Feel Me Fall Read online

“Very cute,” I agreed. “But not my type.”

  “Liar.”

  That night, I tossed and turned in my bed, feeling a heat within me I’d never felt before. I was crushing hard—on a teacher, no less. Not that it would go anywhere. Of course it would never go anywhere. Why couldn’t I just date someone my own age? I’d tried, but they were boys. They talked about getting drunk and told jokes stolen from the internet; nothing they ever did was original, as if they were trying on different personas to see which one would stick. Boys my age didn’t interest me. But Johannes DeKoning did, with his ever-so-slight Dutch accent and his Dutch-boy blonde hair and his professorial knowledge of literature. He was a man, a man of the world, and I was eager to learn.

  Nothing would come of it, that was certain. Nothing at all.

  We heard the river, its current resonating deep and wide. The river leads to the ocean, that’s what Ryan had said. There has to be a village nearby. We veered towards it, stepping out of the overgrowth. A group of butterflies fluttered across the river, big and bright, and I felt they were a good omen.

  Ryan stopped first. Then the rest of us.

  Bodies littered the river, caught in the rocks.

  Not people, not any longer: bodies.

  Bodies from the wreckage. Thirty, maybe forty or more. I didn’t count. I wouldn’t; they weren’t objects to be counted.

  They must’ve floated downstream as the plane flooded and got caught in the river’s eddy. They bobbed in the water. On TV, it always looks as if dead people are merely like live ones, just not moving. As if life itself had evaporated from them leaving a calm husk in its place. This was real life, and they were dead: faces tinted blue, the skin no longer skin, but waxy, and the eyes dark orbs. Flies flecked over them, emerging from open mouths. How odd not to see someone blink.

  Molly pointed into the water. Her voice was flat. “Him. I sat next to him. He told me his name, but I don’t remember it. He hogged my armrest.”

  Pieces of wreckage floated on the water, bits of suitcases, a backpack or two, air sickness bags. I saw a teddy bear and I wanted to cry.

  Then I saw movement.

  The bodies weren’t bobbing because of the current. They were bobbing because of something underneath. The bodies rose up and down in minuscule beats, pulled down, and then allowed to rise. Little concentric circles rippled from their herky-jerky spasms.

  Under them the water turned red.

  This. Can’t. Be.

  This was nature at work. Meat was in the water. The piranhas were having a feast.

  Repulsed and hysterical, I rushed into the water, the water up to my ankles, and I screamed, “Leave them alone! Leave them alone!” I tried to shoo them away when I felt Nico’s arms around me. He picked me up and carried me out of the water and the next thing I knew I was on shore.

  “Don’t ever do that!” He took my face in his hands. “You can’t save them. You can’t stop it.” He released me and I looked past him.

  The water churned like miniature blenders, and if I watched closely I could see the remnants of more passengers. Seat cushions and clothes I thought had come loose from suitcases: they hadn’t come from suitcases. The torn jeans, the ripped shirts, they were all that were left.

  I wanted to be sick, but nothing came up. Just the taste of bile. I couldn’t even cry; I was too dehydrated. How messed up is that? To want to cry only to have your body deny you.

  Viv sat next to me, her arm around my back and she leaned her head on my shoulder. “Just look away, Emily. There’s nothing there.”

  “But there is.”

  She gently turned my head away. “What kind of flower is that?”

  I knew what she was trying to do, distract me, but I couldn’t help but turn back and stare. “It’s random, Viv. It’s all so random. Why did we live and they didn’t? Why did we make it on shore and no one else did? Why were we special?”

  “I don’t know, Emily.”

  “I don’t know, either.”

  Viv looked me in the eye. “Do you wish you were them?”

  “No.”

  “Then look away.”

  I was about to when Derek ran into the water. I thought it was the most ridiculous way to commit suicide. I thought of all the taunts he’d gotten at school; how kids took his last name “Wert,” and chanted “Wart! Wart! Wart!”; how with gangly steps that only highlighted his lanky frame, he was trying to end it all with some story that would make him infamous—“the guy who got eaten by piranha.”

