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his is how we finally came together.
At our 2001 Senior All-Night Party, in the high school natatorium, my buddy Pedro’s head came out of the water over in the deep end of the Olympic-sized swimming pool and he said, “Dude, there’s something down there!”
I don’t like the sound of that.
But his excitement wasn’t aimed at me, I was all the way over at poolside of the shallow end. I saw Pedro’s curly black mane hovering on the water, his face directed at a foursome standing poolside of the deep end, toward the girl of my dreams and the cause of my schizophrenia.
Clarissa. Sullen Clarissa.
She used to be so happy.
Her cocoa skin held not a drop of water. Her straight black hair hung dry. Her pink two-piece swimsuit could be wrung for nothing. The pool had been open ten minutes and she still hadn’t gone in, but considering what she saw happen to her brother Toby it was a wonder she had gotten this close. I’d spent the ten minutes twisting somersaults from the diving board, hoping she’d find me more interesting than her ‘boyfriend’ Quentin. Quentin was still dry, having spent the time at Clarissa’s side, but you could tell there was no love between them, standing apart with their arms folded, barely talking; a couple by proxy. The classwide joke was Clarissa was the Britney Spears Quentin could actually get; rumor said his bedroom was wallpapered with posters of the teen queen. Kevin and Stephanie, the other half of the foursome, were in love.
None of the four took notice of Pedro’s discovery. None of our classmates cared, not the dozen in line to the diving board, or the baker’s dozen wading and splashing in the shallow end, or anyone hanging around on and off the pool’s edge. No one halted at Pedro’s exclamation. After all, what could he have found in the deep end of an indoor pool? A quarter? A pair of goggles? A nexus of schizophrenia?
I certainly made nothing of it because a song had come on the loudspeaker, and it was one I had always associated to my situation with Clarissa. “Fool in the Rain” by Led Zeppelin.
It was time.
With a quickening heart rate and a suddenly trembling frame on the slippery tiles, I walked along poolside toward Clarissa, hoping ultimately to take her from Quentin.
Beyond them, through the glass wall, orange security lights illuminated the heavy night rain like candlelight. Kind of romantic, and a good compliment to the song echoing off the natatorium walls, but these coincidences were rattling; the perfect situation seemed to be developing, so if I blew it, dead end to a long road.
I remembered overhearing Kevin and Quentin in the dugout talking about what their little group friendship would be like after graduation, and it came up that Clarissa was heading to New York City for college training in marine biology, and they should all go with her.
I want so much for her to be happy again.
And the Senior All-Night Party would be my last chance to talk with her, and the school natatorium was the perfect place to tell her how she made me feel. Water has a rejuvenating effect, rinsing off worry and glazing you in rebirth. I was hoping she would forever connect the sensation to my first approach, but she was still dry.
Relax. You got the ring. You’re cool.
“Guys!” Pedro tried again, waving a hand to get their attention.
Kevin was in the middle of an anecdote, smiling and gesturing in emphasis, and none of the foursome acknowledged Pedro.
Bad time to intervene, but that was okay. There were still a few minutes left to “Fool in the Rain.”
I stopped halfway to Clarissa, at the young female lifeguard. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than us high school seniors, yet she had the thin-lipped, baggy-eyed look of someone much more weathered. She wore a blue T-shirt over a red swimsuit, and had a blond ponytail.
I stood there awkwardly until she looked at me. I nodded toward the loud-speaker over in the corner of the ceiling. “This is a good song.”
The lifeguard pointed to her ear and silently mouthed words. She didn’t hear the song. She was, I realized, deaf-mute.
At first this seemed like a dumb idea to me, a downside of equal-opportunity employment. But she could see the entire pool from her spot on the bleachers. And really, only the good swimmers of our class would choose the pool for an hour. So what could go wrong?
“Get outta the way, Pedro,” came the cocky voice of Jamie from the diving board.
“Unless you wanna see what I had for dinner. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Up yours, E.T.!”
“Yeah, that’s the idea. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Oh, never mind,” I told the lifeguard, off-balance with this situation. “It’s not important.” I started walking past her toward Clarissa.
The lifeguard picked up a notepad and a pencil from the bench beside her and held them out to me, urgently mouthing that I write what I said so she could read it and know. She died in the pool about twenty minutes later, and I’ve carried the guilt for years that her final terrestrial question was directed at me, and I left her unanswered. Writing from Clarissa’s bedroom, I’ll say this: If the lifeguard ever comes across this passage, she’ll know the simple comment I made to her. May even be able to hear the song now.
I should have stayed with the lifeguard.
I went toward Clarissa. The situation wasn’t perfect, but I had the song, the water, the candlelit rain falling outside the glass wall . . . and no ring in my pocket.
It was idiotic to swim expecting the ring not to fall out, I know. I just assumed the pocket was tight enough. My fault, I paid for it. Big time.
Pedro had made it to the ledge. “Hey, guys!”
Kev halted his anecdote and slapped his hands together. “What, Pedro? What’d you find, a Twinkie?”
Quentin and Steph broke into laughter. Clarissa did not.
You need the ring for her to know Toby’s okay in your mind, you need it!
I patted my trunks for nothing. The ring had fallen out when I dove into the water, and now there was an open invitation to it. I was never able to tell Pedro about my plans for Clarissa, thinking the unreliable bastard would screw it up for me. Like the time he arranged an afterschool fight against Kevin. Even though I was the only one who showed up to support him, Pedro spent fifteen minutes trying to convince Kevin to fight me instead. Kevin kept saying he wouldn’t fight a teammate, and when Pedro began trying to befriend him, Kevin simply left. It was a good thing Clarissa wasn’t there with Kevin’s group because she would have seen how much I didn’t want to fight, either. Looks like I didn’t even need to tell Pedro about Clarissa for him to mess things up this time. But neither could he help, since no one knew just how much I needed that gold ring.
