Feel Me Fall Read online

  By now all of us were up.

  Ryan emerged, soaked, a cluster of small welts rising from his arms. Something had bitten him. Out of the water, his body was taut, his hands fists, and he let out a throat-clearing scream that echoed through the jungle.

  Nico asked, “You all right, man?”

  He continued to clench in agony.

  “Ryan?”

  He uttered one word: “….pain….”

  “What happened? What bit you?” My feet dangled over the bamboo and I quickly pulled them up. I peered over the bed, but only saw dirt.

  Derek said calmly, “Probably bullet ants. They hang around the base of trees. And their sting is….” He motioned to Ryan as evidence.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I did.”

  “Not that they bit! Not that they—” He clenched again, his body contorted as if being shot by an unseen laser beam. If Ryan Wray felt pain, then those bites must’ve been off the Scovell scale. Ryan made his way back to the base of the tree and took his revenge. He kicked and scraped his foot against every bullet ant he found. “Take that you ugly shits.” He used his crutch and made paste of their bodies.

  When he finally calmed down, he asked, “What else is dangerous out here?”

  Derek smirked. “Pretty much everything.”

  That was the understatement of the year.

  I had slept, but my body was thrashed. Waking crystallized what I’d feared: I was bruised and sore, as if my body had been turned inside out. Anything for an aspirin. Or dry clothes. Morning came with a new malady: hunger. My stomach rumbled. The last meal I’d had was the terrible airplane food, which I’d barely touched. My mistake. How I’d love a piece of that congealed patty they called meatloaf.

  Then I realized what I was really suffering from: disappointment. I thought we’d wake up like a collective Sleeping Beauty to find a handsome rescuer next to us. But we were alone. On our own.

  I looked at the blue sky and saw no planes. Not even a vapor trail. Who knew how far we were from the crash site?

  I could feel the weight of despair descend on me. I didn’t want to move from my bamboo bed. I didn’t want to move at all. Viv scampered over to me. “Come with me.” Even here, under these conditions, she seemed effervescent.

  “Where?”

  “I have to go….” She nodded towards the privacy of the jungle. “I didn’t want to ask Nico.”

  Making sure to avoid any ants, we carefully made our way a few yards into the jungle.

  Viv said, “You always know how to fix things. Tell me it’s going to be all right.”

  I wanted to believe it. “It’s going to be all right.”

  She squatted and did what she needed to do. I looked away. A mist hung in the trees, like diffused cotton balls, and for a second it looked like the beauty of a postcard. I hated that image for seducing me with its splendor, its false sense of security.

  When Viv was done, she pulled up her pants and covered the spot with dirt.

  “I’m not cut out for this, Em.”

  “None of us are.”

  She said, “The jungle…it’s everywhere. There’s no where else to look.”

  “Look at me.” I forced a smile for her benefit. “Remember how I helped you pass Algebra II?”

  Her eyebrows rose in apprehension. “You’ll tutor me out of here?”

  “We’ll call this Survival 101. With your charm and my…I don’t know, what do I have?”

  “Brilliance.”

  “Of course. We’ll be just fine.”

  My mini-therapy seemed to help. We walked back to the group when we heard rustling nearby. Leaves trembled a few feet from us. A black boar snuck its head from the undergrowth, short tusks at its side and it sniffed. This was no cute pig. I’d read they were carnivores and could attack if provoked.

  Viv saw it and turned, ready to run. I reached out and grabbed her. “Don’t move,” I whispered. “Stand your ground.”

  Viv’s eyes were huge, and for once I felt how her size must have terrified her.

  “Just walk slowly backwards, okay? Don’t make any jerky movements and we’ll be fine. Tell me you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  The boar turned its head and looked at us.

  We slowly took a step backwards. Then another.

  The boar held its ground.

  Once we were a few feet away, it sniffed, finding something else it was more interested in and trotted away.

  Viv released her breath. “Ohmygod. I wasn’t breathing.”

