by Dawn Steele
Tears came unbidden to my eyes. I smiled at him. The air was thick and smoky between us, and a knot strangled my stomach, making it hard to form sounds in my throat.
“Rebecca.” His voice was hoarse.
My heart leaped. Whatever was affecting me so profoundly was affecting him in some small measure too. I didn’t know what this was – this connection between us. But it was deep. And magical. And something more than purely physical.
A movement to my right made me turn. Adeline was striding back to the car, the six-pack in hand. Kurt and I leaped apart as if our hands were on fire, and we settled back in our seats. My guilty hands were folded neatly in my lap. The one which touched Kurt’s skin still burned.
“Hi.” Adeline opened the driver’s door and got in.
The guilt was extremely palpable in the air between Kurt and me, but I didn’t think Adeline noticed it.
She was gabbing away: “There was a queue before me, and these two underage guys tried to get away with buying cigarettes, can you believe it? They were fourteen if they were born a day.”
She looked at both of us.
“What were you two talking about?”
Kurt seemed nonplussed, but I recovered quickly enough.
“College,” I said. “It’s a tough subject.”
“Oh yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me about it. I’ve had enough arguments with my Dad over it already. He has just this amount of money in my college fund bankrolled for me.” She emphasized this between her thumb and forefinger. “Which cuts out a lot of colleges in the East.”
Our parents couldn’t help the amount of money they have, I thought. And what more Kurt? He came from the other side of the tracks. There was no way he could ever get into college without a scholarship. At least my parents had a little bit stashed away.
Adeline plunked the beer down on Kurt’s lap. He grinned, and the tension dissipated. I doubted Adeline noticed anything was wrong.
*
You would think you have guessed the reason for Kurt leaving Adeline now.
You must think it was because of me.
Well, you are wrong. You are so wrong by a long shot.
What happened was a lot more tragic than a love triangle.
KURT
I stare at Rebecca across the table.
That night.
“I didn’t exactly leave her,” I splutter.
“Oh, yes, you did.”
The waiter arrives with our starters, and we have to call it a truce for a moment. Correct that. My starters. The lobster bisque was in a boat-shaped bowl and piping hot. Thick and creamy, the way I like it. The foie gras came with a spring of parsley and some lemon dill.
I have absolutely no appetite.
“Do you want some?” I ask Rebecca.
She shakes her head.
“Do you remember?” she says in a low voice.
I remember what happened in the car at the parking lot of the Seven Eleven, but I think that is not what she is referring to.
It is what happened after.
*
Adeline was driving into the night, and our spirits were up again.
What was I thinking of when I touched Rebecca’s hand? I felt her freeze, and I knew what she must have been thinking of me. Especially with a reputation like mine.
You cad. You’re my best friend’s boyfriend.
But Rebecca seemed unnaturally affected. I liked Rebecca, though I had always felt a little uncomfortable around her. In fact, I secretly thought she was a lot more interesting than Adeline. I didn’t want to think that, but the fact was out there, like a puff of acrid smoke that trailed and lingered in the air.
I had never ‘dated’ a Rebecca before – a girl who could give as good as she got. She was feisty and so smart I honestly thought she was too good for this town. She deserved to go out there and make a better life for herself. She deserved better than us.
It would be terribly interesting to be with Rebecca. And I didn’t know why the thought kept encroaching into my brain recently, like a spreading tumor.
I mustn’t think such thoughts, I told myself.
The atmosphere between the front and back seats began to lighten, especially as Adeline jabbered on about our SATs and which questions she found particularly difficult. We were on the highway, heading for the Interstate turnpike ten miles down.
And then it happened.
I was preoccupied with not being preoccupied by my thoughts for Rebecca, when the white SUV barreled down onto us on the same side of the road.
“Shit!” I yelled. “Swerve, Addy, swerve!”
She turned the wheel all the way to the left, but there was a car on the other side of the road as well. We would have slammed into it had not Adeline turned further left, off the asphalt and onto the grass. The car kept running forward as the trees rushed at us like a swarm of low-flying birds. The car creaked and jolted and flew over bumps and roots and stuff, and there was no way we could continue this. Somehow, somewhere, we would have to stop or be stopped.
I was sure Adeline was slamming against the brakes because I could hear the sound of tires screeching. A tree loomed just ahead and we crashed into its bark. Something white and ghostly blew up in front of me and punched me in the chest and gut.
Passenger side air bag.
The air whooshed out of my body and I feel as if a giant hand had picked me up and slammed me against the ground. My heart was bursting to claw out of my chest and my limbs were completely numb. My brain was screaming with an infernal howling that swept like an arctic wind in my ears.
It took me a long time to pick up my senses.
Everything was silent around me. Everything was dead calm.
I finally found my voice.
“Adeline?”
I heard a groan behind me. The entire front of my body hurt something bad, and my neck felt like it had been whiplashed.
“Rebecca?”
More groans.
