The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  Even though there were no props (and no Drew) tonight, those guys had schooled us before the chorus began. Dan had been tasked with the first two verses – further proof of Pete’s tactical genius. Not only did Dan have an unexpectedly gorgeous voice, he strutted around like Mick Jagger so convincingly that even I believed he spent every weekend on stage.

  By the second verse, I knew we’d lost. Dan’s floppy bangs were drenched in sweat, like streams of brown molasses running down his forehead and into his eyes. And every single female in the bar was screaming at the top of her lungs. Especially the Italians.

  At some point, Pete jumped off the stage to help Dan get the whole crowd on their feet. That nitwit Meg Green was standing on top of her chair, bouncing to the music like she was the only person in the universe who mattered. While I held my breath for the impending twerk train wreck, Pete Russell suddenly appeared before me, out of breath and sweating like a fool.

  “How you feeling now, Sully?” The smugness in his tone was unbearable. “Hope your recall on Apache is a little stronger than your last performance, because…”

  Pete pinched his nose together like he’d just gotten downwind of Marshall Freeman after his kale chips, then winked at me and ran back to the stage area. Only he stopped short. With little to no effort, he joined that Meg girl on top of her chair, wrapped his arm around her waist and produced a microphone from his pocket as he began the third verse. Totally off-key.

  Well, hallelujah. At least he was bad at something.

  But did anyone in the bar notice? No way. At the last minute, Pete jumped back on stage and directed different sections of the bar to sing the final echo-repeat section of the song. The Addison girls and I stood in awe. No way could two Oregon frat boys create spontaneous magic like that. One hundred percent impossible.

  As the crowd cheered them off the stage, I saw Pete chatting up the bartender, presumably to order up Apache on our behalf. But some Frenchman had already taken center stage, butchering The Eagles’ Desperado in an operatic voice and terrible diction. Senses, I urged telepathically. You can’t come to your ‘sentence,’ bro. English isn’t even your language. Read what is on the screen.

  After two painful minutes, I finally stood and faced the Addison girls. “Listen, I’m really sorry, guys, but we have to go onstage now.”

  Anne’s eyes widened. “I knew it. There was a loser’s clause?”

  “Oh, come on.” Kelly waved her hand dismissively. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Right.” I rested my hands on my hips. “You’re right, it’s not that bad. Pete never said all four of us have to dance. He just said ‘you,’ which technically means me. Meredith Sullivan. The one who brought mortal disgrace upon the motherland. So, I’ll dance. It’ll be fine, really.”

  Harper’s eyes narrowed. “Dance to what, exactly?”

  I tried not to wince as I answered. “Sugarhill Gang’s Apache. The Ultimate Dance Dubs 3 choreography. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, and no way,” Harper steamed. “I refuse to do any of that whooping.”

  “Technically, the track will do that part.” Kelly pulled her blond hair into a ponytail, readying for battle. “Okay, Meredith, you do the dance, I’ll take care of the rap. Harper and Anne can back me up on the chorus.”

  The other two started to protest, but just then, the bartender announced Ah-pah-shay over the loudspeaker, and time was up. When the four of us took the stage again, there were actual boos coming from every corner of the room. Luckily for me, that sort of negative feedback only served to rally my inner competitor. No way would Pete Russell see me fail twice in one night.

  When the music began, I started the up-and-down arm and leg pumps, executing every move like a boss. By the time Kelly started to rap, the crowd was actually cheering. But midway through my rotation, I discovered why. Pete and Dan had joined us onstage, and bookish, elegant Anne had grabbed Kelly’s mic to perform the second verse.

  Every single word, straight from memory.

  In my shock, I stopped dancing. But then Pete caught my eye, lifting his hand above his head and rotating his finger in a circle. Lasso, he mouthed. For once, I didn’t roll my eyes. I just did as I was told, and did it with a smile. A real one.

