We All Fall Down

  “What the hell? I heard an entire conversation, one that happened with me at a party a few months ago, but I was hearing it today on that bridge.”

  “Maybe you just remembered it really clearly in that moment. You know, those memories that are so real you think they’re happening again?”

  “No, this is not some sort of memory-lane bullshit. I heard myself talking. Word for word, I heard a whole conversation, and it should be…”

  It should be what? A clear recording taken today of an event that happened four months earlier? A minute of rustling and breathing makes way more sense, but I’m disappointed.

  Not that I was dying to relive it, but somehow the conversation not being there is worse. Makes me feel crazier, like I made the whole thing up.

  “I don’t know what happened,” I say. “I listened to this on the bridge. It was all there.”

  Gabriel shrugs. “Or you thought it was. Just like I thought I heard a lady calling my name.”

  “You think the bridge is haunted by some sort of voice-mixing ghost deejay?”

  “My theory is it’s an amplifier,” he says, looking completely serious. “A spirit that finds emotions in us and turns up the volume.”

  “Then why wouldn’t it amplify everyone’s drama? I mean, it was strong enough to drive one guy to suicide.”

  “No, it didn’t. I looked into that guy, figuring maybe he was the reason. But he was a really sad guy, a tragedy waiting for a place to happen. You know people like that?”

  I cock my head. “The bridge might have pushed him over the edge.”

  “I think he was always on the edge. He didn’t have a great life, but he didn’t have some crazy experience on the bridge either.”

  He stands up suddenly, snapping his notebook shut. “Look, I have to go. I’ll pick up some notes from the historical society, and I have a contact I want to talk to.”

  “A contact?” I laugh, but he doesn’t flinch—simply watches me in that strange motionless way. “Sorry. I can’t tomorrow. I have to work, or I’ll piss off my uncle.”

  Gabriel cocks his head. “Maybe you should try to talk to the voices.”

  I narrow my eyes at him? “Really? Would you want to talk to the voices?”

  “I don’t need to talk to them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ve never tried to scare me.” Then he stops suddenly, looking down the sidewalk with a frown on his face. “Are you expecting company?”

  “No.” I say it half a second before I hear the soft pat of footsteps. Paige’s wavy hair and freckled shoulder slide into view as she turns for our porch stairs.

  Gabriel waves as he passes her, then disappears from my mind completely because I really don’t care where he went. Paige is here. She’s right here, standing on the busted steps of my uncle’s porch, looking like the cure to everything that’s ever ailed me.

  I notice she’s upset about the same time I see the ridiculous rubber boots she’s wearing. I edge to the steps, having no clue how to approach this.

  “Going fishing?” I ask, trying a smile. She doesn’t bite. But she keeps looking at me, like she’s fighting some battle in her head. I can’t tell if she’s winning or losing.

  I climb down until only two or three feet separate us. It’s close enough that I can hear the way her breath is shaking in and out. In and out.

  “I found the purse I carried to the party in the river today,” she says matter-of-factly. “It was in the water. I was under the bridge.”

  “Why were you in the water?”

  “I had to collect new samples. We encountered an arsenic outlier.” She’s talking too fast, words mashing together. “Melanie thinks it’s an aberration, but the test was conclusive.”

  “Those are all seventy-five-cent words, and I’m going to need you to bring it down to normal-people speak. What are you talking about?”

  “We found something bad in one of our water samples,” she says, and now the emotion hits, wobbling some of her vowels. She looks up at me, her eyes gleaming with the warning of tears. “I think something is happening to me. I saw someone, Theo. Someone was standing on the bridge when I found my purse.”

  “When you found it in the water, this guy was on the bridge? Did he drop it?”

  “No, it was in the current,” she says. “But he showed up too. I could see his feet from underneath. I had this weird feeling that he might jump. And that he was watching me.”

  I want to touch her so badly that I can feel my fingers flexing, but I can’t. I shove them into my pockets, and pull them right back out. There’s nothing that feels right so I push them into my hair. “All right. You’re all right. Could it have been a jogger? Sometimes if you’re already freaked out, it could—”

  “No. He wasn’t moving. He just stood there for the longest time. Watching.”

  “Then what happened? Where’s the purse?”

  “I threw it. I couldn’t… It was leaking all this stuff… It was… Look, I don’t know what I was thinking. I was freaked, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She pushes her hair back, and I can see traces of mud on her hands and all down her shorts and her legs. She’s a mess.

  “What happened next?” I ask.

  “When I got to the bank, there was no one on the bridge.”

  “Okay. And you’re sure the purse was yours? It wasn’t just… I mean, I know I’ve been talking about it, so I could have freaked you out.”

  She nods. “I know. I know how I am.”

  But everything about her face tells me she’s having a hard time buying that it was only anxiety. And since I heard ghostly voices rehashing the five minutes where I destroyed her jaw and our lives, I’m having a hard time arguing with her.

  “I didn’t know where to go,” she says softly, looking at her feet. “My parents are worried about me. They talked to my roommate. Maybe my teachers.”

  “What the hell? Is it your grades or something?”

