“The memories usually come in colors,” Jude continued. “I’ll see a certain shade of yellow, maybe, and I’ll picture her in that pretty little sundress she used to wear; or green, and I’ll remember her eyes, like yours almost, Beck, and how they shined when she laughed. I can feel her slipping away, like an echo dying in the distance.”
He paused. “I’m the boy who let her drown.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Becka said. “You never should have been put in that position.”
Jude nodded. “I know that. In my head, I get it. But—”
“You have to forgive that boy,” Becka said.
Jude shook his head.
“You were just a kid,” she insisted.
Headlights appeared along the beach, a four-wheel jeep rolling down the shore.
“Security patrol,” Jude said. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“Quick, jump down,” Becka said. They leaped to the sand. There were a couple of long, seafaring rowboats tied facedown to the stand. “Let’s hide.”
They squeezed between the two boats, huddled close together. Jude peered out from underneath, watching the lights bounce closer, closer, until turning away toward the parking lot.
They lingered in the black womb of the boat’s overturned belly, waiting for the coast to clear, an electric closeness between them. Becka found his mouth, and they kissed, and time seemed to disappear.
* * *
“He’ll find my car,” Becka realized, standing to brush the sand off her arms and legs. “We should go.”
Jude glanced to the east. The sky was softening, turning pinkish, foreshadowing sunrise. He clawed sand from his hair. “Are we going to be all right?”
Becka lifted her shoulders, let them drop. She didn’t know, and so couldn’t say.
“I’m sorry for everything,” he said.
Becka nodded, looked at her feet. “You really hurt me, Jude.”
He swallowed those words, each one like a stone in his stomach. “I want to try to make it right.”
“Sometimes I feel like I fell in love with a stranger,” Becka confessed. “I can’t be hurt like that again, Jude—not by you, not by any boy. I deserve better.”
Jude didn’t answer. He knew that he couldn’t undo the hurt, couldn’t black out the stars above, was helpless to uncrash the car. He touched her slender waist, wrapped an arm around her back, squeezed.
Becka trembled slightly, hugged Jude in return. “We’ll see what happens, okay? But you have to tell me one thing,” she said. “Tell me it’s over with that girl.”
“It’s over,” Jude replied. “It never started.”
“You embarrassed me.”
“Nothing happened,” Jude said.
“Nothing?”
Jude looked from Becka to the distance beyond. Then back to her again: “Nothing that meant anything.”
Becka pulled the hair from her face. “I think I could love you, Jude. But I’ve got all kinds of warning bells going off in my head.”
Jude understood. Some things take time. No one could wish the hurt away. They walked back to the car. There was a parking ticket on the windshield. They had lingered too long under the boat. Jude paused beside Becka, reading the ticket over her shoulder. “I’ll pay it,” he offered.
“Sold,” she answered, stuffing the ticket into his shorts pocket.
“Listen, do you mind if I stay?” he asked.
“Stay? Here?”
Jude jerked his head toward the Atlantic. “I want to hang around, see the sunrise.”
“I have to get back before my parents—”
“No, I know,” Jude said. “But will you be okay, driving home alone?”
“You really want to stay here by yourself? Won’t your folks freak? How will you get home?”
“I’ve got my cell,” Jude said, patting his front pocket. “I’ll call ’em. Seriously, they’ll probably just assume I’m asleep.”
Becka looked from Jude’s face to the ocean beyond, light beginning to soften the horizon. “I wish I could stay with you.”
“Another time, maybe,” Jude said.
Becka bit her lip, nodded. “I’d like that, Jude.” She pointed to the west. “Look! A shooting star.”
They watched it burn across the sky.
“Can I borrow that blanket?” Jude asked. “And do you have any more food in there?”
Becka rummaged through the backseat and uncovered a half-eaten bag of Doritos. “Here’s some orangey goodness for you. It’s loaded with vitamin C.”
“Really?”
“No, it’s pure garbage,” Becka laughed, “but very tasty.”
Jude leaned in, kissed Becka on the forehead.
“Be good,” she said, climbing into the car.
“I’ll call you, okay?”
She rolled down the window, nodded once, waved.
He watched her drive away, his heart quivering with new hope. Jude pulled the blanket around his shoulders, turned back to the shore.
He drifted eastward along the surf until he found himself standing alone, no one in sight except for a few fishermen, just now arriving from the parking lot. He stood, reflective, remembering how Lily used to splash in the water, and that wild banshee squeal of hers like an exalted, silly goose. Just a four-year-old girl. He could feel his cheeks lift to a smile.
Jude walked ankle-deep, then shin-deep, into the ocean. The water was surprisingly cold, biting. The waves had quieted, rolled in light and regular, more like an ambitious lake than a vengeful sea. Last night’s storm had passed.
He didn’t know what would happen with Becka. Maybe that’s why he needed to be alone on the beach, to watch the sunrise, to be okay with himself, despite everything. Sometimes life seemed impossibly hard, full of car wrecks and souls that shined like stars in yellow dresses. So much heartbreak and undertow. Jude bent down, picked up a smooth white stone, measured its heft in his hand. And he reached back to cast that rock as far as he could.
Just to see the splash.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The initial idea for this book—the car crash as a pivot point, the central fact in the lives of these teenage characters—came at a time when I was teaching my oldest son how to drive. An accident on the road is every parent’s nightmare. Yet it happens everywhere, and too often ends in heartbreak.
Some quick stats according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens. Teen drivers, ages 16–19, are four times more likely to crash than older drivers.
We all know that drinking and driving don’t mix; and texting, too. Studies show that the presence of teen passengers increases the risk, as does driving at night, when the rate of accidents becomes three times higher.
Be careful about those distractions. Stay under the speed limit, buckle up every time you get into a car. Be smart. Be safe.
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
BEFORE YOU GO. Copyright © 2012 by James Preller. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN: 978-0-312-56107-9
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
eISBN 9781429955300
First Edition: 2012
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Before You Go Page 14