  Within twenty seconds, the whole bar had joined us – French, Italian, Monegasque, Meg Green Minion… whatever. Later, as the six of us tromped down the medieval streets of Rouen back to the hotel, I had to admit: I’d never had that much fun in my entire life. Never.

  Pete Russell had conned me right out of my misery.

  EIGHT

  The sky was so unusually bright and the air so crisp the next morning as we boarded the bus that I had to pull a sweater out of my bag before the bus driver loaded it in the undercarriage. But despite the dazzling sunshine outside, a somber mood crept like a fog among us on the drive to the American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer. No one spoke. No one slept. Everyone watched the Norman landscape slide past and prepared ourselves for what was to come.

  At your average student bus tour stop, you would see clusters of friends walking along, their laughter floating on the wind, but today was different. I stood for a long time by the northern reflecting pool, near the memorial, and watched my classmates tread carefully among the rows of grave markers. Without exception, each person explored alone. Not a cloud hung in the sky, and the grassy hill below me was so brilliantly green that if it weren’t for the thousands of crosses and Stars of David sloping down to the sea, you might never know what happened here.

  Madame Beauchamp had dedicated two hours of our day to explore this place from our shared history. After a while, I meandered down to the memorial chapel at the midpoint of the cemetery, then kept walking along the path. The chapel’s location at the crossroads of four gravel walkways made a visual barrier, so most people turned back after they toured the inside. But there were still four full sections of graves beyond, so I walked another hundred meters or so, reaching into my messenger bag to pull out the camera my brother had given me last Christmas, then trained the lens up the nearest row to my right. At the far end near the sea, I spotted Pete Russell through the viewfinder, tugging his hood over his head, crouching down in front of one specific cross.

  I watched for a few moments as he slid two tiny flags from the sleeve of his fleece – one American, one French – rolling them back and forth in his fingers as he took in the white cross before him. Then he pushed both flags gently into the ground at the base of the headstone and lifted his hand to where the name was engraved, trailing his fingers along the words.

  I should have headed elsewhere. I should have respected whatever moment he was having in this of all places. But instead I walked down the row of graves to stand beside him.

  “Hey, Sully,” he nodded his head toward the cross as I approached. “Come see this.”

  Without a word, I stepped closer. The headstone read:

  **************************

  Peter S. Beckett

  First Lieutenant, U. S. Army

  Independence, Missouri

  June 6, 1944

  **************************

  “That’s my great-grandfather on my mom’s side,” Pete said quietly, shifting slightly to make room for me beside him. “He made it off the beach but died coming up the hill, just over there.”

  The hairs on my arms stood on end. I had never met anyone who could say such a thing about a relative. “Wait, is that how you got your name? You’re named after this Peter?”

  “Sort of.” Pete bent over to straighten the flags he’d just prodded into the ground. “My mom named me after her dad, Peter Beckett, Junior. He was born in August 1944.”

  “Wow. So, your granddad…”

  “Never knew his father.” Pete stood upright again, and the two of us stayed motionless for a while, listening to the wind whistling past. I bent forward to run my fingers along the lettering of Pete’s great-grandfather’s name, trying to imagine how this must feel. None of my relatives had
ever fought in a war. Even if you’d never met the person who died, this was still huge. A real-life hero was buried here, and Pete shared his name and his blood.

  I turned to face him, pushing my sunglasses back up my nose. “You brought those flags all the way from home just for this visit?”

  Pete laughed a little. “My grandmother asked me to bring these two with me and leave them here. That’s the real reason I ran back to the Sigma Phi house last Sunday morning – to find these flags in my storage bins. It’s sort of a miracle that I made it to the airport at all.”

  “But how did you know where to find his grave? Did you look it up online or something?”

  Pete looked down the row toward the sea for a few seconds, then turned back to me. “I’ve been here before. I used to come with my family twice a year when we lived in Paris.”

  Oh hey – welcome back, Sneaky Pete. There was no way he was telling the truth. This guy’s favorite pastime had always been making me question my sanity. Good thing I knew how to return the favor.

