I’ve heard that the average person blinks every six seconds, but I’ve been training, and so far I can go like three minutes without blinking if I’m really concentrating. However, tonight is a windy Spring one, and my eyes are stinging in the fresh air, so it’s harder not to blink, but I’m still trying, and I think I’m doing pretty well. At least, nothing has happened yet.
Stephen doesn’t know that I’ve been to Deer Creek before, with someone else, someone he doesn’t know but knows enough about. He thinks he’s showing it to me, and I let him, on the drive over, describe the path we’ll take behind the Lutheran church, then through backyards with porch lights that will sense our movement and then a little woodsy area covered with spider webs before we reach the creek. He bounces in his seat as he shifts gears, excited for this adventure. I shift in my seat, a combination of nervous and excited, maybe more nervous than excited, maybe just not sure.
If Stephen knew that the reason I’ve been here before is because it was Craig’s favorite place to do it, he wouldn’t want to take me. He’d probably even refuse. But I want to go. I want to face my fears and keep my eyes open in the cold air that brushes off the creek’s surface, and I want to spend time with Stephen, because he’s really cute and nice. Like, almost too nice. But still, nice is a nice change.
I blink. My eyes open and I check myself: still in Stephen’s car, still hearing the community radio, still breathing. I’m in the now.
These things—flashbacks, I guess—just started happening recently, and they only happen when I’m nervous, when I’m in a place I’ve been before, when that place is connected to a negative emotion, and when I blink. They don’t happen every time I blink, just sometimes, like it’s a game for my eyelids. So that’s why I’ve been trying not to blink at all, which is hard, because I’m nervous all the time, because when I blink I have flashbacks. The worst part is that sometimes I can’t tell when is now and when isn’t.
It’s my fault. I’d been experimenting with sad music because I felt like I wasn’t remembering things. Like, when I thought back to when I was a sophomore, there wasn’t a whole lot there. Craig, sure, but what else did I do? Did I go to movies? Did I ride my bike? The small details, the hard ones, the happy ones (and I’m sure there were happy ones), escaped me. What I knew was that there was Craig, there was a pile of clothes on a dirty basement floor, there was my mother inspecting a cut across my cheek, there was me, looking in a mirror, looking at the cut, but I had no expression to give myself, I didn’t know how I got it. I didn’t know what was going on.
It’s been two years. I want to remember. I don’t want to be afraid of the past any longer. I don’t want to ignore it the way I used to. But maybe I took it too far, because now I can’t stop remembering things. The past forces itself into the present, wedges itself between me and now. It’s like I’m living the memories over again, like they’re trying to teach me something by their repetition. It seems significant, and it seems important, I just don’t know what it is yet.
The first flashback happened after I had been listening to Joni Mitchell. I’d been lying in a pile of dirty laundry, replaying my mom’s copy of Blue, falling asleep, and then suddenly I wasn’t, I was at a movie theater. Craig was next to me, we were seeing Once, and we were the only people in the movie theater. Our hands were sweaty from how hard they’d been holding on to each other. Craig turned to me in the dark.
“Hey. This movie is about us,” he whispered. Which is kind of like saying, “Hey. We’re not right for each other; we’re placeholders, substitutes. This will never amount to anything.” I found it romantic then, this kind of impermanence. Here was a guy who knew that life ended and things never remained long and memories faded. But when I came back into the present, lying on clothes in my bedroom, I was grossed out by the flashback, a moment I hadn’t remembered but knew was real, and had to call Joanna.
Joanna is my older sister, or at least that’s how I like to think of her because I don’t have a real older sister. She still lives in Webster Groves, goes to the university, which is unfortunate, because her neighborhood is also one of the places I generally avoid due to Craig. It’s not like I’m afraid of seeing him here, which is hardly possible, since I’ve managed to avoid him for three years, and since he moved out of his parents house, according to Joanna. The whole trip just triggers memories I can feel under my skin, things I’m still afraid of, that I’m still hiding from myself. But when she invited me over, she did it in this way that was really sincere. Sincere or piteous, like I’m-sorry-you-don’t-have-any-friends-your-age-here-borrow-some-of-mine. And she said Stephen, who actually is my age, would be there with his older brother, and then she gave me this stupid wink like now-you-two-can-finally-admit-you-like-each-other-because-everyone-can-see-it and also like it’s-about-time-you-started-dating. You’ve been flirting for weeks.
