“So like, I really don’t need to be standing on anything at all.” He held his hands out away from his body and levitated about eighteen inches above the ground. I took a step back startled, and he dropped abruptly. “Sorry…I guess that’s a little crazy.”
“Um…yeah. Wow.”
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed, brushing his hands together nonchalantly and then “leaning” back against the railing. “So, why uberwhatzit?”
“Ubermensch,” I corrected. I would have thought with all that energy, he would be more easily distracted.
“Whatever.” His bright eyes were still on me, waiting, curious.
I inhaled deeply. “The day you died, when I left I noticed this quote on the bridge: ‘Where art thou, Ubermensch?’ It stuck with me for some reason, and I looked the word up a few weeks later. It’s German. It means overman or superman. I guess after that, I associated the word with you.”
“So…you thought I was superman?” he asked, his lips turning up a little at the corners.
“Yes…no…” I sighed, embarrassed. “Look, it’s not important.”
“It’s important to me. Seriously.” He tried to rearrange his face into a more solemn expression, failing miserably. The twinkle in his eyes just wouldn’t quit.
“How do you even remember what I said that night? It’s all so confused in my head now.”
“I remember everything you said to me that night, Catherine,” he replied, genuinely serious this time. He caught my eyes with his and held them. “It was the first time anyone talked to me in six fucking weeks. And it was you. I knew you.” I looked away. “You were the only thing about this whole damn town that was familiar…that felt like home.”
“I’m sorry I refused to talk to you.”
“Well, shit, can’t imagine why you did that.” Sarcastic, then he laughed. “I mean, you only saw me fall off a cliff and bite the dust, like for real, a few weeks before.”
I looked down at the bridge railing and patted it absently with my palms. “Yeah…I know, but—”
“Okay. So I get that you think of me when you think of superman or uberwhozit, which is very cool, by the way…” I sighed. He was still teasing me. “But what made you think of it that night?”
This was the part I didn’t want to talk about, but it was obvious we’d never get on the subject of his fall if I didn’t give him some explanation. “Um…okay. While I was trying to run away from you, this song played. ‘Hope Bleeds.’ Do you know it?”
He shook his head.
“One of the lines goes ‘Let me be your Superman.’ It made me think of this quote on the bridge.”
He furrowed his brows, trying to understand.
“Look…you need to listen to the whole thing,” I said, digging out my little pink iPod.
“Whoa…how old is that thing?”
“Shut up! I bought it off eBay when I was in middle school. Just…” I plugged my headphones in and scrolled through my Playlist while he watched with interest. Then I held up the headphones between us and put one earpiece into my ear and nodded for him to listen to the other. He moved in closer.
“Now before you listen, you need to understand that I knew it was you from the first second I saw you that night, only I thought I was hallucinating, you know? The spiked cigarette theory? Maybe post-traumatic stress disorder? This song is what made me believe you were real. Okay?”
He nodded. I pushed play.
Hell if I know what I am
Black sheep or sacrificial lamb
I can’t even see myself anymore
I’m trapped, and I can’t break free
He rolled his eyes as the verse began, but as it ended, the crease between his brows deepened.
But you…you broke the mold
Left me here in the cold
I want your arms around me now
But they’re losing their warmth
Let me be your Superman
In the night, I’ll tie you down
With me you’ll be safe on the ground
‘Cause hope don’t grow on trees
It bleeds
I watched him closely as he listened. By the end of the refrain, a distant look appeared in his eyes, and I knew he was turning the lyrics over in his mind.
So I’ll rip it through you
That thread that drew you away
I need your arms around me now
But you’re losing your way
If it’s not real, it can’t change
What matters, won’t fade
And I feel myself fading—
“Turn it off,” he said suddenly, pulling away from me.
Startled, I shut it off and waited while he stared off into the woods for a few minutes, thinking. When he didn’t speak, I said, “It was like the song was talking directly to me about you. You know, telling me it really was you. So—”
“It’s just a song,” he countered brusquely. “A coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I murmured. “I think maybe…” But I lost my nerve to say what I was going to say, and hugged my arms in close to my chest, avoiding his eyes. Underneath all of my doubts and fears, I believed this song, like all the others, was God’s way of trying to tell me something. I also knew that tomorrow, or perhaps even later today, I would wonder how I could be so delusional, so why say it out loud.
He zeroed in on my conclusion anyway. “Come on, Catherine,” he said, shaking his head. “So you’re saying that what, like someone, like maybe God or something, played that song for you?” His voice was dripping with condescension, but his eyes told another story. He was paying attention.
“Hey! You asked!” I shot back, getting in his face. He took a step back, surprised by my temper. “All I know is that I was scared out of my mind that night, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of these woods, but that song got my attention, and I stopped! I stayed! Isn’t that what you wanted that night? For me to stay? I think maybe God was trying to tell me that.” There it was. The truth I wished for. My blue eyes flashed stubbornly as I steeled myself for his reaction. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Maybe your God just likes to fuck with your head.”