  “Parisian childhood, huh? That’s cool.” I opened my messenger bag to put my camera away and took my time disassembling the lens from the body. “Let me guess – you were here from age three to six?”

  “Four to eight.” Even through his dark lenses, I could see Pete blinking at me in disbelief. “Hey, how’d you guess that?”

  “Oh, you know – the native-level accent, the easy recall of the most arcane grammar rule. Oh, and the annoyingly accurate cadence of your speech. You can’t pick those things up in a high school classroom, my friend. They can only be acquired during prime language learning years.”

  “Well, that’s true. Guess I’m lucky that way.”

  “Exactly. So is your mom a Romanov?”

  Pete blinked again. “Sorry?”

  “You heard me, Pyotr. There must be some reason your family had to move to France when you were a child. So what happened? Did the Bolsheviks finally track you down?”

  Pete pulled my sunglasses off my face, turning them over and over in his hand. “Have you got a hidden camera in these glasses?”

  I snatched my sunglasses out of his hand and shoved them back onto my nose. “Don’t be glib, Pyotr Petrovich Romanov Russell, rightful Grand Duke of St. Petersburg. Just tell me the truth.”

  Pete stood motionless for a moment, a shadow crossing his face. But then he took off his aviators and started polishing them on the pouch of his hoodie, over and over and over again. Then, before he lifted them back onto his face, he fixed his gaze on me in a way that made me feel like a kid in the principal’s office.

  “I am telling the truth, Meredith. For four years, I lived with my parents in a flat on rue Guénégaud. My grandparents bought it in the eighties before real estate went berserk here. That’s where Dan and I live now. You and Anne should come visit soon. I’d like that.”

  The Pete standing before me was someone I’d never seen before. The swagger had disappeared, and as he slid the glasses back on his face, he seemed slighter somehow. And much, much older, like some ancient soul walking among us, who had finally shed the post-adolescent body he’d shanghaied so he could disappear among the masses.

  “So, wait.” My mouth went dry. “You guys really did just pack up and move to France? Isn’t that a little unusual?”

  “Says an Irish girl whose family just picked up and moved to Oregon,” he grinned. “But yeah, that’s what happened. We moved here so my mom could earn a couple of master’s degrees.”

  “Huh. I guess that explains why you deconstruct Balzac and Dumas like a boss.”

  “So many inappropriate jokes I could make right there.” The smile on Pete’s lips widened. “My mom’s plan was to get a doctorate when we got back to the States, but instead, she decided she loved teaching high school. She always told me she preferred building the foundation than trying to repair all the cracks on the other end of the spectrum.”

  My mind could not keep track of all the pieces of this puzzle. “Was she your teacher?”

  “She was.” He pointed at the grave below. “Those two flags were from my mom’s classroom, which is why my grandmother wanted me to leave them here. I think First Lieutenant Beckett would’ve loved it. Don’t you?”

  I studied Pete for a few seconds as he bent over again, fiddling again with the flags like he was buying time, waiting for a wormhole to open up and let him out of this dimension. When he looked back up at me, I asked the next obvious question.

  “So what did your dad do while your mom was studying? Was he your manny?”

  “Manny, photojournalist.” Pete stood, kicking at a clump of dirt. “Depended on the day.”

  Pete’s dad is a photojournalist? If my brother Ian knew, he would be knocking down the Russells’ front door without half a second of hesitation.

  Was there actually a wormhole around here? Because this was nuts. If you’d told me two weeks ago that Pete Russell and I would have one single thing in common besides our major, I would have told you to lay off the whiskey bottle. I’d learned more about him in the last hour than I had in the two years before. And I felt a little sick as I realized how badly I’d misjudged him.

  “Well, sir, you have lived quite a life,” I said, propping my hands on my hips. “So, I guess your parents are retired now, huh?”

  The color drained from his face. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “What do you mean, why? You keep talking about their jobs in the past tense, and...”

