“To your parents?” he asks.
“To anyone.” I drop my gaze and try to steady my breathing. My heart is beating fast. The anxiety is climbing, but I know it won’t be as bad. I’m too low on energy.
“What if we avoid the bridge?” he asks, taking my hand. “That would be a start, right? I’m fired anyway. You could stay on campus. What if we start over and forget all of this crazy shit ever happened?”
“It’s more than the bridge, Theo,” I say softly. “There’s negativity between us too.”
The truth of it falls heavy between us. It’s inevitable and inescapable. And it makes me very tired.
My phone buzzes at 8:05. Melanie.
Where are you? Are you okay?
I show my phone to Theo. He rubs his hand over my knee. “How long has she been up?”
“Not long. Fifteen minutes maybe.”
His palm is warm on my calf. His hands are warm everywhere. I want to curl so close to him that he’s all I feel.
“What do you want to do?” he asks.
I turn, like it will make the question go away. Or Melanie. Maybe all of it.
“I don’t want you to let go of that program,” he says. “It’s all you talked about for months. You drove me crazy, for God’s sake. You might as well—”
“I’ll say I’m sick,” I say. It’s not even a lie. I am sick, and I’m not sure how to get better.
I tap out a quick response.
Sorry. I’m sick.
Are you in the bathroom? I didn’t see you?
No, I walked to the drugstore clinic. Long line.
What about the health clinic here? Why go off campus?
I can see her shaking her head. Or worse, maybe tightening her mouth. Second-guessing my every text. She could call my mom. God, I can’t handle that right now.
My heart pounds as I think. I’m not sure how to proceed.
Finally, I type: The clinic might call Mom. She’d freak. Just want to make sure it’s not strep. I’m not dying.
You sure?
Totally. Need medicine and sleep. Blah.
LOL. K. We’re going to a movie after lecture. Want me to bring soup first?
I’m good, thanks. I’m going to practice for tomorrow’s presentation. Have fun.
Be back by 8. Text if you need me.
The words all look convincingly benign. Who knows, though. If you look at my texts, they seem honest enough. Melanie could be lying too. She could be calling my mother right now, or she could just be a concerned roommate. I wish I were the kind of person who could tell.
My panic has burned itself out, so the thoughts chase each other into silence. I curl up, and Theo flips through the channels. My eyes grow heavy. We are messed up, but maybe it’s all right this way. Maybe messed up is the only thing that fits.
I don’t know I’m asleep until I’m awake.
My eyes open to see slick, muddy water sliding underneath me.
Where am I?
But I already know. This is the river. I gasp and jerk my head up. I’m outside, holding metal railing. I’m on the bridge. How? How is this happening? How am I here?
My heart beats hard, my pulse a painful throb in my neck and fingers. I can’t be here. It’s a dream. It has to be a dream.
I look around to collect whatever data I can. The sun is high and bright. My shoes are gone. The only thing I can hear over the roaring in my ears is the sibilant rush of the river.
My teeth chatter, and my knee bangs into the railing, sending locks rattling.
This is happening. I’m out here, barefoot again, standing at our lock. And I am alone.
A scream scrabbles up the back of my throat, but I swallow it down.
“You’re all right.” I say it to myself, out loud the way my mother might in the middle of a panic attack. The way Theo might.
Theo.
I look around wildly, pressing one hand to my face. Where is he? How did I get here? Did he let me go?
“Excuse me, miss,” a woman says, bumping by. Her smile is tight. I can’t blame her. I’m sure I look deranged. I’m barefoot on a bridge and obviously terrified. The woman passes by, looking once over her shoulder.
And then I’m alone again. There’s no one. The air is warm, the sun already dipping slowly toward the west.
I’ve been gone all day. I pat my shorts, but my phone is gone. I don’t know what time it is. I was with Theo, curled up on that ugly couch.
Where is Theo?
My next breath comes too short. I smell something. So strong I almost taste it. Lilacs. That can’t be right. They bloomed early this year. I shouldn’t be smelling that now.
I push back from the railing. Don’t think about it, I tell myself. Get off this bridge and figure it out later. One step and the smell grows stronger. A soft jangling of wind chimes dances on the edge of my hearing.
Another step and I hear the voices.
She has an anxiety thing.
My heart trips. Loses its rhythm. I move faster.
Don’t you, Paige?
Bang! A board in front of me jumps, and I shout. I look up, but there’s no one watching. No one here but me. A choking sound erupts beneath my feet, a wheezing breath that goes in and out. It winds into a wail that sounds like my name.
Because it is my name.
And I know that voice. It’s Theo crying for me. He’s the dark shadow. The thing beneath the bridge, clinging to the underside of the walkway.
“No.” I choke on the word.
Something drags along the wood beneath my feet, like denim on wood. A sack of laundry. Or a body.
Another board bangs, and my stomach drops. Tumbles. I turn around, reverse my route. It doesn’t matter. I’ll head into the Village. I can find my way from there.
He’s dragging himself after me. I see him, a shadowy mass, the dark impression of fingers between the planks. Oh, God, he’s right there, right below me.