You see, ever since her twin brother Toby died in the river, I’ve been absolutely, unconditionally, in love with Clarissa.
It began with vomit. On a summer day between 9th and 10th grades, I had to drop the dumbbell I was curling and shove my face in the waste basket. Where am I? In the bathroom, I poured the disgorged breakfast into the toilet. What the hell is this? Rotten eggs? Oh well. Had to put the weights away, too weak to exercise until tomorrow. What happened to me? I used to eat and exercise all I wanted without puking, but maybe realizing it was pointless since no one was watching. Clarissa, where are you? I never cared about you before, always smiling so happy in the hallway with Steph and friends, but I’m so scared and lonely. I must’ve died. This must be death, having no one and no reason to keep trying. I have to find Clarissa. Maybe she’ll be as interested in me as her brother always was. I don’t want to be dead, not at all. I want to be alive and have reason.
I smacked my forehead, surprised and a little worried at how out of control my thoughts had gotten. I’d been working the weights too hard, I decided. Something had burst and flooded, so I resorted to the greatest of cognitive dams, and TV calmed me for the rest of the day.
Until the six o’clock news: A long camera shot framed Clarissa, dripping wet on a riverbank, backgrounded by trees, bikini clad and emotionally crushed, crying with a hand over her mouth as she stared horrified down at the river. Oh no, Clarissa, I want to console you since you entered my mind when I was feeling lonely this morning but I can’t because I don’t know you but I’ll find a way, I promise—
The sympathetic newswoman reported, “Fourteen-year-old Odyssey student Toby Brady drowned in the Genesee River this morning while swimming along the bank. The victim’s sister claims he did not swim out deep, he simply went under to grab a rock and never came back up.”
That was no rock if he never came back up.
“This comes as a painful reminder of how easily a body of water can overwhelm you if you don’t exercise caution and common sense. Hundreds of Americans drown each year from casual swimming in lakes and rivers. To avoid joining this statistic, it’s recommended to swim while around people and to wear a life-jacket.” The newswoman glanced down at a notebook in her hand. “The body has yet to be found. Thousands of drowning victims around the world go missing every year, but a family spokesperson says that won’t stop them from searching . . .”
Tell my family I’m okay, they live with me and if this overthinking goes on they might think something’s wrong, not knowing I was in love, not knowing I had a new reason to continue exercising. Clarissa would need a strong man to console her.
Over the next few days, during normally-thoughtless weightlifting repetitions, a voice kept insisting Clarissa would be at Toby’s memorial service, that I should go. I didn’t go, though.
I hated Toby and was glad he was gone. I’m fairly certain that during Freshman year, Toby grabbed more male genitalia than every girl at school combined. He would separate from his jock buddies in the hallway—usually Kev and Quentin—approach someone who had no real backup pretending he had something important to say . . . and grab their crotch. While the victim jerked away, Toby would turn back proudly to his chuckling buddies. I was Toby’s most frequent victim.
“Dude,” I once told him, after about the thirtieth and final attack of the year, “you’re seriously gay if grabbing dick makes you happy.”
Rather than joke along with the comment, Toby went on defense. “No, it’s just funny seeing how you react.” He went back to Kev and Quentin silent.
Then that summer, Toby jumped into the river and never came out.
First day of Sophomore year, I approached Clarissa in the hallway so eager to see her up close, tell her Toby is okay in your mind and wrap my arms around her to absorb her pain because she just wants to know he’s okay, her sad black eyes pulling me in for the kiss, wait, no, sicko, that’s my sister and it would be like kissing Toby in a skirt with long hair. So I walked by without saying anything. This line of overthinking plagued all of my approaches, and so I passed by every day.
It led to sleeping troubles. In some of my many dreams featuring Clarissa, I would go in for the kiss, and she would morph into Toby at the last moment, and I would wake up confused.
I was basically stuck in a donut-zone, with Clarissa in the center. I couldn’t stray too far, aching to see her every so often. But I couldn’t get too close, terrified of what it might mean, how it might feel.
I tried to forget Clarissa in Courtney’s bedroom—running my fingers through her blond hair as she unzipped my pants with her delicate hands and thinking stop, you’ll get AIDS, hepatitis, gonorrhea, syphilis—and couldn’t. I tried to forget Clarissa in Michelle’s bedroom—finally removing her many layers of preppy clothing after over a year of not being ready and thinking for the love of God, don’t, she’ll get pregnant and ruin your whole life—and couldn’t. I was still young enough to believe my conscious was saving me for my soul mate, and I obeyed its wishes. Because I would gladly take Clarissa’s diseases, and I couldn’t wait to give her however many babies would make her happy.
I tried to break the donut-zone—pulled in by her deep onyx eyes from down the hallway—wanting her to grab your package and imagine she’s Toby because you’re truly gay—and couldn’t.
Schizophrenia: life-altering personality disorder. Maybe the only definition I still remember from 11th grade Health class. Psychoanalysis and psychopharmacotherapy are recommended treatments, but the side-effects include mocking classmates and embarrassed parents. Escaping the donut-zone is the treatment I chose, where the only side-effect could be a happier life.
I would eliminate the ghost of Toby by replacing him. Weightlifting paid off, helping me take Toby’s position in right field on the Varsity baseball team. My parents would get to see me play college ball, too, so the personality disorder wasn’t all bad.
