— — —
YOON-MI AND MAURA Yoon-mi said she knew the minute she walked into the gymnasium for early pep-squad practice. She knew as she stretched and as, across the gym, the last phys ed class of the day counted off into teams. She knew as the class spread out to start dodgeball, getting ever closer to where they were practicing. And she knew as she stood up to learn the new cheer. She knew when she felt the smack of impact as the ball hit her square in the face. She knew as she fell backward, and she knew as she lay there, staring up at the ridiculously tall ceiling, where caught in the rafters was a lone silver balloon from the formal the month before. She’d gone to that dance with a boy, even though she secretly liked girls.
What she knew is that something significant would happen today.
The feeling took shape and grew eyes and a mouth and a face, turning into this girl, this fellow junior named Maura.
“I’m so freaking sorry!” Maura was going. “I didn’t mean to get you in the face!”
And
there
were
more
people
surrounding them—the gym teacher, the other juniors in last-period gym, and the girls on the pep squad, a crowd of heads and hands—but Yoon-mi focused in on one of them.
Maura Morris, who’d moved here from Canada last year.
Her future girlfriend who’d just clocked her in the face during dodgeball.
Maura, on the other hand, didn’t know a thing when she walked into PE that day. Not even when she smacked the beautiful pep-squad girl in the face with a speeding dodgeball. Yoon-mi Hyun, the girl to whom she gave two black eyes—little did Maura know that, within a week, she’d become her first girlfriend.
The mystery wasn’t how they fell in love—that was quick; that was easy—it was what happened once they went public. Their families’ reactions. The kids at school. When Maura suggested they could run off together and start a new life up in Canada, she’d only said it offhand. A little wishful thinking, a silly dream. She didn’t expect Yoon-mi to show up at her house with her bags that very night and say, “Let’s go.”
Yoon-mi Hyun and Maura Morris: Gone 2007 from Milford, Pennsylvania.
Both age 17.
— — —
KENDRA
Kendra ran to the edge of the cliff and waved to all her friends. “Guys, guys!”
she called. “I’m gonna do it. Watch!”
Kendra had seen the guys jump the cliffs before—one of the guys would take a running leap to clear the outcropping of rocks and cannonball into the bright blue basin of water below.
The splash would be terrific. Then there’d be those heart-pounding moments after the jumper went in, when he was so deep no trace of him could be made out, and then, just when some coward was thinking of dialing 911, the surface of the lake would shatter.
The jumper would surface, whooping and yelling, and the next guy would get in line to see if he could make a bigger splash.
None of Kendra’s friends had ever jumped off this particular cliff—the highest point above the lake—and she knew they were too chickenshit to try.
She’d be legend.
She powered through the run, took the leap, and her body set sail. Gravity took hold and air rushed around her as she started to fall. It sang her name.
When she hit water, she didn’t expect it to sting so much. She’d fallen sideways, and the impact was a surprise, and the cool temperature of the water was also a surprise, and she was sinking fast, going deeper than she knew the lake could go. Traces of foam surrounded her, forming a tunnel that seemed to bury her in the wet and sopping center of the Earth.
She looked up and up, and up and up some more. That pinpoint of golden light at the highest height of the blue above her was the sun, she knew, casting down over the water. All she had to do was swim up to reach it.
How far could it be?