Its weight was supported by giant cables, each cable made of 27,572 strands of wire.
It was held together by approximately 1,200,000 rivets.
It was 746 feet above the water.
—
Cally’s father read the newspaper story aloud. Tristan Bloch, age thirteen, had gone to the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped.
He’d left his bike against the rail, leaning where the tourists came to pose for pictures.
—
Tristan’s mother came to school to gather his things. She drifted through the halls, slack, rudderless.
In the eighth-grade pod, Cally pretended to search her locker while Mrs. Bloch worked herself up to opening Tristan’s. Ms. Flax and Principal Falk and the janitor clustered around her, murmuring. What could they possibly be telling her? There was nothing they could have done. They couldn’t have made Tristan less awkward or strange, or stopped him from writing that note and sending his heart into the world for everyone to cut a piece of. Couldn’t have stopped Cally from giving the note to Abigail and Ryan Harbinger. After Tristan had jumped, Ryan and Damon Flintov had been suspended for a week, Abigail and a few others for three days each. Cally had been questioned, but she and Tristan weren’t even Facebook friends; technically speaking, she’d done nothing wrong. So now she was supposed to go back to class, copy science labs and cheat on algebra tests as though nothing had happened.
Tristan’s mother fell against the locker, pressed her forehead to the metal. Ms. Flax palmed circles over her broad back and murmured something that Cally, stepping closer, barely heard: “Gloria, we don’t have to do this now. We can wait, as much time as you need.”
Cally knew she should leave, hide, but she couldn’t. From down the row of lockers, Ms. Flax noticed her and glared. The teacher must have understood the truth: that this was Cally’s fault and no one else’s.
Finally Tristan’s mother stepped back and the janitor clipped the lock with bolt cutters; the hollow clang made Cally gasp as if it were her own dark heart being cut. She stopped herself from crying out. It seemed wrong to go through someone’s locker, even if they were dead. She expected Tristan to trudge around the corner and shout at them to get out, which, after all, would have been his right.
Tristan’s mother opened the locker, and as the adults peered in to assess its secrets, a rush of origami cranes, red and blue and green and gold and silver, paper wings rustling, tumbled forth and floated to the floor.
“It’s just a bunch of paper,” the janitor said. He and Principal Falk looked at each other and then at Tristan’s mother, as if waiting for an explanation.
“Calista Broderick,” Ms. Flax said flatly. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
Cally had come too close. Words dried up in her throat like leaves.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” said Ms. Flax.
Cally knew that she was going to be found out, Ms. Flax was going to expose her—but then again, that would be a kind of blessing. She stepped closer to Tristan’s mother. “Mrs. Bloch? I just wanted to say. I’m sorry.”
Clutching a silver crane, Tristan’s mother gazed back at her. Her eyes, small and watery blue like Tristan’s, asked, Who was this girl, what was this effusion of beautiful paper, what did any of it mean?
The newspaper said that Tristan had left no note.
“Calista,” Tristan’s mother said. “Yes. Tristan mentioned you. You were a friend to him—he never said it, exactly, but I could tell.” She smiled. The sudden light in her face was strange and hard to look at. Did she not realize that Cally was the girl Tristan had written to? Did she not care? “Thank you,” she said.
What Cally felt then was more than guilt or sadness. It was like the pleasure-pain that Abigail had shown her, a connection that cut you and thrilled you, a sharp, exquisite opening.
She smiled back at Tristan’s mother. And understood:
She thought he had a friend.
Junior Year
MISS NICOLL