We All Fall Down

by Natalie D. Richards

  At the second officer’s urging, I step out and he unlocks the cuffs, all the while talking.

  “We could take you down to the station, but Mr. Quinn assures us this is highly out of character for you. He says he’s known you for years.”

  Denny won’t meet my eyes, but his voice is hard and bright. “Since she was a tiny little toddler in pigtails.”

  Definite lie. I didn’t meet Theo until I was twelve. My hair hasn’t been long enough for pigtails since I was eight.

  Denny gives me one last look as the police issue final warnings. I nod when they tell me to get in touch with my doctor about that medicine. Nod again when they tell me it isn’t safe for a young lady to walk here before dawn. And one last time when they tell me they don’t want any more trouble from me.

  In the end, they drive away and Denny waves, smiling until their taillights disappear around a corner. The expression that falls over his face once they’re out of sight is too cold and mean to name.

  “You’re fired,” he says to Theo. “I’ll take you home Friday after I’m done.”

  Theo flinches. I close my eyes. Wait to hear the shuffle of his steps as Denny leaves.

  When I open them again, Theo isn’t looking at Denny. He’s watching me, with unlaced boots and a swollen left eye. There’s still a smear of blood, dried mostly, under his nose.

  The city is coming to life, but it’s still quiet here, nothing but the sound of the water. Nothing but the two of us and this terrible bridge. And whatever is haunting it. I don’t know what to call it. I’m not sure it has a name. I’m only sure it wants to be here. It wants to stay close. Theo doesn’t want to hurt me, and I don’t want to hurt him. But a feeling I can’t explain tells me this darkness in the bridge wants to hurt us both. I don’t think it wants anything more.

  Theo

  I don’t know what I expect when Paige walks up to me, her little bare feet so quiet against the wood. I’m worried she’ll find some glass or a splinter, so I turn like I’m going to get her shoes, but she stops me, hand on my arm and eyes filled with tears.

  Her breath shakes in and out, and her touch messes with me. I can’t think when she’s this close. Hell, I can’t think anyway, but now?

  “I’m sorry,” she says, choking on the words.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Let me be sorry,” she says, half laughing. But then her face crumples. “I thought it was you. I thought you were doing all this. Leaving things for me to find.”

  “Me doing it would have made a hell of a lot more sense than whatever is actually happening.”

  “Stop defending me,” she whispers, biting her lip.

  “No.”

  She laughs a little, but she doesn’t move her hand. Her fingers are so soft and cool, but they burn right through me. “Friday is only three days away. That’s not much time.”

  “Maybe it’ll be best. None of this happened when I was away from you.”

  Her fingers curl over my arms. “I don’t care. I know who you are, and you are more than that night. More than everyone sees. I don’t want to be away from you anymore.”

  My heart thuds because I’m a sucker. And an idiot. And a lot of other stupid things, but I can’t think of any of them because her hand is moving up my forearm to my bicep. Her other hand is touching my chest, and I can’t help myself when I’m in my right mind. I’m sure the hell not in my right mind right now.

  I kiss her, and she melts into me. We both whisper apologies between kisses. I can’t get her close enough and I can’t stand myself for hurting her and I hate that all this badness is between us. I say all of that while I’m kissing her. I don’t know what she can make out.

  “I love you, Paige.” That part is clear, and there isn’t some melodramatic bullshit pause where she thinks about it or pulls back all contemplative. She just presses in tighter with her own choked I love you that I feel more than I hear.

  I don’t know who pulls back first, who realizes this is the worst possible idea, given all that’s gone down. Probably Paige—she is always the smart one. Either way, I know when it’s over. I can feel the bruising cold of the air between us and the ache she leaves when she’s not touching me anymore.

  Her lips are swollen and her eyes are red, and damn it, she’s crying again.

  “This is so messed up,” she whispers. “We are so messed up, aren’t we?”

  I want to argue, but I know she’s right. How can I say we’re anything else? Half of our last handful of encounters have ended with punches and one of us in handcuffs.

  She sighs and we both turn to head off the bridge, but we’re not alone. Denny’s waiting at the top of the stairs, arms crossed and looking as mean as I’ve ever seen him. There’s something about this I don’t like, a lot of somethings. He said his piece before, and him being back can’t be anything but trouble.

  We inch our way closer, but Denny does nothing to make it easier on us. Polite to a fault, Paige mumbles a polite thank-you, which he mostly ignores. I start forward, ready to tear into him for being a dick. He cuts me off with a single look.

  “Your parole officer just called. Apparently, he couldn’t reach you last night on your phone.”

  He called yesterday? The last twenty hours rolls back through my mind, most of them spent on Gabriel’s couch, chasing random search efforts and looking through old copies of history books and blueprints. “Sorry, I was at a friend’s.”

  “I don’t care where the two of you were,” he snaps.

  My hands roll into fists, and Paige touches my arm automatically. I ignore the warning and charge closer, growling. “Paige was on campus. I was with Gabriel.”

