Street workers to take a smoke break.
But there is the pond still, at the bottom, kidney-shaped but surprisingly clear-looking. He would have expected a film of algae across the top, but it actually looks cool and inviting on a hot summer day. There’s a rock in the middle that was usually covered with ducks preening themselves. There aren’t any today, but the sun is so bright, the day so clear and warm, that it somehow seems like ducks might swoop in at any moment.
He looks up, half thinking that his thoughts might create them. They don’t.
He’s hot in his over-warm hiking clothes, and the pond looks so inviting that he has a fleeting impulse to jump in, have a refreshing swim, have something even like a bath and just allow himself to float, suspended in water –
He stops.
Suspended in water,
he thinks.
The terror of it, the sheer awful
terror
that never seemed to stop. Fear was bearable when you could see an end to it, but there was no end in sight out in those freezing waves, those pitiless fists of ocean that cared nothing for you, that tipped you over and down in a kind of callous blindness, filling your lungs, smashing you against rocks –
He reaches around to where his shoulder blade snapped. He can remember the pain of it, can remember the irrevocable
snap
of the bone breaking. He feels a little sick at the thought, even though his shoulder here, in this place, works fine.
Then he wonders where his body is.
In whatever world this isn’t, out there where he died, where is he? He wonders if he’s washed ashore yet. He wonders if they even know to look for him in the ocean or on the beach, because he wasn’t supposed to be there,
no one
was supposed to be there at that time of year. Freezing winter on an angry, rocky coast? Why would anyone be
near
the water, much less
in
it?
Not unless they were forced.
Not unless someone forced them.
He feels another pain in his stomach, an unease at the memory of his last moments on the beach that makes him feel even sicker. He screws the cap back on the water bottle and forces himself to return to the spaghetti, now cooled enough to eat. He makes a mess of it, tipping it into his mouth and slopping it onto one of his new T-shirts, not caring much.
He wonders how his parents found out. Would he have been gone long enough to be missed before his body was found? Would they have been surprised by policemen showing up at the door, carrying their hats under their arms and asking to come in? Or would they have been worried by his absence, growing more worried by the hour, until it became clear something had gone wrong?
Or if time worked the same here as it did there – though the warm summer here and the freezing winter
there
put that into question, and he had no idea how long that first purgatorial bit on the path had lasted, but still – he might have only died late the day before yesterday or even early yesterday morning. It’s possible they haven’t even noticed yet. His parents might think he’s at a friend’s house for the weekend, and between Owen’s clarinet lessons and his mum’s running and his father’s decision to start redoing the bathroom, they might still be unaware that he’s gone at all.
They never had noticed him all that much. Not after what happened.
In fact, maybe, secretly, they’d have some guilty happiness that it wasn’t
Owen
who had drowned. Maybe they’d be a little relieved that Seth was no longer a walking reminder of that summer before they moved. Maybe –
Seth sets down the empty can of spaghetti and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
Then he wipes his eyes with his other sleeve.
But,
he thinks,
it’s possible to die before you die.
There’s no one walking through the park, no one in this world at all who can see him sitting on the edge of the sandbox, but he lowers his face down to his knees, as he can’t help but weep once more.
“I mean, for God’s sake, just look at them,” Monica said as they lay on a hill
But there is the pond still, at the bottom, kidney-shaped but surprisingly clear-looking. He would have expected a film of algae across the top, but it actually looks cool and inviting on a hot summer day. There’s a rock in the middle that was usually covered with ducks preening themselves. There aren’t any today, but the sun is so bright, the day so clear and warm, that it somehow seems like ducks might swoop in at any moment.
He looks up, half thinking that his thoughts might create them. They don’t.
He’s hot in his over-warm hiking clothes, and the pond looks so inviting that he has a fleeting impulse to jump in, have a refreshing swim, have something even like a bath and just allow himself to float, suspended in water –
He stops.
Suspended in water,
he thinks.
The terror of it, the sheer awful
terror
that never seemed to stop. Fear was bearable when you could see an end to it, but there was no end in sight out in those freezing waves, those pitiless fists of ocean that cared nothing for you, that tipped you over and down in a kind of callous blindness, filling your lungs, smashing you against rocks –
He reaches around to where his shoulder blade snapped. He can remember the pain of it, can remember the irrevocable
snap
of the bone breaking. He feels a little sick at the thought, even though his shoulder here, in this place, works fine.
Then he wonders where his body is.
In whatever world this isn’t, out there where he died, where is he? He wonders if he’s washed ashore yet. He wonders if they even know to look for him in the ocean or on the beach, because he wasn’t supposed to be there,
no one
was supposed to be there at that time of year. Freezing winter on an angry, rocky coast? Why would anyone be
near
the water, much less
in
it?
Not unless they were forced.
Not unless someone forced them.
He feels another pain in his stomach, an unease at the memory of his last moments on the beach that makes him feel even sicker. He screws the cap back on the water bottle and forces himself to return to the spaghetti, now cooled enough to eat. He makes a mess of it, tipping it into his mouth and slopping it onto one of his new T-shirts, not caring much.
He wonders how his parents found out. Would he have been gone long enough to be missed before his body was found? Would they have been surprised by policemen showing up at the door, carrying their hats under their arms and asking to come in? Or would they have been worried by his absence, growing more worried by the hour, until it became clear something had gone wrong?
Or if time worked the same here as it did there – though the warm summer here and the freezing winter
there
put that into question, and he had no idea how long that first purgatorial bit on the path had lasted, but still – he might have only died late the day before yesterday or even early yesterday morning. It’s possible they haven’t even noticed yet. His parents might think he’s at a friend’s house for the weekend, and between Owen’s clarinet lessons and his mum’s running and his father’s decision to start redoing the bathroom, they might still be unaware that he’s gone at all.
They never had noticed him all that much. Not after what happened.
In fact, maybe, secretly, they’d have some guilty happiness that it wasn’t
Owen
who had drowned. Maybe they’d be a little relieved that Seth was no longer a walking reminder of that summer before they moved. Maybe –
Seth sets down the empty can of spaghetti and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
Then he wipes his eyes with his other sleeve.
But,
he thinks,
it’s possible to die before you die.
There’s no one walking through the park, no one in this world at all who can see him sitting on the edge of the sandbox, but he lowers his face down to his knees, as he can’t help but weep once more.
“I mean, for God’s sake, just look at them,” Monica said as they lay on a hill
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