Even though she graduated from our high school three years ago, Joanna still knows all the gossip. Maybe more than I know, and really all I do at school is listen to other people gossip and think about a place far away.
But there was a still lot of truth in that wink, like more than I’m ready to admit, even now, as Stephen and I are driving, alone in his car with the windows down, away from Joanna’s party just to jump into Deer Creek, and though he never said we’d be skinny dipping, at least partial nudity is just one of those things that is, like, implied when two high school seniors are alone together and also harbor this much sexual tension (his hand brushed against mine once when he reached for the clutch, and I had to hold my breath).
When we reach the Lutheran church parking lot, Stephen jumps out of the car almost as soon as he turns it off, but I have to take a couple deep breaths before I follow him. I didn’t have any flashbacks at the party, but I’m not into taking chances right now, especially here. That last blink felt like a freebie.
While Stephen leads the way to the outcropping above Deer Creek, I think about how the party was actually kind of nice, even though I didn’t know a lot of people there. Joanna recently painted all over the walls in her house, messy trees and cute owls. Every piece of furniture is a hand-me-down or was found in a dumpster by the university, so they’re all mismatched, different colors and levels, and all smell like cheap beer, and in the center of the living room there’s an old stereo that can’t quite get the right rpm, so all of the records she plays are pitched down, which makes everything feel a little slower, calmer, especially combined with the moody string lights that hang down from the ceilings like stalactites in a cave.
Before Stephen came I mostly sat on a yellow couch and watched the party happen, which was boring, but in a nice, I-want-to-be-bored way. I leaned back and listened to the old records, paying attention and never noticing a skipped beat after a blink, which is another one of the ways I know it’s now. But then Stephen walked through the front door and spotted me, rushed over on the balls of his feet, and whispered gently, “Would you like to go for a dip?” and I didn’t want to be nice-bored anymore.
A garage light flickers on as Stephen and I pass it, so we pick up our pace, playfully pretending the cops have been waiting there all night for us; they finally get to nab some kids out past curfew. But Stephen is faster than me, and eventually I fall behind, blinking in the light of the garage and the ambush of spider webs (I’ve reached the woodsy part), finally letting down my guard.
We’re in someone’s backyard for a graduation party. Joanna has just introduced me to Craig, and now she’s left us to go get a drink. He’s eighteen, a senior like Joanna, and he can drive. Instead of being embarrassed to be seen talking to a freshman, he seems genuinely interested in me. He’s seen me around school, and he knows I haven’t made any friends yet, and he gets it, too, the whole social anxiety thing. He asks me questions about myself, understanding that I’m too shy to start a conversation on my own, and he makes me a drink that is only slightly alcoholic, presenting it to me with this look in his tempting green eyes like hey-I’m-not-like-them-I’m-a-gentleman.
I don’t know if I’m really buzzed or if I just think I am, because I’ve never had alcohol before tonight. Craig is, like, rapid-fire pushing me for information: how do I like high school? Do I have any crushes? Who was my first kiss? Which is when I let it slip that I haven’t actually had my first kiss yet.
And so Craig grabs me with this, like, violent intense look in his eyes and kisses me, forcing his tongue between my lips and teeth and moaning. My eyes are open because I don’t know how to kiss back.
When he finally pulls away, he whispers, “Don’t tell. Not even Joanna.” Which at first I think is kind of hot.
When I reach the outcropping, Stephen has been waiting for me. He holds out his hand for me to grab, so he can help me up onto a fallen tree. He’s totally naked, too, and the darkness makes his skin like almost glow. I can hardly see the tree beneath him; his naked body is like a white chalk drawing on black paper; he’s just floating. I promised myself that I wouldn’t make this into a big thing and that I wouldn’t spend the whole time staring at his penis, but I can’t help it—it’s there. So I distract myself by slipping out of my own clothing, piling the party dress I borrowed from Joanna next to Stephen’s green cargo shorts.
