Before We Go Extinct

by Karen Rivers

  A gray haze hung everywhere. The hammering of the rain on the roof sounded like something I’d only ever imagined until I heard it, then I felt like I’d been hearing it all my life. Now, instead of being stifling hot, it’s perfect, scrubbed clean. The air hangs easy in the sky, warm and fresh. The water is cold and clear.

  “We broke up,” she says, blowing a bubble with gum I didn’t know she was chewing.

  “Oh yeah?” I say. My voice is too heavy for my mouth. “Great,” I add. I stand up. Stretch tall, toward the wispy clouds. I hesitate for a second. “Hope you’re okay,” I add. Then I dive under the water, let it fill up my ears and my mouth and my nose. One sharp breath in and it would be in my lungs. Then what?

  Then nothing.

  Then I would be nothing.

  Then everything would be nothing.

  I open my eyes and spin my body over, like a seal. Through the distorted surface, I can see her standing on the rock, waiting to jump in. I swim hard and fast out into the middle of the bay, my muscles feel strong and hurt just enough for me to keep going, still on that same held breath. You can go a long way on one inhalation, it turns out.

  I climb out at the raft, sit in the chair for a while. She’s sat back down, didn’t come after me. I feel disappointed and relieved at the same time. From here, it looks like she’s reading and I miss her. What is wrong with me?

  Daff, I think. But I’m trying to think of her. She’s fading, that’s the problem. Daff and my feelings for her, what’s happening to them? Can meeting just one new girl completely erase the old one? What kind of guy am I, anyway?

  I lean back and pick at the yellow paint on the arms of the chair and I miss my mom and I miss The King and I try and try and try and try to remember how it felt to be New York–me, and not island-me, and it’s fading, like the yellow of this stupid chair in the sun.

  I belly flop back into the water and the surface slaps my stomach hard. Stinging. I swim hard and messy, with arms like Kelby’s boyfriend, flapping and splashing me to the shore, like a bird with a broken wing, beating uselessly at the air.

  I finally climb back up next to Kelby, my muscles shaking from the effort.

  “Did I tell you that Mum once took me to this priest friend of hers and he did an actual exorcism?” she says, like we’re in the middle of a conversation. “He for real laid his hands on my head and screamed things in Latin. Then he moved his hands. Actually”—she lowers her voice—“I think he copped a feel.”

  I stare at her, blinking salt water from my eyes.

  “I know, right?” she asks.

  “Wow,” I say, finally. “That’s intense.”

  Two kayakers in bright yellow boats slide by on the glassy sea. “Nice day!” one shouts. I raise my hand. Yes, it’s a nice day, sir. Now move it along.

  She shrugs. “She thought I was possessed because I kept having nightmares. But you know what? People have nightmares. It’s normal.” She stops. “Maybe Mum wanted to get the normal out of me?”

  “What’s up with your mom anyway?” I say to her. “She’s pretty over-the-top with the church … stuff.” Around the back of their cabin, Darcy has been building a little church. An actual church, out of stone. It’s tiny, like a playhouse. She goes in there and kneels. She puts flowers on the altar.

  Kelby sighs. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Can’t we talk about something else? Like, I don’t know, the first amazing concert you ever saw. Or … I don’t know. Anything.”

  “Okay,” I say. “It was Foo Fighters, last September, Madison Square Garden.” I lean back on the hot rock. It was with Daff and The King. Daff held my hand, so we wouldn’t get separated, she said. But it wasn’t that. The way she ran her finger around in a circle on my palm. I’d thought it meant something and I’d gone in for the kiss and she’d laughed and said, “No.” Not in a mad way, just casually, like that. “No.” So I stopped. Then The King came back from getting drinks, three huge cups of Coke spilling out of the drink tray, and then the band started playing, and that was it. That was all of it. The way she held my hand, I thought about that for a long time after. But it didn’t mean anything, after all.

  “I saw them,” Kelby says. “In Vancouver. They weren’t that great.”

