CHAPTER 15 A DROWNING

Matt sat up in bed, pushing away the sweat-drenched sheets. He peered out the window, listening to the soft calls of birds in the nearby trees, announcing the dawn.

“I can’t sleep,” he said aloud, rubbing his eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”

Five thirty-five, the clock on the night table said.

He’d been tossing most of the night, his mind whirling with troubled thoughts.

Mostly he had been thinking about April.

He had tried her house when he got back from the beach in the afternoon, but the line was endlessly busy. Then he tried calling after dinner and her mom said April had gone out.

Probably with Gabri again, Matt thought unhappily.

I’ve got to talk to April. I thought we were going to have a great summer together.

Thinking about her had kept him up all night. Now, as the sky slowly brightened and the chirping of the birds grew louder, he decided there was no point in staying in bed.

An early jog on the beach might help to clear my mind, he thought, pulling on a pair of black spandex bicycle shorts and squeezing his feet into his running shoes.

He closed the cottage door silently behind him, stepping out into the morning air, still cool and dew laden. The salty-fish smell of the ocean invaded his nostrils as he began to jog past the other cottages to the dunes that led down to the ocean.

The lapping waves were still inky black under a pearl gray sky as Matt began his jog along the shore. Sea gulls scattered as he ran, squawking in shrill protest.

The beach was empty. All his. Not even one other early-morning jogger in sight.

Off on the brightening horizon, he could see the dark outlines of a ship. Some kind of barge. The image shimmered above the water, its outlines bending and shifting in the eerie morning light. Like some sort of ghost ship, not real.

Matt jogged slowly but steadily, past the dying embers of a small campfire someone hadn’t fully doused, past a blackened, charred log the ocean had tossed up, past a pair of starfish dead and drying on the sand.

The spray felt cold and refreshing against his face as his sneakers crunched over wet sand. The gray of the sky was beginning to lift, like a pale curtain rising, revealing the crimson morning sunlight underneath. The ocean water brightened with the sky, reflecting its color.

This is really beautiful, Matt thought, jogging steadily, his forehead dotted with beads of sweat despite the cool air. He gazed ahead at the dark rock cliff that rose up at the water’s edge beyond the dunes.

As he approached the cliff, the sand beneath his shoes becoming pebbly, then harder, he looked to the small rowboat dock that jutted out in the shadow of the cliff.

Something appeared to be floating in the water beside the dock.

Was it a small boat of some kind? He was too far away to see clearly.

As he drew closer, crimson sunlight rippling along the water’s edge, he could see it clearer, something dark, pretty large, bobbing beside one of the rowboats.

Has a whale lost its way and trapped itself near shore? He dismissed that idea as he drew closer, and was better able to judge the size.

He stopped just before the dock, his chest heaving from the effort of his long run. Wiping away the perspiration from his forehead with his arm, he turned his eyes to the water.

And his breath caught in his throat.

It was a person.

Bobbing like a rowboat.

Bobbing facedown.

Arms floating out at its sides stiffly, so stiffly.

And before he even realized it, Matt was in the water, cold around his ankles, over his sneakers, which he hadn’t thought to remove.

He hadn’t thought.

He hadn’t thought he’d find a person.

He hadn’t thought anything.

And he was tugging the person by the shoulders, the water up over his waist. Pulling hard now. But the person—the body—the person—was so heavy.

The water felt so cold, swirling about his hot body. Matt gasped for breath, his chest heaving.

Are you breathing?

Please be breathing!

But, no—how could he be breathing?

It was a he. Yes. A he. But Matt still hadn’t been able to lift his face from the water.

How could he be breathing with his face still in the water? With his arms stretched out so stiffly?

What was he wearing? Only undershorts?

His skin so white and smooth, like some kind of sea creature.

Only sea creatures can breathe in the water.

And this person wasn’t breathing, couldn’t be breathing.

Panting loudly, Matt heaved his heavy cargo onto the shore. Pushing the wet, matted hair back from his forehead, Matt stood for a moment, hands on hips, leaning forward, breathing, breathing deeply, waiting for his heart to stop racing.

And then he bent over the person—the body—turned it with great effort onto its back.

And screamed: “Todd!”

“Todd! How? How, Todd?”

With dreadful clarity, his friend came into sudden focus. His nearly nude body was covered with gashes and cuts from banging against the rocks around the rowboat dock.

So many cuts.

So many cuts, his blood appeared to be completely drained.

“How, Todd? How?”

So many cuts, all over his face and neck.

“No. It can’t be Todd. It can’t be.”

So many cuts.

So many cuts, it made no sense.

How did Todd drown?

Why would he swim way out here, so far from everyone?

Did he drown farther up the beach where everyone hangs out? Was his body carried here by the current?

His body?

How could Todd be just a body now?

How could he no longer be Todd?

Matt sank to his knees, his mind swirling faster than the ocean waters.

He closed his eyes, but the vision of his drowned friend, his skin so white except for the cuts, the cuts, the cuts, stayed with him.

Todd wasn’t a strong swimmer.

Why would he brave the undertow at night?

Todd knew how powerful the undertow was, how unpredictable, how deadly.

So why did he go swimming?

“Why, Todd?” Matt cried, opening his eyes, raising his face to the orange, rising sun.

Several minutes later two fishermen, tackle boxes and fishing rods in hand, came upon Matt, still on his knees, still huddled over his friend’s body, still asking the question, “Why, Todd? Why?”

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 713