Dare Me to Live

Chapter 24 (Part two)

A rush of cold air, a sickening sensation as my heart jumped into my mouth and my stomach disappeared entirely, and I hit the water like a bullet.

The effect was instantaneous. The cold wrapped around me like steel while water filled every orifice, my eyes, mouth, ears, nose. I may as well have had a cannonball strapped to my waist for how heavy my clothes became. I tried to kick out with my feet, paddle with my arms, but my blood was ice rendering me immobile.

The current, even faster than it seemed from above, dragged me along like water-logged trash so I couldn't tell left from right, up from down. Air escaped in an explosion of bubbles. Panic ensued as my lungs threatened to burst and I choked on filthy river water. Brightly colored spots filled my vision—were my eyes even open? The roaring in my ears might have been water or blood. Just as I was sure the end was near and I was going to drown, my head broke the surface.

My relief was short lived. No sooner had I drawn breath than the current pulled me back under. Around and around I went, spinning like a cork, only managing to get my head above the surface to take small gasps of air.

My underwater world was just as gray as the one above and water and sky merged into a shapeless, viscous mass. Until my back slammed into a rock. The impact forced the air I had been clutching in my lungs out in a cry of pain. I scrambled to grab ahold of anything, scraping my knuckles and ripping off nails, but before I could I was torn away again.

How much longer could I do this before I slipped beneath the surface into the never-ending darkness below and never came back up? How much longer could I fight to live? It would easy, to give-up. Almost too easy.

But I did not want to die. Not today.

Sharp, stabbing, clawed fingers ripped at my hair, pulling, yanking. I cried out again, water rushing into my mouth. My left elbow slammed into something hard. It was a fallen tree, jutting out into the river. I reached out and grabbed a branch, jarring my shoulders as I stopped my momentum while the current continued to pull at my waist and legs hungrily.

With the last of my energy, I used the branches to pull myself towards the river bank. I lunged the last foot to the shore, sinking my hands into the mud and dragging myself out of the water. Suddenly, I wasn't the one lifting myself; the shore was pulling me in, over the ground, as though the land now had its own current.

I pushed up onto my knees, retching up river water and phlegm while my eyes and nose burned. Once my stomach was empty, I collapsed onto my side. If I thought I was exhausted before it was nothing compared to now. Someone turned me onto my back and through blurry eyes Tyler's face swam into view.

I sat up at the waist, trying to breathe into that lungs that were filled with fire.

"What are you doing here?" I wheezed.

"Me? What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, though his face was twisted in worry.

"Keeping a promise," I said, putting my forehead on my knees.

"Are you insane?" Tyler asked, unzipping his jacket and throwing it over my shoulders. "You could've gotten yourself killed!"

"But I didn't," I said.

It was exactly the conversation Danny and I would have had only in reverse. And something about that was hilarious. The laughter I had held back before erupted from me in great gasps, filling the air with something between joy and hysterics.

A few birds nearby took flight in alarm. I collapsed backwards, not caring that I was getting mud all over Tyler's jacket, not caring that it had begun to rain or that he was looking at me with a concerned expression or that I was soaked and disheveled as a drowned rat. I just laughed.

"Where exactly is the humor in this?" asked Tyler. He knelt next to me in the mud, shielding me from some of the rain. The water beading in his hair and on his skin made him seem almost like a mirage.

"I almost drowned," I gasped between fits of giggles.

"And that's funny?" he said, bewildered.

I shook my head, still snickering.

"I'm alive but he's dead. And I did it. I jumped. Without him. I did it. He's gone, but I did it." My chest began to ache as the laughter subsided and I tried to regain a normal pattern of breathing I hadn't had since this morning when I woke up. I hugged my knees tightly.

"He's gone," I sighed, lapsing at last into silence.

It was though I was realizing it, and understanding it, for the first time Danny was dead. He was gone. Never again would I hear his wild laughter, feel his arm around my shoulder, taste his lips on mine. Never again would I get to see him do the impossible.

But that didn't mean I couldn't.

All along, I had thought I needed him. Had looked to him for guidance, sought comfort in his presence, and adventure in his person. Knowing him, loving him, dying with him, had irrevocably made me who I am, but it wasn't all I was. Or all I would be.

Life wasn't little. It was the biggest thing of all—the biggest thing anyone did. But what made it big was all of the little things. And if I could do something big, something insane, and Danny-like without Danny, then I could do all of the little things too.

"He's gone," I repeated. And it didn't hurt quite as much as before.

"Dash, are you...?"

"I'm okay," I said. "I'm okay." And for the first time since the accident, I meant it. "So what are you doing here anyway?" I asked.

My own nonchalance surprised even me; I might have been asking what brought him to the mall.

"Vanessa called me," he said, though his words were stilted. He seemed to be waging some kind of internal battle as he studied my face and analyzed my inappropriate demeanor, though I could only guess at what his choices were.

His answer surprised me. I had been so sure Vanessa would get Kevin's car.

"Why did she call you?"

For a moment, he appeared lost, as though he had never stopped to consider the question himself. Finally, he shrugged. "I'm not sure. Once she told me what happened, I didn't listen to much else. I got in the car and came here."

A kernel of warmth formed in the pit of my stomach at the thought that even with everything between us, Tyler had still come to see if I was all right. By contrast, I realized for the first time how very cold I was. My fingers had stiffened to the point of being useless and I may as well have been encased in ice for all the good my soaked clothes did me.

"Your lips are turning blue," he said. "C'mon, we should get you to a hospital."

I ignored his outstretched hand. "Why are you here?" I asked instead.

Tyler's brow furrowed, half confusion, half agitation.

"What do you mean? I came to make sure—"

"Make sure what?" I interrupted. "That I was okay or that I didn't kill myself?"

Tyler blanched at the word "kill." I could see the thoughts tangling up in his head.

"Dash, I didn't think—I mean—you're not Mia."

"No, I'm not," I said. I shifted into a more comfortable position, watching the water lap at the shore a few yards away, trying to reach for me, to pull me back under. Mud coated my hands in a cold paste, but I didn't bother wiping them off.

"I want you to tell me what happened," I said, directing my words at the river. "I want you to tell me what you were going to say the night you came to my room."

Something in my tone made Tyler sigh and move to sit down in the mud beside me. He looped his arms around his bent knees, interlocking them at the hands. It seemed to take a while for him to collect his thoughts, to pluck them like posies from the ashes of his memories and hold them on his tongue to taste them before he spoke. He too spoke to the water.

"Mia was music," he began, and took me back into his past.

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