“Nice,” I said. “If it wasn’t God, then maybe it was you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was skeptical, but the idea had a certain appeal. Maybe God wasn’t the only one who could reach me through music. “If you listen to the words of the song, it’s almost like it could have been you trying to tell me something that night.” I paused and pondered that while his mouth dropped open, startled by the idea.
“Can you do that?” I wondered aloud. “You know, focus your thoughts somewhere? Like you focus the rest of you?”
“Catherine, you’re insane.”
Right. I knew there was a reason I didn’t talk about this stuff. We both turned suddenly at the sound of some hikers coming up the path.
“Let’s go,” I whispered, motioning toward the overlook.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be standing here talking to myself when they walk by. I may be insane, but I’m not stupid.”
He laughed, but he vanished anyway, murmuring, “Lead the way.”
I rolled my eyes. “You really need to work on that walking thing.”
“Would you walk to California if you could fly?”
“California my…we’re only going a quarter mile,” I complained. I could hear the sound of his breathing mingled with the sound of crunching leaves beneath my feet, and his sweet citrus and pine fragrance wrapped around me like a warm cloak. He was very close.
I narrowed my eyes at the surrounding forest. “You’re keeping your distance, right?” He just laughed.
When I reached the edge of the cliff, I lowered myself down onto the ledge where I’d been the day he fell. It was colder there, and the wind was stronger, but it was less likely that we would be interrupted. With each wind gust, a shower of leaves spiraled off the trees that lined the ri
dge tops on either side of the gorge. Brown. Orange. Yellow. Red. Most of them eventually found their way into the rushing river, which flowed past in the valley below and disappeared around the bend.
It felt good to be sitting there again, knowing he would soon be sitting beside me. I watched his ethereal body take shape, gathering and filling in to reveal him sitting next to me with his chin resting on his knees, which were drawn up in front of him. The thumb of his left hand rubbed up and down over his tattoo while his dark lashes and gray eyes moved subtly as they took in the view of the cliff in the distance.
“Anyway…” I began after a while, reluctantly disturbing his peaceful profile, “Now that I know you’re not Superman, and you’re actually just a ghost who somehow got himself stuck—”
“So I’ve gone from Superman to being a shit-for-brains ghost?” He turned toward me with his lips turned up in a sarcastic grin. “You really know how to build a guy’s confidence.”
I ignored his comment. “I think I’m supposed to work on getting you…unstuck.”
“I already told you. I don’t think I want to know where I’m assigned to go next.”
“But you believe there is a next?”
“Not really.” He stuck his chin out stubbornly, his eyes steely. “No.”
“For me, then? Can’t we at least explore the possibility?”
“What do you want me to do, Catherine?” he said. “There’s no light or whatever. Nada. Zippo. Okay? Just me, floating around in this ether crap, bored out of my fucking skull.” His shoulders slumped. “Who do you think you are anyway? Jennifer Love Hewitt? That creepy little kid that sees dead people?”
“News flash. I do see dead people.”
He gave me a pained look.
“Look. Think about it, you have to be appearing to me for a reason. We need to figure out what it is. The way I see it, you’re either haunting me because you hate me, you’re trying to save me from something, you need my help to deal with something from your past, or you don’t know you’re dead.”
He shot me an angry glance. “Well, you can cross the last one off. Being dead is one thing I’m sure of. It sucks.”
“Okay,” I nodded encouragingly. He looked sourly back out over the valley.
“I might hate you,” he went on in a teasing tone. “I don’t know. We haven’t spent much time together yet.” He glanced over at me to see my reaction to that, and I rewarded his efforts by rolling my eyes. “Okay, okay. I’m not an evil spirit that’s come back to destroy you or whatever.” He waved his hands in the air spookily.
“That’s good to know.”
His eyes brightened a little as he went on to the next possibility. “So…maybe I’m just trying to save you from a life of extreme suburban boredom?”
“Succeeding, but I don’t think that’s a compelling enough reason to dodge the grave—which brings us to the third and only option left.”
He rolled his eyes again and stuck his scraped chin back out. “This is stupid, Catherine. Nothing I did mattered when I was alive, why would it matter now that I’m dead?”
“I think we need to start with what really happened on the cliff last August.” I held my breath, waiting for his temper to flare again.
He bristled sharply. “I fucked up.”
I braced myself for worse. “Very descriptive.”
“How about, I’m an asshole. I fucked up. I fell off a freaking cliff. I died.”
“Okay, we’re making progress.”
A flicker of a smile crossed his lips, and then his eyes darkened again. “What do you want from me?” he whined. “You’re so damn bossy.”
I smiled at that. I was bossy. I was also undeterred. “Tell me what happened before you were up on the cliff.”
