The World Without Us Read online

  No. It was worse than that. I’d embraced it. It was romantic to me, all that darkness. It was what drew us together, and so I did what I could to feed it. I joined Jeremy there without even seeing what a dangerous place he was standing in.

  Drowning

  A week before Ramon’s execution, Jeremy and I skipped out of school. He’d taken his mom’s car, not exactly something she’d agreed to.

  “Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” he said. “Not that I’ll have to do either as long as we’re back before she gets home from work.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Thought you didn’t like to add to her stress.”

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he said shortly.

  He sounded angry—bitter, almost—but I let it go by. The sky was blue and I was high about skipping school and heading out on an illicit road trip with Jeremy, and I didn’t want to ruin the mood by getting into anything heavy. “Got any tunes?” I asked. “Or are we listening to the radio?”

  He handed me his iPhone and I found us some roadtrip music. “So where do you want to go?”

  “Want to see the prison?” I asked. “There’re protesters outside every day now. Mom was there on the weekend, and she said there were a lot of people there with signs and stuff. Because of Ramon, you know?”

  “Yeah, you told me.” He shrugged. “Jacksonville’s a three-hour drive. We’d get there and it’d be time to turn around and come home again.”

  “I guess,” I said. I didn’t know why I wanted to go there anyway. It was the same impulse that makes you pick at hangnails until they’re bloody and sore—I hated to think about it, but I couldn’t leave it alone.

  “Let’s go to the beach,” Jeremy said. “I’ll show you where Lucas drowned.”

  I turned and looked at him. “Seriously? I mean, you sure you want to do that?”

  He didn’t answer, just started the engine and reversed out of the school parking lot. After a few minutes, the silence between us was making me squirm. “Have you had more dreams about him?” I asked.

  Jeremy nodded. “More like nightmares.”

  I watched his profile, his mouth a hard straight line, his hands tight on the steering wheel. I was almost scared to talk to him when he was like this—so tightly wound, it felt like the wrong word could trigger an explosion. The air between us was electric. “Maybe you shouldn’t try so hard, you know?” I said softly. “I mean, trying to dream about him? Maybe it’s too—”

  “Crazy?”

  “No! I didn’t mean that. Just, if it’s giving you nightmares…”

  “I need to talk to him,” Jeremy said.

  I opened a bag of potato chips, took one and crunched it too loudly. “Want some?”

  “No thanks.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes, turning onto Pinellas Bayway. The sun shone down on the blue water to our left and right, and pelicans dive-bombed the smooth surface, beautiful and ungainly and vaguely prehistoric.

  Finally, Jeremy turned onto Gulf Boulevard and parked at the side of the road. “Well, here we are,” he said. Through my window, I stared at the white beach and the blue-gray water, and all I could think was, Lucas swam into that water and never came out again.

  We walked along the beach for a while, watching the waves gently lapping the sloping sand. It was pretty quiet: the summer tourists had gone, and the snowbirds were just starting to arrive for the winter. Little kids dug in the sand; their parents lay on beach chairs nearby, reading or chatting. A golden retriever fetched a tennis ball from the water and galloped out, shaking water from its thick coat. A group of shirtless guys played Frisbee. Not locals, obviously: people who live here don’t go shirtless in November.

  At some point I reached out and took Jeremy’s hand in mine, and he didn’t pull away.

  In front of a small hotel with a blue-and-white awning, Jeremy stopped. “This is the spot,” he said abruptly. “We had our towels spread out here. Beach volleyball net was set up over there. Lucas and his friends were swimming. It was July. Stinking hot. I walked off down the beach.” He gestured ahead and I stared into the sun, squinting. “And then when I came back, Daimon and Carter were playing volleyball. I figured Lucas was around, you know? I didn’t even look for him. Just sat down on my towel and read for a while. Then there was all this commotion. The lifeguard pulled him up on the beach and all these people crowded around—they were doing CPR.”

  “Oh, Jeremy.” I felt stupid and useless and, at the same time, horribly fascinated.

