One Moment

by Kristina McBride

  “What would you say Joey’s demeanor was when you arrived?”

  “He was just Joey.” I closed my eyes and remembered the way the sunlight framed him after his first jump. He’d stood above me, shaking water from his hair all over me as I lay on the towel. I’d giggled. Kicked him away. I wanted to scream at myself for that. I should have pulled him closer and never let go.

  I took in a deep slicing breath as I remembered his smile. The sound of his laughter. “He was joking. Laughing. Like always.”

  “So you wouldn’t say he seemed depressed. Or angry about anything? Maybe a fight with his parents? His brother? Or … anyone else?”

  “No.” I blinked several times, something else in my memory shifting just out of reach. “Summer’s about to start…. We’re almost seniors. He was as far from depressed as a person can get.”

  “Can you walk us through the events leading to Joey’s accident?” Detective Wallace asked. “Tell us everything you remember?”

  “We were just hanging out,” I said. “Listening to music. Tanna, Shannon, and I were lying out on our towels, getting into the water when we were too hot. The guys went up and made several jumps. Tanna and Shannon jumped, too. Once each, I think.”

  “But not you?” Detective Meyer asked, his eyebrows pulling inward.

  I shook my head. “I’ve never jumped off the cliff.”

  Detective Meyer jotted something down on the paper in front of him, then looked me directly in the eyes. “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “Too afraid.”

  “I see,” Detective Wallace said. “So what made you go up with Joey? We were told that you intended to jump together. Is this true?”

  Shannon’s face flashed in front of me. I dare you, she’d taunted, a giggle escaping her lips as she grabbed the bottle of tequila planted at the head of the towels and took a long swig.

  “It was a dare,” I said. “I’ve tried to jump before. It’s like a running joke. That I’m too afraid.”

  “Who dared you?” Detective Wallace asked.

  “Shannon.”

  Detective Meyer wrote the name in his notebook.

  “And what made you decide to try again? What made you feel like you could do it today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, remembering Joey’s smile, the feel of his skin sliding against mine as he tucked my arm against his body and we began walking toward the bridge of rocks.

  “Was it the alcohol?” Detective Meyer asked. “We found a bottle of tequila at the scene.”

  The scene? I cringed at the word. Blue Springs Gorge, our most sacred hangout, had become a crime scene.

  “How much did Joey have to drink?” Detective Wallace asked.

  My eyes stuttered between the two men’s faces, their features blurring into a shadowy puzzle.

  “We’ll find out for ourselves when the results from the autopsy come back,” Detective Meyer said.

  “Autopsy?” The word whirred through my brain, flipping around and around. That meant they were going to cut Joey open.

  “Yes.” Detective Wallace’s lip twitched again and I had an urge to pluck the hairs from his face. “In the case of an accidental death we always order an autopsy. And we run through a complete investigation.”

  “He’d had a little to drink,” I said, recalling the way Joey had stumbled as he walked out of the water the last time.

  “Would you say he was intoxicated?” Detective Wallace asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re aware that we just finished interviewing your friend Adam. He told us that Joey was a daredevil,” Detective Wallace said with a sad smile. “That he often showed off, performing stunts when he jumped from the cliff.”

  I pictured Joey at the top of the cliff, smiling down at us, his arms spread wide. Watch this, he’d yelled just before disappearing. Seconds later, he reappeared, soaring out from the lip of the cliff, his body circling over itself in a flip before he slipped into the water with barely a splash. Had that been his second or third jump of the day?

  “Yeah,” I said. “Joey liked attention.”

  “Can you describe your relationship with Joey?” Detective Meyer asked. “Would you say that the two of you were happy?”

  I closed my eyes briefly, remembering my plan to spend the night with him in just a few weeks. “We were very happy,” I said.

  “What about your relationship with the rest of your friends?” Detective Meyer asked. “It seems as if you are all very close.”

  My father cleared his throat. “These kids have all grown up together, Detective. They’ve known one another since kindergarten.”

  “That’s a lot of history.” Detective Wallace scrunched his lips in a sympathetic pout.

  Detective Meyer scribbled more words on the paper in front of him. I wanted to rip the notepad out of his hand, to tear the flimsy paper from the wire spiral. How could my life—and Joey’s death—be whittled down to just a few words?

  “We’re trying to figure something out,” Detective Wallace said. “And we’d like your help, Maggie.”

  “Okay,” I said, drawing the word out so it sounded more like a question.

  “We don’t understand why you and Adam left the scene.” Detective Meyer’s voice suddenly sounded very official. Almost demanding.

  My heart started beating more rapidly. I felt hot. Stifling hot. I shifted in my seat, and my mother’s hand squeezed my knee again.

  “Maggie?” Detective Meyer said. “Can you explain that for us?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know why you left?” Detective Meyer’s voice was tight with something I couldn’t place. Irritation. Maybe anger. “Or you don’t know if you can explain it?”

  “Adam was looking out for our daughter,” my mother said. “He was the one to find her after Joey’s fall. Maggie was in shock, and it scared him when she claimed to have no memory of what had happened. He thought it was best to bring her straight home.”

  The detectives looked at each other. Then they stared at me.