  “They were okay. But this rock is great,” I say. “I love this rock.”

  “Weirdo,” she says. “It’s a rock. There are miles of rock. This whole island is rock.”

  “This rock is the best rock,” I say. “Of all the rocks. I don’t know. It’s like … perfect. It’s got this groove thing to lie in. And it’s the warmest. And the view! Look at the view!” I wave my arm at the bay, at the sky.

  She sighs and lies back. Takes her gum out and sticks it in one of the finger holes in the sandstone. Closes her eyes. Opens them. Sits up.

  “A bird could choke to death on that,” I say. “You could be committing actual bird homicide with that gum.” I pick the gum out and stick it on my shoe.

  “Gross,” she says.

  “I’ll throw it out later,” I say.

  “No bird would eat that,” she says. “Birds are smarter than that.”

  “You think they are,” I say. “But what if it’s one really stupid bird? What if that one dumb bird that you don’t know exists swoops down and is drawn to the delightful pinkness of this gum and then … Bam. Dead.”

  “Okay, okay,” she says, but she’s laughing. “Keep my gum, dude.”

  “I’m going to,” I say. “I am a hero to birds. I am a hero to the entire animal kingdom.”

  “Right,” she says. “We’ll talk when you save a hippo from marauders.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll save a hippo. Find me a hippo. I’ll save it.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Great.” She nudges me. “Hero.”

  “That’s me,” I say, suddenly needing to swallow a lump in my throat. “The Great White Hope.”

  “What?” she says.

  “Nothing,” I say. “But what were you going to tell me?”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yeah.”

  She moves away from me a bit and hangs her feet down the other side of the rock. The tide is starting to cover the sandbar. “We could make an island,” she says. “On the sand.”

  “Nah,” I say. “We can make an island tomorrow. Let’s just talk.”

  “Okay,” she says. “You know, maybe it was better when you didn’t talk.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “I could’ve been the silent savior of birds with special needs.”

  “And hippos,” she says, but she doesn’t laugh.

  Then, all at once, “Look, my dad died, okay? My dad died. My dad … died. He died and Mom found God and I found…” Her voice falters. “I found the stars. I figured out what they meant to me. After. I mean, we find the thing that saves us, right? That’s what happens. That’s the normal thing that happens.” She looks up at me, her eyes glistening with tears. “I know that sounds cheesy, so don’t you dare make fun of me. Not right now. I’m telling you that my dad died. No jokes allowed.”

  “Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “So this is what happened. I’m going to tell you. Don’t talk, only listen. This is the whole story: We were in the yard. The backyard behind our apartment building. Our building was an old house, split into apartments. It was nice. It wasn’t like an alley out back, it was like a real yard. Grass. The whole bit. Like something out of a storybook. I think that’s why they chose the apartment, for that square of grass that made them feel like real proper parents. Dad had this telescope and we were going to watch a meteor shower. He always loved that stuff. It was his thing.” She stops. Her eyes are slowly leaking, tears pooling on her lips. I know it’s entirely the wrong thing to think, but what I’m thinking is that I want to kiss her. “Now it’s mine,” she added. “Now the stars are mine. So I guess he left me the stars. Pretty nice, right? Better than leaving me a check, I guess.” She laughs, but not like it’s funny
, like she’s sad. The saddest.

  There’s probably something wrong with me that someone is pouring out their heart to me, and I am thinking about kissing. She licks the tear off her top lip. I shiver.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. I want there to be something bigger and more meaningful to say, but I can’t find the words. Sorry feels as weightless as a feather.

  “So we were out there,” she continues. “And he smoked, right? He was like this secret smoker. He thought we didn’t know that he smoked but he did smoke and he snuck away behind this shed thing that was back there, for a cigarette, and then there was this—”

  She stops. In the distance, one of the dogs is howling. Then a second one joins in. A seaplane flies low overhead and dips its wings. I can hear voices from somewhere, probably a boat. People laughing.

