Hitchers

I managed to scare the shit out of myself, imagining the city brimming with hitchers, their hands shaking, those horrible voices fouling the air.

“I’m not losing you,” Mom said. “He’ll listen to me. I’ll make him listen.”

She had a point. As far as I knew she was the only person alive Grandpa didn’t hate. If anyone could talk him out of me, it was Mom.

“Where is Grandma?” I asked.

“She’s staying with Aunt Julia.” That didn’t surprise me. She probably started packing the moment Grandpa and I left her house.

“It’s probably best if you stay with her, too.”

“Why is that?” Mom asked.

“Because I’m not home much. I’m spending all of my time trying to figure this out with help from some friends.”

I told her to call when she arrived, tried to assure her that I was okay.

I found Summer sitting cross-legged on a bench, her coat draped across her shoulders, gazing at Monet’s water lilies but clearly not seeing them. She was rocking slightly.

“Hey,” I said softly, putting my hand on her back.

Her eyes lost some of their thousand-yard stare and fixed on me. She made a vague sound that was mostly vowel.

I sat next to her, looked up at the Monet. It was the one with the green rainbow-shaped bridge. “My twin sister Kayleigh had a print of this in her room. She kept bugging Mom to take us to France so she could see the real bridge.”

“I’d like to see France,” Summer said listlessly. “I’ve never been anywhere. Except Disney World.” After a moment she added, “And Nashville. I saw Graceland.” Abruptly she turned and looked at me. “Can I ask you something personal? I won’t be offended if you don’t want to answer.”

“Sure, anything.” Anything to get her mind off what she’d just been through.

“What happened to Kayleigh? I asked Mick, but he said you haven’t told him, except to say she drowned.”

My eyes filled with tears. It surprised me that the question could stir up such emotions with everything else going on, but thinking about her now filled me with such a profound sense of loss and shame. “I try not to think about it. But I’ll tell you if you want me to.”

Summer turned to face me more directly, waited. I realized that, painful as it was, I wanted to tell her my story. I wanted her to know. I started in a low voice, though there was no one else in the room at the moment.

“The summer Kayleigh died had been the best of our lives. Grandma and Grandpa had invested in this rooming house on Tybee Beach, sort of a downscale B and B, with the idea that Grandma would run it (making the beds, cleaning, running clean towels up and down four flights of stairs with her bad hip) while Grandpa drew his strip. Tybee was a blue-collar place back then—t-shirt shops, beer joints, lots of chipped paint—but Kayleigh and I fell in love with it. Bare feet all day, dark tans, hunting for shells in the dunes, begging quarters from Mom to play the games on the boardwalk. We won this big stuffed tiger we were dying to have, always playing the number twelve, because we were twelve.

“The shift from magical summer to the blackest despair I’d ever known was so quick it nearly snapped me in half. One minute I was with my folks, wolfing down fried clams dipped in tartar sauce from a paper plate, on top of the world. The next, my sister was dead.

“Grandma was the one who called. I can still hear seagulls screeching in the background, fighting over French fries when Mom answered her cell, the way she stopped chewing, the way her face suddenly shifted to an expression I’d never seen before, one that made my heart start hammering. It’s an expression I became very familiar with, because Mom wore it every day for the next three or four years, and still wears it sometimes, nineteen years later.

“I can still see Mom’s phone clatter to the boardwalk. She was saying “No” over and over. “No. No. No. No.” Dad picked up the phone, and after talking for a minute he started crying. That’s when I knew something awful had happened, something that meant summer was over, that my life would never be the same.

“It just kept getting worse. First, I learned Kayleigh was at the hospital, then I learned she was dead. Then I realized it was my fault.”

A couple of elderly women entered the room and I stopped. We sat in silence as they circled the room and eventually slipped out into the next.

“Why was it your fault?” Summer prompted.

“Kayleigh jumped off the pier because I did,” I said. “It was Kayleigh’s idea to begin with. She dared me to jump, and said she would if I would. But she didn’t think I’d really do it; it was a thirty-foot drop, and you had to jump out away from the pier to clear the wooden pilings.” I shook my head. “She was just talking. Sitting on the pier pretending we were going to jump was just something to do.

“So we squatted with our toes curled around the edge of the wood planks, and the longer we stayed, the more I thought maybe I could actually do it. I thought about how impressed everyone would be, maybe even Grandpa. I was as surprised as Kayleigh when I launched myself off that pier. The fall seemed to go on and on, and when I hit the water I hit hard. The soles of my feet stung and my balls ached. But I was ecstatic. I felt strong, and brave, and I didn’t often feel that as a kid. I was a shy, anxious kid. When we were younger I used to whisper things to Kayleigh when we were around other people, and she would say them for me.

“Kayleigh admitted she couldn’t do it. I didn’t taunt her. I didn’t tuck my fists under my arms and flap them and go buck-buck-buck. We didn’t do that stuff to each other. But I did strut. I told everyone how I had jumped off that pier.”

I was getting to the hard part. I put my hand over my mouth, tried to calm my pounding heart.

“It must have eaten at her, that she agreed to jump and then backed down, and after dinner when Mom and Dad decided to go to the Shoppies—that’s what we called the outlet mall out by the interstate—Kayleigh stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa.

“I jumped off the pier on a calm sunny day, the waves just bumps with occasional slivers of white at the crest. Kayleigh jumped just after sundown, into big, black, crashing waves.”

I stared down between my feet, at the swirling grain in the polished wood.

“Mom and Dad’s marriage lasted a year to the day from Kayleigh’s fatal jump, and we moved in with Grandpa. Dad disappeared for a while after that, only to reappear long enough to convince Grandpa to invest in his insane Toy Shop Village idea. When it was clear the village was failing, he disappeared again for good.

“It was all my fault, and everyone blamed me. At least, that’s how it felt to me. That’s when I started drawing. I’d come home from school and go straight to my room and draw my comics until dinner. And when I wasn’t drawing I was reading comics; I had hundreds of compilations—Peanuts, Ziggy, Nancy, Dilbert. You name it. While most guys my age were playing baseball and sneaking peeks at Playboy, I was obsessing over Pogo.”

I looked at the Monet. How hard it must have been for Mom to take that print down from Kayleigh’s wall, to pack all of her stickers and clothes and stuffed animals in boxes.

“I’m sorry,” Summer said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re to blame. You didn’t put her up to it. You jumped for your own reasons. You didn’t push her to follow you. It doesn’t sound like you really cared whether she jumped or not.”

“Honestly? I didn’t want her to. I wanted it to be my thing.” I studied the bridge, the calm, shallow, comforting water beneath. “Next time Grandpa called me a sissy, I could remind him of how I jumped off that pier.”

Was that really what I’d thought? I wasn’t sure. Maybe I was adding it after the fact because Grandpa was so much on my mind.

“I appreciate you telling me. Thanks,” Summer said.

“Sure.”