to do to you now.”
“Oh.” But that isn’t enough. I’m ashamed of how I acted around him. My behavior with Jack is inexplicable. The force pulling me to him was so strong, and I’m so afraid that even after the horrible things he’s done to me, I’ll still somehow be drawn to him. But I can’t tell Trey that. It doesn’t make any sense, even to me.
“You can still come with me,” he says.
I stand, brush the pine needles from my backside, and follow him. As I walk, I marvel at how I can almost see every individual grain of dirt on the ground, at how I can almost hear every insect marching along its path. Now that the sun has risen, everything takes on a warm orange hue, and the entire sky is a shade of lavender I’ve seen only in small streaks during the most colorful of sunsets. The river, once black, now looks clear and inviting, like the Caribbean Sea. “Everything looks so … alive,” I whisper. I guess compared to me, anything is.
He turns back. “You’re different. So you see things different.”
“I feel strange. I used to be so afraid of the river. Now I want to … I don’t know. Dive in.”
He grabs a stick and starts swishing it through the brush as we walk. “Told you. You’re different. In death, you become what you most wanted to be in life.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Like what?”
He shrugs. “You figure it out. Don’t you know what you wanted to be?”
I think. Shake my head. Before I know it, we’re at the pier near the Outfitters. There’s a different boat there, one I’ve never seen. It’s just a primitive raft, kind of like something out of Tom Sawyer. A line of people, waiting patiently, stretches up the hill. It’s a motley crew, some young, some old. They’re not dressed in wet suits. One man is wearing a Speedo. A little girl is standing there, naked, sucking her thumb and crying quietly. The strangest thing is how eerily silent everything is, though there are so many people there. Most of them look a little dazed. Trey runs his hands through his hair and whistles. “Sheesh,” he mutters. “I’m gonna catch hell, that’s for sure.”
“What—” I begin, but I know. I know who these people are.
Trey walks to the front of the line and cups his hands around his mouth. “Proceed in an orderly fashion,” he calls.
The line moves. Most people put their heads down and walk, ever so slowly, onto the raft. I swallow as I look at the little girl. I don’t care if these people cannot feel cold. I pull off my jacket and hurry to wrap it around her. I notice that it’s no longer sopping with blood, which is good, but the second I notice that, I can feel the wound open up in my stomach with a sickening pop, like a hungry mouth. The little girl is so tiny and thin. When I stand next to her, she eagerly takes my hand and presses herself against my leg.
The raft fills with people. We all press together. The girl looks up to me gratefully, her dark blue eyes rimmed with tears. I didn’t mean to go across yet, but I can’t leave her. I hear Trey’s voice telling people, “Step to the back of the raft. Room enough for everyone. That’s right. No pushing.” People crowd against us and we’re forced to the very end of the raft, and by the time I turn around, I can no longer see him.
A confused man, maybe in his twenties, is standing next to me. He’s wearing swim trunks. He smells like alcohol and keeps wiping blood away from his eye because there’s a wound so big, it looks like half of his head has caved in. I wonder if he knows it. I shield the little girl’s eyes from the sight of him when he says, “Where am I? Where are we going?” But nobody answers. Everyone else, like me, seems to know already. Drops of blood slip from his chin, turning pink when they hit the clear water. Even that is beautiful.
We set off. I expect the river to carry us downstream, as it did when Hugo tried to take me across in the kayak. But it’s like we’re crossing a calm, glassy lake. The boat does not pitch and toss. We simply glide, as if we’re skating across a frozen pond. There is a