The Guardian's Playlist
Page 5
A few minutes later, I was pumping gas while Claire happily waited in the car, texting Jones, her “ex” boyfriend.
“Does Mom know you’re still going out with him?” I asked as I slid back into the car. She scowled and set her phone down in the ashtray. “So, are you sleeping with him?”
“No!” she snapped, but she didn’t meet my eyes.
Right, I thought, but I didn’t want to jeopardize my ride, so I dropped the subject and reached for the radio. Her hand beat me to it.
“Nope. Driver’s choice,” she said.
“C’mon, Claire! Just this once!”
She just smiled and switched it to her favorite “Top Forty” station.
I contented myself with resting my chin on my tanned forearm, which was half hanging out the open passenger side window. The hot wind filled my nose with the acrid smells of cars and asphalt and whipped my scruffy braid against my face. I narrowed my eyes against the assault.
When we pulled out of the gas station, we merged onto a street that runs through Fairview Park’s commercial district. We were surrounded by strip malls and fast food restaurants, and to the uninitiated, we were stuck in the middle of suburban sprawl, but Cleveland has a secret—an escape route that can take you away from the cluttered signage, steaming blacktop and weedy lawns of the city. The congested commercial district became a residential area. Then the houses on the left fell away and were replaced by a rusted steel guardrail, which was the only barrier between the cars on the road and the one hundred foot drop down into the Rocky River Gorge. Our escape route was just ahead on the left.
Claire stopped at the next light and took the hairpin turn on to Cedar Point Road, braking hard against its steep and sudden descent. The air became heavier, and the tree adorned gorge walls rose up around us. The breeze caressing my cheek became cooler and now carried the organic scents of leaves and mud.
At the base of the hill we took a sharp right onto Lewis Road, crossed over the west fork of the Rocky River and then followed the tightly twisting curves back up the other side of the gorge. This time there was no guardrail. The car wheezed as it fought to gain altitude and prove itself worthy of the last leg of the journey. When the road leveled out, the forest opened up, spitting us back out onto the threshold of civilization. To our right were a handful of homes set far back from the road, and to our left was a large fenced riding ring in the middle of a huge mown field with another spur of the forest beyond.
We pulled into a gravel parking area in front of a carved wood sign that identified the place as “Lewis Road Riding Ring,” which was part of the Cleveland Metroparks’ Rocky River Reservation. The park was deserted. Claire parked the car and looked around. “Where are your friends?”
“Oh, they’ll be here.”
She pursed her lips and shook her wavy ponytail in a frustrated gesture. “Cate, I can’t wait. I’m going to be late!”
“You don’t have to wait. I’ll be fine.”
She stared out the window and thought for a moment, chewing on her lip. “Do you have your inhaler?” she asked, resigned, but still not happy about leaving me there alone. I nodded. “Let me see it,” she ordered. I dug through my pink bag, making a big production of the effort I was making.
I held up the inhaler. “Happy?”
“Does it work?” Oh, for crying out loud. She didn’t have to be so bossy just because our mom and dad were away. I shook it and pressed the cylinder, releasing a white medicinal cloud into the car.
“What the…? You didn’t have to do that!” she complained, waving the cloud out of her face.
I smiled inwardly.
“What about your cell?” I rolled my eyes, but this time I dug through the bag without being asked and held up the phone.
“Tada!” I exclaimed.
She still looked doubtful. “Call me if you run into trouble. I’ll be back at five unless I hear from you.”
When she disappeared, I walked down the dirt path toward the woods, alone.
The sun was high overhead, turning the sky the palest blue. It beat down hot and merciless on my bare shoulders and the mostly dormant yellow grass of the field, but I wasn’t concerned about my lack of sunscreen, because I would soon be under cover.
I followed the path past the fenced riding ring and bleachers and across the massive field, stopping and turning around just before it vanished into the woods to see how far I’d come. I could barely make out the sign that marked the entrance to the parking area. Turning back toward the woods, I quickened my pace, anxious to get out of the baking sun.
