by Nic Brown
Throughout elementary school, even most of middle school, Fletcher and Grier had been inseparable. It was an easy, almost inevitable pairing, Grier the wacky, outgoing girl, mousy and underdeveloped; Fletcher the quieter one, beautiful and popular but reliant on Grier for a certain social spark. In the past year, though, Grier had started listening to strange music, wearing vintage dresses, watching old movies—movies with no talking. They had moved apart in imperceptible steps, their friendship becoming a compound of memories.
The last real time they’d spent together was when they’d driven Grier’s Dodge Diplomat to Myrtle Beach over spring break. Before they reached the beach, Grier stopped at Crazy Barrett’s Fireworks. Crazy Barrett’s was famous for having a fireworks testing area—an enclosed Plexiglas room with a concrete floor where you could light one of any firework you wanted.
They gathered as many roman candles, thunder bombs, Saturn batteries, and whistling busters as they could afford—enough fireworks to fill the bottom of a shopping cart—and Grier took them into the testing room. Fletcher watched from the other side of the scarred Plexi as Grier sent colored sparks shooting in arcs across the space. She looked electric in that smoky cell, like it was her exploding, not a cardboard cylinder that read GUCCI MINESHELL MAYHEM. That was three months before Fletcher got sick, but even then it was clear that Grier was more alive.
The taste of Grier’s vomit was not as bad as Fletcher had expected. Her own sickness had rendered the body’s various productions innocuous, just annoying byproducts of an unreliable factory. After three more breaths, Fletcher put her hands between Grier’s small breasts and forced a small stream of water out of her mouth with each compression. Then something popped, loud and solid under Fletcher’s palms.
“What’s that?” Mike said.
Fletcher knew that it was normal for ribs to break during compressions, but she didn’t say anything, she just continued to pump.
“Hey!” Mike yelled towards the closest houses. “Help!”
Grier’s flesh seemed pristine, preserved, as if she had just emerged from a melting block of ice.
“Is she dead?” Mike said.
“I don’t know,” Fletcher said.
“She’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t know!”
“Fuck!”
Mike lay his ear against Grier’s chest.
When they were young, Fletcher and Mike had been close. For almost the whole summer after their parents divorced, when Fletcher was nine and Mike twelve, she slept on the floor of his bedroom in a sleeping bag. At times, she would even climb onto his bed and he would stay up with her, talking. Now he was eighteen and barely spoke to her. She didn’t understand his transformation, why he shut her out and put Jell-O in his hair and drove a monster truck.
“I don’t hear anything,” Mike said.
Fletcher resumed her pumping and another rib popped. Her sickness had given her a perspective on bodily damage. A rib would heal, a head of hair would grow back. Previously, the closest she’d ever come to this calm assurance was during the hundred-yard backstroke, pushing herself through the chlorine with the sensation of molecular fire spreading through her limbs. There was an end, she would think, gazing at the metal girders arced across the green gym roof, water splashing across her view. She tried to think the same thing about the nausea that accompanied her chemotherapy. She knew this logic had worked for swimming. She held six North Carolina records. Grier’s broken ribs were the burn on the way to the win, Fletcher thought. She was preparing to awaken.
Mike was crying. He wiped at his nose, then got up and started to run towards Evelyn Graham’s house.
Fletcher had never told Grier that she saw her singing with Mike. It would have been so important before. She wondered if she didn’t care now because of the drugs. She took so many drugs. The only time she ever felt better was when she took her buffet of pills. She longed for the hour of medication.
Fletcher’s head was cold. She had read that some huge percentage of your body heat can escape from your scalp, and since her hair had fallen out, she constantly wore a red knit cap. She’d left it inside, though, and now her scalp was exposed. Chemotherapy can shut down your immune system. She was actively thinking about the fact that she was thinking about that, and not Grier. She thought, I wonder if I’m calm because of the drugs. But she didn’t think that was it. She put her lips back on Grier’s, the vomit now washed away by the rain. The sound of Mike pounding on Mrs. Graham’s door carried across the street, and then Fletcher heard them talking. She was still thinking about how she wasn’t thinking about Grier. She wasn’t drugged, or at least that wasn’t the explanation. She was simply calm because she knew Grier was getting ready to cough.
