What would you do if you knew you could not be hurt doing it?
I think you should do something a little reckless. Just a little, to see how it feels.
—H.
I went to school Monday wondering what I could possibly do that was reckless enough as to be a little unsafe, not reckless enough as to cause me any real harm. I kept coming up blank.
First period Em and I had history together. We sat in the back, and I passed her a note that said: I have to do something a little bit reckless. Any ideas?
She read, considered, then wrote:
I know exactly what to do. Your aunt would approve.
What?
Secret.
This is terrifying.
That’s a good sign.
When?
After school. We’ll have to swing by your place first to pick something up.
Pick what up?
Secret.
Em looked too pleased with herself, which made me nervous.
There were a lot of things Em might consider an appropriate amount of reckless. Skydiving. Bungee jumping. Zip-lining.
All things Em would find perfectly acceptable for a Monday after-school event.
Em jabbed me in the side with a pen and handed me another note.
It said:
Relax. I know you.
That was true. Em did know me, and she wouldn’t take me skydiving.
She would never take me skydiving.
I scribbled a quick message and threw it back at her:
Is it skydiving??
She read it, rolled her eyes, and didn’t look at me for the rest of the class.
When the bell rang I tried to grab her arm, but she was excellent at evading me. It helped that she was so fast. She was out of the room before I’d even packed up my things. I started rushing, shoving my history book and notebook and pen into my bag quickly so I wouldn’t be alone for too long. I’d already been approached by four people telling me how sorry they were about my aunt, and I’d only been at school an hour.
It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it.
Because I did.
But it also made me a little angry.
I mean—it was bad enough that she was dead. I didn’t really need the constant reminders.
The thing we needed from my house was small enough to fit in Em’s backpack, which, to be fair, was kind of a big backpack. I had no idea where she was heading, but I’d decided to go with it.
Em drove a black Jetta she’d bought secondhand with her own money (she’d worked at a juicery in town since she was fourteen, “Not because I think juice cleanses work, Lottie, but because everybody else does.”). She’d named the car Joan Jetta, something she thought was very clever, and she told anyone who showed even the slightest interest.
“Are we going alone?” I asked when she merged onto the highway.
“Jackie has dance—”
“I can’t believe you’re actually dating a ballerina.”
“And Abe said he’s been spending too much time with you as it is. And I’ve been getting the feeling you need some alone time lately. And yes, I’m dating a ballerina and you’re clearly jealous.”
“By alone time, do you mean alone time with you?”
“Of course I mean alone time with me. Gross, do you want alone time with, like, just yourself?”
“That’s actually what alone time is, you know. Like—alone.”
“Whoever invented alone time did not have a best friend as interesting as I am.”
Em liked being alone when she was sleeping. Other than that she was either with me or Jackie or with various members of the track team.
She wouldn’t tell me where we were going. All I knew is that we were headed toward the ocean. She stopped at a drive-through and bought us fries and salads (I never asked questions when it came to her culinary preferences), and we ate them in turns, passing each between us. I found myself wondering, not for the first time, what the rest of my aunt’s instructions would be. And also—why had she written the letters in the first place? Because I couldn’t deny that it was nice to have them, but it was also sort of frustrating. Was there something obvious they were doing that I wasn’t smart enough to see yet?
But at the same time I found myself wishing they would never stop, because as weird or creepy as it might have been to get messages from beyond the grave, I missed my aunt too much to say good-bye quite yet. And so much of her writing was public and popular. . . . I liked that these were just for me.
“Lottie, seriously? You have such a problem sharing,” Em said, grabbing the almost-empty carton of fries from me.
“Sorry,” I said. But I wasn’t sorry. You should never apologize for fries.
“We’re almost there, anyway. Are you excited? Any ideas?”
I looked around the car for a landmark, but all these little seaside towns started to look alike after a while. I hadn’t been paying attention; I had no idea what exit we’d gotten off.
“I don’t know where we are,” I said.
“Seriously? You are so unobservant.”
“Are we going to the Nautilus?”
“We are nowhere near the Nautilus,” she said, sighing. “I worry about you. If your phone died and you woke up in the middle of nowhere, you would literally never find your way home. You would end up in Tibet.”
“Tibet?”
“Yes. I am absolutely certain that you would end up in Tibet. And then you would ask to borrow a stranger’s phone and you would try and call me, but we both know you haven’t looked at my phone number since the day you saved it to your phone. That’s the problem with all of us.”
“That we don’t memorize phone numbers anymore?”
“No. Yes. Well—that is one of the problems with all of us.”
“Someday I’d love to hear your breakdown of all the things that are wrong with people nowadays.”
“It’s a long list.”
“And really, where the hell are we?”
Em didn’t answer but pulled her car into a dirt parking lot. She chose a spot in the shade and turned to look at me.
“Do you remember that place your aunt used to take us swimming? We were young, you know, I hadn’t even come out yet, but my mom knew, and she was already convinced I was going to the special hell they have for people who like people with the same genitalia as them. Because it’s so important, you know? What our genitalia looks like. It’s, like, a very big deal to the big guy.”
It made me uncomfortable when Em got like this, so down on her mom, but I couldn’t really blame her. Her mom really did think like that. It was so sad.
“I remember.”
“Well,” she said, and swept her arm in front of her.
“You want to go swimming? That’s not really that reckless.”
“No, I don’t want to go swimming,” Em said. “Just follow me.”
We got out of the car. It was hot and a little muggy, and I thought we were heading down to the beach, but Em led me up a little path that led to the top of a cliff that overlooked the water. We got sweaty and out of breath almost immediately. We passed a few people coming down, but when we finally got up there, we were alone.
Em took a bathing suit out of her backpack and handed it to me.
She smiled her special kind of smile, the one where her face got darker and her eyes got very bright and you were suddenly absolutely terrified of whatever it was she was planning.