The path into the woods was bordered on both sides by deciduous trees and dense leafy undergrowth, but immediately beyond its entrance, the sun-dappled tangle of trees faded gently into a deeply shaded pine forest. Under foot, the crackling of dead leaves became the whisper-quiet of fallen pine needles, and from this softened forest floor, the tree trunks rose straight and parallel, mostly naked of branches, until they reached the vaulted pine ceiling high above me.
I stopped there as I always did and pulled the cool pine-scented air into my nose and down into my lungs. That fragrance and the sense of sheltered solitude were some of the reasons I liked to walk in Lewis Woods. Another reason lay about a mile and half up the path.
As I began walking again, I let my thoughts drift back to the conversation I’d had with Claire that morning, to the maelstrom of emotions I needed to sort through about the changes that were coming. I began with one of my safer feelings, with the acknowledgement that I loved my grandmother deeply.
She used to visit several times a year, but since her emphysema had worsened, she could no longer make the trip alone. Instead, during the summer months my mom would drive down and fetch her back to spend a few weeks with us. Those visits were fun, but difficult. There were personality clashes and complicated TV and bathroom schedules to sort out. There was also the ever present tension between my mom and Mina over Mina’s withdrawal from the Catholic Church. Both of them strong-willed, that weekly battle was unlikely to go away.
In the short term, the joy of seeing her outweighed the problems, but in the long term, I wasn’t so sure. Where would my friends and I hang out? Why did Claire get the basement? Selfish thoughts like these rampaged through my head, and I hated myself for allowing it. She’s sick, remember? Really sick. Maybe dying. No. I didn’t want to think about that, and I was relieved when I came to the fork in the path and surfaced from my swamp of negativity.
Choosing the right path would take me down to the Rocky River far below. The left path would lead me out of the pine forest to the top of the ridge. There was no hesitation in my stride as I veered left toward my favorite lookout point in the Metroparks.
I forged ahead, crossing a small wooden footbridge with a handrail over a gully. Beyond the little bridge, I left the dense shade of the pine forest behind and approached the edge of the cliff, which was bordered by a narrow stand of oak trees. Several feet below the edge of the cliff, a wide ledge jutted out over the gorge. That ledge was my reward for my hot hike in.
Down on the ledge, I couldn’t be seen by the casual passerby. From my bird’s eye view, I could see the bridge we’d crossed when we veered onto Lewis Road, and beyond the bridge, about a half mile from where I stood, the other side of the gorge rose almost straight up over a hundred feet from the opposite bank of the river. In the valley between, several picnic areas dotted the river bank and nestled among the trees. The view, in short, was spectacular.
I picked my way down among the sharp rocks, careful not to rely on the untested roots too much for support. When I reached the ledge, I dropped down onto the bone dry dirt to sit, then retrieved my phone to check the time. The screen remained stubbornly blank even when I mashed down on the power button.
“Guess I’m stuck here ‘til five,” I murmured. I tossed the dead phone back into my bag and looked around. Immediately to my left, a hollow oak tree clung precariously to the ledge. I checked to see if I recognized any of the late
st lovers’ initials carved there. Jason and I had carved our own initials somewhere up above last summer—a lot of good that did us. He’d been the first I’d let explore my curves, push through some of my walls, and stretch my willpower to the limit, and I wondered if I’d done the right thing by breaking up with him. I felt a painful twinge in my chest over the loss and turned my thoughts back to my grandmother’s impending arrival, which made me feel even sorrier for myself. Shit. I shook my head briskly to clear it, and pulled out my old iPod.
My cheap cell phone notoriously sucked the life out of its battery at record speed, so I brought my little pink iPod, which I charged religiously, with me everywhere. It was my security blanket. I got it when I was eleven, and it held more than my deified playlist. It held the songs I needed to give voice to my every emotion, to lift me higher, to intensify my outrage, to drag my sorrow out of the dark and blow it away.