  “Can you tell us the first thing you remember?” Detective Wallace asked. “After Joey’s fall?”

  I looked at the table in front of me, my eyes following the swirls in the wood, shuffling through the memories I had, trying to categorize them into before and after.

  “The seat belt clicking into place,” I said. “Adam’s hand.”

  “Adam put your seat belt on?” Detective Meyer asked. “Good. That’s very good. What else?”

  “The quilt my grandmother made. Spread across my lap. And whispering.”

  “That was right after she came home,” my mother said. “She sat on the couch while Adam told us what happened.”

  “You must be grateful that Adam is such a caring young man,” Detective Meyer said, looking at my parents.

  “Yes.” My mother straightened herself in her chair and smoothed one hand down the side of her brown hair. “We feel very fortunate that our daughter had someone looking out for her best interests today.”

  Detective Meyer leaned forward, his hulking chest creating a shadow on the table in front of him, blanketing the words he’d written on the paper.

  I looked at my dad. He steepled his fingers under his chin. “Can you explain what happens from here? You said something about an autopsy?”

  The detectives exchanged a glance, and then turned to my father. “Yes. Though this appears, in all respects, to be an accidental death, it’s standard to open an official investigation. It is our job to learn everything we can about exactly what happened today so we can consider everything that might have led to the accident.” Detective Wallace spread his hands in the air.

  Detective Meyer agreed with a curt nod. “We will be searching Joey’s car and bedroom, looking over his phone records, and cross-referencing the statements from all of our interviews, which will also include friends who were not at the scene, to get the most detailed picture of his last twenty-f
our hours. Only then can we close the investigation.”

  “So—” I said, trying to think of anything but the words that were ringing through my head: death, accident, autopsy. “This is, like, a full-on investigation?”

  “Yes,” Detective Wallace said. “It is.”

  My mother’s fingers dug into my knee.

  “And we have one more very important question for you at this time.” Detective Meyer looked directly into my eyes. “Where was Joey last night?”

  “A party,” I said with a sigh. “We were all at the party.”

  “Yes.” Detective Wallace nodded. “Jimmy Dutton’s. We’re aware of the party.”

  “We’d like to know where Joey was after the party,” Detective Meyer said.

  “He took me home,” I said. “And then dropped off Shannon and Pete. He was probably home by twelve thirty.”

  The two detectives stared at me. Hard. And then they looked at each other. I was almost certain that Detective Wallace shrugged his shoulders, but the movement was so slight I couldn’t be sure.

  Something inside me started to backpedal, like I was mentally trying to escape. But I didn’t move fast enough.

  “No”—Detective Meyer cleared his throat and turned his eyes to me again—“Joey did not make it home last night.”

  My thoughts stretched back to the previous evening, which now felt like it had happened in some alternate lifetime. I went back to the kiss on my front porch. Watching Joey drive away. Hearing the music stream from the windows of his truck. What would have kept him from going home?

  “I’m not sure that I understand why this is important.” My mother sat forward in her seat, tipping her head sideways. “What does last night have to do with today’s accident?”

  “As I already explained, Mrs. Reynolds, we’re trying to construct a detailed time line of Joey’s last twenty-four hours of life.” Detective Meyer watched me closely as he spoke. “It’s standard procedure, I assure you. We simply need to know where Joey was during the overnight hours.”

  “There’s a mistake, or something.” I shook my head. “I already told you. Joey dropped me off a little after midnight. He took Shannon and Pete home. And then he went home.”

  Detective Wallace shook his head slowly. “No, Maggie. He did not go home.”

  “He said …” Everything in my head jumbled together. I wasn’t sure if I knew anything anymore. If Joey was out all night, why hadn’t he said anything? We’d hung out at the gorge for hours; Joey had plenty of opportunities to share if he’d been out all night doing something crazy. It’s the kind of thing he’d usually brag about…. But he hadn’t mentioned a thing. “He had to have been at home.”

  Detective Meyer leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “We’ve spoken with his parents. They are certain that he spent the night out, and that he wasn’t where he said he would be.”

  “Maggie, do you have any idea where he might have gone?” Detective Wallace asked. “Or who he might have been with?”

  I opened my mouth, searching for anything that might answer the very same questions that had started to spin around in my own mind. But I had no answers, so all that came out was a choppy, stuttering sound that hardly reminded me of my own voice.

  “This is an awful lot to take in,” my mother said, squeezing my knee again. “If Maggie remembers anything, we’ll be sure to call you.” From my mother’s tone, it was obvious that the conversation was over. But I suddenly didn’t want it to be.

  “You’re sure he didn’t go home?” I asked, focusing on the sound of the words tumbling out of me instead of the fact that, if they were true, it meant Joey had been keeping some kind of secret.

  Both detectives nodded, eyes trained on me. “Positive,” Detective Wallace answered.

  I looked down at my hands, squeezing them together so tightly they turned a sickly whitish-blue. I wasn’t sure if I was angry with Joey for keeping a secret or glad to realize that maybe he could go on living through all the little things I didn’t yet know. Things that I could easily find out.

