They were on a bridge, the kind of bridge halfway built that was made up of squares and cement and asphalt and that was sturdy enough for a group of teenagers to go out to the middle of it in the middle of the night and throw beer bottles off the side but still a few weeks from being opened to the public.
And two of these teenagers had their legs hanging off it, looking at the water beneath twirling and dropping gravel in just to see it disappear. And one of them didn’t want to be, had just come over because the other was her ride, and she wanted to leave, she was tired, but not the kind of tired where she hadn’t gotten enough sleep, no, the kind that was you never wanted to wake up again.
The tired one being Erica meant that the one who didn’t want to leave, the one who wanted to continue throwing gravel into the ripples for what could be forever, could be another five seconds, because it would never be decided until the moment of, was Cadence. She didn’t want to leave because that meant they would have to go home, they would have to go to bed, they would have to go to get up the next morning, and that wasn’t going to happen, oh no.
And so she kept throwing gravel below, kept throwing laughter behind them, and then got quiet, turned to Erica, said she didn’t want to do anything anymore and was tired, and Erica got this sense of relief, this ‘oh thank God we can go home now,’ for when Cadence said tired Erica didn’t think she meant it the same way she did. But then Cadence pulled her wrist, lurched forward, and they were falling, falling off the bridge.
And they were in the ripples and the twists and the turns of the waters but they weren’t not there, weren’t out, weren’t dead. And Cadence still had her hand around her wrist, her thumb and middle finger touching just so barely, and was kicking to the side, grabbing onto the side, pulling Erica just so so that she had to hold on too.
The bridge that wasn’t finished yet was over a river that wasn’t wide as much as it was deep and fast-moving, and drains from neighborhood streets would join it underneath through a giant tube, the kind that was as wide as a person’s height but only just and as tall as a six year old who drank a lot of milk. And there was still a construction platform in this pipe, red plastic crisscrossed diamonds three inches above the water, and on this platform was a dirty air mattress, and on that mattress were three boys.
They had heard the two clanging up the ladder, so that one stuck out his hand and helped them in, but before turning to such and saying a thing Cadence did what she thought was the only thing needed and kissed Erica on the forehead, the lipstick that should have washed off in the water staying there and not letting Erica conjure up any angry emotion so that she just hugged herself, her sweatshirt now wet and cold, no longer a source of heat, but at least she wasn’t dead, just barely on the platform, on the mattress, but at least she wasn’t dead, and so Cadence pulled her toward her a bit.
And then she was turning to the boy who had helped them in, the boy who was afraid of spiders and couldn’t be disliked by anyone and wished he was blonde with all of his being but was sadly brunetted. And Cadence was hugging him, telling him about the beer bottle throwing and the bridge nearly completing, and Erica decided she just needed to lie down.
She knew one of the boys better than the others, the one who was too obsessed with Beyonce, got too upset about people asking him if he was gay, and who was the envy of the first, because he was blonde wasn’t he. And so she laid her head on his stomach because he was already lying out like a mummy and she needed a pillow, really needed one, because Cadence was saying that she was going to text her mom that she was spending the night at her house and that she should do the same.
The other boy, the remaining boy, was the one who looked stoned all the time but never was, got mouthed off to “slow down” in neighborhoods by cranky parents constantly, and would flick off random passerby just to see any old reaction. He wasn’t doing anything, hadn’t even looked up when Cadence and Erica arrived, because he was looking through the red plastic crisscrossed diamonds, cupping his hands out in front of where the platform ended, grabbing onto anything and everything that went past.
He had found a toy soldier earlier with just the tip of his sword missing, a pair of badly cracked sunglasses, and wouldn’t you know it, a bottle cap, what were the odds. And he was too wired on energy drinks to go to sleep, didn’t need to be a pillow for anyone anyway, and so kept pulling his hand through the water, kept looking through the red plastic crisscrossed diamonds, kept thinking thoughts of to, too, two.
But then he saw something shiny, of course, very shiny, stuck in a crack along the pipe, not too far back but not far enough forward that he could reach it. And because it was shiny, because he needed too, and because there were three inches between the red plastic crisscrossed diamonds and the start of the water, because it was possible, he took off his shoes and socks and slid himself up under the platform, wedged his fingers in between the diamonds to keep himself hanging there looking up.
And he wasn’t tired, wasn’t ready to go to sleep, just wanted to see what the shiny thing was, because he was curious, wasn’t he, and it couldn’t just be a toy soldier or glasses or a bottle cap, oh no.
But wouldn’t you know it, his hands slipped, he let go, he went in, his head hit the cement of the bottom of the pipe, and there was the mattress, so they wouldn’t have been able to see him even if they were awake, but they weren’t, were they, they were sleeping, and he now was too.