  In real life there are always people laughing at the wrong moment. If this was a TV show, someone would edit that out.

  “This,” I say, helpfully. “There was this…”

  “Yeah,” she says. “There was this explosion. I guess—I mean, I know. I thought that he … I was only nine. So I guess, I just assumed—I mean, I thought he was hit by a meteor. Because right before that, there was this shooting star that was huge. I mean, you could see the tail and everything. It stuck in the sky like a tattoo of light. And I was yelling, ‘Daddy, did you see—?’ and then there was an explosion that blew me into the fence.” She holds out her arm and I can see the faint white lines of an old scar, puckering the skin inside her elbow. “His match found a gas leak in the barbecue.”

  “So he died,” she says. “I guess that’s the whole story. Except that after that, after the explosion, I saw him. He was standing next to me. He said, ‘You’re gonna be okay, kid.’ He didn’t even talk like that, not for real. In real life, he had a British accent. He was English. So he wouldn’t have said that. He sounded like John Wayne! My shrink says that’s how he knows it’s just me, just brain messings, he said. My own brain messing with me. After that, I saw him all the time for a while. And then I stopped seeing him. But I think that it was like seeing a star, you know? You keep seeing its light even though it’s already gone.”

  I wait. “Is ‘brain messings’ an actual medical diagnosis?” I say.

  “Ha ha,” she says. “Funny.” But she does crack a small smile.

  “I’m available for bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals,” I say.

  “Gallows humor?” she says.

  “Yeah.” I nod. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Well, people die. You know that, of all people. So the living keep on living and the dead keep on being dead. Right? I guess that’s all there is to it.”

  “I guess,” I say.

  The tide has risen while we’ve been talking and my feet are submerged. Under the surface of the water, my feet look distorted and unreal. My heel catches a barnacle and a puff of red clouds out. It doesn’t hurt. I’m going to have so many scars from this summer. It’s leaving marks all over me. The water is cold. Later, I’ll feel it, but for now, it just feels the same as always.

  “I guess I wonder if you saw him,” she says.

  “Who?” I say.

  “The King,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. I swallow. I’m not thinking about kissing anymore. I’m thinking about not throwing up. “No,” I say.

  She shifts over so her leg is next to mine, our feet are dangling next to each other. Her leg is brown and smooth, mine is whiter and bonier. The place where they are touching is an inferno of heat. Not from the sun.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “Me too,” I manage. “I am, too.”

  I just want to stop feeling everything. I want it all to stop. I get up, grab my stuff, and head back up to the cabin. I don’t look and see if she’s still there, but I think she’ll probably sit there till it gets dark, waiting to see her dad again up in the stars, and for a minute I’m just so jealous that she has that, she has a place to look. I don’t have anything at all.

  31

  The dogs come rushing from their usual spot behind the logs to greet me and I grab my T-shirt and my pack, which I’ve filled with the kind of food that Dad and I still have, which is those stupid onion chips that he loves, a bag of cornflakes, and a few of those fruit cocktail cups that you eat when you’re a kid. The kind with extra cherries.

  I want to get far away from Kelby and the beach and my feelings about Kelby and about everything. How far do you have to go to get away from yourself? I want to go deep into the woods before I eat. We start out pretty fast, me and the dogs. I’m so used to them now, I hardly notice their huffing breath and the way they crisscross the trail, disappearing and reappearing from the salal. We go up and west and up and west until I figure that we might be near the highest peak of the island. My legs are wet from brushing through the still-rain-soaked undergrowth. There is no lookout provided by a handy parks department, or signs, or markers, or really anything at all except a few old trail flags with obscure writing on them, left here by loggers a decade ago. The trees are thinner up here and there are different kinds than lower down. They are smaller-leaved and spindly. The ground is covered with waist-high yellow grass and thistles and weeds and countless wasps buzzing around on the hard-packed earth. It’s hot and somehow the dampness in the air makes it feel like a sauna. I’m soaked in sweat and I miss the bay and the water and I wonder if Kelby is still sitting there and I know that she is.