  I shouted, “Stop!”

  No one tried to save him like Nico had saved me.

  But Derek wasn’t trying to commit suicide. He splashed out of the water almost as fast as he’d gotten in. Wet up to his knees, he carried a piece of metal. I couldn’t tell if it was a piece of the plane’s wing or what, but it was triangular. He held it in his hand, about two feet in length, and he ran his finger over the edge, satisfied it was sharp.

  Ryan mocked him. “What the fuck, fucktard?”

  Derek said, “You might want to rephrase that. I’m the one with a hatchet.” To prove his point, with a few solid whacks he cut a vine from off a tree.

  “You never cease to amaze me with your weirdness.”

  “What’s weird about me getting a tool? You understand how I just helped you? Helped all of us?”

  “Look at what you did to get it.”

  Derek turned to Ryan. “You know what’s weird? I keep thinking, like a bad habit, your football friends are gonna have your back. Like you and Conlin. That he’s hiding behind some tree, just waiting for me to look the other way and then boom! Push me to the ground. Or knock shit out of my hands. Or if he’s feeling really generous, pretend to rape me. That’s what you and he liked to do. For ‘fun’, right?” He turned the metal piece in his hands. “Then it hit me. He isn’t here. He isn’t coming. He won’t be coming. Your asshole friend Pete Conlin is never coming.” He held the metal like a knife. “What do you say to that, fucktard?”

  Ryan stood, taking in this turn of events, and I couldn’t tell what was written on his face. Fear? Karma?

  Nico said, “Why don’t we all just calm down. No one’s thinking straight.”

  Something changed in Ryan’s face and he stepped forward, crutch and all, and knocked the metal piece from Derek’s hand. It fell to the ground. Derek’s face fell with it.

  “Don’t ever mention my friend again. Not from your mouth.”

  Derek stood a moment, considering his options. He said defiantly, “Pete. Conlin.”

  “Derek,” I said, imploring. “Stop.” I didn’t want to see him get hurt. I didn’t want to see a fight. Not after everything we’d been through.

  But it was Derek who wouldn’t back down. “Enough of the threats. If you want to beat me up so bad, do it. There’s no principal to get in the way. No fear of getting kicked out of school.”

  Ryan shook his head and did nothing. “You’re not worth it, Wart.”

  Derek said, “Thought so.”

  Ryan hopped back to the front of the group. “Let’s keep going. Those bodies are only gonna attract more wildlife.”

  We didn’t stick around to see if he was right.

  The sun began to set, and it created a blanket of rose in the sky. At least some things were the same no matter where you were.

  “We’d better make a shelter,” said Derek. “Once the sun goes down, it’ll be dark. And I mean dark.”

  Viv spoke up. “Shelter?” The implication was clear. We thought we’d be in the jungle only a few hours at most before being rescued.

  Derek said, “You see any planes? Helicopters? Flares?”

  We hadn’t. We were on our own.

  I kept trying to convince myself we were going to be all right. I kept failing.

  Nico sat near the base of a gnarled tree, its trunk nearly ten feet thick, surrounded by a tangle of roots. “I think I’ll just sit here.” Ryan and Viv followed Nico’s lead.

  “I wouldn’t do that. You’ll
be covered by bugs come morning.”

  Scared of the idea, Viv stood up. So did Nico. Ryan stayed put.

  I asked Derek, “What do you need?”

  He scanned the area, his eyes settling on tall stalks of bamboo, thick and round. “Help me cut this stuff.”

  For the next half hour, we helped him hold bamboo as he cut it with his makeshift hatchet. He cut four posts and rammed them vertically in the ground, the soft mud giving way easily, each about a foot high, which made a base. Then he placed two longer pieces of bamboo on them. From there, he placed cross pieces. Suddenly, from nothing he had created a bedframe. Though he explained as he went along using words like “bamboo nodes” and “V-grooves,” I couldn’t follow it all. I was just impressed that here in the jungle was the closest thing to civilization—a bed—that I’d seen.