I wonder what I must look like to him—somehow even whiter than I was in the throng of tan, sunshine-lovers at Joanna’s party. I wonder what he thinks about my lack of pubic hair, if he’s even thinking about it at all, which of course he is. Right now I’m thinking it was a stupid experiment and I should have just left it alone. I wonder if he can see the ghosts of bruises on my inner thighs or the scars across my cheek or both, and what he thinks about them, if he’s scared of them, or if he’s scared of me because of them.
“Come on,” he says, smiling and waving his hand, hoping that I’ll grab it. I guess he’s not as self-conscious as I am, because he doesn’t even seem to notice we’re naked. “What, are you getting cold feet?”
And we laugh, having walked about a mile barefoot through all the mud backwards to get here. We didn’t think to throw on shoes before we ran out of Joanna’s apartment and hopped into his car. At least we remembered to grab the swim towels from her bathroom closet.
I start to reach my arm out, but before I can grab Stephen’s hand a gust of wind rushes up under my eyelids and my eyes shut reflexively.
Craig is standing inside of the Porta-Potty behind the Lutheran church, beckoning me in. He wants to hot-box it, because he says no one will catch us, because no one will want to go anywhere near a Porta-Potty on such a hot day, including me, because gross.
It’s the dead of summer in St. Louis: humid, heavy, exhausting. It’s the kind of heat that weighs down your eyelids. No one brings their children out to the church playground or out anywhere else, not even the sno-cone stand down the block, which has gone out of business because of the suffocating heat. In fact the church hasn’t even changed their sign since Easter (it still reads, “He Lives!”).
We could just smoke in Craig’s house, which has A/C, but Craig got all paranoid after his dad came into the kitchen, dipped a finger into the bowl of special brownie batter, licked that finger, snatched the bowl off the counter, and left with it and without saying anything to him. And we could smoke in Craig’s car, except for the fact that the last time he tried that he got tailed by a cop car for, like, ten blocks, he says.
I’ve only smoked once. After locking us in the bathroom, putting a towel under the door and running the shower Craig finally pressured me into inhaling from a dented Diet Coke can. I didn’t like the way it smelled, or tasted, or how it burned my throat, or the lightheaded feeling it gave me, but Craig just kissed me and said I’d get used to it and that it would be better the second time, that you don’t feel anything the first time, anyway. I’m still not sure, though.
Now Craig shakes his hand impatiently in my face to remind me I’m supposed to grab it and just get into the Porta-Potty already, and I actually do grab it, even though I don’t really want to, because he’s giving me this look with his tempting green eyes that says if-you-do-this-for-me-I-won’t-tell-your-mom-you’ve-been-cutting-again, and also like I’ll love you and finally admit that you’re my girlfriend, because I know that’s what you want, and I really care about what you want.
Inside the Porta-Potty it’s even hotter, more humid, and it smells like disinfected infection. There isn’t enough room for the two of us—Craig has to sit down on the toilet seat, and I have to stand up facing him. He pulls out the same dented and charred soda can and does all the things he usually does before smoking, including the parts that I’m pretty sure are just for show, like the way he meticulously places every little green piece over the holes he’s poked into the can with a safety pin, like if it’s all an even layer it will make a difference about how high we get.
Then he lifts the can up to my mouth, ready with his naked lady bic to light it up for me, but I hesitate.
“I don’t think I want to,” I say.
“Sure you do,” he says. He’s got this smile, like he’s almost laughing at me for not wanting to smoke. “Come on, kid. It’ll be good this time, I promise.”
I don’t really believe him, but I do it anyway, and it’s still gross, plus I can smell all the Porta-Potty smells, too, and what happens next is I hear really loud breathing and then a sound like something got knocked over.
And then I’m swimming; I’m swimming for what feels like maybe ten years. The water is still, so I’m sure I can’t be swimming in the ocean, but I can’t see anything but water and the sky, and I don’t know where I am, and I realize I’m trying to find my dad, I’ve been trying for ten years, since he died.
I wake up and I’m crumpled on the floor of the Porta-Potty with my head between my knees. I look over to Craig on the toilet seat. His eyes are wide.
“What happened? How long was I out?” I say, because I realize that the heavy breathing came from me, that the thing that got knocked over was me, that I must have fainted.