When Fletcher had walked in on Grier and Mike that morning, the only thing she could think about was how thirsty she was. It was like her insides had cracked and withered. The dim glow from the hall nightlight lit the room just enough that she could see them in the bed together and it hadn’t mattered at all. All she wanted was something to make her feel better. When she asked Mike for help, Grier tried to hide under the sheets. Fletcher hadn’t even laughed, hadn’t done anything except ask for a glass of water. She didn’t think she would throw up before it came, but she did. Sometimes she was so betrayed by her body, so surprised by its output.
What Mike thought Mrs. Graham was going to do was beyond Fletcher. The phone lines were down and the electricity was out. No one knew CPR better than Fletcher did. This was as good as the situation could get.
“She’s going to the hospital!” Mike said, rushing back to her.
Fletcher didn’t even respond. She couldn’t waste the energy. She put her mouth back on Grier’s, pushed three breaths into her small torso, then pumped her broken ribs. Any second now.
Fletcher’s mother and Grier’s mother had both driven to the beach the day before to board up their condo. If that house had flooded or the walls had collapsed with those two single women inside, Fletcher thought, the kids would all have to move away, spread out to the homes of fathers. It seemed impossible. This park was Fletcher’s favorite thing in the world. She didn’t take it for granted. She was keenly aware that right across the street from her bedroom was a plot of land that could not be improved upon. Her favorite spot was Mo’s rock, an exposed area of stone by the creek bed where her old dog Mo used to love to lap from the water. She was also mystified by the floodmarkers on the bridge, red lines painted with the high-water marks for floods of years past. She never knew who had painted them. They seemed like some prehistoric markings, emerging from the bridge itself. For the first time ever, the bridge was now completely underwater. When it reemerged Fletcher wanted to paint a new floodmarker on the top. It would say OVER THE TOP 1989. She told herself, You need to do it. You really need to do it. Don’t chicken out. She felt like she always chickened out. She was going to do it.
Fletcher could feel the broken ribs shifting and was aware of the possibility that one might tear into a lung. She moved higher on Grier’s chest, trying to avoid sharp edges.
Mike had stopped talking and was just breathing wet air through his mouth. Mrs. Graham was slowly backing out of her driveway, into the shallow water standing in the street. Fletcher pumped the lower chest of Grier and knew that she was going to breathe. She simply knew it. This was not hope.
Mrs. Graham rolled through the water so slowly that Fletcher was embarrassed for her.
Then Grier coughed.
Fletcher’s house had always been the gathering point. They had the beanbags, the tape player in the kitchen. The moments of friendship and the stretches of long silence together had mostly occurred within those walls, so it made sense that Mike carried Grier there and not to her own house. Fletcher ran behind while Grier moaned over Mike’s shoulder and continued to leak water from her lungs.
Inside Grier cried and drooled and vomited more water, a seemingly endless amount
contained inside her. She said she’d wanted to swim in the park. It was as dumb as Fletcher had thought. Grier said she thought it would have been fun, that she was so stupid. “I’m so stupid,” she said. “I’m so stupid.” But the idea was enviable, Fletcher thought. Brave. Who else would think that, who else would identify the chance to swim across Mankin Park and then try to take it? It was exactly the type of thing Grier always did and Fletcher never did. Mike carried Grier into the bathroom and began running water into the tub. Fletcher lingered in the kitchen. She wasn’t afraid of seeing Grier naked. She’d seen that enough times. She just didn’t want to be in there with Mike, watching.