  There are acres of blackberry bushes all around me now. I stuff myself with berries because let’s face it, fresh fruit beats tinned sugary stuff anytime. I eat and eat. Thorns scratch patterns in my arms and my hands get sticky with juice. Bees fly around me, brushing against my fingers and legs. I lose track of time. I feel like I’m someone else. Since when am I a kid who picks blackberries on islands? Who am I here?

  No one.

  By the time I start going down, I’ve lost my sense of which way I came. But down will eventually lead to a beach and from there, I’ll be able to figure out where I am. I pass the face of a cliff off to the side of what must be an old logging road that I’m walking down. I stop. I know that animals live in caves. I know that from movies and books and documentaries.

  I know I shouldn’t go into the cave.

  But knowing a thing and what you do with that knowing are not the same.

  I go over to the cave and shout into the entrance. Up close, it’s a small space. The entrance is only maybe two feet around. I can’t hear anything. I can’t smell anything. I remember my dad telling me that all wild animals have an unmistakable stink. A smell you don’t have to be an animal to smell. I sniff. I can’t smell anything but cool rock and dirt.

  I don’t know what I’m thinking, but I crawl in. The cave is pretty deep. I crawl about ten feet before I start to feel anxious, but it is so cool that it’s a relief from being outside. I lie down on my back.

  I don’t know why I do that. But I do.

  Lying on my back makes me feel buried alive, the roof of the cave only inches above my nose. It’s impossible not to think about coffins and suddenly I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, but I also can’t get out. I mean, to get out, I have to flip back on my belly. I have to wiggle slowly. I have to not panic, but I am panicking, and The King is in the ground in the ground in the ground in the ground.

  The King is

  The King can’t get out

  The King is decomposing and

  I wiggle out and the dogs sniff me and lick my legs as if to say, Seriously, dude, don’t go into caves.

  “I know,” I say to them, scratching each of them behind the ears. “Seriously. What?” I take in huge lungsful of breath.

  I try to slow my breathing.

  I try to slow my pulse.

  It’s getting dark.

  “Remember the Alamo,” I whisper, which is what we always said to each other when we started this game we used to play, this hide-and-seek treasure-hunt game we played in Cen
tral Park, but we didn’t call it that. We made up a cooler name: SCAT CATS. It’s an anagram. Maybe that’s only cool if you’re a huge nerd, which we are, I guess. Were. Whatever.

  The point was that you had to find this list of random things, but you couldn’t be seen by anyone else. If someone spotted you, you were out. There was a lot of crawling. There was a lot of hiding behind things. A cave like this would have been an awesome find. But nothing is scary when you’re with your friends. Everything is scary when you’re alone.

  Anyway, this one time, one of the things on my list was “wheel,” and I thought I’d remembered seeing an old tire down by the edge of this one place on the creek. I don’t know why that made sense to me, like I’d be able to carry an old tire back to our meeting place, along with the stuff I already had, which was a balloon on a string, a flamingo, an empty beer bottle, a half-eaten hot dog, and two filthy coins I begged off a street musician, but that’s where I was going.

  I made my way down the rocky slope that led to this creek. The balloon was basically like a giant red bubble pointing at where I was, so I figured I’d get spotted but there wasn’t anything I could do. If I let it go, it would be gone. There was garbage stuck between the rocks and it smelled terrible. I half expected to find a dead body in the water. At least the corpse of a rat. Or worse.

  I got down there and the tire I thought I remembered was gone. There was an old shopping cart though and I was trying to figure out how to pull off one of the wheels when I looked up and I saw them.

  I saw The King.

  He didn’t see me. He was talking to someone. A man. He was with the man. The man and he were together. The man was a middle-aged white guy. Balding. But big, like a biker. He looked somehow tough, even though he was in a suit. I think he was in a suit. Between the man, The King, and me, a woman dressed entirely in long purple robes was doing some kind of tai chi and the purple fabric kept blocking my view.