“Paige!”
I turn my head at the sound of my name. Theo’s on the other side of the bridge. Not Then Theo, but Now Theo. And he’s not crawling on the underside of the walkway. He’s at the end of the bridge—for real, red-faced and obviously recovering from a run. His shoulders heave. I open my mouth to call for him.
The wail that comes next threatens to split me in two. My hands slap over my ears, and I drop low. Crouch into a ball. I think of tornado warnings in elementary school when we’d hide in the halls, hunched over our knees, pretending that would stop the bad thing from coming.
I’m still thinking of tornadoes when Now Theo touches my shoulders. I look up, and the world goes quiet. He looks so scared. He’s holding my pink flip-flops. They look pretty and clean in his hands.
“Where were you?” I ask, crying.
“Where was I?” He gives a laugh that’s closer to a sob. “Paige, I got up to use the bathroom, and when I got back, you were gone. That was over an hour ago.”
I shake my head. My stomach cramps. My throat goes thick. “I don’t remember.”
“You were dead asleep, and you just—” He stops himself with a sharp breath, hands smoothing down my shoulders, my arms. “You were asleep, weren’t you? You were sleepwalking again?”
“I don’t know. It shouldn’t last so long. It shouldn’t…” My eyes go hot and prickly. Then I’m crying. He pulls me in to his chest.
“I should have known,” he says roughly.
I shake my head. It’s hard to talk. “How could you know?”
His grip tightens on me. “I should have. Shit, you could have walked into traffic.”
“I shouldn’t have. Sleepwalking shouldn’t work like this, Theo. It never happens like this.” Dread pools in my belly, liquid and cold. “Something’s wrong with me.”
“No,” he says, his hand smoothing over
my hair. “It’s this damn bridge. We need to stay away from it until you’re gone. Screw Denny, screw all of it.”
“The bridge is us. It’s what happened that night,” I say. “How do we fight something that’s coming from inside us?”
He doesn’t argue. We don’t bother trying to make it to the other side. The bridge doesn’t hurt us when we’re together. Whatever this thing is, it likes us twisted and tangled and clinging to each other.
Theo traces the heavy brass lock with our initials. “If you want to fight it, we’ll fight it. Or if you want, I’ll go. Whatever you want. Just tell me what you want to do.”
I touch the lock too, our fingers meeting at the first letter of my name. I remember everything about closing this lock on this rail. We were fourteen years old, and I was as desperate to have Theo as I was to hide how badly I wanted him. It was the only time I’d wanted to believe in fairy tales.
“When did you do this?” he asks, tugging the lock.
“The first time I came to visit you. You told me about the locks on the phone, about the whole tradition.”
“I did? I don’t remember.”
“You told me it was this urban legend—locked in love for eternity. You laughed it off, but it made me hope. It was stupid. I walked to the hardware store before I came to Denny’s. I was shaking so badly when I handed the clerk my money.”
Theo laughs. “Did you think he’d call the police?”
“I don’t know. I felt like a criminal, though. Then I had to buy a nail too, to scratch the letters. It took a while.”
“What happened after you put the lock on the bridge?”
My stomach sinks. “I ran straight to Denny’s to see you.”
“I don’t remember that either. But I remember us hanging out at the fair that night. I got into it with that kid on the football team.”
“And you were kissing a girl on the couch when I got to Denny’s.”
His mouth parts, a mix of realization and regret shaping his features.
“Paige…”
“I was crushed,” I say, shaking my head. “But how was that fair? It was ridiculous, believing this lock would be enough to magic us together.”
I look up at him and pull his hand away from the lock like it’s leaking poison into the water. Maybe it is.
“I wish I had some clue of what to say right now,” he says, looking stricken.
“There isn’t anything to say. It doesn’t matter. It was years ago.”
“And I didn’t mean…”
His voice trails off, because he doesn’t need to finish. That girl never appeared again. She wasn’t some great love; it was just life.
I guess happily ever after has never been our story. Maybe we are meant for something else. And maybe that lie locked on this bridge is holding us from whatever that is. I hate it for being there. And for being wrong.
“Will you do something for me?” I ask him.
“You know I will.”
“I want to cut off the lock,” I say.
His hands tense in mine, his face furrowing. “Our lock?”
“Yes.”
His shoulders sag, but he nods. “You want me to do it?”
“No. I want to cut it off together.”
Theo
I don’t have the tools, and Paige doesn’t have time to wait for me to get them. Something about a presentation tomorrow, and since I don’t want to cut it at all, I’m quick to agree. When I finally manage to sleep that night, I do it badly, tossing and turning on that half-inflated air mattress, and dreaming of kissing Paige. And hitting Paige. Paige sighing and Paige bleeding. I wake up feeling like the creepiest bastard who ever lived.
I visit Denny at the work site, hoping he’ll let me help. He ignores me like it’s his God-given duty, until I finally confront him with the last topic he’ll want to talk about.
“What happened to you on the bridge?” I ask, and I watch the hammer he’s holding go still, dropping slowly to his side. “You told me I’m not the only one who’s been haunted, right?”
