Joshua Doleman was sleeping when it happened, which was completely on trend with his life to date. He had been sleeping when the bus stopped at his house on the very first day of high school freshman year, his mother barreling him out of bed and pushing him out the door—so that he showed up to school with nothing but the clothes he’d woken up in, setting the tone for the four years to come.
He’d been sleeping when his name was called in the auditorium his junior year for some high score on a national test he barely remembered taking. And he had been sleeping in the back of the classroom when the college counselors went over the requirements for graduation, which was how he’d ended up with an email the week earlier, warning him that he did not have the required volunteer hours needed to receive his diploma.
And now he was here—flying, falling. Suddenly unsure whether he was dreaming or not.
His body hit the seat in front of him, and then the ceiling. Two consecutive thuds, and he couldn’t take a breath—the air knocked from his lungs. And then, suddenly, he could, in a flash of pain that resonated down his spine. He heard a ringing in his ears, or was that a scream?
How he survived, he would never be sure. Some instinct, displacing the fear? Compensating for the lack of knowledge, his careless lack of seat belt—a half dream, where his body knew what to do. A cat, its body twisting to land, by pure instinct, on all fours.
It didn’t matter that the van was upside down, that he was scrambling along the underside of the roof, that there was water coming in from below, seeping in from every possible gap. He didn’t know how long he’d been feeling along the edges around him as the waters rose, pushing at the corners, desperate for an exit.
He did know that the water pouring in meant there had to be an opening he might be able to escape through, but the force of the rushing water kept pushing him back. The panic kicked in when he felt along the cracks of the glass window, kicking, but unable to get enough leverage in the rising water. Like a dream, when everything was in slow motion.
And then, miraculously, the glass was shattering. But the force of the water was sending shards of glass inward, all around him, in the water now. He felt it in the bite of his palm as he reached out. And then a sharp cut on his cheek. He gasped on instinct, taking in too much water. It was too dark, and he couldn’t find the way.
He was panicking, and he couldn’t orient himself, and he wondered if it would be so bad, really, to sleep forever—
A hand had him under the arm then. There was another person in the dark, pulling him. And he let himself go, let himself ride the current, his lungs starting to burn.
And suddenly his head was above the water, and he was hooked to some girl, the girl who had been beside him in the van, tucked into the corner of the back seat—Cassidy Bent—and she was screaming something at him. “Josh! Grab the… Don’t let go!” But half her words were swallowed up in the river water. He was choking on it, spinning in a circle. A whirlpool, where he couldn’t orient himself.
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to grab, and in the presence of too many decisions, he did what he always did, which was nothing at all. But Cassidy had him under the arm still, and she’d wrapped herself around a branch, or a log, and Josh felt the water rushing by him, around him. Cassidy pulled him closer, and suddenly they were in mud, on earth, on solid ground. Joshua was heaving on all fours.
Behind them, the van had come to rest against something beneath the water, the headlights still on, shining just over the surface, wheels protruding from the river.
Josh had collapsed onto his side, but she was still yelling at him.
“We have to go back!” she said, before coughing violently.
Josh looked toward the light—the van was caught in an eddy, a tree trunk blocking its forward progress.
“Josh, wake up!”
He heard the metal groaning, two opposing forces. He knew how this would go. Basic physics, a math equation written on the board, an answer in his head that he never bothered sharing.
It wouldn’t hold for long, and then they’d all be gone.
“Come on!” she yelled, but he didn’t move. He didn’t do anything at all. Sometimes Josh felt like there was a disconnect between his mind and his body. That it took him too long to realize he needed to move. He was better when he wasn’t thinking, when he wasn’t overwhelmed with options and possibilities. When he was asleep, and the van was in motion, and somehow he just knew what to do.
Cassidy left him there and trudged back up the riverbank, toward the van. He knew how this would go too. She would go in and wash away with all the rest, and he would be it, the only survivor. Least likely to be here, least likely to graduate, least likely to amount to anything at all. But it would be him.
He went as close as he dared, to the edge, gripping on to a tree root extending from the river. He watched as she walked along the edge, peering into the river.
And then she disappeared under its surface. Josh stared at the spot she’d just been. He stared and counted the beats of his heart resounding in his head, but still he didn’t move.
