to confess that in the moment after I’d realized how stupid I’d been, how I hadn’t even understood him all along or what he’d been through, I felt this overwhelming, truly suffocating feeling like I just needed to do something.
But I had no idea at all what to do. There was nothing to do. So, in a millisecond decision that I’ve never been able to explain or understand or take back—I just turned, right there on the pier, and took off running.
Not back toward the seawall, though. Away from it.
I knew this pier. I knew that there was a break at the far end with a ladder down to the water. I knew there were Polar Bear Clubs that jumped off the end every New Year’s, and Mermaid Clubs that dove off it wearing sparkly costume tails. Like all bad decisions, it didn’t seem too bad at the time. Who was I to tell Duncan to be brave? Who was I to judge anybody at all? I wasn’t a risk-taker! I was a librarian. The scariest thing I’d done in years was the Hustle. But I could change that. I could change that right now.
This might be the worst decision I’d ever made, but it was my decision.
I ran faster.
I heard Duncan behind me. “Sam! Sam! Hey! What are you doing?”
It’s possible that if he hadn’t taken off after me, I might have stopped at the edge. There’s a very good chance I would have come to my senses and rightly chickened out.
But he did take off after me.
I heard his feet behind me on the boardwalk. I felt him gaining on me. And it sparked that feeling I remember from childhood games—what must be an ancient human instinct—of realizing you’re being chased … and running faster. You know that feeling. It’s like a prickly feeling on the back of your neck. You can’t let them catch you. Some deep part of your lizard brain wipes out every thought except: don’t get caught.
I didn’t even think the words. I just felt them.
I am not a risk-taker or a thrill-seeker. I am the opposite of those things. That moment on the Iron Shark was enough fear to last me forever. I blame the adrenaline. I blame my frustration with Duncan. I blame the fact that every single thing I’d tried to do lately had failed.
I just ran.
And when Duncan chased me, I ran faster.
And when I got to the end of the pier, I ran right through the opening in the railing, launched myself off the end, and plunged down toward the water.
twenty-three
I regretted it instantly.
The very second that I passed the railing, the second there was no turning back, I wanted nothing more in my whole life than to turn back.
My life that might not last very long.
The fall took forever and gave me plenty of time to review my idiocy. There could be pilings down there, or jetty rocks, or a shipwrecked boat. There could be an oil slick, or a whole school of jellyfish, or even a patch of flesh-eating bacteria. Anything was possible.
No matter what, this was the dumbest thing I’d ever done.
My arms spun involuntarily, by the way, as if they might find something to grab on to in the empty air. And my legs kept pumping, as well, as if their efforts might inspire some solid ground to appear underneath them.
And I’ll tell you something: I knew a sudden truth in those dead-silent seconds before I met whatever gory death awaited me below.
I definitely didn’t want to die.
I’d known it in a casual way before. But now I knew it in a hundred new ways.
So there it was. You can’t know what you don’t know.
Mid-plunge into whatever blackness awaited me below, I felt many of the things you’d expect a person to feel in that situation. But I felt one thing that really surprised me: empathy for Duncan. I’d been so judgy with him. I’d rolled my eyes at his suits and his color schemes and his rules. But would I give every single one of those moments back for one chance to find myself standing safely back up on the pier with him?
Hell, yes.
This was what it felt like to be truly scared. This was what it felt like to feel like you might really, truly die.
Duncan knew that feeling, and he remembered it, and he carried it around with him every day.
I regretted it all—everything about this foolish, insensitive, self-satisfied moment—with utter vehemence.
And