Yet, in spite of all this, Sean stayed upright. He too laughed at the antics of his fellow racers, and the beer seemed to loosen him up a little bit. He had a similar look on his face to the one he wore that day at the quarry, a kind of manic joy, grinning as he leaped, without warning, from a thirty-foot cliff.
As the race went along, he stayed close to a pack of five or so seasoned riders, who increasingly whooped at his efforts. By this point, no one was trying to knock the others down. It wasn’t a grudge match anymore. It was an endurance race. Who among this final crew could down another beer and make it another mile? At the second-to-last checkpoint, the group of other riders buddied up to Sean. They slapped his back and seemed to be welcoming him to the fold. But something had shifted in Sean. He smiled at them, but you recognized the look in his eyes from his diving days. This was how he’d been at meets: stone-faced until it was over. And there was just one more stop to go.
He stood alone, and when the whistle blew for the last time, he downed his beer in what looked like one epic swallow. The final checkpoint was near the university, and there was traffic from a football game that was about to start. You were trying to follow, but you got stuck behind carful after carful of raucous frat boys, howling into the rain, while Sean and the others soared around the traffic, dipping in and out of bike lanes, medians, and sidewalks.
Finally, your visibility was so bad that you pulled your car over and hopped out, running on the sidewalk, trying to make it to the next intersection. It was one of the biggest in town, the convergence of five streets, bars on all the corners. A game-day hub, with partyers out on cold patios in ponchos, braving the rainto tailgate. And from the moment you started moving, you had a nervous feeling about it. Sean was leaning against a stoplight, still on his bike, one hand keeping him balanced.
The noise was deafening. Tables full of drinkers chanted fight songs. Cars honked their horns and launched muddy waves from puddles. And there was even a crew of drummers, pounding on white buckets in perfect synchronicity. There wasn’t much farther to go. And maybe it was because he just wanted to get it over with. Or maybe, and this is the part that still keeps you up at night, part of him wanted what would happen next. But before the light turned green, Sean ran the red light and shot out into the intersection.
He was going fast. Faster than you had seen him go all day. His head was down. His hands gripped tight to the handlebars.
You yelled his name.
You screamed so loud, your throat would hurt for days after. But he either couldn’t hear you or he didn’t care. He was nearly past the intersection when the SUV rounded the corner. Sean was low, and going so fast that he might have been a blur in the periphery. A flash in the side mirror before he was suddenly right in front of the bumper.
There was no time for the SUV to stop.
There was a terrible noise.
You didn’t see the impact clearly; you only heard the awful thump and saw where Sean’s body ended up, which seemed an improbable distance from the crash. And when you ran to him, his eyes were already glazed over, and there was blood coming out of his nose, mixing with speckles of rain. He was unconscious.
You said his name so many times.
You screamed for an ambulance.
It took so long for one to arrive, and you held his hand the entire time, saying only the word “sorry,” over and over again.
When the paramedics showed, you were still saying it, and they thought you were the driver who hit him. They told you to talk to the police, but you pleaded to ride with him. They waved you away and loaded him on a stretcher and put him in an ambulance. They took him to the hospital.
You don’t know what to tell your friends now, because what happened next is not even a story. Just a series of fragmented moments. Crying on a sidewalk. Calling your parents and making no sense on the phone. Lying in the back seat of the Corolla. Replaying all the memories of the moment. Wondering if you were hallucinating. Vomiting outside an e-cigarette shop. Sitting in the waiting room of the hospital with your parents and already knowing what the words were going to be when the young doctor came out with the look on her face that said everything was about to be more horrible than you could possibly imagine.
You don’t know how to say this part, so instead you say:
“I know he was hit by a car. So I guess I knowhowhe died. If that’s really what you were asking. And for a long time, I even thought I knew why. I had a lot of ideas about why, and they mostly involved me. But now…”
You finally manage to look at Diana.
“Now I’m not so sure.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Finally, it’s time to sleep.
No one else wants to be in Silas’s tent that night, so eventually you volunteer. Partly, it’s for the extra space. But mostly it’s for the privacy. A half hour ago, when you finished talking about Sean, everybody seemed to look at you differently. There were pats on the back, and I’m-sorrys, and I-can’t-imagines, and the kind of looks that most people save for puppies at a shelter. And while it felt good to let these people know who you really are, it also felt a bit like you were stripping down to your underwear in front of them. So it’s oddly calming now to zip yourself into the tent of your dead counselor and be alone until morning.
Only it isn’t morning that interrupts your shallow sleep. When your tent flap unfastens in the middle of the night, every part of you tenses, ready to fistfight a vengeful bear if necessary. But this time it isn’t a predator; it’s a person who looks remarkably like Diana. She enters the tent quietly, and once inside she fumbles with the zipper again, struggling to get it closed. The wind has picked up, and before she can get the flap closed again, a biting gust makes its way through the mesh.
“Damn,” she whispers. “It’s getting cold out there.”
Then, while you watch through barely open eyes, she doesthe unthinkable: She gets into Silas’s abandoned sleeping bag and lies down next to you.
“What are you doing here?” you ask.
She’s quiet for a few seconds, which gives you time to wonder ifsheeven knows what she’s doing here.
“He told me about the race,” she whispers.
Your eyes open wider, a spike of cortisol flushing away your sleepiness.