Clarissa came to the games with Steph to see Quentin and Kev, so I didn’t approach her. Sitting alone in the dugout, standing alone in right field, watching Clarissa on the sidelines game after game and wanting to give her a gold ring as a symbol of my love because I’m sorry for stealing hers when we were younger by replacing her brother and here’s a new one.
The ring was the key to unlocking the donut-zone, allowing access to the sweet center. It was the only thing the damned voice in my head agreed with.
Pedro struggled up over the ledge, saying, “Screw you, telephone pole! It wasn’t no Twinkie,” and rolled onto his stomach at poolside.
The lanky ‘telephone pole’ Kevin cupped his hands to his mouth and wired a message to our classmates. “Call the Coast Guard, we have a beached whale!”
Pedro scrambled to his feet, but too late.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” came Jamie’s chuckle from the shallow end.
Pedro was the only flabby body in our grade who chose an hour in the pool.
It restored some of my confidence. “Why don’t you go somewhere and grow a dick, Kevin?” Not a good one, I know, but the one that came out.
Kev saw me and scowled, confused. After two years on the same baseball team, two years in right field behind him at first base, two years trailing him in the batting lineup, this was the most I had ever said to him. He threw a wet arm around Steph’s wet neck and reeled her close to his side. “Grow a dick, huh?” He gestured at my crotch. “You’re the one looks like he’s packin’ a Tic Tac in his trunks.”
Five sets of eyes couldn’t help glancing at the subject of discussion. Quentin laughed and gave Kev a congratulatory backhand to the chest. Steph smiled and said, “That was meeean.” Pedro surveyed the natatorium hoping focus was off him.
Clarissa’s humorless black eyes spared me embarrassment; seeing them up close had given me half a chub. To prevent full growth I walked past her to Pedro, feeling her presence stronger the closer I came, within a few feet, and weaker the further I went. Neither Courtney nor Michelle, despite their best efforts, had garnered such an intense attraction. In my life, Clarissa was the only human being who had an actual gravitational hold on me. How could we be anything but soul mates?
“What’d ya see down there, Pedro?” I clapped him amicably on the shoulder, hoping to come off suave for Clarissa.
“I dunno. It was a small, black rectangle thing.” He looked around me to the others. “It could be a wallet!”
“A wallet?” Quentin turned his back on Clarissa to face Pedro. He’d played maybe three innings a year, and from what I saw, only joined the team to joke with Kev in the dugout. “Why didn’t you get it, Beached Whale?”
“Yeah, Beached Whale.” Kev kissed a giggling Steph on the cheek. “There could be hundreds in it.” Kiss. “Thousands.” Kiss.
Smiling, Steph turned to face Kev, chest to chest. “Oh, suddenly the wallet belongs to Bill Gates?”
“I guess we won’t know because . . .” Kev reached around behind Steph and pulled out her red bikini bottom, letting it snap back against her ass.
“Ouch!” Steph slapped Kevin lightly on the chest.
And Kevin finished, “. . . Beached Whale didn’t get it.”
“I had to come up for air, ya . . .” Pedro saw they were kissing instead of listening, “. . . empty head.” Ouch.
“Who would go swimming with their wallet?” Quentin was uncomfortable about not being as passionate with Clarissa as Kevin was with Steph. Maybe if she was the real Britney. . . .
“Who knows, who cares?” Kevin pulled away from Steph and hopped up to the edge of the pool. “All I know is that I’m gonna get the freaking thing, and all I care is what’s inside.”
Good, Pedro only saw a wallet, but wait, just because he didn’t see the ring, that didn’t mean that Kevin wouldn’t see the ring and be treated not only to a loaded wallet but the key to my donut-zone.
“Kev! Listen. I grew up by the lake and got alotta swimming experience. Why don’t you let me get it for you?”
“It’s not an ocean trench, Tic Tac. It’s twelve feet. I think I can handle it. Why don’t you be the pool monitor for this one?” Kev pointed and nodded at Pedro. “Beached Whale, you can be Tic Tac’s assistant.”
Pedro laughed, but it looked like he was masking anger, probably wanting to avoid a fight. “That nickname is kinda wearing thin, Kevin.”
“Unlike you, Beached Whale.” Kevin looked to the water. “There it is!”
The rest of us looked to where Kevin was pointing. Through the choppy water was the black rectangle or oval sitting at the bottom. It lay about a body’s length from the corner and about halfway to the diving board. Our classmates were still springing from the board and splashing the water up.
“Clare’s going to be a marine biologist,” Steph said. “We should let her make her first expedition.”
Clarissa tried to smile, but it looked like the suggestion terrified her.
“No, no, no.” Kevin pointed to himself. “I am a marine biologist. It’s my expedition. Just tell me what do you guys want for your birthdays, I’m paying.”
“Ooo, a convertible,” said Steph.
“Naw, Britney’s jet,” added Quentin.
“A wallet,” said Clarissa, low and almost to herself. She was not smiling like the others.
Quentin turned his face to her. “What’s wrong? You know I’m kidding.”
Clarissa shook her head and said something, but I didn’t hear it over Kevin:
“Okay, and I know Beached Whale wants a cake, and Tic Tac wants a Penis Enlarger.”
Kevin might have been Clarissa’s friend, but I’d put up with just about enough. All I did throughout high school was hold back, stepping away from physical confrontations and too afraid to approach the girl of my dreams. Well, I had graduated from high school a day earlier, I might as well have graduated from my standoffish high school behavior as well.
