A scream: It’s your fault!
Rattled to my bones, I yelp and stumble into Nolan’s side, and he looks at me like he wants to shove me across the room far away from him. His eyes are as accusatory as the voice. I don’t know if it’s the girl, who’s been abnormally quiet since our accident. It has her anger but feels more intimate. Like another part of me. My throat constricts with the tears I’m trying to hold back.
Wordless, everyone disperses with heads down to their own corners of the house. I go to my room and find myself staring at the white walls, the pinholes where the lights used to hang above my bed, the books on the shelves, and scrapbooks of pictures, which I hadn’t realized were tucked in with the books. Odd that I’d forget the scrapbooks were there, but I see now that there is one for each year. Yes, Joe and I made these together every summer.
Until this summer.
Life came to a halt this summer.
I flip through the years of us: me and JoeLo. God, our friendship was beautiful. I can see it in the way we make the same expressions. The way our bodies lean into each other with such comfort. We are brother and sister. Were . . .
My heart hurts.
Live with integrity; die with integrity.
Joe went and spoke to Dom after we fought. Proof of love. I need to apologize to him.
Dom’s origami tiger watches me from the dresser as I flip through the pages of another life. The paper tiger was supposed to be a message. I thought I understood the message when I decided to jump. But maybe Dom intended for me to hear a different roar. I pick it up. The delicate brushstrokes of paint speak their own message: that Dom cared enough about me to painstakingly make a reminder of how he sees me.
Saw me.
Could there be a message written inside? It seems a shame to ruin the tiger to find out. We stare at each other, this tiger and I.
I rip it in half.
Tumbling from its belly is a small memory card. The rumble in my chest is unwelcome?—?I don’t know anymore if it’s the girl who disturbs me or my own broken mind, but I do my best to ignore the feeling of eyes on me. I put the memory card into the laptop on my desk and press play.
Dom’s deep voice fills the room.
Dear Ryan, I made you this video to remind you of who I see every time I close my eyes. Who I dream of at night. Who I miss. You . . . in all your wild glory. You are the most beautiful creation.
Never have I seen myself like this. A candid picture of me walking with my chute crumpled against my chest after a jump, a mass of ringlets, and a mass of attitude. No one is in the picture with me, but I’m smiling. I appear to be smiling to myself, giddy with an inside joke about how badass life is. A picture of me and my mother, belly laughing. Our smiles are the same. A side shot of me giving the bare ass to my father with his back turned to me as he briefs a bunch of his boys before a jump. The smile on their faces says it all. The first sergeant has momentarily lost their attention.
The memory of this thought rushes in: Now he knows how I feel.
These are all pictures of me, but . . .
Babe, I love strong women. Hell, I was raised by one. And now both of my strong women are gone. I’d give anything to go backwards and erase that night in the motor home. Everything changed that night. You changed that night. Does it have to be forever?
The skydive calendar proofs scroll by. I gawk at the brazen images, feeling disassociated, like the girl I see is so completely foreign to me, I can’t even say she’s me.
It is no longer me but her.
Her with her cola skin, her full lips sauced with shimmering gloss, and her skintight red skydive jumpsuit unzipped down her ridged belly. Everything in her cat eyes says she’s blatantly unafraid of being looked at, of showing the world exactly who she thinks she is.
She. Is. Unafraid.
Being unafraid of experience is what made you extraordinary.
On top of a mountain. Her naked body is a silhouette, a dark S of curves against the night sky. Wind blows her puff of wild hair, licks her skin. A lightning storm rages and strikes out in the distance in front of her. Arms overhead, she is powerful: it’s as though she can shoot lightning straight from her soul and out through her fingers. Watching her, I’ve no doubt she can.
Video now, of different jumps. Dom wears a camera on his jump helmet, flying toward me, her, floating in the sky; wind makes her cheeks ripple like water. She zooms closer, reaches for him with muscled arms in a tank top, and kisses him in freefall. Does everyone fall to the earth with such peace? Does everyone look so radiant after a kiss?