Denny lights a cigarette and walks toward me, looking halfway between hateful and resigned. “You’re good and obsessed with it, aren’t you?”
“I’ve always been all or nothing,” I say, scuffing my boot at the new planks. They’re even and smooth. Nothing like the other half of the walkway. “It looks good.”
“So do the lights,” he says. “Still don’t know if I’ll be able to finish the locks this week.”
“I’ll help you with the locks,” I say. “You don’t have to pay me.”
“It’s going to be too much damn work,” he says, not answering that. “I’m talking to the city about replacing the railing. It’s going to be expensive as hell, but it needs to be done.”
“It would take care of the lock problem.”
Denny looks hard at the railing. “They’ve never been nothing but trouble.”
“So, tell me. What happened to you?”
“The only thing you need to know is that nothing happens on this bridge if you’re not already screwed up to begin with.”
I step back, feeling cold. But Denny just looks at me. “It’ll stop when you let her go. That’s the only rhyme or reason to it, kid. You’ve got to let her go.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Shit, it’s what we all do in the end.”
The sun is high and bright, a white disk burning in a pale-blue sky. It turns the water below shimmery, and the locks dance above like gold and silver. It doesn’t seem so bad from up here.
“My friend Gabriel thinks you’re right about those locks. They have some bad energy. He’s looking for some serious tragedy to explain it. The source or whatever.”
Denny laughs. “You think you need to look for a source. The whole damn world is the source. Life is the source.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ghosts don’t put these locks on the bridge,” he says. “It’s just us. Bastards like me and you with bad blood running in our veins. It’s not a haunting… It’s a warning telling you to stay the hell away.”
I don’t bother to tell him I can’t stay away. He already knows I won’t, so there’s nothing left to say.
I leave with no idea what to do with my time. I text Gabriel three times about cutting off my own lock. No response. He might be spooked. Or maybe his grandfather finally decided to put down his foot about the weird older guy lurking around at all hours of the day and night.
After dinner, I sneak the Sawzall from Denny’s truck and head down to the bridge at sunset to meet Paige. I’m wondering how her presentation went and if the saw will be strong enough to get the lock off. I’m not sure if I want it to be or not, but I want this to end. I want us to be free of all the bad things these locks have become.
I keep figuring a storm will come. The heat is that late-summer kind that begs for rain, leaves flipped backward on the trees and the wind whipping the river into frothy little peaks. But the sky is clear.
I stay off the bridge until I see her coming down through the campus. She’s got her shoulders back and her gray Blue Devils sweatshirt on, sleeves pulled down over her hands even though it’s eighty-five degrees out here.
“Hey,” she says when she meets me on the walkway.
“Hey,” I say, biting back every lame-ass thing I want to say about how tired she looks and how I’m worried she didn’t sleep. Instead, I go with: “How’d the presentation go?”
“The Laurens went over on their time,” she says with a shrug. “We go first thing tomorrow, but we practiced. I think I’ve got it. Are you ready to do this?”
I’m not, but she doesn’t wait for an answer, just looks pointedly at the saw at my feet. Lifting it off the walkway feels like picking up my own noose, but I do it and even try to force a grin.
Her hands a
re cold when she reaches for mine, and I swear to God my heart drops so hard I feel it beating in my knees. I’m not ready to cut this lock, and I’m not ready to cut my losses. Being without Paige made me sick for months. I don’t know how to do life without her.
“I don’t want to do it,” I confess, the saw heavy and awful in my hands. “I know we’re a shit show, and I have no damn idea how we make this work. But I want to try to make us better. To be good. I want to try.”
She winces but reaches for me all the same, her cold hand on my chest, then the side of my neck. I can see the fear in the shadows under her eyes. It’s been there all along, hiding behind her poise.
“What if we can’t? What if there isn’t better than this for us?”
“I don’t believe that. Maybe we aren’t great, Paige, but we don’t write each other off. We see the good. That’s something. That’s a start. We can do something with a start.”
“And what if we fail?”
“You’re worth that risk to me,” I say. God help my pathetic ass, I croak it out. I’m halfway to crying, and she’s so calm and steady I barely recognize her. In that second, with her hands on my face and her sweatshirt sliding down off one perfect freckled shoulder, I’m sure she’ll say no. I can already feel her pulling away.
“Then we risk it,” she says, but her smile is brief, a flash of lightning I almost miss. Then she’s grave. “But, we start by ending this. This was a lie, and it has to go.”
She snags the lock hard and rattles it. My own fear pricks up, rows of goose bumps rising on my arms and a steady whisper slithering down from the arched metal overhead.
I swallow hard. “Then it goes.”
My hands shake when I pick up the saw, my heart thumping sideways in my chest when I hit the power switch. The motor grinds to life and the saw jerks, vibrating wildly at the end of the handle. I can feel the darkness coming already. It’s that feeling you get in that split second of free fall before the impact comes. You know it’s going to hurt, and you know there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it.
I hesitate and Paige reaches for the saw slowly, her hands small and surprisingly steady when she takes it from me. I want to stop her, but I’m lost in the haze of what’s coming, what’s almost here.