“Kev, how about instead of buying me a Penis Enlarger, I just whoop your ass and take the wallet when you come back up. Then I can buy it on my own.”
Kevin went slack for a second. He hadn’t expected a rebuttal. Then he smiled and shook his head. “Hoho! You know what?” He peeked around me at the lifeguard, making sure she wasn’t watching; if she couldn’t see what he was saying, she wouldn’t know. “I never liked your sorry ass, always sitting alone in the dugout like a loser didn’t even belong on our team. We ain’t teammates no more, anyway. I can’t wait to come back up and see you try to whoop me, Tic Tac.” Kevin turned to Steph, planted one on her lips, and waved goodbye to her while falling backward into the water.
Steph waved back, glowing.
Ah, young love.
Pedro mumbled, “Don’t worry, dude. I got your back.”
I nodded, not believing him at all. The future law student might make a good lawyer if he stopped saying dude. “Hey, Pedro,” I mumbled, “you see a gold ring down there?”
He kept his eyes on the water. “No. Why?”
I didn’t answer, just watched Kevin and waited for him to pick up something that wasn’t a wallet.
“Don’t worry,” Steph grinned at me, tilting her head a little to the side, “I won’t let him do anything. We’re not getting kicked out in the first hour of the party.”
“Oh. Good. I don’t want to get kicked out, either.” At least not until.
The five of us saw Kevin make it to the bottom. Through abrupt waves, I saw him crouch beside the black object and reach down to pick it up with his right hand.
It didn’t move.
Kev attempted to swim it up, but couldn’t lift it, as if it anchored him down. He then reached down with his left and unsuccessfully tried to uplift it with both hands.
Great, his thieving hands were on the wallet-thing and not on my gold ring. But what’s taking him so long?
“What’s taking him so long?” Clarissa wondered in her sweet familiar voice.
How could we be anything but soul mates?
Quentin giggled. “He probably stopped to slap his snake.”
“What the heck?” Pedro sounded more bewildered than I’d ever heard him sound.
Quentin must have noticed Pedro’s tone too because he stepped up for a closer look, and his face went just as puzzled. I caught myself staring at Clarissa, the deepest, longest look I’d ever had outside a yearbook picture, as she crept up to the edge, as if she didn’t want to look down there, but had to.
Oh, Clarissa, I would love to take you away from this scene and lay you down and hug you and tell you everything was alright, I’m here for you. And then I had to look away from her because the feeling was becoming too intense. I followed the gazes of Pedro and Quentin and Steph and Clarissa, and saw the source of there concern.
Kevin was wriggling at the bottom of the pool. He was still in a crouched position with his palms on the object, but it seemed as if he were trying to get away from it at the same time. He pushed his feet into the ground, which served only to raise his butt, and whipped his head up, over and over, trying to jump, but his hands appeared to be glued to the bottom, to the black thing. The hands that had scooped up countless hundred-mile-an-hour line-drives at first base couldn’t lift this wallet-sized object. A group of air bubbles rose from his mouth to the surface.
“What’s he doing down there?” Quentin’s voice rippled like the water. A few seconds earlier he’d answered his own question. Now he wasn’t sure.
Kevin was wriggling faster, pushing his feet into the ground and raising his butt with greater frequency, whipping his head with more violence. At the peak of his struggle, small but visible red poofs started coming off his body. He was moving too wildly to tell exactly where they were poofing from, but it was surely from him.
“What . . .” Pedro spurted. “What . . . what . . .”
“Damnit, Kevin!” Quentin dove in.
Pedro and I fell to our hands and knees, for a closer look and maybe to help. I didn’t see Clarissa from this position and could only imagine what nightmare she was reliving, seeing another person drown. I didn’t want to let her go through it again. But what could I do?
The rest of our classmates continued on as usual, laughing and splashing to Led Zeppelin’s melancholy “Rain Song.” That’s it, the rain rose water levels and brought that thing in through the pump from the river! Outside the deluge continued. A few inches of water was splashing against the bottom of the glass wall in wavelets. This was the low-lying side of the building.
Courtney was on the diving board, looking in the direction of the lifeguard. “Hey, they need some hel—” and was pushed off the edge from behind.
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Jamie lost his balance and fell in after her, chopping up the water more.
The lifeguard must not have been looking in our direction at the moment. I considered going over and getting her attention, but that would mean looking away from the pool.
The water settled some just as Quentin got to the bottom. He crouched down opposite Kevin, facing him. Quentin wrapped his hands around Kevin’s wrists and attempted to pull him free. The natatorium was quieting. Our classmates were beginning to notice us.
“Don’t drown, baby,” Steph murmured, almost in prayer. “Please, don’t drown, honey, please, please, please, don’t—”
Kevin exploded. One second he was crouching, the next second a thick dark-red cloud was in his place. At first it was the size of a love seat, and it engulfed Quentin. And though this welling, maroon cloud was the color of blood, it couldn’t only be blood, there was too much of it. The cloud had to have been a liquid concoction of Kevin’s entire body, like someone had put him in a blender for ten minutes and poured the result into the bottom of the pool. Oh, no, not again, Clarissa, not—
Stephanie vomited. First I heard her terrible gurgling buildup when Kevin silently burst, and then a plateful of partially digested macaroni and cheese splattered the tiles a few feet to my right, some of it rolling into the water. Steph collapsed and crabwalked back away from the pool.
Past her, the lifeguard was filing her toenails.
In the water, a mushroom cluster of air bubbles rose from what used to be Kevin and boiled through the surface. A septic stench overlapped the chlorinated scent of the air as well as the puke. They were all the gases from Kevin’s body released into the air at once, though the prevalent smell was intestinal. The deep end had, more or less, farted out Kevin.