  “No, my grades are good. They’re worried because I ran into you, but Melanie might have told them I had a nightmare. I don’t know… They want me to go home.”

  “Do you want to go home?” I ask, terrified that maybe that’s why she’s here. Maybe she really is that messed up that she doesn’t want this program anymore. Maybe I made her too afraid. The idea of it makes my chest hurt.

  “No, I don’t want to go home.” She huffs, her eyes bright. “You didn’t break me, Theo.”

  My chest constricts until it’s hard to breathe. It’s all I can do to not break down crying.

  Suddenly, a new light comes into her eyes, and she looks around and glances in the direction Gabriel walked, like she’s figuring out a piece of the puzzle she hadn’t before. “You were busy. You had company. I’m sorry to drop by like this. I’m—”

  “Paige.” I want to hold her, but I wouldn’t dare do that. I push my toes at her foot instead, my dirty socks against her rubber boots. “I’m not busy. I’m glad you’re here. Thrilled.”

  “Oh,” she says, and then for the first time in four months, Paige is looking right at me when she smiles.

  Paige

  We walk to a school playground on a hill. It’s not much. Some apple trees and a playground with a dented slide and mostly broken swings. I know Theo picked it based on location. We’re far from the dilapidation of the Village. Far too from the austere buildings of the university. Most of all, we’re far from the river with its stink and its terrors. Here, it’s only us.

  I sink into one of the two rubber-bottomed swings left. Theo takes the other. I sway back and forth and Theo spins, twisting in his seat until the chains wrap over and over. I point my toes out and whoosh forward. Theo pulls up his feet and unwinds in a shiver of noise and motion.

  We could do this for hours, and he won’t ask why. He’ll let it be and roll al
ong. Maybe that’s why it’s always easy to talk to him.

  “Who was that kid on your porch?” I ask.

  “Gabriel. I met him at the library. He’s kind of weird.”

  I smile. “You’re kind of weird.”

  “True enough.” He starts twisting his swing around again, boots clomping against gray remnants of mulch. “He knows about the stuff on the bridge. He works at the library.”

  “Does he think there could be a way to stop it?”

  “He’s fifteen. God knows what he thinks.”

  “Then why are you talking to him?”

  He scuffs over closer to me on his twisted-up swing. “Because I’m desperate?”

  “Generally speaking, or now?”

  Theo laughs and lets his swing unfurl again. I still love the way he looks—wiry and lean, with a smile that curls a little higher on one side and eyes that are too pale to label any one color. Even his brows arch in a way that promises mischief.

  He doesn’t look like a guy who would hold open doors or buy me antibacterial gel. Or bring me pretzels because he knows I’d rather starve than eat lukewarm potluck food. Then again, he doesn’t look like a guy who’d hit me either. Not even by accident.

  Funny that he’s the one staring at me this time. All those years, I was hoping he’d look at me. Then he did, and everything fell apart.

  “Our timing is terrible.” I don’t even realize I’m talking until the words are out.

  Theo’s mouth opens a little, like he wants to say something, but he wants to pick and choose each word. Very unlike Theo. “I know. I’m trying not to talk about it, because I don’t want to mess this up.”

  “Mess what up?”

  “You being here.” The way he looks at me would have leveled me a year ago.

  “Me being here?”

  “Yeah. You’re here, breathing my air and generally making my life less shitty. Except for the whole haunted-out-of-my-mind part.”

  My hands suddenly itch with the memory of the purse. I can feel the weight of it on my boot and in my fingers. The image tenses my shoulders.

  “I can’t handle much more of that,” I admit. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to walk you home the long way,” he says, getting up. “And I’m going to keep working with Gabriel. World’s youngest paranormal investigator.”

  I stand up too, letting the swing drop away with a rattle of chains. “It’s not just at the bridge for me. It’s happened in my room.”

  “The earring you found, you mean? You said you found that in your room.”

  “Yeah, but there’s been other stuff. My jaw hurting and bleeding.” I breathe in sharply, remembering the coppery taste on the back of my tongue.

  “Did any of it start before you were on the bridge?”

  “No. Not really.”

  We walk a little farther before he stops, tugging my arm. “Have you told your parents?”

  “About the haunting? God, no. My mom would lose it. She’d admit me somewhere.”

  “We could avoid the bridge. See if that works.”

  “Even if I could, you can’t. And I don’t know if that would fix it. It keeps reminding us, looping us back to what happened.”

  “Replaying that night. I know.” He sighs. “I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do with any of this. What we should learn. It’s not like we can go back and change the past.”

  He’s right about that, and it leaves us both quiet as we walk. Traffic zips by on the State Street Bridge. It adds half a mile to our trip, but it’s nice. The heat is easing its grip. The sun hangs lower over the university rooftops. A reminder that I should have gone back a while ago. I don’t really care. I feel peaceful with his boots clomping beside me. I’m content.

  He stops at the edge of campus. “Will you call if you need me?”

  “Yes. And you? If you find something?”

  He nods, I nod. Everything between us feels the same, except this. He’s hesitating. And Theo never hesitates. He also never looks at me like this, his expression so open and hungry that I can feel it under my skin.

  I think of those same words again. Terrible timing.