“I’m OK. Addy? Are you all right, Addy?”
*
But Addy was not OK.
Addy was never going to be OK again.
She wasn’t dead, just in case that’s what you’re thinking. No. For an eighteen-year-old girl, it was a fate infinitely worse than death.
*
I stir my lobster bisque.
I say, “I tried. I really did.”
Rebecca shakes her head. “You didn’t try hard enough.”
“What about you?” I demand. “You left her too.”
“I was her friend. I never left her. But you . . . ” Her eyes glisten and she averts her face.
I swallow.
I remember it all too well. Adeline – hooked up to the machines. Her four limbs wrapped up in plaster. Paralysis from the neck down, the doctors said. She would never walk or hold somebody’s hand again.
I remember the shock Rebecca and I went through. We escaped the accident with just a few scratches and bruises. The airbag saved me while Rebecca hit her head on the roof of the car, but it was nothing serious. Adeline had the brunt of it because a branch had crashed through the windshield and taken out one of her neck bones.
C3, they said it was. The third cervical bone from the base of her skull.
I tried. I really did. But it was too painful to sit by her hospital bed day after day, unable to do the things we used to do. She could speak. Her eyes were so full of inner turmoil as she tried to grasp what we once had.
I was young.
I was initially armed with the best of intentions. I initially wanted to do the right thing and stay by her side.
But my mother didn’t want me to.
“You’re too young to be saddled with a burden like that, Kurt,” she said. “God knows I was too young too when I had you kids, and so I know what it’s like to be saddled with that burden every day.”
Adeline knew what I was going through.
“You have to find someone else, Kurt,” she said bravely from her bed. She wa
s no longer in hospital but a rehab center. “You can’t stay here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I won’t leave you,” I avowed.
But those were empty words, said in a moment of passionate bravado.
Adeline sank into depression, and me with her. After a while, she didn’t even want to see me. She didn’t even try to apply for college.
“What’s the point?” she said bitterly. She shot a look of desperation at me. “Tell me you applied, Kurt. You have to go to college. Don’t throw your life away because of me.”
“I’m not,” I said.
It was true.
But I didn’t want to tell her that I only had rejection after rejection. My grades were not good enough. My basketball talents weren’t good enough. I was competing with a whole lot of black kids who were hungry and from the projects in the big cities, and they were given the advantage over me.
Soon, Adeline and I drifted apart. We were no longer the same people we were when we entered the car that night. Our visits grew too painful. And I still harbored the guilt over what I did with Rebecca that night. We didn’t kiss. We just held hands. But there was fire in that mind meld, and maybe . . . just maybe if we hadn’t done it, Adeline would still be whole today.
It was all my fault.
Everything that happened to Adeline was my fault.
When the audition for American Rock Star came into the nearest city, I thought: What the heck? I didn’t think I had a ghost of a chance to go to the next level. My singing skills had been confined to the shower. I had more swagger than talent. But it was a chance to escape from my humdrum life for a moment, and certainly a chance to escape from my troubles with my life and Adeline.
But one audition led to another. And another.
You kind of know the rest.
Before I left for Los Angeles for the finals of twelve, I visited Adeline one final time.
Her eyes were shining. “Don’t look back, Kurt. Don’t think of me and don’t come back here. Just don’t look back.”
I held her limp hands. Tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t say anything. We both knew I wasn’t going to look back, and so I didn’t pretend to mask it with false promises and noble declarations of ‘I’ll come back for you’.
Because I never came back.
It was too painful to confront all the memories we left behind. Not just painful, but downright, terrifyingly excruciating.
Rebecca never forgave me for that.
*
“You’re a coward!” Rebecca says to me.
I can’t eat my soup. The plate of foie gras lies untouched as well.
I say, “I know.”
I can’t bear to look into her accusing green eyes. The color drains from my face.
“You’re a . . . a . . . ”
Words seem to fail her. She is that upset.
I know what is weighing heavily on her mind. It anchors on mine just as guiltily. If we hadn’t done what we did, maybe the karmic forces would align and make everything that happened unhappen.
Rebecca gets up abruptly from her chair.
I look up. “Where are you going?”
Her body trembles. “I can’t do this. I can’t have dinner with you. I . . . I – ”
Her eyes are filled with tears as she grabs her purse and stumbles blindly away. She starts to stride towards the exit, and finally gains speed.
I am too stunned to move.
What should I do? Go after her?
But I didn’t do anything wrong. Not this time. What’s done has been done. I can’t undo anything by going after Rebecca Hall.
I shouldn’t be going after Rebecca Hall. She’s part of my past – the past I’m so desperately trying to run away from.
I am besieged by indecision when the waiter comes back to the table, shaking his head lightly.
“It’s a tough call,” he says to me. “But your lady friend looks right upset. I would go after her if I were you. There’s a storm out there and the deck’s slippery.”
That’s as good a reason to go after her as any.