“Holy shit!” Pedro screamed, and now everyone in the natatorium was aware something was wrong.
They began herding in our direction, asking each other what was happening, what was wrong. They came out of the shallow end and jogged in our direction, past the lifeguard.
The lifeguard looked up and noticed what might have been her greatest challenge, as a ragged group of high school seniors jogged past her, ignoring the fundamental rule of no running in the pool area. The lifeguard began blowing her whistle as she stood up and held a hand out hoping to stop this rampage. A few listened to her, but most jogged around her. She followed the group’s focus to the scene by the deep end and jogged over.
Jamie meandered more quickly through the group from the shallow end, so he didn’t see the vomit. He was slowing from a jog to a walk when he stepped in the frictionless puddle of regurgitated macaroni and cheese. His feet flew up and he landed hard on his ass in that same yellow puddle. “Ow! Damnit!...” And when he saw the yellow stuff on his palms, “Uuuuugh.”
Ha, ha, ha, Jamie. I think that’s pretty funny now, but at the time it was meaningless compared to what was happening twelve feet below the surface.
The burgundy cloud of blended-Kevin had stopped expanding, and the process began reversing itself. The cloud began to shrink downward into a single point at the bottom as if someone had unplugged a drain down there.
Behind me they were asking what happened, is he drowning, where’s the lifeguard?
As the cloud shrank down, Quentin seemed to realize Kevin was gone, maybe thinking he had swum up already. Quentin attempted to spring up, and stayed suspended a few feet above the bottom. He kicked his feet and waved his arms trying to rise, but it seemed the black thing was indirectly holding him. Whatever force pulled in the red cloud was pulling in Quentin.
Slowly but surely, Quentin was sucked downward. A second after the last of the red cloud disappeared into the culprit, Quentin became attached to it by his bellybutton, laying face down. He fought it, but the flailing of his limbs could not carry him any further. He gave up flailing and began attempting the World’s Most Difficult Pushup, but pushing his palms into the bottom and whipping his head up in synch served only to raise his head and shoulders. His torso was planted. Air bubbles rose to the surface.
“He’s drowning!” a girl yelled, but it wasn’t Clarissa or Stephanie. I looked for them but could see neither through the crowd of high school seniors, living a night we would never forget.
I did see the lifeguard pushing her way through the crowd trying to get back to the bleachers. She picked up a red plastic floatation device and hurried back to the deep end.
“No, dude!” Pedro screamed. “You can’t go down there! They’re already dead!”
And of course the lifeguard didn’t hear him. She dove into her own watery grave, right through Stephanie’s vomit.
I noticed some students were filing out, either shirking responsibility or going to get help or not interested in the origin of commotion. Some just wanted to get on with the all-night party. No one else had actually seen what happened to Kevin.
Only the ten or so who stayed saw what happened to Quentin, and they gathered at poolside to witness what they thought would be a rescue mission.
At first the lifeguard didn’t realize that Quentin was stuck to the bottom. She hooked her arms under his armpits and tried to deadlift him, tried to swim up and was surprised that he anchored her down. She kept trying.
Someone wondered, “What’s taking her so lon—”
Quentin exploded into a roiling burgundy cloud that erased the lifeguard from view.
All the remaining seniors moaned and retreated back and asked what the hell and oh my god and what was that what happened. Someone thumped the ground. Someone yanked open the door and a few seconds later it clicked closed. Only a handful of us remained at poolside.
Clarissa was gone. Pedro was gone, abandoning me yet again. Steph was still sitting back against the wall, gawking without comprehension.
The red plastic floatation device bobbed as the mushroom cluster of Quentin’s gases boiled through the surface. I pinched my nose closed.
At the bottom, the human being that the string from the floatation device was tied around reappeared. The red cloud was shrinking. The lifeguard had seconds to swim up before the force that pulled in blended-Quentin pulled her in too.
But the lifeguard wasn’t ready to give up yet. She pawed through the shrinking red mass, desperate to find Quentin.
“Someone get a pole!” I called out.
“What?” Courtney said, standing next to me. She’d tried to help from the diving board before Jamie pushed her in, and now she was hypnotized by what she couldn’t prevent.
“Something to pull her up with. Anything! Hurry!”
Courtney and two overachievers scrambled around looking for a makeshift lifesaver.
At the bottom, the lifeguard continued pawing until she found nothing but the horrid red concoction. She pushed into the ground attempting to spring up . . . and remained in place. She went through her fundamentally sound and apparently powerful swimming motions, and I actually thought she would break the hold. But she didn’t.
As the red cloud rushed into the black thing, the lifeguard descended after it. Air bubbled up to the surface to make the vomit appear boiling. The lifeguard tried swimming faster, and landed crotch first. Her legs were split, one out front, the other going behind. I had to look away.
Oh, man, that’s what got me, it came through the pipes from the river and ruined my chances with Clarissa. There was no way I could approach her after she relived this nightmare unless you get her the ring and tell her it’s from Toby and of course, the ring. But what if it got sucked into whatever that thing is? More than ever, I needed that gold ring.
“I have it!” Courtney said.
For a split second I thought Courtney was talking about my ring, and then I saw her running a fifteen foot skimmer over from the other side of the pool.
Behind me, one of the overachieving guys said, “We’re gonna go get help,” and I heard two sets of footsteps trample out.