  I tried to calm her down. “I think you just passed your first pop quiz.” Looking further, I saw the group was up and about. They were waiting for us.

  Viv ran to Nico. “There was a boar!”

  Molly rose, freaked. “A boar?”

  Nico held Viv, offering comfort.

  Derek said, “Boars won’t attack a group. He was probably just looking for easy prey. He’ll leave us alone as long as we stay together.”

  Ryan tried to joke. “I wouldn’t mind some bacon right about now.”

  We congregated near the river. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  Ryan said, “We gotta keep moving.”

  Anxiety rose within me. “We’ve got beds here.”

  Ryan said, “We need to find a village.”

  “Why? We’ve got a camp. We can stay….”

  “Emily, it’s not close enough to the crash site, and it’s not close enough to a village. We’re in the middle.”

  The middle of nowhere, I thought. The middle of hell.

  Before we left, we wrote in large block letters in the mud: HELP US. We included an arrow the length of a room pointing in the direction we were heading. It looked like footprints on a sandy beach, and I wondered if anyone would ever see it.

  We trudged through the overgrowth, careful to hold the branches in front of us so that they didn’t snap back to hit the person behind us. My body felt as if it had mutinied against me.

  Nico came up behind me. “How are you holding up?”

  He made me uncomfortable. “Okay, I guess. Why aren’t you up with Viv?”

  “Just used the bathroom, that’s all. On my way.”

  As he passed me, I saw the silver watch on his hand. “Does it work?”

  He took it off. “Nope. Broken as all get out. But my dad gave it to me when I got straight As.” He looked at me pointedly. “I like to think some things can be fixed.” With that, he passed me.

  The mood was dreary and after a few minutes, Nico busted out with a chant. “I saw a birdie flying in the sky.” He motioned for us to repeat it after him. “C’mon, people, get with the spirit.”

  Ryan said, “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “No, man,” Nico said. “My grandfather was in the Army. He taught me a bunch of these. Should hear some of the dirtier ones.” He said it louder: “I saw a birdie flying in the sky.”

  I replied, weakly, “I saw a birdie flying in the sky.”

  Nico smiled. “Now, was that so hard? I got some white stuff in my eye.”

  This time Viv joined in with me. “I got some white stuff in my eye.”

  Nico was on a roll now. “Is that water? Is that spit?”

  We repeated, Ryan joining us. “Is that water? Is that spit?”

  Nico said, “Oh, no, it’s birdie shit!”

  One by one we joined him in his marching chant: “Oh, no, it’s birdie shit!”

  From then it was a game of Nico chanting and us repeating: “Oh, birdie birdie in the sky/Why did you do that in my eye?”

  Against all odds, we laughed. It was my first genuine smile and the small piece of joy reminded me of how I felt around Johannes—that sense of aliveness. I lost myself in the memory of our first kiss.

  Since I’d seen him at the poetry reading, something invisible had been building between us. I’d felt a shiver of anticipation when his finger would linger ever so briefly on mine as he passed back our graded papers. How I look
ed forward to those moments, eternities of waiting followed by explosive Big Bangs.

  He’d arranged a one-on-one with me to talk about my short story assignment. I could tell he was nervous, energy radiated from him, around me, around us. It was chemistry, that elusive quality that makes no sense unless you’ve felt it yourself. We were pulsing.

  I could barely concentrate.

  He handed me back my short story. “I think this is a real contender for Shades of Light.” It was our school’s literary magazine.

  “I guess that means it’s a shoo-in if you’re the editor-in-chief.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get a big head.”

  He was so close. His eyes were green and flecked with shards of gold. I could lose myself in those eyes.

  Surprising myself, I lunged forward and kissed him. His mouth tasted of honey and saltwater taffy. I don’t know where I got the confidence to do it. It was so outside who I was. But when you know, you know.

  This is how I knew he felt the same: he didn’t pull away.

  Not right away.

  He pushed back a lifetime later, breathless, and looked at the open door. No one was there. He stepped back from me and there was fear in his eyes. “You’re underage.”

