes were wet, and her head rested against the gnarled roots of a tree. She could hear the rush of the river, full from last night’s rain.
She was in the forest, but she didn’t know why. She sat up. Her head pounded, her hands were dirty from the wet ground, and pine needles clung to her jeans. And somewhere, she could hear voices. Julie crawled along the ground, pushing aside bushes and vines that she dimly hoped weren’t poison ivy.
When she made it to the riverbank, she saw them, though they were farther down and on the opposite bank. Paramedics, police. Nell, orange hair unmistakable, her face in her hands.
Little pieces started coming back to Julie then. Nighttime. An argument. Running through the woods. Running away.
Whatever bad thing that was happening on the other bank was her fault.
She ran to Molly’s house, flew through the front door. Molly, sound asleep on the sofa, didn’t stir as Julie ran past her, up the stairs to her room, ripped off her dirty clothes. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, but she didn’t want to know what.
Just as soon as she’d cleaned her face and pulled on sweatpants and a tank top, someone knocked on the front door. She stumbled into the hallway, made it to the top of the stairs in time to see Mr. McLeod standing in the living room, red-faced but unusually quiet. Molly, wide awake now, looked up at Julie with an expression closer to pity than any she’d ever seen her wear. “It’s Reba.”
Julie doesn’t remember falling down the stairs.
Nothing broken, they said when she woke up in the sterile white of the hospital. Shock, or something. Two policemen were waiting to talk to her, but all she could do was stare at them blankly, until they finally shook their heads and walked away.
She slept, and when she woke, Toby was there in her hospital room, the newspaper in his hand.
“Stop faking,” he snarled, the moment she opened her eyes. “I said, stop faking. I know you’re not ‘in shock.’ I told the police that you were at home all night after the play, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“What?” she said, her voice hoarse from sleep.
“I know you were there,” he said.
“What?” She couldn’t look him in the eye.
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“What happened, Toby?”
“You really don’t remember?” he said. “You don’t remember what you did?” She shook her head, silent.
“It’s your fault,” he said, and there was a cruel and frightening edge in his voice. “You were there. You could have done something. You as good as pushed her.”
Surely she’d heard him wrong. “I-I pushed her?”
He tilted his head to the side and studied her. After a moment he spoke. “You’re lucky I don’t tell everyone what really happened.”
Oh God. She hadn’t… She couldn’t have pushed her best friend off the bridge, could she? She remembered two people arguing on the bridge, though it felt more like she was watching it all happen, and everything was dark and stormy, and she couldn’t hear the words. “How do you know?”
“You told me. You woke up earlier, and you told me.”
“Oh God,” she said. “You should tell. I should tell. They’ll know… They’ll come for me…and oh God, everyone will know about Reba and August, and the baby…”
Toby tossed the newspaper onto her lap. “They don’t. You don’t tell them anything about Reba, not about the boy, the drugs, nothing. And I won’t tell them what you did.”
She looked at the paper.
“Do you hear me, Jules? Do you fucking hear me?”
“I hear you,” she whispered.
His boots made scuffing noises against the hospital room floor as he walked out the open door.
Her horrified tears fell onto the newspaper as she read the headline.
“Mysterious Death of Lawrence Mill Teen under Investigation.” The paper described Reba’s death as a puzzling tragedy with too many unanswered questions, namely, what was a seventeen-year-old girl doing at the bridge alone in the middle of the night? Apparently, police found no evidence that anyone was with her that night, though the police chief admitted that the rain turning the riverbanks to mud would have washed away any footprints. No sign of foul play. The reporter didn’t come right out and say it, but the whole article suggested suicide, even going so far as to say that classmates interviewed described Reba as a quiet girl, someone who always kept to herself. Depressed, maybe. A girl no one really knew. A ghost.
Julie wished then that she had talked to the police when they’d come to question her, instead of sitting there with that useless stare. She couldn’t believe there was no evidence to link her to the crime. Surely police would find something? The paper said that drowning was the official cause of death, but autopsy reports were pending. Once they cut Reba open (Julie shuddered at the thought), they would discover that she was pregnant, and then it would be the town’s biggest scandal. And then police would start to look for the father. They’d come back to Julie with questions. Would she confess, say that she’d killed Reba? Would she tell the truth about it all? She didn’t know.
The worst part was Reba’s smiling face staring up at her from the black-and-white photo on the page. Accusing her. Asking her why.
“Oh God!” Julie screamed. She felt like a killer. She tore the newspaper into shreds, screaming and crying, until a nurse came rushing in with a sedative.
“You poor thing,” she heard the nurse say, before she tumbled back into sleep.
92
Toby hated Jules so, so much after that night. If she hadn’t been so drunk, so stupid… If she’d gone for help instead of standing there in the woods staring like a fool, then Reba might have still been alive. And she didn’t even remember, didn’t have to see that last expression on Reba’s face every time she closed her eyes, and it wasn’t fair.
Secrets of Southern Girls Page 26