I grabbed the skimmer from her and let the netted side slide down to the lifeguard. I was shaking while maneuvering the long pole and ended up jabbing the lifeguard rather violently in the gut. That caused red liquid to puff out from her mouth and nose and ears and eyes. Blood, obviously. The pool was vacant, except for one immobile body at the bottom, and the water had settled to an almost dead stillness. Tiny ripples emanated from the moving pole, but otherwise it was a clear view to the bottom.
“Oh my God.” Courtney’s voice broke. “I told her to go down there.”
“She didn’t hear you, Courtney, she’s deaf. It’s not your fault.”
The lifeguard didn’t even react to the jab. She seemed more focused on getting the hell off the menace that was suctioning her down. She made no attempt to grab the net of the skimmer right in front of her, as if she didn’t even know it was there. As she began spasming in full body jolts, blood poured from her openings. It was like a countdown to detonation.
“Look away, Courtney.”
“Why?”
“Look away!”
The lifeguard stopped jolting for a moment and . . . poof! She vanished. In her place was the heavy welling redness. The clarity of this one caught me off guard. Chunks of yellow and white boiled up and sank back into the cloud. Purple lines that had to be veins slid along the cloud’s surface. I thought I saw an intact eyeball and had to cover my eyes. Knowing what was bubbling to the surface, I covered my nose.
I heard a thump/slap/slap to my left. I didn’t have to look to know that Courtney had fainted. Someone would come in and help her soon.
I would sit there covering my eyes and nose until the water cleared again, and then I would go down and get the ring. Maybe you should just go into that black thing down there, maybe that would be an easier route. No, I would give Clarissa the ring. I couldn’t hold in how I felt about her anymore. And it wouldn’t be fair if Clarissa never knew someone in the world was so crazy in love with her. She might live the rest of her life thinking no one loved her. Yes, she deserves to know someone—
The knuckles of a tiny bony fist dug into my spine. It was Steph. She had unperched herself from catatonia to place the blame on someone for the death of her boyfriend.
“I knew it wasn’t a wallet!”
When I turned to face her, she jabbed me right on the nose. Luckily the petite didn’t have enough power to blind me or break the cartilage, but I threw up my arms to block the rest of her punches anyway. And boy did they ever rain down, like she was a professional boxer. I caught one glance at her face during the flurry and could tell she was completely in a zone, blinded and driven by rage and adrenaline, probably not even aware of each individual punch but seeing the attack as a whole and able to plan ahead a few hits. Attackers in such a state often liken the experience to being possessed.
I got my arms over my face and head, and felt the knuckles knot my neck and shoulders.
“Why’d you let them go down?” Steph yelled. “You shoulda gone down! It shoulda been you! You should be dead! You killed them!” Her knuckles must have worn out because she started kicking me in the ribs. When I reached down to block the ribs, she kicked me in the head, and I would have to block my head again. And during the course of this attack, Steph said something odd, yet familiar. “Whoop my ass?” she said, and kicked. “Whoop my ass? I don’t think so, Tic Tac!”
Steph gave one more front kick, and collapsed to the floor in a weeping heap. She crawled to the door crying. I knew they loved each other!
When I tried to get up there was a sharp pain in my spine, right in the spot where Steph landed her initial punch. I had tried to stop Kevin . . . oh, God, that could have been me. Maybe it should be you. Did you hear what she said? Did you hear what she called you? Tic Tac. Kevin called you Tic Tac! Don’t you get it yet, dummy! Where do you think Kevin went?
Through perfectly calm waters, I saw the last of the lifeguard disappear into the bottom like a genie into a bottle. The thing had inhaled three fully grown human beings in fifteen minutes. I pondered all the ways that was not possible, until a shiny object entered my field of vision. It was so close to the “wallet.” Only a foot, maybe less.
Not close enough! “I can get it.”
I hurried over to the adjacent side, next to the diving board. Was it worth it, to risk suffering whatever unimaginable fate Kevin and Quentin and the lifeguard had suffered, just to let Clarissa know someone in the world loved her when she might not like it or care? Yes! Of course! Just what the hell was that thing? What did it do to them? How did it hold them down, how did it make them explode, how did it suck in all non-gaseous remnants? All that matters is where you go afterwards, idiot! After you go down! What can I do to make you see that? Nothing, because after I went down and got the ring, I would go give it to Clarissa.
I was still hesitant. I swung my arms to and fro on the edge, working up the courage. “One . . . two . . .”
“Wait! Stop!” Pedro was at the door with some teachers and pool tenants and what looked like all our classmates huddled behind them. One of them ran to Courtney, still unconscious on the tiles. Apparently Pedro really did have my back, but a little too late.
“Three.” I inhaled a lot of air. I dove in about five feet to the left of the ring, which in turn was about six feet from the black object. I speared straight down and when I felt the rough texture of the bottom, squinted my eyes open. The first thing I noticed was pressure on my head and the popping of my ears. Oh no! It got me! No, not yet. Because these were normal occurrences when under twelve feet of water.
Then I saw what I thought got me. It never looked more intimidating than it did just then. The ring was never further away; only five feet, but it might as well have been five light-years if I couldn’t move closer. The water pressure made me exhale, and air bubbled up from my mouth. Up close, even though blurry I noticed the black thing was rounded at the edges, and more of an absence of color, almost an absence of space. That you could fall into!
I was in the donut-zone again. I couldn’t get too close and I couldn’t go away. If I reached for the ring the black thing would get me. Then reach for it, wussy! If I went up to the surface they would not allow me back down. Then don’t go up! I looked up and saw several blurry faces looking down on me from the edge of the pool. Even with a depleting oxygen supply, I was indecisive in the donut-zone.