  “His face was really white,” he said. “Grayish, almost. His lips were blue. They were pounding on his chest so hard, but it didn’t work. Water came out of his mouth.”

  I could feel my eyes filling with tears. I wanted to tell him to stop talking, but maybe it was good that he was sharing this. Vicky would think so, I told myself. She’d say, Let him talk.

  “It felt really unreal,” Jeremy said. “I kept thinking it’d be okay. That he’d just sit up and crack a joke, you know? And it’d all be okay.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess it must have been hard to believe it could really happen.”

  Jeremy looked me in the eyes for a second and then looked away. “The ambulance came, and I went with him to the hospital. I called my parents from the beach. When they were still doing CPR.”

  I wished he was talking to Vicky, not me. To someone who would know the right thing to say, because I sure didn’t. “What did you say?” I whispered.

  “It was my father who answered the phone. I remember that. And I said there’d been an accident, that Lucas was hurt. They came to the hospital. They didn’t know he was already dead. They found out when they got there.”

  “God, Jeremy. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been.”

  He sat down on the sand and wrapped his arms around his knees. “This is the first time I’ve been back here.”

  I knelt beside him and awkwardly put an arm around him. His shoulder blades were sharp ridges under the thin gray T-shirt. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” His head was on his arms, his face hidden, but I could hear the tears thickening his voice. “Not really.”

  “I guess not,” I said. “I mean, of course not. I’m so sorry, Jeremy.” I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, but I thought he’d get angry. And besides, I didn’t even know if it was true. In a way, it didn’t matter. I watched the waves rolling up onto the sand and thought that I would never look at the ocean the same way again.

  After a few minutes, Jeremy lifted his head. “Sorry, Mel. I guess I’m not much fun to be with, huh?”

  “No! God, Jeremy. I mean, it’s fine. I’m glad you told me about it.”

  “He hadn’t had a seizure in three years,” Jeremy said. “I don’t want you to think I just…”

  “Yeah, no. I don’t. Besides, he wasn’t alone, right? I mean, he was with his friends when you left him.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I doubt they even knew he had epilepsy. He wouldn’t have told them. He wouldn’t even wear a medic-alert bracelet. Didn’t fit his image.”

  I hesitated. “Your parents…I guess they were still together when that happened?”

  “Yeah.” His whole body stiffened and he looked away. “My dad left a year later.”

  “Do you ever see him?”

  “No.”

  I held my breath for a few seconds. “How come, Jeremy?”

  “You can probably guess,” he said.

  He blamed you. I couldn’t bring myself to say it though. “No,” I said. “I’d have thought…I mean, he’d already lost one of his kids. I would have thought he’d hang on tighter than ever to his other one. You’re all he has.”

  Jeremy snorted. “Right.”

  I sat beside him, staring out at the water, waiting to see if he wanted to say more. A woman jogged past, pausing occasionally to throw the tennis ball for the golden retriever. An elderly couple walked by, between us and the water. The man had a bent back and took each s
tep slow, leaning on his wife’s arm. She was heavier, sturdierlooking, her short white hair ruffled by the breeze.

  Finally, I couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “What happened? With you and him, I mean?”

  “He’s an asshole,” Jeremy said. “That’s what happened.”

  “To you? Or your mom?”

  He shrugged. “Both, I guess.”

  “Maybe it’d be different now,” I said. “You know? I mean, maybe he just couldn’t cope with, you know, with Lucas dying. But if you haven’t seen him for a year…If you got in touch with him…”

  “I think about it sometimes.” Jeremy turned and looked at me. “I think he hates me though.”

  “He can’t hate you,” I said. “You’re his kid.”

  “Lucas was his favorite, you know? He was everyone’s favorite.” His Adam’s apple jumps as he swallows. “I think my parents felt that the wrong kid died.”

  “Of course they didn’t,” I said. “Jeremy, that’s awful.”

  “You didn’t know him.”