  I felt stupid. So so stupid. What was I thinking? I tried to soften everything. “I’m seventeen.” As if that made it any better.

  “I’m your teacher.” He whispered, “I could get fired.”

  “I won’t tell anybody…I’m sorry.”

  I ran to the door when he reached for my arm. “Emily, wait.” I turned and gazed at him.

  “Are you recording this?”

  “What? No.” I showed him my phone. It was off.

  “I didn’t know if someone put you up to it. Like a joke. Or a dare.”

  “No. Never.” This was making everything worse. He was going to make me say it. He wanted to hear me say why out loud. “Please, Mr. DeKoning. I’m embarrassed enough.”

  “There had to be a reason. Something I did….”

  What could I tell him? That it was everything he did? Even though I felt rejected, I knew the truth. I wasn’t crazy. This wasn’t one-sided. I’d felt it.

  “Don’t you feel the same?”

  He shook his head. “…I can’t.”

  “What about all the books and poetry we read about forbidden love? How nothing can stop the human heart? Not war, not rules, not families. Think of Romeo and Juliet. Lady Chatterley. Lancelot and Guinevere.”

  “And look how they turned out.”

  It wasn’t an answer, but it was enough. We found each other’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t say sorry enough. It’ll never happen again.”

  I saw something in him shift, like we were back at the café. “Won’t it?” He grabbed my face, kissed me, and my world ended and began anew. From that moment on, I was his.

  Chapter 5

  I lay in Johannes’ bed, inhaling the scent of his floral laundry detergent. The journey from our first kiss to his apartment was faster than he wanted and slower than I did. I learned about the relativity of time: days or weeks were nothing to Johannes; to me they were unendurable infinities. Yet, most of the time, we would just end up cuddling. We kissed; we messed around, but we never slept together. Not like that. I think it was his way of drawing a line. He wanted to wait, and though disappointed, I was willing.

  I’d had sex before—only once—but I’d never been in a relationship, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to act. I was learning by experience. I’d read books, seen movies, but those relationships were fictional; I never knew anyone that acted like people did on screen, so sure of themselves, so relaxed in their own skin. Where did that leave me?

  I didn’t want him to think of me as a girl. I wanted to be a woman.

  He napped next to me, his snores like a purring bunny. His apartment was small, purposely close to school to avoid a long commute, and it was lined with books, stacked Tetris-like along the shelves. He told me he liked the feel of a book in his hand, the smell of the pages, and the sense of history that people had actually touched it.

  I rolled out of his bed and stood up. My toes curled into the carpet. There weren’t posters of rock stars or women in bikinis on the wall—this was a man’s room. Instead, there were photos. As I looked closer, they were of him in Africa, standing next to smiling young children. They appeared to be in a crudely built school. It must’ve been from his time in the Peace Corp. He seemed to live his life whereas I merely existed. I wanted what he had, to take his sense of purpose as if by osmosis. The only oddity in his room was a stuffed Mickey Mouse on his desk.

  I heard him stir.

  “How long did I sleep?”

  “Not long,” I said. “What’s with Mickey?” I reached over and picked him up and imitated his cheery, chirpy voice. “Hi, Johannes. I’m a mouse that talks. Why am I in your room?”

  “When my parents moved from Amsterdam to America they wanted to move someplace happy. Someplace sunny.” He shrugged. “They picked Disneyland.”

  “You grew up in Disneyland?”

  “Near Disneyland. Anaheim.”

  I placed Mickey back on the desk. “I went there once. Saw the parade. I think it was my 10th birthday.” I plopped down next to him. “Maybe you can take me there. We’ll wear disguises.” I laughed. “I know exactly who we’d be.”

  “Who?”

  “Hubert Humphrey and Lolita. Oh snap!”

  He mimicked a gut punch. “Low blow. Low, low blow.”

  We fell into a comfortable silence and I wished I could stay here forever.

  “Anyone ever tell you,” he said, “you smell like puppy?”

  “I smell like a dog?”