In the silence, as always, a voice struggled to be heard. Haven’t you been listening to me?
I’m Toby, brown-lips.
No, I’m not. I only tried to be like Toby to console Clarissa.
I know you’re not Toby! I’m Toby! What do you think I am, a voice in your head? This black thing is what killed me in the river that day. It must have welled up from the river bottom from all the rain we’ve been getting and I think you’ll agree it had no trouble getting through the filtration tanks and screens, but you puked that day I drowned, just like Steph puked a few minutes ago because Kevin went inside her and gave her the idea to beat the crap out of you and call you Tic Tac because she was in a confused enough state to listen to Kevin’s voice, just like you’re in a confused enough state to listen to my voice.
No, it’s just a voice in my head that developed because I couldn’t gather enough courage to speak with Clarissa, just a line of consciousness that branched off from the rest and grouped together to help me connect with my soul mate when I didn’t know how.
The line of consciousness is me! I’ve told you so many times but you were too wrapped up in your own thoughts to realize I’m anything more than more of your own thoughts. You’re only now listening because you’ve run out of your own thoughts. I’m the one who tried so hard to prevent you from banging those girls by putting all those negative thoughts in your head because I knew you would want to without a second thought on your own.
But why would Toby, why would you, go into my head?
Because . . .
If the black thing sent Kevin into Steph—
Because I loved you, goddamnit, okay! I loved you! If you tell anyone I swear to God I’ll drive you up the wall! I’ll scream and scream and scream until you lock yourself away and get a lobotomy to shut me up! But I won’t—
I thought of the college baseball coach saying “Can’t wait to see you on our field;” my father saying “See you when you get home” cause he knows you need hope, and how he’d never get to see his son play college ball; my mother saying “Have a good time” cause she knows you never do and how she’d never see her son happy with a woman, but without a woman, college and career would be pointless but you can have Clarissa tell your parents you’re alive and okay, that’s all parents want to hear is their children are okay wherever they are whatever they’re doing—
That did it. There was only one way, I thought, to avoid a confrontation with Clarissa and yet still fuse our souls, and it would be the ultimate intimacy. There was only one way to shut up Toby’s voice, since that seemed to be what he wanted, screaming for me to touch the black thing from inside my head. Any other time of my life, I would have dismissed Toby’s voice as subconscious role-playing, but after seeing what that deep, deep black orb had done to three human beings, after enduring an attack from Steph who spoke like Kev, it would seem naïve to disbelieve anything.
More air bubbled from my mouth. My lungs felt flat, deflated.
I lunged over the ring and placed both palms on the black thing. It was not so much a solid object as it was a suctioning. A vacuum of space. And yet there was still solidity to it. My hands remained on the surface of it. For a while.
Then my hands millimetered in, as if into drying concrete. But it wasn’t just my hands. It felt as if the very essence of me was being sucked in. There was a downward pull throughout my entire body. It was a sedative sensation, and I thought the only reason the others fought against it must have been because they were surprised and didn’t know what was happening.
Then the pain started. The pressure built and burned. I thought I could feel every X-ray, gamma ray, microwave and ultraviolet wave poking through my essence. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’m pretty sure I started to resist the black thing at that point. There was a bodywide burning, as if every molecule was separating into its original atoms, every atom separating into its original protons, neutrons and electrons, separating into particles.
Swirling rainbow colors formed on the backs of my eyelids. The colors began to take shape. Red formed a tall rectangle. White bordered the rectangle. Silver formed a smaller rectangle on the middle-right of the big red one. It was a red door in a white wall.
I must have been hallucinating this, yet the pain continued.
The red door lowered, or I stood up. The door and wall blurred away together, or I turned. The colors took a few seconds to regroup again.
They formed a human shape. They formed a female shape. They formed long straight black hair and sad black eyes. Clarissa. In her pink swim suit. Walking toward me.
And seeing her sadness built up more burning pressure, but I was guided on by a force as uncontrollable as love toward her, and oh did the trembling ever start, but that was okay because I could see that Clarissa was trembling just as much as she approached me, and I thought that this could only be Heaven. Where else would the girl of my dreams be as drawn to me as I was to her, where else would my soul mate risk as much anxiety approaching me as I to her?
We were drawing together for the ultimate fusion, the spilling of secret passions, the bonding of souls. And Clarissa looked as worried about our retracting spiritual conduit as I felt, and the closer we came the more powerful the pull. There was so much emotion seeing her eyes this close that the pressure had to be relieved, we had to make the bond, we had to come together, at last, forever.
Only steps away, Clarissa leaned her face forward, and I leaned forward, and . . .
I vomited.
There was a sink below me, and that is where the pasta primavera went. Wait, that doesn’t make sense. I had the chicken dinner. All the anxiety must have transcended my innards.
The anxiety was gone. The anxiety was a mushy white pile in the sink. Relief. Sweet, blessed relief. Oh, how heavenly it was to feel normal again. No pain. No apprehension. Bliss.
The faucet turned on and water washed all of the vomit down except for a few big pieces. Without thinking or feeling more than a detached sensation, as if imagining my own actions instead of doing them, put my mouth down to the stream and sucked in some water, rinsed it around with the remaining vomit and spit out the nastiness. Turned the faucet off with an arm I didn’t see.
Looked up and was face to face with Clarissa, with those endlessly deep black jewels. Yet I wasn’t nervous. Not at all.
Clarissa’s lower lip trembled on the verge of tears.
Don’t worry. I’m here now. We’re finally together. Everything’s going to be alright from now on.