I get up and take out my wallet. I extract two thousand dollars from it and lay it on the table.
“This good to cover my bill and your tip?” I say.
He nods and grins. “You’re welcome back here anytime, Mr. Taylor. I’m sorry about what happened to you. I think the newspapers have a way of distorting stuff.”
“Don’t I know it,” I groan.
I dash out of the restaurant. I have no idea where Rebecca has gone to, but I’m willing to bet it’s to her cabin. The Clarion opens out into a corridor with some of the other restaurants on the ship, At the end of this corridor, a door to one of the sun deck swings shut. The silvery torrent of rain is lighted up momentarily by the lamps inside.
Shit. She has gone outside. Where it’s cold and dark and blustery and not fit for a witch’s tit, or whatever the saying is these days.
I grit my teeth. I’ve got to go get her. She might do something stupid.
Nah. Not Rebecca.
But how well do I know her anyway?
Composing a mental apology to Manny and the sorry state I’m going to render his dinner jacket, I run out through that door.
The wind hits me immediately. It is terribly cold, and my nuts shrivel into my ball sacs inside my pants. The rain pelts down and the sky is a merciless black. Jagged streaks of lightning light up the dark clouds, competing with the blazing lamps from the sun decks. There is no one outside.
Maybe she didn’t even come out here.
Then I see her.
She is there by the side of the wall, shielding herself from the cold. Her arms are wrapped around her body and her shoulders are slumped. Her head is bowed. I can’t be sure because of the pelting rain, but I believe she is crying. Her cheeks are certainly wet. Her whole body is wet.
What was she thinking of?
“Rebecca!” The wind snatches the cry from my lips and hurls it into the great beyond.
She looks up, and her face contorts. She turns from me and hurries away.
“Rebecca! Don’t be stupid! Come in!”
But she vanishes into the darkness. I curse and almost slip on the wet deck. What is she wearing? High heels? How can she totter around on a slippery deck like this? The whole ship is quaking and listing from one side to the other, and I feel like I’m stuck in a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ reel.
“Rebecca!”
I dash after her, but I think I have lost her in the dark now. I step over a pile of rope and almost trip myself up. A particularly furious gust of wind howls on the surface.
I hear a scream all the way towards the railing.
“Rebecca!”
I blink against the rain and wind. I rush to the railing. I can make out a flailing figure in the dark churning waters.
“Rebecca!”
Another scream tears from the figure. At this rate, she will drown or be crushed under the ship’s propellers!
Frantic, I scan my immediate environs for a lifebuoy. There are a couple of buoys tethered to a triangular stop in the railing. I quickly pull them from the railing and fling them into the sea.
“Rebecca! I just threw a buoy!”
I doubt she heard me.
Shit. I’ve got to do something.
Without stopping to think too deeply about this, I wrench my shoes and socks off, as well as Manny’s dinner jacket. Then I clamber over the railing and dive into the furiously churning waters.
Oh shit.
I forgot I can’t swim.
KURT
I bob in the water, gasping for breath and flailing with my hands.
“Rebecca!” I try to cry out, but water rushes into my mouth.
Waves crash into my face, sending salty water into my mouth and nostrils. Every time I try to gulp for more air, water slams into my face.
And then something else.
The lifebuoy lifts on the crest of the waves and delivers itself to me in what can only be describe
d as an act of God. My cold and wet hands cling on to it and I hook two grateful arms around its ring.
“Rebecca!”
Both my stomach and lungs are sloshing with seawater. Why is the sea so damned choppy? (Oh right, there’s a storm.) I can’t see where she is in the dark and the only light we have – from the ship – is getting dimmer and dimmer.
I swing my head to the ship. Alas! It’s moving away from us, oblivious to our plight.
“Hey!” I call after it. “Don’t leave us!”
But the waves are sweeping us from it and the ship’s engine and turbines are determinedly going against the current.
Rebecca!
I swing my head wildly again to look for her. There she is! Clinging to the lifebuoy I threw her. She seems to be coping better than me, it appears. Maybe she can actually swim.
“Kurt?” she cries.
“Rebecca, I’m here!”
I don’t know how to swim properly, but I can actually paddle with my legs on a lifebuoy. I kick my legs to propel my body in her direction, and she seems to be doing the same. Her hair is plastered over her face, and occasionally, her form is lit up by lightning.
Strange that we are unable to hear the thunder for the roaring of blood and water in our ears.
“Rebecca, are you all right?” I say as I come closer.
We finally come close enough for me to reach my hand out and hook my right wrist around her buoy. Our clammy skins brush against each other’s. There is so much water splashing around that we can hardly make each other out.
“Just tide this over, OK?” I say to her.
Breathless, she nods. Our hands clasp each other’s between our bobbing buoys. Thank goodness we are in the tropics. The water could be a lot colder than it really is.
Not having the energy to do or say anything more besides cling to our buoys and to each other, we let the waves carry us to wherever they are going.
Which might be nowhere.