TONIGHT
“This one is unlocked,” I yell over to Colin.
“Frenchie, don’t you think this is kind of crazy?” he asks. But I’m already taking the metal chain off this particular plastic swan. Something about this action, releasing it, even though it’s not a real swan, makes me think of Andy and how maybe he would appreciate it in some way.
“We’re going to get caught. And they take swan shit seriously here.”
I look at him.
“Well, not literally. What I mean is . . .”
“I know, I know. Come on,” I say. But Colin is just standing there, his hands in his pockets as he stares at me. “Well, are you going to help me?” I ask.
“Fine, get in,” he says. I jump in and so does Colin. We sit down and start pedaling, slowly making our way around the lake. I try not to wonder what this would have been like with Andy. I try to ignore the sense of betrayal that I feel as I remember he wanted to do this.
“This is kind of hard,” Colin says. I’m thinking the same thing. I always thought this was like some lame pastime for people who were all about showing the world how romantic they could be, but it’s more of a workout.
“Are you out of breath?” Colin asks with a bemused look on his face.
“Shut up,” I say, completely out of breath.
He starts laughing. “You’re pathetic!” he yells.
“You’re the one who just said this is hard!”
“I know, but I’m not the one gasping for air,” he says.
“I’m hardly gasping. And shut up,” I repeat.
“Fine.” He’s quiet for a few seconds before he says, “So, why are we out here? I never would have pegged you for a romantic. Not that I’m not flattered. But swans, Frenchie? Really, I’m touched.”
“Don’t be,” I say. I stop pedaling for a moment and look over at Colin who still looks amused by all of this. “Do you feel sorry for these swans? I mean, do you think their lives suck?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a big plastic swan, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m being serious.”
He stops pedaling and leans his head back. I wonder if he’s thinking how in the hell he got stuck here, with me. Maybe he’s mentally retracing his footsteps, back to the night we met, and second-guessing having ever acknowledged my existence because now he’s here, in the middle of Lake Eola at whatever time, being asked a philosophical question about the happiness of swans.
“Those swans are fine, Frenchie. Their existence or happiness isn’t compromised just because the city put them here. I mean, what’s so bad about it? That the city actually cares about them? That if they get sick, there’s some vet out there probably offering free service to them? What’s so bad about that?”
“I don’t know. But doesn’t it still seem wrong on some level?”
“Maybe . . . or maybe sometimes what seems bad isn’t really that bad . . . ,” he says slowly, as if he’s trying to make sense of his own thoughts as they come together in his head. “I mean, yes, okay, I know I talk about the gray a lot, and I get it, some things might be black or white, right or wrong. But most things aren’t that definitive, right? Good and bad is like that, too, in the sense that everything can’t always be good, there’s always some bad. And everything can’t always be bad, there’s usually some trace of good, right? There’s that balance in the world, that yin and yang.
“I mean, think about it. The very second one person dies in the world, another person is born,” he says. I look out at the swans. “Maybe you want to see the bad here, the imprisonment of the swans,” he says with dramatic flare, “but look, they’re good. They have a sweet deal here. And who knows, maybe, somehow, someday the existence of these swans in this very location will make a difference in someone’s life. Sometimes things are what you make of them.” He puts his feet back on the pedals and starts pedaling.
I start pedaling too, and think about what Colin has said.
He looks over at me. I give him a sincere smile. He’s making more sense to me.
“Keep pedaling,” I say. “We still have a couple of more places to go.”
We leave Lake Eola and head to Cocoa Beach. I park where I parked last time, and head to the same part of the beach Andy and I went to that night.
“Tell me a secret,” I say to Colin as we sit down on the sand.
“What?”
I turn to him. “What’s the biggest secret you have? Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”
He thinks for a minute. “Well . . . Okay, here’s something. I was a real jerk to this kid one time, for no reason,” he says. “His grandparents lived next door to us and he would come and visit during summers.” He looks at me and stops, like he’s not sure he wants to tell me more, but continues. “My mom used to make me play with him even though I didn’t want to. He was a couple of years younger than me and annoying as hell. That kid could keep talking on and on and never shut up. So this one time, I told him I was going to teach him a cool wrestling move someday. And I was, even though I didn’t know anything about wrestling except for what I saw on TV.” He stops and takes a breath. “So one day he comes over and starts talking and talking as usual, and I tell him I’ll teach him that move now. I pin him down and I can tell I’m hurting him, but I just put more of my weight on him. And then”—Colin says and shakes his head and starts digging a hole in the sand—“then, I have my arm against his neck and I can tell it’s choking him. But I just keep it there.”
I’ve been holding my breath. I remember to breathe and Colin goes on. “I don’t know why I didn’t move it.”
“Oh my god,” I say.
“I mean, I didn’t hate the kid that much. I didn’t hate him at all really, but there I was, cutting off his air. And I see his eyes, how he starts to panic. How his face is getting red, and then a deeper red. And I just kept my arm there.” He shakes his head and goes back to digging the hole.