  Finally, he added layers of bamboo across the whole thing and created a kind of mattress. Satisfied with his work, he lay back on it and theatrically crisscrossed his legs and placed his arms behind his head. He sighed deeply. “Home, sweet home.”

  After a moment he got up. “Actually, Molly, this one’s for you.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. Molly sat on the bed, made herself comfortable and watched us. Maybe being pregnant had its perks.

  Viv asked, “What if they don’t come?”

  Nico replied, moving his dark mop of hair out of his eyes, “They’ll come.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  More insistent this time, Nico said, “They’ll come.”

  She looked up at the sky, or what she could see of it. “Then why aren’t they here?”

  The question went unanswered until she repeated it.

  “Because,” Ryan said, as if the answer was obvious, “it’s the Amazon, not America.”

  The sun seemed to set in time with our falling hopes.

  Derek was right: the dark wasn’t just lack of light; it was a presence—a suffocating presence. The sounds that had emanated from behind the wall of green during the day, the drone of crickets and insects, seemed louder. Closer. Ominous.

  There were a total of five thin beds, one for each of us, save Ryan. He rested against a tree and closed his eyes.

  I didn’t want to sleep alone, so I snuck next to Viv, feeling her warmth.

  She whispered, “Tell me a story. You’re good with stories.”

  The only thing I knew by heart was a stanza by Henry David Thoreau. It was “Friendship,” and I whispered to her:

  Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side

  Withstand the winter’s storm,

  And spite of wind and tide,

  Grow up the meadow’s pride,

  For both are strong

  Above they barely touch, but undermined

  Down to their deepest source,

  Admiring you shall find

  Their roots are intertwined

  Insep’rably.

  Viv was sound asleep.

  As I lay snuggled next to her, I took a deep breath. While the air was oppressive during the day, at night it cooled. It was as fresh and pure as I have ever breathed. In a day filled with horrors, the air provided the one and only sense of pleasure.

  Looking up, I saw the moon through the canopy. I wondered if my mother was seeing the same view from back home. Did my mother know about the crash yet? Or was she living in a comfortable haze of normalcy?

  I hoped so. Enjoy those moments, mother. Someone should.

  I covered my face in the folds of my shirt to avoid the buzzing of mosquitoes and closed my eyes. The jungle screamed in protest.

  Chapter 4

  “Emily….” It’s my mother’s voice. She gently shakes me and I open my eyes. She hovers over me in the hospital room, her face inches from mine. I can smell the lingering scent of menthol cigarettes in her hair, on her breath, a combination of mint and smoke. She must have started smoking again.

  “You were having a nightmare.”

  I didn’t remember it. “What was I saying this time?”

  “The same thing…. ‘Viv, come back.’”

  “I’ll be okay, mom.”

  I see her glance down at the sheets, eyes filled with concern, and she presses her hand against the mattress. I’ve wet my bed again. I’m ashamed to admit, but in the jungle I didn’t get up at night to go to the bathroom. I was too scared. So I held it until I couldn’t hold it any longer.

  “Should I call a nurse?”

  I shake my head. I just want to sleep. In the grand scheme of things, a wet bedspread is nothing. Losing a best friend is another altogether.

  I first met Vivian Liu on a sunny summer day under the bleachers at a local park. I was stretched out, legs in front of me, my body resting against a beam, reading. Behind me, kids shrieked, joining the music of whistles and drifting voices, but as I turned the pages, the world around me fell away.

  It was the summer after seventh grade, and my mother, worried that I hadn’t lost my baby fat or scared at my blindingly pale skin, figured signing me up for the local soccer team would give me a dose of athleticism I wanted no part of. That soccer didn’t interest me didn’t seem to matter. “Getting outside will do you good,” she’d said. I had no intention of chasing after a ball while trying to avoid getting kicked in the shins. But being a dutiful daughter, I dressed the part, gym bag in hand, and as soon as she dropped me off, I’d wander over to the bleachers. Hidden in my bag was a book, and I proceeded to read until she picked me up later in the afternoon. I did that every time. By the end of the summer, still pale, she told me to stop wearing so much sunscreen.