From the front door she watched the water gently wash through the grass in her yard, a daily view rendered suddenly exotic. The curve of the flowerbed was now the bank of a pond. In the middle of the yard the oak tree that she’d almost never noticed before now seemed austere and grand, rising out of the water. A bright red shirt floated by, a brushstroke through the space that had so recently been only a front yard. The neighborhood. There was an alternate view to it all, something other than night and day. It made Fletcher feel alive, in tune with her senses. She wasn’t dying. She was a lifesaver. She was a swimmer.
She opened the storm door and walked into the water, the shock of the chill dulled with her legs still wet. She crossed the street, the water reaching up to her calves now, and then into the park, until the water touched her waist. Then she dove in.
Underwater she opened her eyes.
The geography of the park was barely visible as she stroked into the water, but soon Mo’s rock appeared below her, the footpath stretching away into the murky depths. She dropped deeper and floated just above the footpath, like a ghost visiting the landmarks of her life, then drifted over the grass and past a small bed of ferns swaying in the water. She felt endangered and rash, flush with the risk of life. She rolled over and the surface of the floodwater appeared grey in the storm light above, shifting and shattered and low. She was in complete control, circling her hands to keep herself in position. Small branches and bits of vegetation floated gently by, yet there was barely any current, just a random spilling of the banks. Soon her lungs began to burn and she reluctantly started to rise. The hour of medication and pillows neared as she floated upwards, and when her nose surfaced at the same time as her toes, rain pounded her emerging flesh like a thousand tapping fingers insisting she awaken.
NIGHT
7:00 PM
SEPTEMBER 22, 1989
WKLB RALEIGH, CHANNEL 2
FIRST ALERT DOPPLER FORECAST
What you see around me right now is Mankin Park, near downtown Lystra. I am standing on a bridge that has for years served as a marker for floodcrests, where locals paint lines to mark how high the water in the small creek below me rises. As you can see, however, there is nothing left to mark at this hour. If Henry can show you, swing out a little bit. There. The neighbors here are lucky that the water has stopped before it made it into anyone’s living room.
Rain has tapered off for the most part, but Hugo still wreaked havoc throughout this historic day. We are going to see clearing skies tonight, with temperatures holding in the low sixties. Water levels here, obviously high, and flash flood warnings remain in effect. For an update on the path of Hugo, let’s go to Rob in the studio.
Rob?
frog gigging
This was Matthew’s crowded lawn, his darkened house, and Nigel could see him now, standing before a half circle of women more than twice his age, holding aloft a martini into which he had placed a piece of dry ice. The glass issued forth a constant flow of steam that tumbled down his forearm as the women laughed hysterically. Nigel had seen Matthew do this countless times before, but for this crowd it was clearly a first.
The only light on the lawn came soft and wavering from seven flaming tiki torches speared into the wet ground. The electricity had been out since that morning, when Hurricane Hugo had blown inland and thrown the edge of itself over Lystra, ruining plans for the wedding Nigel had returned for. It was Matthew’s stepsister, Rebecca, who had been married that afternoon in a makeshift ceremony inside Matthew’s living room. The rain had now stopped, though, and the neighborhood was celebrating in the tiki light.
“And introducing . . . Nigel Felts!” Matthew announced as Nigel approached.
The women turned away from Matthew’s bubbling martini, their faces all war masks of extreme makeup. They wore clothes covered in aggressively sized floral prints. One lady’s blouse featured giant lobsters floating across her sagging chest. Various perfumes mixed in a toxic concoction of flowers and musk.
“Nigel,” one of the women said, holding out the collar of her lobster blouse. “Did you make this one?”
“Let’s see,” Nigel said, his nose almost touching her neck. “No. Not ours.”
“What about this?” asked another, holding out her collar.
It seemed to Nigel that his trips home were a single, continuous variation of this conversation. He worked in Atlanta as a product manager for a company called American Label. They made 14 percent of the fabric labels in the United States and had contracts with the military, Wrangler’s, OshKosh, Fruit of the Loom . . . the list went on. Nigel had been there for six years.