“Did you . . .” I can’t even say it. And I wonder if Colin has killed this little kid. If he already did his time at juvie and now I’m sitting here at the beach with him at night, alone.
“No, no . . . Oh God. No, Frenchie,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, I let him go. And when I did, and he started gasping for air, all I’m thinking is I almost killed him, I almost killed him. So I ran inside and left him in my backyard. I peeked out my window and saw him just sitting there. Then he gets up and yells, ‘Thanks, Colin! See you tomorrow.’ Can you believe it? That’s what he said.”
I sit there for a minute taking in the story.
“Why do you think you did that?”
He bites his lip and shakes his head. “I don’t know. It was just a stupid thing to do. I don’t think I’m a mean person, and I would never do anything like that again,” he says. “But something about that haunts me. I mean, it makes me wonder if there’s this inherently evil side of me. I was”—he stops and kind of laughs—“for a while I had this kind of weird anxiety that I was going to grow up and be a serial killer or something.” I can tell he feels embarrassed to admit this, and somehow it makes me feel better.
“I can’t believe I just told you that,” he says. “I promise I’m not as fucked up as that makes me sound.”
I smile. “I know,” I say. “Thanks for telling me.”
“I think about that kid a lot. I wonder where he is, or if he’s still that nice. Or if he ended up getting bullied at school.” He shrugs his shoulders, like he doesn’t know what else to say. “Anyway,” he says. “Your turn.”
I think about telling Colin how I almost drowned, but I already told Andy, so it doesn’t count. Or does it since Andy now took that secret to his grave? But I know that’s not the secret Colin wants me to tell him. I know he wants to hear about Andy.
“It’s stupid,” I say.
“Tell me anyway,” he says.
I breathe in deeply before beginning with, “Andy was this guy. . . .” I hate that I’m starting out like this, how so many other girl stories do. “And I . . . I guess I liked him, and one day we spent this ‘one cool night’ together.” I look at Colin, but he shifts his gaze to the ground. “Not like that. We . . . it was like this. We did what you and I are doing right now. But now he’s dead. He killed himself. And it doesn’t matter because we weren’t even anything.”
It’s the most I’ve said about Andy to anyone. Saying it out loud makes me feel even more weird and embarrassed about the night Andy and I spent together. I don’t even know what it means to me, and I’ll never know what it meant to him.
“Frenchie . . .” Colin says my name with so much sympathy that I have to talk over him.
“And now I think a part of me hates him and a part of me still . . .” I can’t say it.
“A part of you still loves him?”
I don’t know if I can admit this to Colin, but he’s already guessed it. “Maybe,” I say finally. “But how can you love someone you barely know? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t think things like that have to make sense,” he says.
I nod. And because it’s the first time I feel like someone understands, I can’t control the tears. I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them, hiding my face in the little refuge this creates, and I cry as quietly as possible.
“It’ll be okay, Frenchie,” Colin says gently, putting a hand on my back, now shaking with my stifled sobbing. “I’m so sorry,” he says.
I don’t know how long we stay like this. But finally I look up, wipe my face, and look at the dark water.
“Is he . . . is he here? I mean, out there?” Colin asks motioning to the water.
“No,” I say, but in a way Andy is here. In a way, he’s always here. He’s been hanging out with me for months, walking behind me, telling me that a book sucks when I pick it up at the bookstore, reading other headstones while I sit at Em’s. If I squint, I can almost see him swimming back to shore.
“Frenchie?” Colin says. But I’m already up, walking toward the water. I hear Colin calling me, but I’m in to my knees, and then my waist before I know it. The water is cold, but not as cold as it was that night. And I’m terrified. There’s a part of me that feels he’s here. There’s a part of me that thinks he’s going to grab my ankles and drag me down into the ocean and never let go.
“What the hell are you doing?” Colin yells, and he’s suddenly next to me, looking at me like I’ve just lost my mind.
“Hold my hand,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Just hold my hand,” I repeat. And he does.
I close my eyes, hold my breath, and sink into the water. The salt water seeps under the plastic covering my tattoo. I reach up as the plastic floats away, leaving my skin exposed to the salt. It burns and stings but I ignore it and stay under water.
Images of Andy jumping into the waves that night rush through my mind, followed by images of the man in the red trunks that saved my life so long ago. The brightness of the sun is still in my mind, even as I sense the darkness of the water around me. I let my body bend to the will of the waves, but they don’t thrash me around. I let go of Colin’s hand and wait, but still, the sea doesn’t swallow me. Finally I come up to the surface, gasping for air.
“What are you doing?” Colin says.
“I wanted to see something . . . .” The truth is, telling someone that you want to know if the sea will finally claim you and what Andy felt that night doesn’t make any sense.
“Man, you’re really freaking me out,” he says.
“Don’t worry.”
He looks skeptical. “Come on,” he says holding on to my hand tightly again and tugging me back to the shore. “Can we just go now?” he asks.
I look at the shore, certain that on some plane of time, in some nexus to the universe, Andy has walked out of the waves and is getting in my car.
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go.”