Clarissa looked down, and I looked down and turned the cold water knob back on. Splashed water over my face and looked up. Clarissa’s face was wet, dripping water.
Droplets of water were suspended between our faces.
On the mirror between us.
Yes! We made it! Clarissa it’s me, Toby! I’m okay! I’m inside you now! The black thing in the river sent me into you. How did you get in here? It was supposed to be me. I’m the one who loves her. Duh, but I’m a part of your consciousness, remember? Oh, man, I can’t believe my luck to actually find another one of those black things and convince you to go in it. But I thought your queer ass wanted to be in me. I thought it was perfect for a while, too, until you started trying to get with women, and with my sister, you sick bastard. You think I wanna watch you humpin up and down on my sister, or with any woman? That’d be like me doing it. But now I can make sure she finds the right guy. My kinda guy. You manipulative asshole piece of—Hey, watch your mouth, man. My sister’s listening to us. Don’t worry, Sis. Everything’s alright. Your brother loves you. No, I love you! Who do you think made you love her? You think you could ever love a girl as much as I love my twin sister? You only love her because of me!
Clarissa’s lip stopped quivering amid our declarations of love. She really did hear them, in her mind, and it must have been enough to sooth her worries.
So I floated there, a voice in her head, unable to control her body, as she went to her locker, got a towel and took a shower. I felt nothing outside the detached sensations of her body. I knew I should have been excited to see the girl of my dreams washing her elegant body, but I didn’t really see her, and I couldn’t really touch her. I had no body of my own, no medium to feel my own sensations and emotions. All I could feel was the serenity. I had none of the anxiety of being near her, and I had none of the depression of being out of reach of her. In a way, I was right back inside the donut-zone.
Clarissa dried and dressed and left the locker room through that red door. Her thoughts debated with Toby’s thoughts about the quality of the rest of her life. Toby assured her everything was okay, to move on and find a new boyfriend, a better boyfriend than Quentin, who was surely in a better place. I was still getting used to being a formless entity, able only to think, and it was actually a few days before I realized what Toby meant when he said Quentin was in a better place. It was when Clarissa was finally able to pick up another celebrity-dirt magazine to take her mind from the real world that we found out Quentin’s hopeless obsession with Britney
Spears was now far more than a passing phase.
The teen queen had gotten sick on a red-eye flight, and vomited.
Stephanie was still in her swim suit outside the natatorium with the rest of our chattering classmates. Clarissa approached her. “Steph?” And saying the name almost brought her to tears again.
Steph turned around, “Clare,” and hugged her, and I could almost feel the arms around me as the two friends broke into sobs.
Steph pulled back, and I saw into her blue eyes, red from crying. Kevin was trapped in there.
Slap her, Clarissa!
Clarissa wondered why she would think such a thing.
Slap that skank and the moron inside her!
Clarissa dismissed the thought as meaningless mental rambling.
“Clare,” Steph sniffed. “Where’d you go? How could you leave after Kev . . .”
“I didn’t know at first, not until he got stuck down there.” Clarissa really didn’t want to tell her friend this, but she had been holding it in for three years. She had to tell someone now that she had proof. “I think . . . I think that’s the same thing that killed Toby . . . in the river. He said he was going down to get a . . . black rock or something, and then like a minute later all these bubbles came up and it smelled awful . . . They never found his body.”
Steph pushed away, and it tore Clarissa up. “You knew what that thing was and you didn’t even say anything?” Kevin must have given her that thought.
Oh, that monkey-minded bastard Kevin wouldn’t have believed it, Clarissa. And he wouldn’t have changed his mind anyway, Sis. “You guys wouldn’t have believed me.”
Steph looked like she wanted to continue placing the blame, but had no further reason and found it pointless. Maybe in Steph’s mind Kevin agreed that he would have gone in anyway. She nodded, and hugged Clarissa again. “I’m sorry, Clare. I just . . . don’t know what to make of this. Kevin’s gone. We were going to college together, moving in together . . . now what?”
You’ll still be doing all those things together, Steph. And we can still do them, anyway. “We can still do them together, Steph.”
Steph pulled back and smiled through her tears. “Yeah.” Her head twitched. “Wait . . . is that why you want to be a marine biologist? To find out what killed Toby?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s why. But now I just want to see them kill it. How about you?”
Steph looked perplexed. “Didn’t you hear? Where were you?”
“Getting dressed. Why? What happened?”
“They were draining the pool and the thing just . . . went down the drain.”
“What? How could they just . . . let it get away like that?”
“The pool tenant said it was big enough for the grating to catch it, no problem, but they said it slid right through the grating, like nothing.”
Back out to the river. Back out to the water where thousands of drowning victims have never been found, right? Good thing you watched the news that day like I told you. Now we know where all those poor bastards went, don’t we? They’re all still out there, alive in the minds of those they love. Hey, how many of those black things you think there are? I mean, it’s pretty obvious why they’ve never been reported . . . You still there? . . .
Clarissa had a confused moment without thought.
Find Pedro, Clarissa! Make him tell my parents I’m inside you! Or just tell them yourself! I live at—
“Steph . . . what are we going to tell their parents?”
“I don’t know, Clare. I think this is one of those things no one’s going to believe.”
“We have to tell them something.”
My personal request had made no more sense to Clarissa than Toby’s made to me from inside my head for three years.
We are together, and there is no more pain, but this is not possession, or the true bonding of souls. All I can do from here is watch Clarissa go with other men. All I can do from the donut is hope she dreams of me. All I can do from here, from the donut, from her eyes, is put ideas in her mind.
After this one, she will not make the same mistake. |
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