  “The creepy kid who hung around the bridge all day? Yeah, I finally figured out where I’d seen him before. That’s the kid of Joe Barnum, the guy who jumped off this bridge. What kind of DNA you think that produces?”

  “I’ll call my PO, all right?”

  “No, Theo, it’s not all right. I could lose this job over your antics. I’m already three hundred dollars in the hole over those damn locks, and now you’re getting tangled up with this girl, the police, and a kid with two dead parents and a guaranteed ticket to the loony bin, given his family history.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you! You need to find some friends who aren’t crazy. Somebody that can level you out!”

  “Go to hell, Denny!”

  “Hell’s better than wherever you’re going to end up.” The worst of it is that he doesn’t yell. He simply lays the truth out, bare and terrible. He doesn’t think of me as a kindred spirit. He thinks of me as a good deed. A nice favor for his sister.

  Denny turns away, pulling a cigarette out of his pack as he heads down the stairs. My body slumps like someone’s kicked me. I guess it’s a bit like that.

  I lean against the rail, staring down into the dark water. I just want this over. I want to end the awful thing on this bridge, and I don’t know if I can.

  Paige shoulders closer to me, and I sigh. We hold hands like it’s all we have left. Not far from it, I guess. Neither one of us says much. Maybe we’re afraid of what the bridge will do if we—

  I stop cold and Paige looks up at me, curious.

  “Wait,” I say. “Can you stay for a minute?”

  She nods and we stand there, hands clasped halfway across the river. The breeze is gentle and the sun is weak and I don’t smell a single damn thing. I close my eyes and listen hard to the absolute peace and quiet.

  And I think I understand.

  “It’s us,” I say. “You and I together. I think it’s some sort of shield.”

  “A shield?”

  I squeeze her hand and grin. “Yeah, a shield. When we touch, I think there’s some kind of magic in it. Good magic.”

  She arches a brow. “I think there’s an
eighties rock ballad trapped in your brain.”

  “I’m serious.”

  She bites her lip, her expression sobering. “You can’t feel the haunting right now. And you think that’s because we’re touching.”

  “Maybe,” I say. I let go of her hand and take a step back. “My friend Gabriel thinks whatever this dark energy is, it feeds on our energy. Maybe us touching, getting along—maybe that’s how the good energy will win.”

  “Maybe.” She doesn’t sound like she believes it.

  “Let’s test the theory. Isn’t that the scientific way?”

  “I’m not sure what science has to do with any of this.”

  “You told me science is everywhere,” I remind her.

  “I did. I also believed that bridges were bridges and purses full of blood didn’t swim through rivers.”

  Nothing strange is happening. A jogger passes, and then a kid on a bike. Paige moves her hands for her pockets, and I think she’d check her phone if she wasn’t trying to indulge me. A great blue heron swoops low over the bridge, diving for one of the riverbanks where a piece of the river curves sluggishly around a patch of trees.

  “It doesn’t seem to be haunting us right now,” she says.

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” she says. “Maybe it’s all chaos.”

  I feel a pinch of frustration, or maybe it’s impatience. Hard telling with me.

  “I really need to get to class,” she says. “Melanie’s been super aware of my stress level. I’m already going to have to explain where I went, and we present tomorrow.”

  “I know that, but we need to figure this out too.”

  “Well, I might not have that luxury. I’ve been gone since before curfew ended. People will be looking for me. I’ll probably get in trouble.”

  “Then go,” I say. “I can stay here while you do your college thing.”

  “Don’t say it like that?”

  “Say it like what?”

  Something changes. I don’t know exactly what it is, but somehow the light goes cold and the shadows from the bridge beams… They aren’t missing, not exactly. They’re just wrong—too long and jutting off at strange angles.

  Paige presses her lips together and stares at the other side of the bridge. She’s not noticing any of this, so maybe it’s just me. I’ve got plenty enough screws loose to explain some weird lighting.

  “What are we even doing here?” she asks softly. “I love you. You know I do. But we have so much bad between us.”

  “Maybe we could be good together this time.”

  “Or maybe we’re both too messed up.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I say. “I refuse to believe that.”

  “Theo, you have oppositional defiant disorder! You don’t always believe red means stop or that falling from a tree will hurt.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I need us to think rationally here. We can’t do whatever we feel like without a single thought.”

  “So, what then? We go on pretending we don’t feel all this? That we don’t want more?”

  “I’m not saying that! I just don’t know—”

  Something moves. There, under my feet, fast and dark beneath the boards. Paige gasps, stepping back, and I see it too, a shapeless, nameless form slipping behind the rusting beam.

  It’s starting again. I feel it more than I hear it, like voices so far away they’re indistinguishable from background noise.

  And then:

  What the hell is wrong with you?

  A mother is crossing the bridge with two young boys and a baby in a stroller. The first boy holds a bright-red toy hammer out in front of him as he jogs along, hair still mussed from sleep. He’s pink cheeked and chattering happily, but I don’t hear his voice. I hear mine.

  You want the full psychiatric report?

