First she took one step, then another, as she turned her back on all her sorrows. She stumbled at first, drunkenly putting one foot in front of the other and picking up momentum.
Then Sarah ran.
Near panic, filled with fear, but increasing speed with every stride and understanding that she had no other route, Sarah raced into the growing darkness.
One block flew by her, followed by a second. Sarah didn’t try to pace herself; she sprinted. She could barely see the buildings she swept by.
Find the river, she thought.
Running desperately hard, trying to leave all memories behind, she dashed forward. The sidewalk narrowed slightly on the approach to the bridge, but she pounded to the top. Then she stopped, gasping for breath.
The bridge had four lanes of roadway and stretched across a portion of the river just beneath Western Falls. There was a treatment plant nearby which used the natural flow of the river to help cleanse sewage. The water was dark, fast, turbulent, and dangerous; more than one fisherman working the stretch above had slipped and died in the powerful currents created both by the demands of the plant and the twenty-foot drop forged by nature and helped by turn-of-the century engineers. But the plant barely worked anymore and the industries that had sprung up nearby had closed, so now the only thing that seemed to have life were the black, rain-choked, swirling waters.
Even the small fence supposed to keep people from getting too close to danger was in disrepair. A faded yellow sign warned passersby of the risks. Not many people used the footpath by the bridge. She stripped off her overcoat and let it sink, crumpled up, to the ground. She felt a sudden chill against her neck.
It was a fine place for someone consumed by despair to die.
Sarah bent over, trying to catch her breath. She looked up suddenly. Soon, she thought. Any second now, Red Two.
Fourteen points, eight boards, a pair of assists, and we won by eleven.
Red Three had taken her customary seat alone in the back of the school’s van. Even with her solid, nearly spectacular contribution to the team’s victory, she was still left alone on the road trip. There had been a few perfunctory “good game” and “way to go” hand-slapping reactions in the immediate aftermath, but by the time the steam from the showers in the away-girls locker room had dissipated and the last brush had been drawn through wet curls, Jordan was back to her routine outcast status, which was what she had counted on.
She sat with her face pressed up against the glass in the window by the back row. It was cool against her forehead, but she felt hot and sweaty. The other girls on the team were lost in various conversations. The coach was driving and the assistant coach was in the front seat.
Jordan had played at this other school a half-dozen times since making the varsity. She knew the route the van would travel back to her school. She knew how long it would take and what streets they would pass.
She had adopted a forlorn, lost look, as if her thoughts were elsewhere, when they were actually riveted on what she could see outside. At the stoplight, we’ll take a right. Five minutes. Maybe less.
She could feel her body tighten with tension. The muscles on her arms were taut, and her legs seemed like rubber bands being pulled to breaking. It was like the locker room anxiety before the start of a big game.
It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you. Doubt crept into her, settling alongside fear. He’ll never stop. Not until we’re all dead.
Jordan tore her eyes away from the window. The coach was driving slowly and cautiously, because the unwieldy van was hard to handle on the slick highways. The assistant was going over the stat sheet from the game, using the light from the dashboard to read off numbers. Her teammates were continuing to talk about boys and parties and classes and tests and music and assignments and all the usual stuff that occupies teens-talk about nothing and everything, all at once.
She returned her gaze to the window. We go left, then past the apartments and the bodega where they probably sell under-the-counter drugs along with overpriced foodstuffs. There’s a stop sign, which he will only pause at, because this shortcut takes us through a bad part of the city and he’s got a van filled with rich white girls and that’s potentially a bad combination. So he’ll accelerate a little, even in the bad weather, right up the street past the empty warehouses and onto the bridge.
She gritted her teeth. It was a little like Jordan could see it all happening seconds before it did. She could feel the Big Bad Wolf’s presence, just as if he were seated beside her, breathing heavily into her ear.
The engine sound increased as the van picked up speed. Now! Jordan told herself. Do it now!
She took a huge deep breath and then let loose with an immense, terrified, full-throated panicky scream that exploded in the confined van.
Sarah took one last look down the roadway, then vaulted the fence.
She hesitated above the black, swirling waters. Goodbye to everything, Red Two, she told herself.
The van swerved wildly across an empty lane, the driver-coach almost losing control at the piercing shriek from the back. Jordan had pushed partway onto her feet and was pointing furiously out the window into the creeping blackness of falling night, her arms waving wildly.
“She jumped! She jumped! Help! Help! Oh my God! The lady, she was standing there by the bridge, I saw her jump!”
The coach wrestled the van to a stop and managed to throw on his emergency flashers. “Everybody stay where you are!” he shouted. The assistant coach was struggling with his seat belt and trying to open his door. He yelled, “Someone call 911!” as he went through the door and ran to the concrete barrier by the side of the bridge to search the pounding ink-sweep of water. The other girls were all shouting incomprehensibly, craning their heads in the direction Jordan pointed, a cacophony of fear and panic. One had grabbed a cell phone from a backpack and was furiously dialing for help. Jordan abruptly slumped down, head still pressed against the glass, moaning and starting to sob uncontrollably, deep, guttural sounds of despair mingling with, “I saw it. Jesus Christ. I saw it. She jumped, she jumped. I saw her jump…”
28
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf was oddly familiar with the turbulent emotions swirling around within her. She had been through illness that had threatened to steal her life, she had experienced the clammy belief that her body was about to betray her, and she had once before faced up to the idea that imminent death awaited her.
And she had survived. But she was not sure she could survive what awaited her now. She wondered: Can the truth kill me?
She knew the answer to that question: Of course it can.
Her head filled with furious admonitions. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. You should never have opened that office door. Before you did that stupid thing, you were happy. Never open a locked door. Never.
Across the room, the Big Bad Wolf was shuffling through the day’s mail, discarding just about everything into the plastic bin they used for recycling, grimacing at the occasional bill that appeared in the midst of flyers, catalogues, and letters marked “Important” which were only false come-ons for new credit cards or requests for donations to political parties or causes. Mrs. Big Bad Wolf noticed that her husband kept a few of these; she knew that he made small contributions to cancer and heart research. These were a few dollars here or there, donations that prompted him to joke, “I’m just trying to make sure we get into heaven.”
She was unsure whether heaven was any longer a possibility for either of them.