“Um, like ten seconds I think,” Craig says, and he looks really scared, “but it could have been longer, I don’t know.” I see the can next to him on the seat, all that’s left is ash, so it must have been longer.
“Let’s just go,” he says. “Let’s go swim in the creek.” But the problem is I don’t want to get up because when I fainted I also wet my pants.
A blink lasts a third of a second, so when I come back to the present, back to the real, Stephen hasn’t had a chance to notice how freaked out and unsure I am now, and I definitely don’t want him to notice now, so I shake it off, make it look like I’m building up momentum, and grab his hand.
I climb up, but the roots are all tangled, and I get a splinter. The suddenness of the pain makes me gasp and slip and I try to keep my eyes open, but I can’t, and I know what’s coming now. I can’t avoid this one any longer.
Craig is laying over me, holding the switchblade he bought off of a televised auction to my cheek.
“This will be good for you,” he says. At the time I thought it was my fault. I push the memory away and hear myself shouting far away like my body is actively fighting against the flashback.
Stephen pulls the splinter out like it’s nothing and kisses the arch of my foot. I’ve started shivering, like panicking, but Stephen just smiles, attributing it to the kiss, and squeezes my big toe before helping me stand back up. When my feet are firmly down, I dig my toes into the bark, because texture is another way I can tell now is really now.
I look down from our spot on the horizontal trunk. We’re pretty high up from the water, which is black and swirly in this kind of foreboding, don’t-jump-into-me way. But Stephen squeezes my hand three times, our countdown to go. We jump and I have to shout—really shout, and to do that I have to close my eyes.
I am hiding under the covers, because Craig’s dad has come into his bedroom. It’s really hard to stay still, because Craig has a waterbed and because he’s gripping my wrist so hard my fingertips start to get this sensation of being poked with needles, like they’re trying not to fall asleep.
“Craig,” his dad says, “you start work at the factory today, okay?” Craig sighs in annoyance but his dad cuts him off, says, “I don’t want to hear your whining. You think I don’t feel like whining, too? Everybody knows I got a kid so dumb to get kicked out of the only Presbyterian school in Saint Louis for selling magic mushrooms grown in my own basement!” He gets quiet in this way that I’m assuming he’s looking at Craig very sternly. I have to hold my breath so the bed doesn’t move.
“Yeah, okay,” Craig says and pulls the blankets up over his head, exposing my bare feet.
“You’re damn right it’s okay,” Craig’s dad says, and I can hear him turn toward the door and then whip right back around. He’s seen my feet. He tears the blanket off of Craig and me, gives me a disappointed look and Craig a withering-we’ll-talk-about-this-later look, and says, “Jesus, April, did you sleep here last night?”
“No,” I say, but my voice clearly lacks confidence. What he doesn’t know is that I just came over to tell his son that I can’t come over anymore, since my mom noticed the cut on my face and everything else. She told me I couldn’t talk to him at all, actually, but I felt like I should at least tell him, because maybe if I don’t, he’ll come after me and maybe hurt me for it.
“Where does your mother think you are?” Craig’s dad says.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Craig’s dad sighs. “Alright, go home.”
I cough when I reach the creek’s surface; I got water up my nose on the way down. I blink a couple times, but I’m still in the water, still in the present, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the water, of the past, of these accelerated flashbacks, of what the future holds of the past.
Stephen is swimming downstream, toward where the current carried me away from the tree. He wraps his naked arms around me and moves in for a kiss, something I’ve been afraid of, but something I know is inevitable, because we’ve been flirting in Calculus for, like, weeks.
I hate that I’m surprised that it isn’t horrible, that it’s actually really good, like what a first kiss is probably supposed to be. Definitely what a second first kiss should be, and is.
When he pulls away, he’s smiling, but there’s sadness behind his eyes.
“What happened to you, April?” he says. “Who did this to you?” At first, I think that by ‘this’ he means my always-nervousness, the way I shake when he touches me, the way my eyes look crazy when I strain to keep them open, the way I don’t talk to people at parties unless they talk to me first. But then I think maybe ‘this’ means ‘hurt.’ And if that’s the case, I don’t know how to answer him, or even myself, just yet.
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