  “I assume it is standard, in cases like this, for people to obtain lawyers,” my father said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “If you believe you may need to question Margaret again, we will certainly call our attorney.”

  “That would be fine with us.” Detective Wallace met my father’s eyes.

  “Just so you know,” Detective Meyer said, “we will be requesting that Maggie undergo a medical and psychological exam in the next week or so.”

  “I’m not hurt.” I pushed my chair back, standing, wavering a little, and placed my hand on the table for balance. “I don’t need to see a doctor.”

  “But, Maggie, you are suffering from memory loss,” Detective Wallace said. “This might actually help you.”

  “We will have our lawyer contact you for any further directions.” My father stood, his chair scraping along the tiles of the floor.

  My mother grabbed her purse from the floor and flung it onto her arm before she got to her feet.

  Placing a hand on my back, my father led me toward the door. But I was still shaky and moved slowly as I tried to figure out what Joey could have been doing all night without me.

  The detectives stood before I’d rounded the corner of the table. My fingers trailed the looping grain of the wood, and for some reason I didn’t want to lose my connection with that cool surface.

  But then I saw something that made me feel like racing from the room. As the detectives buttoned their suit jackets, like men always do when they stand, I sneaked a peek at their full uniforms, which hadn’t really seemed like uniforms at all, since they were dressed like businessmen. But businessmen don’t have handcuffs strapped to their waists, badges making their pockets bulge, or guns stuffed into holsters at their hips.

  Suddenly, every fuzzy quality that had made the day feel like a dream slipped away from my consciousness. It was like I broke the surface of the water, my sight and hearing clearing in an instant. And for the first time since the accident, everything felt excruciatingly real.

  Especially the thought of myself, alone in bed, while Joey was out in the dark night doing things without me. Things he obviously didn’t want me to know about. And the gaping emptiness where my memories ought to be—memories of Joey’s last moments on this earth, of our last moments together. There was so much that I suddenly needed to uncover, no matter the cost. Because learning all the things I didn’t already know, finding a few more slices of life when Joey was with us, even if it only helped for a little while, was the only way I could cheat my way out of his death.

  5

  Waiting for His Touch

  B there in 10 the text said. T.

  I wasn’t ready. Didn’t know if I ever would be, but that wasn’t what mattered.

  I’d spent the last few hours sitting on the floor in my dark closet, knees pulled to my chest, remembering Saturday by sifting through the parts that hadn’t disappeared. It had only been two days, but it felt more like forever.

  After the police station, my parents called in a lawyer—a friend of a friend of my father’s. With his stiffly combed hair and red-striped tie, I felt like Mr. Fontane had just stepped out of a movie of the week. I’d sat there in our living room as my parents spoke for me, silent except when I was asked a question, and then I only offered a yes or no.

  My moment of clarity at the police station hadn’t brought back any memories, hadn’t answered any of the questions spinning around in my mind, spiraling out to the air around me. All I knew for sure was that the day’s events were real. Something had happened. And Joey was gone.

  To make matters worse, I had a feeling. A creeping feeling that slithered through the shadows of my heart, whispering to me when I was quiet—what if something I had done had killed Joey? What if something I didn’t do could have saved him? And when I zoned out on the carpet or the drone of someone’s voice, I saw flashes—treetops and tears and rippling water. I was afraid that if everything came flooding ba
ck, I’d face a truth that might be too much for me to handle. But even with all that fear, I wanted to pull the pieces together. The memories that had escaped me—I had to find them.

  During a few quiet moments that first day, I’d wondered if it was real. The part where Joey had died. The part where I didn’t. Maybe, in some parallel universe, Joey had survived and I was gone. Maybe my mom knew all about it, and that was why she had one hand on me every second she could. She thought I was fragile and wanted me by her side so she could keep me from imploding or exploding or whatever she was afraid might happen next.

  My little secret: I was glad. It felt like she was keeping me from floating away. I was scared to death to leave the house without her. But this night, it was something I had to do. Something we all had to do. Together.

  So I took a deep breath and slid out of the cocoon my closet had become, yanking my fingers through my tangled hair. As I pulled on a pair of jeans, I glanced in the mirror and saw the dark smearing shadows under my eyes. I ran a finger over the stitching on the front of Joey’s baseball shirt: JOEY. It still smelled like him, and I pulled it on to feel like he was closer. Still with me.

  I’d found the shirt in my car and remembered how he’d flung it into the backseat after school Friday (was that three days ago, or another lifetime?), claiming he was hot-hot-hot. With a smirk, I’d agreed. He’d flexed his arms dramatically before leaning toward me, nuzzling his face into my neck, knowing that tickle zone was the easiest way to make me laugh. My giggles mixed with his words, twining around them. We’re gonna have a kick-ass Memorial Day weekend, he’d said. Two parties and the gorge to kick off the best summer ever. And then he’d kissed me, long and insistent, like he knew what I’d secretly planned for us when his parents left town in a few short weeks, and wanted to give me a prelude so I wouldn’t back out.

  When he pulled away, he cranked the dial on my radio until “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz pumped out the open windows and collided with everyone walking past. I reversed out of my parking space unaware that it would be the last time Joey would ever ride in my car.