And then she resurfaced again, on the other side of the log, flowing down the river again. There was another head beside hers, gasping for air. Ian Tayler, who used to play video games in his basement, in another lifetime.
Cassidy was screaming at Josh again. “Help us!” They were floating by, and Josh was hanging on to that same fucking tree root. And it was Cassidy herself who had to reach out and grab him instead. Her hand hooked around his waist, so that he had to grab her in response, lest he get pulled down with them.
She clawed at him, and he felt the pressure of the river pulling them all. He was sure she was going to kill them all, for nothing. For Ian Tayler, of all people.
But then Ian had hold of the roots behind him, and they were free of the current.
There was no moment of relief, no time to process. Ian turned back to the dark river and yelled, “What about the rest of them?”
Cassidy and Ian were staring at each other when the van suddenly dislodged from the eddy. There was no going after it. The van disappeared from sight before it rounded the bend, lights first, and then tires, sinking under the water. And the last thing Josh could see in the headlights was Ian’s face, his mouth open in a frozen scream. And Cassidy, mask of horror and disgust, turning to face Josh.
He could read enough into it: Such a useless piece of shit—
This was not supposed to be his story.
He braced for the brunt of her anger, for her rage, but she just ignored him. She pulled Ian, who was shaking and possibly in shock, farther back from the water.
And then they sat there, in silence. As if they would hear someone else coming back. As if the others from the van would meet them there. He had no idea how long they stayed like that, immobile at the edge of the river, waiting.
Finally they did hear something. But it wasn’t from that direction. It was from behind them.
Cassidy was on her feet. “The other van,” she was saying.
Ian stood, though he seemed unsteady, unfocused, like Josh.
They walked single file, but Josh couldn’t get his bearings. He placed his feet where Ian’s had been before him. But he couldn’t figure out how they had come to be in a river, at night. How they were now trekking through a gathering of trees and rocks and mud. How there appeared to be a dark, dark cavern surrounding them, and only the faint glow of the moon behind the dark, dark cloud cover.
“Where are we?” he finally asked. “What’s happening?”
At first no one answered, just their steps crunching roots and mud. “There was an accident,” Cassidy finally said.
“I can see that,” Josh said, picking up his pace. “But where the hell are we?”
“We went off the highway in the traffic jam, looking for a rest area,” she said. Then she stopped abruptly, turned to face him. “You don’t remember? Did you hit your head in the crash?”
He had slept through all of it. Vaguely registered lights turning on in the van, doors sliding open and shut. But that could’ve been as much a dream as flying through the air, as walking through the muddy riverbank. He’d been curled up against a window, feet extended as far as he could, nudging against Cassidy’s bag that she’d put up as a divider, a deterrent for his long legs, stretching across the bench seat.
“There was something in the road,” Ian said, though his gaze was still faraway, lost. “I saw it.”
Cassidy turned back, kept walking. “There, look,” she said. She sucked in a gasp, or a laugh. “I think they’re okay.” She started moving faster. The other van had somehow come to rest right side up, like it had driven down an incline, as opposed to catapulting through the dark night.
But someone was crying, loud gasping sobs. And Josh didn’t think everything was okay, as they made their way closer.
He purposely slowed his steps. He sensed Ian doing the same.
“What did you see?” Josh asked Ian quietly.
“It came out of nowhere.” Ian’s gaze was faraway, up toward the top of the ravine, the place where the dark rocks faded into the sky. “A deer.”
And then he heard it: Grace Langly was screaming for their teacher. It was the first thing he saw, on the other side of the river. Mr. Kates, slumped over the steering wheel. The terrible luck of where he’d been sitting. The violence of it all.
Whatever adrenaline had propelled him to this moment had finally begun wearing off, and he felt the swelling around the cut on his face; the bruising on his wrists, from where he’d desperately pounded at glass and metal. He noticed the way Ian was holding his arm, like it had been dislocated.
He remembered those terrible moments of panic, before he’d been pulled from the van.
Before he had been saved.
He had been closest to the exit at the back window. That’s all there was to it. That’s all there really was, between life and death.
For the first time in a long time, he was wide awake.