“I was born. I was an asshole…”
I closed my eyes and took a deep calming breath. I wasn’t going to get anywhere this way, so I reluctantly dug the newspaper clipping out of my back pocket and smoothed it out on the dirt between us. He slouched closer to me, and I watched as his eyes scanned the article, too curious not to read it. He sat quietly for a while staring at the paper, and after a few minutes passed I looked up to see his reaction. He sighed roughly, and banged his forehead on his knees a few times.
“Can’t you just read it to me?” he mumbled, his face still buried in his knees. I picked up the crumpled paper with the tips of my fingers and then stared at him questioningly until he looked back at me, an expression of pure misery on his face.
“I have dyslexia,” he said.
THIRTEEN
DIARY OF A CLIFF DIVE
MY STOMACH ROLLED. “When did you find out?”
“What?”
“That you have dyslexia.”
Michael scowled. “Last winter. The Gardiners had them test me at Fairview. It took hours.”
“So all this time—”
“Yeah…stupid, lazy, goof-off, troublemaker. I’ve heard it all.” His jaw tightened for a moment, and then he laughed harshly as if to prove it didn’t bother him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. My voice caught in my throat.
His eyes flashed. “You promised.”
I nodded quickly, blinking hard to stave off any wetness that might be gathering in my eyes. Then it suddenly dawned on me why he was so excited when he found the word Ubermensch.
“Then how did you—”
“Recognize that uberwhatza word?” He smiled grimly. “When you have absolutely nothing to do 24/7 you find ways to keep yourself occupied. I’ve read, or at least tried to read, every word on every tree in this whole place.”
“Ah,” I said. I looked down at the newspaper clipping and cleared my throat. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” He scowled again. Then, I began to read.
Drugs Involved in Tragic Death of Local Teen
According to the coroner’s report released yesterday, no drugs were found in the body of Michael Casey, a student at Saint Joan of Arc Catholic High School, who fell to his death from a cliff last August.
However, police have now confirmed that a half-empty bottle of Ritalin was found near the victim. The medication was prescribed to a former foster child of Bill and Suzanne Gardiner of 342 Snowdrop Way, who were Casey’s foster parents at the time of his death.
He leaned back against the cold face of the cliff and groaned. “Bill and Sue must be so pissed at me.”
I looked up, surprised. “No. They’re not. You should have seen them at your wake and funeral. They were totally sad. They loved you so—”
He groaned again. “I’m such a shit. They were so nice to me and look what I—”
“Michael,” I interrupted, “they don’t blame you. They blame themselves.”
“Do you think that makes me feel any better?” His eyes blazed angrily. “How could I be so stupid?”
I tried to think of something to say to soothe him, but no words came.
“Just…” He nodded at the paper with eyes that were overflowing with self-loathing and motioned impatiently for me to keep reading.
Shawn Fowler—
“God, I hate that kid…”
I looked up, but he waved his hand for me to go on.
…also a student at Saint Joan of Arc Catholic High School, who was hiking with Casey when he fell, stated that Casey had taken the pills from the Gardiner’s medicine cabinet and brought them to the park intending to share them with him. Fowler said, “Michael got really angry when I refused. Then, we went for a hike, and he got too close to the edge and slipped.”
I looked up again, waiting for him to protest Shawn’s blatant lie about Michael being the one who strayed too close to the edge. He just looked defeated and moved his index finger around in a circle to tell me to keep reading.
The Gardiners have refused to comment.
Detective Lucas McCready said, “Students are turning to prescription drugs to get high because they think they’re safer than street drugs, which is a dange
rous assumption.”
This was not the first time Casey, who was no stranger to the juvenile court system, was found with drugs. Last winter, he was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana…
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him studying my face carefully, his jaw locked tight, but I plowed on, pretending his past didn’t shock me.
…on the grounds of Fairview High School, his former school of record, and was placed on probation. He subsequently was charged with felonious assault after pushing another teen through a plate glass window during a fight.
The coroner has ruled Casey’s death an accident.
I left out the part about his aorta, thinking he probably didn’t need to hear about his arteries busting open.
Michael laughed bitterly anyway. “Well, they just had to put it all in there. The juvenile delinquent. The bad seed. He finally made his last mistake. I’m sure the talk around school has been interesting this week.”
“You could say that,” I admitted.
He was quiet, just staring down at the base of the cliff where he’d taken his last breath. I left him alone with his thoughts for a while. Then it was time to ask the burning question. The one I was afraid to hear the answer to. I cleared my throat.
“Um…so, how much of it’s true, the article, I mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess it sums my life up pretty well. Classic Screw Up.” He regarded me accusingly, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I never said I was fucking innocent. What does it matter? Why do you even bother to visit the dead stoner? Why don’t you run back and join all your perfect friends in your perfect little lives, so you can all be perfect together?” He looked away, his jaw tight, his eyes flint hard.
“Because…” I stammered, not surprised but still stung by the ferocity of his response. “Because I don’t think you can judge a person by knowing only their worst moments.”
The Guardian's Playlist Page 16