  “What’re you reading?”

  I looked up to see a girl I’d never seen before standing in front of me. She seemed about my age, dark hair falling to her shoulders like silk, with naturally tanned skin. She, too, wore a girls’ soccer uniform, but she wasn’t from my team. Her tone wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

  “It’s Beowulf.”

  Her eyes knitted together. “Are you in summer school or something?”

  “No. Just reading for fun.” I could see the incomprehension on her face, as if I’d told her I was from the moon, so I dog-eared the book and handed it to her. “It’s a graphic novel, see?”

  “Like a comic book?”

  Not wanting to explain the difference, I said, “Kind of. It’s about a monster, Grendel.” I watched as the girl turned the pages, genuinely interested in the blocks of art like a movie captured in print. “There. And he attacks this great hall. But, to me he’s not really a monster, ‘cause his mother is a dragon. If you flip forward….” She did. “Yeah, her.”

  “Cool,” the girl said.

  “And that’s why Grendel is the way he is. At least, that’s what I think.”

  “So, you just come out here and read?”

  I nodded. “Supposed to play soccer, but I ditch.”

  “You do?” She laughed. “Really? I didn’t think that was possible. I mean, of course it is. I want to every day, but I just never….” She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Soccer’s not even about having fun. My mom and dad just want me to be able to say that I did it.”

  “Why?”

  “Colleges love extra-curriculars. As if I care.”

  I couldn’t tell if I was jealous that her parents were pushing her towards a goal, or relieved that my mother wasn’t. “Aren’t you supposed to be playing now?”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” She whispered. “I. Hate. Soccer. With. A. Passion.”

  This time I laughed. “I thought it was just me.”

  “Getting all sweaty. Running around, banging into each other. And some of those girls? They’re into it. Like, they’ll scratch your eyes out. They’re like that dragon. And the coach? You should see him. He’s Stacey’s father—she’s a girl on my team. So annoying. Both of them. But you’d think coaching was his reason to live. I’m like, it’s only soccer! There’s more important things, you know. Like keeping my skin nice. Look at this.” She pointed
to a scab along her calf. “Some girl did this on purpose.”

  “She did?” I was even happier now to have ditched.

  “It’s like being with animals. They’re feral. And these.” There were splotches of bruises up and down her shoulder and arm. “Surprised I’m not dead yet. I took a bathroom break. Didn’t really have to go, just had to get away.” She paused and looked over at the field and then back at me. “Mind if I stay with you a while?”

  “Are you gonna get in trouble? For being late?”

  “What are they gonna do? Kick me off the team?” She put her hands in prayer position. “Please, please, please!”

  I patted the ground next to me, inviting her to sit.

  She plopped down. “I’m Viv, by the way.”

  “Emily.”

  She still held the book in her hands. “Can I borrow this sometime?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ve got a ton of others.”

  That’s how I spent my summer. Meeting Viv at the bleachers. Sometimes we’d read, other times we’d walk around. But mainly we just talked. Hours and hours and hours, from topics stupid to serious. We were very different, I would learn. She came from money; she lived in a different neighborhood with big homes and better yards; and worse, she went to a different junior high.

  Yet, we became inseparable.

  That summer we each earned the title Best Friend.

  Later, when Viv went to Riverdale Academy, I made it my mission to go there too. My mother may take credit for it, but it was always my idea. It wasn’t the educational opportunities, though that’s how I sold it to my mom. It was friendship. It was necessity. I made sure Viv and I were together. With a life where I’d had to work hard for everything, where I felt as if I’d raised myself, to have someone who was there when I needed her; it meant the world to me.

  The world howled in pain.

  I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or not. When I opened my eyes, Ryan was flailing, hopping as if he was on fire. “Get ‘em off! Get ‘em off!” It’d be funny anywhere else—this strong guy, screaming like a girl. He finally hopped one-legged into the water seeking escape.