  Pete smiled again – a sort of sickly half-smile – and in the mirrored shades of his aviator sunglasses, I watched the panic bloom across my own face. Had I paid attention like a normal, compassionate person, I would have noticed the signs of his discomfort ten minutes earlier.

  Pete Russell’s parents were dead.

  He’d just confirmed it without a word. The grief was right there, rolling off him in waves and into the silence around us. As I stood there watching him watching me, I wished with my whole soul that I had turned left instead of right earlier at the memorial chapel up the hill. I could keep wishing that for the rest of my life, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Some things you can’t take back. So when gigantic tears spilled down my cheeks, I let them fall. Not only for Pete’s loss, but for the words I’d just wielded like a broadsword.

  NINE

  Maybe Pete was used to people acting crazy around him, because when he saw me crying, he clasped his left hand around my shoulder and squeezed gently. Even though I could see years’ worth of grief bubbling just below his calm expression, I could also tell that at that moment, he was more concerned about me. How had I misjudged him for so long?

  Because that’s what I did best. Within thirty seconds of our first meeting, I’d locked Pete in a dolt-sized box and never set him free. In my mind, the messy goatee and oversized clothing were signs of sloth. The need to out-snark everyone reeked of Mommy issues. Or Daddy issues. Or both. And obviously, his penchant for nicknaming me was proof of a warped brain.

  One time, I’d even mocked Pete’s tattoo – the Mandarin characters for grace or peace or something noble like that – right to his face. I still couldn’t tell you why I did it. I’d never mocked Drew, and his tattoo was actually cringeworthy: his name backwards – WERD – in block letters on his forearm so that it would always show up as ‘DREW’ in pictures (which, of course, it doesn’t). He wasn’t even drunk at the time. Just moronic enough to execute one of Ian’s dares.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but only managed two syllables. “Pete, I’m…”

  What? Sorry? Ashamed of myself? The worst person on all seven continents? All of these words and more flew through my mind but refused to leave. So I just stood there, stammering until Pete’s expression morphed from concern to something between horror and pity. But then he smiled and lowered his hand from my shoulder, waving it like he wanted to Jedi-mind-trick me right out of this moment and into the next.

  “We’d better go, Sully,” he said, bending to pick up my bag
from the ground. “The bus leaves in fifteen minutes.”

  And because I was a lunatic, I simply cleared my throat, took the strap of my messenger bag from his outstretched hand, then gestured for him to lead the way. Neither of us said another word as our feet walked in unison, first on the soft grass carpeting the gravesites, then on the gravel walkway leading back to the exit.

  Crunch. Crunch. Awkward silence. Crunch.

  Just past the chapel, Pete finally spoke. “Hey, Sully? I have a question. Weren’t you and Lindsay Foster roommates?”

  It took a few seconds for Normal Meredith to emerge, what with the half ton of contrition weighing her down. “Um… I’m sorry, what?”

  “You lived with Lindsay freshman year, right?” He repeated. “I’ve been thinking all morning about those Ultimate Dance Dubs competitions we used to have at Highgate, and that got me thinking how you and Lindsay were sort of inseparable back in the day. Or did I dream that?”

  “No,” I said without looking his way. “We lived together. Just freshman year, though.”

  Pete cast me a sidelong glance. “You didn’t want to live with her again last year?”

  “No. Last year, I got a single. I had to study for the Beckett qualifying exam.”

  “Right,” Pete said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So, is that how you know Sutton? Lindsay introduced you guys?”

  I actually snorted. I couldn’t help myself. “No, Drew and I have been friends since kindergarten. See how I’m alphabetically cursed?”

  “Russell, Sullivan, Sutton.” Pete’s face softened. “Good one, Sully. So what was our Andrew like as a kid?”

  “Whip smart. He was salutatorian in high school, you know.”

  “No way.”

  “Don’t let the surfer vibe fool you. Life-of-the-party Drew never existed until college. The kid I grew up with spent every minute of his pre-college life either playing sports, working at my parents’ restaurant, or studying. He’s at Highgate on a full ride.”