I naturally tended toward alternative, dark and edgy bands, which surprised most people who knew me because it contrasted sharply with my easygoing nature. Yeah, I was a girl who still loved kittens and the color pink, but I had a hidden, slightly Emo core. I loved bands like Sick Puppies, Shinedown, and Three Days Grace. I loved the angry, in-your-face truth they injected into their music. But what hooked me the most was finding a band’s one song that exposed their naked hope, their fragile, unguarded need for something to believe in. And as I searched for a song, I was drawn powerfully to Pierce the Veil’s “Hold On Till May.” In my gut, it just fit. I clicked on it, plugged my headphones in my ears and turned the music up to drown out the thoughts I was supposed to be sorting. There would be time for soul searching later.
In the meantime, I hauled out my spotting scope and pointed it at the opposite shore. The river, which usually lapped at the base of the cliff, was low, exposing a wide gray beach strewn with boulders and broken shale. In the foreground, cars streamed over the bridge, hurrying past the beautiful views on either side.
I aimed the scope slowly up the many hued layers of the almost sheer rock face of the cliff. Thousands of years’ worth of history were locked up in those layers, some of it displayed at the Nature Center a little way down the river. Halfway up, I spotted a red-tailed hawk perched on a tree root, scanning the ground for prey. I let the scope linger on him a moment, admiring the speckled plumage which covered his powerful breast.
At the top of the cliff, at least a hundred feet above the valley floor, I caught movement and adjusted the scope to refine the image. Two boys were hiking behind the split-rail fence up on the ridge. I focused on their faces, almost dropping the scope when I recognized Shawn Fowler and Michael Casey. Unbelievable. What were the odds?
Both were wearing cut-off jeans and tennis shoes. The sleeves of Michael’s faded black T-shirt were ripped out, revealing his sword tattoo curving snuggly over the tanned muscles of his arm. His blonde hair, damp with sweat, was plastered to the back of his neck in dark ringlets.
You are such a voyeur, I scolded myself, but I looked anyway. My heart beat faster, and my palms got slippery as I watched him. What was with me? I hadn’t seen this kid in years. It didn’t seem to matter. I forgot my bad mood and smiled in spite of myself.
Then Shawn hopped the split rail fence.
“Stupid,” I murmured.
Michael followed Shawn, calling out to him with an angry look on his face, but Shawn continued moving toward the edge. Shit. From my viewpoint, I could see that the ridge they were standing on projected out slightly with nothing underneath. It was thin, way too thin to support them both. Oh, shit.
My palms were now sweating in earnest, my lips silently forming the words “move back, move back,” willing them across the chasm that separated us. Then Shawn stumbled.
My heart seized as Michael reached out from behind and yanked Shawn back from the brink, but in so doing, planted his own foot closer to the edge. The ledge suddenly gave way with a shower of dirt and shale, and Michael’s left foot plunged through the debris into nothing. His downward momentum carried his other foot over, and he pivoted toward the face of the cliff, throwing his arms forward in a desperate bid to save himself.
Oh no, oh no, oh my god no…
Shawn whirled around, dropped to his knees and grabbed hold of Michael’s arms, but more of the brittle edge crumbled, and Michael’s sweat slick arms slipped through his fingers. Shawn was left gripping only one of Michael’s hands. He pulled on it mightily, his neck muscles corded with effort while Michael’s free hand scrambled madly along the face of the cliff, searching for a handhold, his face a horrified mask of disbelief and terror.
My own hands were locked in a death grip on the scope. “Oh God, please,” I whispered as Pierce the Veil’s “Hold on Till May” shriveled to scratchy feedback in my ears.
Michael found a loose tree root and wrapped his hand around it. I could see his jaw clench tight and the muscles of his arm and shoulder bunch as he prepared to pull up.
I screamed, “No don’t!”
He was halfway up when the root broke loose, and his body rocketed downward. The sudden force of his descent broke Shawn’s hold on his hand.