  “But I know you.” Tears blurred my vision. “Jeremy…” I reached out for him, and he let me pull him into my arms, burying his head against my shoulder.

  “This is pathetic,” he said, his voice muffled. “Sorry, Mel.”

  “Jesus, Jeremy. Quit apologizing.”

  “Some fun day out at the beach, huh?” He lifted his head and looked at me. “You’re probably wishing you’d stayed at school. I mean, shit. You could be doing calculus right about now.”

  “No.” I met his eyes. “I’m glad you told me, Jeremy. I’m glad we’re here.”

  “Yeah?”

  And right then, something shifted between us. Something in the way he was looking at me, his head tilted to one side. It was ever so slight, but I could feel it. “Yeah,” I said. Our faces were inches apart. My heart was racing.

  Jeremy reached out a hand and ever so softly touched my cheek. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not.”

  He lifted his wet fingertips to show me. “Are too.”

  “Well, I’m fine,” I said. Kiss me, I thought. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

  “Good,” he said. He stood up, held out a hand to me.

  “Come on. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

  I took his hand, and as we headed back to the car, I wasn’t sure whether the sudden lightness in my chest was disappointment or relief.

  Water Under the Bridge

  Apparently Jeremy’s suicide attempt has turned me into a magnet for the morbidly curious. The story—or at least the bare fact that he jumped from the Sunshine Skyway Bridge—is now public knowledge, and all day I catch people sneaking sideways looks at me and whispering to each other.

  After school, Adriana is waiting by my locker. In front of my locker, actually. “Excuse me,” I say.

  “Mel, please listen to me for a minute.” Her reddish blond hair is tied back but a few curls have pulled loose, sticking out in a frizz at her temples.

  “You’re in my way,” I say coldly.

  She steps to one side but doesn’t leave. I pull a few random books out of my locker and cram them into my backpack, unable to concentrate enough to figure out what I actually need to bring home.

  “Mel, I’m sorry, okay? I never meant all that stuff to happen.”

  “What stuff would that be?” I straighten up so I can watch her squirm. I don’t need you, I think. I don’t need you. I don’t care what you think.

  Her cheeks are flushed, but she stands her ground. “You’re not being fair, you know.”

  “I’m not being fair? Hello?” I slam my locker door shut. “Are you fucking serious? You made my life hell.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she says. “I mean, that party…you were freaking out. I didn’t know how much Tylenol you’d taken or what else you were going to do. I called 9-1-1 because I was scared, okay? I didn’t want you to die.” She bursts into tears. “I thought you might understand that now. Because of your friend.”

  I stare at her and feel like a snow globe someone just picked up and shook—scraps of stuff whirling in my head in a white confusion. What she did—what I have never forgiven her for—is exactly what I failed to do. I didn’t call 9-1-1. I didn’t save my friend. I didn’t take the chance of making him angry, of losing the friendship. “I’m not spreading rumors about Jeremy,” I say, trying to hold on to something.

  “I didn’t mean that to happen,” she says. “I mean, after you got taken off in the ambulance, Devika and I had to say something. And it just kind of spun out of control.”

  “Death Wish? Was that part of what you and Devika just had to say?”

  “I don’t even know who started that,” she says. “It wasn’t me though. And anyway, it was as much about how you were dressing, you know, all in black. It was like you just became a different person.”

  I snort. “You and Devika were the ones that changed. As soon as I said I was going to do the early college prep thing, you guys basically dumped me.”

  “We didn’t. You dumped us.” She rubs her sleeve across her wet eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Water under the bridge.”

  I wish she hadn’t used that expression. Instantly, I’m back there, leaning over that concrete wall, looking down into the inky darkness below.

  “Maybe we can just forget about it. Move on,” she says.

  “Right. Whatever.” I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “I gotta go.”

  “Okay. Just…Mel?”

  “What?”

  “I’m really sorry, okay? If I did the wrong thing.”