“Clearly you know the Hayes sisters,” Matthew said. “And their guest, Mrs. Vanstory?”
Nigel looked at Mrs. Vanstory. He did know her. He had once had such a crush on her daughter that his notebooks from eighth grade read like he had studied nothing but Lily Vanstory. Most boys had found Lily’s flat chest and wide, toothy mouth unappealing. Not so for Nigel. He had felt that his appreciation for her revealed a refined taste. The last time Nigel had seen either Mrs. Vanstory or her daughter was during high school. Mrs. Vanstory’s face still looked like her daughter’s—equine, freckled, and intimidating.
“Nigel. It is so nice to see you,” she said. “You were in Lily’s class.”
“How is she?”
“Good. She’s living in Raleigh still. Married Reggie Edwards.” Nigel had no idea who this was. “They have a one-year-old. My little sweetie, Ellis.”
“Great,” Nigel said, looking to Matthew, ready for him to reclaim this conversation. But Matthew was fully absorbed with a perky young woman in pigtails who was rapidly drinking champagne out of a glass shaped like a cowboy boot. The young woman kept laughing and placing her hand on Matthew’s chest. She was not Matthew’s wife.
“So, Lily’s a mom?” Nigel said. “Geez. I remember when we were fifteen and almost killed you.”
“When was that?” Mrs. Vanstory said. He was embarrassed that she didn’t seem to recall. “When Lily stepped in front of your car?”
“You mean him?” she said, pointing towards Matthew.
“That was me.”
“What happened?” said the lobster woman.
“I was driving home one afternoon and saw Lily kissing him at the curb,” Mrs. Vanstory said. “Good God. Remember? I swerved into Welborne Ray’s oak tree.”
“I remember that,” Lobsters said. “Killed your old Lincoln.”
Nigel thought it had been a Mercedes.
“He even called the police. Welborne did. God.” Mrs. Vanstory shook her head as if to erase the memory. “But I could have sworn it was him.”
“We do look alike,” Nigel said.
Both he and Matthew had thinning blond hair, which lay limply atop their heads like a skull cap, and for years they had both worn dark, thick moustaches. They were not abnormally thin, but because of their similar height, they shared a certain stretched-out quality. Many people thought they were brothers. They were not. They had known each other since the fifth grade, and even though Nigel had not lived in Lystra for years, he still considered Matthew his closest friend.
“Getting old, I guess,” she said. “What are you up to now?”
“Labels.”
Vaguely, Nigel explained his life in Atlanta. He checked the labels of the other Hayes sisters, but fo
und himself thinking of nothing but that afternoon with Lily. He remembered how the whites of her eyes had turned red from the swimming pool. He remembered the freckles that had appeared on her forehead, as he marveled at the changes that occurred after only a few hours of sunlight. He remembered how she had leaned towards him first, how they had kissed, and how she had said, “What a great summer day” just before stepping back into the road. A piano lesson had been going on somewhere, the notes floating elegant across the lawn. It was still vivid—the freckles, the chlorine, the piano scales, and the thrill. After the car swerved away from Lily and hit the tree, though, the fingers on those keys stopped. He remembered that, too—the silence after the impact.
Nigel found Matthew alone in the garage, unloading two cardboard boxes of roman candles into metal buckets. He was working by the beam of a flashlight that he held between his teeth.
“Hold this,” Matthew mumbled.
Nigel took the flashlight from Matthew’s mouth and wiped the saliva onto his pants.
“So who’s Pocahontas?” Nigel said.
“Pocahontas?”
“That girl. Pigtails.”
“She works with me.”
“Works with you,” Nigel said, training the flashlight beam onto a box that promised nine fireballs a candle.
“What?” Matthew said, standing up, an armful of roman candles held to his chest. The flashlight illuminated concentric ovals of dusty concrete at Matthew’s feet. Nigel noticed they were wearing the same shoes. He had made those labels.