  Then the next kid comes, more serious and steady with every step. Darkness oozes up between the boards right in front of them. The little kid looks right at me, his lips opening and closing around words that belong to me.

  ADD, ODD. Shit, Paige, help me out.

  The darkness pushes at the boards until they groan, and the boys chatter on and on, totally unaware.

  I’m done with you.

  The shadow rolls under the boys and the mother, swelling until it’s pushing up between all the boards now, and then when the pushing isn’t enough, it slams hard at the underside of the planks. I jump and Paige yelps.

  The darkness is everywhere, but the boys and the mother aren’t looking down—they’re watching us now. The mom, looking tired in a faded jogging suit and sloppy ponytail, gives me a wary frown and then takes her son’s hand. His eyes are big when he looks at me, Kool-Aid-stained mouth shaping my words.

  “Who isn’t done with me?”

  The mother pulls his arm and they push on, walking across boards that are oozing darkness. The black thing pushes up between those cracks, twelve inches high, then eighteen. I bite my lip so I won’t scream. Paige strangles on another pained noise and starts forward, but the family is moving right past, one foot in front of the other. The back wheel of the woman’s stroller bobbles sideways and forward again, pushing through the blackness. The shadow grows long and thin and sharp as though it will stab the entire family.

  Paige starts forward—to stop them—but I reach for her. My fingers grazing her sleeve and then wrapping around her arm.

  The shadow dissipates, and silence descends. My ears ring in the sudden quiet, the light going golden and sweet in the span of one breath. Above us, the rafters arch majestically, and the little boys jabber at the end of the bridge. They chirp about superheroes and battles in their little kid voices.

  “This can’t…” Paige’s voice trails off, and who can blame her? What the hell is there to say? None of this is possible, and every bit of it is real.

  I slide my fingers down her arm, and when we grip hands, both of our palms are tacky with sweat. My breath saws in and out, and Paige looks like she might throw up.

  “All right. Theory feels pretty sound,” I say. “The bridge feeds off the bad energy between us.”

  She’s very still and quiet for a second, and then buries her head into my shoulder and then my chest. Our gripped hands are tangled at an awkward angle, and her breath hitches.

  “Get me out of here,” she whispers.

  “What about class?”

  She looks at the buildings, longing and desperation in her eyes. But her body shudders and she finally turns away. “I can’t. I can’t. Please, Theo.”

  “Okay,” I say, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Everything feels better in that moment, the sun and the breeze and the grass all feel soft. Paige slips on her shoes and leans into me, and I look back at the bridge. I swear to God it wants us like this, so messed up and bound together. I pull her close to my side because I’m thinking too much. Wondering if maybe the truth is we’d be better off apart.

  Paige

  This is the dance we know best. I am shivering and sick, panic coursing through my body. Theo moves fast but steadily, talking, talking, talking.

  He chatters when I panic because it helps. He winds from one subject to another while I stumble beside him, bleary-eyed and silent. We walk because he knows moving is better when I’m like this. When I’m still, my body itches and tingles. It’s like I’m trying to come out of my own skin.

  We walk until I stop shaking, rounding blocks and cutting through parks. Eventually, I don’t think about every breath. Eventually, his words coalesce into sentences with meaning. I start to respond, clipped one-word answers turning into little comebacks and soft questions. Theo slows then, rounding us back to Denny’s house. We go inside once he sees the truck is gone.<
br />
  We sit on the couch, and my adrenaline ebbs. I’m left empty and dry and terribly sad. He curls an arm around my shoulder then and lets me go quiet. We remember this part too.

  I don’t know what that says about us. We know how to fall apart better than anything.

  After a long while, he kisses my hair, and his voice goes low and deep. Not like the chatter. That’s just white noise to keep me from flipping out any worse. When he speaks now, it’s what he’s really thinking.

  “Better?” he asks.

  I feel the scrape of his unshaved jaw at my forehead. Everything smells like Denny’s cigarettes, but when I kiss him, he still tastes like Theo. Like home.

  I kiss him every time he tries to ask me if I’m better. Mostly, I do it because I’m allowed. It’s so easy and so powerful. Kissing Theo makes me crazy in all the right ways. And it pushes out every awful, buzzing fear.

  He starts to know without asking. I’m not surprised. I tug his hand toward my waist, and he scoops me closer. Kisses me deeply. We do it over and over. Dozens of kisses that make me bubble up from the inside out.

  It’s perfectly imperfect. Our noses bump if we move in too quickly. Sometimes Theo tries to talk right in the middle. And once, he wraps his arms around me so suddenly and tightly that our teeth clack together.

  But mostly, it’s magic. In kissing, Theo is not what I expected. He kisses me the way I always wanted to kiss him. He’s slow and thorough and a bit desperate. Kissing him makes my stomach curl up. It heats my insides and soothes my nerves.

  And nothing about it feels wrong.

  We pull apart and I sigh. “We’re not good together unless we’re a mess. That can’t be good, can it?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. It isn’t like him to leave it at that, but he does. He looks sad. “Even if we end this haunted mess on the bridge, what happens then? How could we ever explain this?”