  I blink back tears and turn away from her, pushing through the crowds in the hallway and out the doors. It’s cool and clear, the sky its usual unrelenting blue, and I cross the street and sit down on the steps where I first met Jeremy.

  All this time, I’ve been so angry with Adriana. And now I don’t know what to think.

  When I get home, Vicky is sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop in front of her.

  “Jeremy called,” she says.

  “He did?” I freeze, heart racing. “What did he say? Did you talk to him?”

  “Not much. He’s feeling better—well, less drugged anyway. I talked to his mother earlier and she said he’s in a lot of pain.”

  “You talked to his mother? How come?”

  “She called.”

  I’m dying to know what they talked about, but I don’t want to ask. She closes her laptop and turns toward me. “He wants to talk to you. I said you’d call when you got home.”

  “Okay.” I start to back away, but she gestures for me to stay.

  “How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Melody.”

  “What?”

  “Sit down and talk to me.”

  I sit, reluctantly. “About what?”

  “Honey. Don’t shut me out, okay? I’m worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t be. I’m not the one who jumped off a bridge.”

  Vicky flinches, fine lines creasing the skin between her eyes. “You sound angry.”

  I am angry, but I don’t know why, and I don’t want to talk about it. “There’s nothing to say, Vicky. I mean, of course I’m upset. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Of course I would. I am. I feel bad that I didn’t realize your friend was so depressed.”

  I hadn’t thought of Jeremy as depressed, although, remembering that poem he wrote, maybe I should have. But everyone talks like that sometimes, and he’d been laughing and kidding around with me right up until that night. Right up until he jumped, practically. “Me too,” I say. “But there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

  She sighs. “Well, I don’t want to push you. But if you want to talk…”

  “Okay.” I lick my lips, which are suddenly dry. “Um, I guess I’ll go call him.”

  “Good.” She opens her laptop. “Oh, and call Nina too. She wants to know if you can babysit Suzy tonight.”

  “Can I?”

  �
�If you want, sure. I can drive you over there. But maybe you should talk to Jeremy first? I think he was hoping you’d come and see him.”

  Up in my room, I flop on my couch and call Nina. I’m sort of hoping she needs me right away, so that there isn’t time to visit Jeremy, but it turns out she doesn’t need me until eight.

  “Just for an hour or two, Mel. Jim’s away for a few days and I want to go out for tea with a friend whose jerk of a husband walked out on her. Ten years together and he just told her he was moving out. She had no idea. Completely shell shocked. At least they don’t have kids.”

  “That’s fine,” I say. “I’ll be there by eight.”

  “Need us to pick you up?”

  “No, Vicky says she can drive me. Tell Suzy I’m looking forward to seeing her.”

  I disconnect and call Jeremy.

  “Hi, Mel.”

  He sounds so normal. “Hey,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I got hit by a truck,” he says. “Like I jumped off a bridge.”

  Are we seriously going to joke about this? “Yeah,” I say. “I guess you’re pretty banged up.”

  “A couple broken ribs and a cracked vertebra. Doctors say I’ll be back on my feet in a few days. Oh, and I’m officially down one internal organ. Luckily, it turns out spleens aren’t essential. One of those spare parts you don’t really need, like appendixes and tonsils. Who knew?”

  “You looked pretty awful,” I say.

  “Yeah, Mom told me you came to see me already,” he says. “I don’t even remember it.”

  “You were pretty out of it.”

  “Did I say anything weird?”

  “You talked about your brother,” I say.

  There’s a silence on the other end of the line, and then Jeremy says, “Can you come and see me? Like, now?”

  “Yeah.” I stand up. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Vicky drives me to the hospital and, to my relief, doesn’t try to start another conversation about how I am feeling. She’s always been pretty careful about respecting my privacy, but I know she’s worried. I wish I knew what Jeremy’s mother said to her. I guess this is an awful thing to think, but I’m kind of glad Jeremy and his mom don’t have a close relationship. Hopefully, he hasn’t told her that I was the one who first suggested jumping off the bridge.