I leapt to my feet, my headphones ripped from my ears, my fingers clutching the bark of the oak beside me. I dropped the scope and watched, horrified, as Michael slid at least fifty feet down the nearly vertical cliff, his fingers digging into its crumbling face, slowing him down. Fragments of hope tore through my mind. If he could slow his fall just enough…
But I could see the bottom of the cliff. I could see that it cut in on itself ever so slightly. He would soon have nothing to hold onto. When he plummeted past the breakpoint, I watched his hands grab desperately at thin air while his body rotated backward. He fell the last fifty feet with his back to the ground, his arms outstretched, and landed on the rocky beach below, face up, not moving.
Leaning out over the ledge, I searched in vain for some way down, some way to get to him, but there was none. The ledge I was standing on ended in a sheer rock face that dropped straight down to the flowing river below. Instead, I grabbed the scope and scrambled back up to the clearing among the oaks, my heart pounding in my chest, thoughts racing through my head.
Call someone!
Get help!
My phone is dead. Damn it! DAMN IT!
Run back to the road!
It will take a half hour to get back to the road! It’s too far! It will be too late!
The isolation I’d revered had become a chain around my neck.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I turned around, lifted the scope and pointed it back across the gorge. I found Shawn at the top of the cliff on his side, pacing madly back and forth, screaming into his cell phone and gesturing wildly toward the base of the cliff. At least now I knew help was on the way. Thank God!
I dropped to my knees, flexing my cramping fingers a few times before swinging the scope back down the jagged face of the cliff. Debris rained down from where it was knocked loose followed by curling trails of brown dust. I scanned the rocky beach and found Michael about halfway between the cliff and the river, still face up, but this time I saw movement. The back of his hand rested weakly on his forehead. His teeth were clenched together, his eyes squeezed shut.
“You’re not alone,” I whispered. “Hang on. Help is on the way.”
One of his Converse tennis shoes had been ripped off during the fall along with several of his fingernails, leaving his fingertips and toes torn and bloody. There was a nasty gash across the bottom of his chin. I watched as he tried to roll up onto his left shoulder, but fell back, a silent scream on his lips.
He opened his eyes and breathed hard a few times, his hand falling back to his forehead, smearing it with dirt. He clenched his teeth again, dropped his right arm to the ground and then swung it up and over his chest, faster this time, rolling up onto his side. Another scream left his lips, followed by a fountain of bright red blood that splashed onto the rocks and seeped into the desiccated dirt of the riverbed.
Michael rolled back onto his back, coughing violently. Then he turned his eyes toward the bridge between us, curling his fingers weakly toward it, as if beckoning to the cars racing by, but they remained blissfully unaware of the tragedy unfolding less than a hundred feet away. He let his gaze drift toward the cliff I knelt on, dragged his focus up, slowly, so slowly, and brought it to rest impossibly in the center of my scope. His eyes flashed angrily, and he shouted something. Then he whispered whatever he’d said over and over, the movements of his lips becoming weaker and weaker. He kept his focus in the middle of my scope, as if by some miracle he could see me. I reached out my fingers without thinking, as if I could touch his face.
“Okay…it’s okay,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Shh…” The muscles of his face relaxed and his eyes lost their focus, the furious spark in them dimming and then going out. The sirens were much closer now, but I knew they were too late. I lifted the strap of the spotting scope over my head and placed the instrument gently down on the dirt by my side. I didn’t need to see anymore. He was gone.
FIVE
WAKING THE DEAD
MICHAEL’S FALL COULD only have lasted a few seconds and his agony only a few more, but it seemed like a lifetime had passed since I’d spotted him at the top of the cliff. I felt ancient. I gradually became aware of the sharp gravel digging into my knees, and I dropped back down to a sitting position, hugging my pebble-pocked knees to my chest with my eyes tight shut.
For a few peaceful moments, no thoughts at all circulated through my head. Only a fine gray mist existed where once intelligible thoughts inhabited. It swirled in random patterns of light and dark until it resolved itself into an image of Michael’s beautiful gray eyes, deep and filled with sorrow. Startled, I snapped my eyes open, and the image was immediately replaced with that of the cliff and the lovely vista beyond.