  Is it, though?

  We can’t be together. I know that can’t happen, but I want it to. It’s scary stupid. We’ve brought out the worst in each other before. Enabled all the wrong behaviors. We could slip right back into all of that so easily.

  I clear my throat and my head. “We still need to talk. We’re still not…”

  He winces. “I know. I do.”

  He shuffles back with an awkward wave, but it’s not what either of us wants. I grab the front of his shirt before I can think. There’s the barest hint of heat through his shirt. He crushes me to his chest before I can feel anything else.

  It’s exactly what it’s always been to hug Theo. Even like this, he fidgets and jitters like burning energy is his life’s mission. I feel that energy now in the hard arms that flex around me, in the sigh that shakes the hair at the crown of my head. In the way his fingers trail, just through the tips of my hair.

  I pull back far enough to see his eyes dart to my mouth. I’m smart enough to know why he’s looking. Something sparks deep in my chest. And burns.

  What if it could be different with us? What if I found a way to live this normal, healthy college life and be with Theo too? Is that possible? Can you go to the darkest imaginable places with a person and still walk with them in the light?

  My therapist wouldn’t tell me no. She’d ask me if being with Theo is a best choice. And I would know the answer, no matter how much I hated it.

  Theo pulls his hands away from me, and I feel my insides split open. I love him. Then. Now. Always. In a movie, it would be enough to undo every bad thing. Out here in the real world, though, love isn’t enough.

  Theo

  I’ve strung lights across the rest of the bridge by eight o’clock the next morning, and not one disembodied voice has come calling. I blame Gabriel. He’s been here since six, sitting on the bridge twenty feet below while I’m working. He’s wearing headphones, eating corn chips, and generally driving Denny out of his mind with his lurking.

  Denny and I closed the bridge with cones this morning, since he’s replacing planks. He wanted Gabriel gone as soon as the poor kid showed up, said he didn’t need some punk kid breaking his neck on his watch. I convinced him Gabriel was a friend, and Denny let it drop. Guess he’s more worried about my social life than I thought.

  Not sure I can blame him. Last night, I almost kissed a girl I sent to the hospital less than six months ago, so clearly I need to brush up my social skills.

  I hook another strand of lights and clamp it into place. Then squat on one of the crossbeams. It’s time to take down my harness anchor, and everything about that process is a pain in the ass. I push my back against the steel. Heat’s already climbing, but I’m finished and Denny’s got ten or twelve fresh planks on the walkway. Decent progress for both of us.

  “You got something else for me to do?” I holler down.

  Denny looks up, pulling his cap low on his eyes to block the sun. “Done with the lights?”

  “Probably. After we check them lit, I might need to make some adjustments, but I’m sick of climbing around like a monkey.”

  “Suit yourself. You can see if you have any luck getting the damn locks off. Broke two sets of bolt cutters working on it yesterday, but the good ones came in.”

  “I’ll give it a whirl.” I start climbing down and Gabriel watches, mildly interested as Denny moves for something behind his toolbox.

  It looks like a giant pair of wire cutters, complete with red padded handles and a wicked-looking set of blades sandwiched together. A pinch strong enough to sever steel. I’m intrigued.

  The cutters are heavy in my hands, and the silver head lo
oks dangerously effective. I’m careful not to get twitchy when Gabriel moves closer. He lifts a finger to the closed blades, and an image blooms in my mind. The blades open and then snap shut. Severing his finger at the first knuckle.

  That doesn’t seem like a good idea, Theo.

  I jerk back, revolted by the disturbing turn of my thoughts and the words—this time with no buzz, no telltale smell to warn me. I look left and right, but there’s nothing.

  Gabriel is watching me, his slim dark brows pulled together. Did he hear it too?

  Or does he somehow know what ran through my mind?

  “Well, are you going to gawk all day or try to get the job done?” Denny asks. I head for the first stretch of fencing and Gabriel follows, watching as I inspect the locks. I want to start with an easy one, so I’m checking the girth of the bars.

  “Wait,” Gabriel says suddenly. “You’re cutting off the locks?”

  Denny snorts. “Why, you and your true love have one up here?”

  “No.” Gabriel sounds affronted. “But they’re a piece of history, you know?”

  “Asshole kids carving their names on shoplifted padlocks is hardly what I’d call history.”

  A few colored ones pop out from the rest, flashes of confetti in a sea of faded silver and brass. They look cheap enough. This is where I’ll start.

  Gabriel reaches for the tool again and I pull the blade back, not trusting myself.

  I cough out a laugh. “Watch your digits, man.”

  Gabriel nods and shifts to the left so I can get to the rail. I tap the tool on a few locks, and my stomach rolls. I try to ignore it. It doesn’t matter. Even if it starts—the voices, the music, the smells—I have to remember it can’t hurt me. The hurting is already done.

  I open the blade with a shink. Gabriel’s eyes go wide. He walks away without another word, past the rail, past Denny, all the way to the ramp that leads into town. I want to call after him, but Denny’s watching. And there’s something buzzing in my ears. A speaker turned up too loud. A bee’s nest in a wall. I feel the sound in my mouth and throat until my teeth shudder.