  “Puppy. There’s a difference. Like…mother’s milk and joy. Somebody ought to bottle and sell it. They’d make a mint.”

  I tried to find the scent on myself, to no avail.

  “I had a puppy growing up,” he said. “Smelled so sweet butterflies would literally land on his head.”

  “I guess there’s worse things to be.”

  “Nothing better.”

  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  His face crinkled. “What an odd question.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  I hated when I heard my mother’s voice in my head telling me I was average. I hated the insecurities that bubbled up within me. I wondered what it would take for them to go away. “What happens when I turn 18?”

  “What do you mean?” He pulled me next to him and kissed my cheek. “I think you turn into a pumpkin. Oh, wait, that’s at midnight.”

  “Will we be able to, you know, go out in public?”

  “Only after you graduate.”

  That was an entire year away. A lifetime. “What if I transferred?”

  “To another school?”

  I nodded. “Or dropped out.”

  “No. No way. This is your education. One of the best around. I won’t allow it. Not on my account.”

  He sensed something change in me and said, “What?”

  “I love you.” I’d never told anyone that before. But I loved this man, this gentle, smart man. I was amazed how easily it rolled off my lips. He looked confused. “You don’t have to say it back. I get it. I just wanted you to know.”

  “I do. I most definitely do.” He rested his head on my thigh. “It’s complicated, that’s all.”

  “Everything’s complicated,” I sighed.

  When I had my period, my mother took me to an Olive Garden. We sat in a booth and she told me to order whatever I wanted. A handsome waiter probably a few years out of college gave recommendations and my mother was smitten. He took our orders and we were alone.

  Our menus gone, the table felt empty. It was only she and I, sitting across from each other, Dean Martin songs playing in the background. It was unlike being at home where we passed each other, coming and going, muttering hellos and goodbyes. Actual conversat
ion was an endangered species. Rather than feel excited at this mother-daughter bonding, I was uncomfortable. There was something forced, something fake. While I felt invisible most the time, at least it seemed natural.

  “When I was your age,” she said, “do you know what my mother did after I got my period?”

  “Mom,” I said, not wanting patrons to overhear.

  “She didn’t do anything. It’s like she didn’t know. Or didn’t care. I knew if I ever had a little girl, I’d sit her down proper and celebrate her awakening.”

  This was the thing my mom chose to celebrate? This biological thing I had no control over? Not my French horn recital or the spelling bee I almost won. This.

  My mom was always on the dramatic side, given her interest in acting. It’s the reason she came out to Los Angeles in the first place. She was the belle of the ball at her Minnesota high school and once she graduated, came out west. Maybe I inherited some of her need to escape: I weaved scenarios where I was caught in a Cinderella story and my mother was just a placeholder. I would create alternate versions of my life, daydreaming.

  “Do you have any questions? Anything you want to ask? The things I could tell you, believe me….”

  I shook my head. I already knew the whole birds and bees spiel. She seemed disappointed that I didn’t take her up on her offer to relive her glory days.

  “Well, there are a few pearls of wisdom I figured I’d share. I’d like to think somebody could learn from my mistakes. At least they’d be worth something. Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” I sighed.

  How could the person who raised me be such a stranger? I wondered if she would ever know me.

  She asked, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m right here.” What more did she want me to do?

  She leaned in as if telling me secrets of the universe. She paused, waiting dramatically for maximum effect: “Never trust anything with a penis.” She sat back with a self-satisfied look. “If there’s any piece of advice that’s better, I haven’t heard it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I almost asked her to repeat it so I could laugh when she said penis.

  Her warning wasn’t without merit. She never did find her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Instead, my mother got knocked up by a musician who she never saw again. That is about as brief an explanation as I got as to my origin. (No, I’m not the daughter of a famous rock star. I am the daughter of a guy who sweet-talked my mom with a six-string and then disappeared. My own ditty of the event goes something like this: “This is what she told me, this is what she said, your father’s long gone, ‘tis better to think him dead.”)