Scary Out There (15 page)

He didn't even know why he had the ticket with him. No bus could take him away from his problems, away from his pain. They would follow him around like a morbid shadow, always licking at his heels. But something made him take it, and that same something made him put it in his pocket right before he walked out the front door. Either way, he wasn't going back. Not to that trailer. Not to that life.

He moved out of the trailer park gate, and as he spat on the rusty sign that read
WELCOME TO SUNNYVALE MOBILE HOME COMMUNITY
, a strange question slipped into his thoughts. Had he said good-bye to everyone? To everything?

It was strange, only because Jeremy had no one and nothing. No pets, no family who cared, no friends. He was all alone in the world, so who would he say good-bye to?

The sky above was as clear as it could be, a blanket of stars above him. The air was warm enough to skip wearing a jacket, but cool enough to warrant a hoodie. Large oak trees lined
the two lane road outside the trailer park, casting huge black shapes against the backdrop of perfect stars. Jeremy shoved his thumbs in his front pockets and walked down the road, glimpsing up every now and then to admire the stars. He'd always liked nighttime.

The Johnson Street bridge was about a mile from the trailer park. It was a train bridge, but as far as he had ever seen, no trains ever used it. The metal was rusty, and weeds grew up along each end, poking through the cracked pavement where the tracks of the bridge met the tracks embedded in cement on either side. Like everything else in this town, it was used up and forgotten.

He stepped onto the rails and balanced his way to the center of the bridge before moving to the side that faced away from town—the side that showed nothing but trees and the river and the calm serenity of night. Ducking under, he made his way to the edge, holding on to the bridge with his hands, his feet poised on his toes. He leaned over a bit, just wanting a moment to look and to think before he jumped. But no thoughts came. He'd been expecting a crashing wave of doubt or a bright reasoning of why he should live. But there was nothing. Nothing but him and the bridge and his ripped up sneakers. Nothing but the night and a light breeze in his hair and the smell of goddamn dish soap on his clothes. There was nothing.

Nothing.

He leaned farther forward, relaxing his grip on the metal rails. This was it. He was going to let go. No more pain. No more loneliness. Just the emptiness of what comes with death. He was ready.

Out of the corner of his eye something moved. Instinctually, he tightened his grip on the cool metal once again, leaning back and turning his head toward it. Sitting on the bar to his right was a boy about his age, with shaggy black hair and skin so pale that it almost glowed. He was dressed in black slacks in need of ironing, a black sports coat with the rolled sleeves pushed up to his elbows and patches all up and down the sleeves, a T-shirt from some band called The Smiths, and on his feet purple Chucks that had seen better days. He didn't speak. Just sat there, looking down at the water, as if he were contemplating something deep and meaningful. Or waiting. Jeremy couldn't tell which.

For a long time Jeremy didn't speak. For one, he didn't really want to engage in conversation with anyone. Anything he'd had to say, he'd already said. For two, he didn't really want to leave. This was it. The bridge. Him. The end.

So he stood there, occasionally glancing at the boy, wondering what he was doing there, how he had gotten over the rail and stood beside Jeremy without him noticing, and what the odds might be that they were both there for the same reason. He didn't think he could go through with it with an audience, and certainly not with another participant. But he wasn't
exactly sure what to do. There was no going back to the trailer, and the bus ticket wouldn't get him anywhere but onto another bridge, in another town. It had to be tonight. He needed peace. But he needed to acquire that peace alone.

He parted his lips and took in a breath, but before he could speak, the boy said, “It's a long way down, isn't it?”

Jeremy nodded and practically breathed out his response. “Four hundred twenty-seven feet to the surface. And the water's sixty feet deep.”

“The surface is pretty still for a river. Almost looks like a reflecting pool on a night like this.” He inhaled on his cigarette and blew a faint haze of smoke out into the night air. His eyes remained focused on the water below. “A good night for reflecting.”

Jeremy furrowed his brow. Who was this guy, anyway? He watched as the boy inhaled again, the paper of the cigarette burning away, the ember brightening before returning to its normal glow. Jeremy didn't smoke. He'd tried it a few times, but everyone around him smoked, and not smoking just felt like the right thing to do. He didn't want to be like them. He wanted to be different. And if he couldn't be that . . . then he didn't want to be, at all. “You shouldn't smoke, y'know.”

“Why?” The boy took another drag and, as he exhaled, the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile. He turned his head, meeting Jeremy's eyes for the first time. “Because it'll kill me?”

If it had been anyone else speaking those words, Jeremy
might have brushed them off. People said it all the time. Mostly because they heard it all the time. But this boy . . . something about him made the words seem more poignant, more immediate, more . . . real. “What are you doing out here?”

“Waiting.”

Curiosity got the best of Jeremy. He looked at the boy and cocked his left eyebrow. “For what?”

“For the inevitable.” He shrugged. Briefly, his eyes swept the shadowy treetops in appreciation. “It's kinda my thing. Waiting. For whatever's going to happen.”

“Doesn't sound like much of a hobby.” A cigarette was starting to sound like a good idea. Jeremy was wondering if the kid was ever going to leave.

“It's more of a job, really. So . . .” The boy reached inside his coat and pulled out an old pocket watch. After noting the time, he put it away again and looked at Jeremy. “It looks like we've got some time. You wanna tell me what you're going to do?”

“Do?” Jeremy blinked in confusion. “What do you mean?”

The boy watched him for a moment, as if waiting for an admission that would never come. When he spoke, his voice was low and almost gravelly. “Well, you walked out here all determined, but the bus ticket in your pocket makes me wonder if you're serious or not.”

Jeremy's heart picked up its pace. No one could possibly know what he'd been planning. He'd been so careful. He hadn't
told anyone or left any clues. There was no way this guy had any idea that he'd been planning to jump. No way. “Have you been following me? What are you, some kind of stalker or something?”

“Heh. Yeah. Because I have all the time and interest in the world to follow around some sixteen-year-old kid who can't even make up his mind about whether or not he's jumping or getting on a bus.” The smirk on his mouth was sharp and meaningful.

Jeremy stood up straight. “Kid? You're what, sixteen, seventeen? I'm not a kid. Or if I am, so are you.”

The smirk remained, untouched by Jeremy's words. “Let's just say I look younger than I am.”

“So, how old are you?” He wasn't curious, and it wasn't like he wanted a conversation, exactly. But the kid was here, so . . .

The boy shook his head, a dark light crossing his eyes. “It doesn't matter. What matters is what's in your pocket.”

Jeremy nodded, again wondering who this boy was and how he seemed to know so much about Jeremy's life. “The ticket.”

“I was referring to the flask. Mind if I steal a drink?” The boy grinned, and Jeremy handed over the flask, his hand paling in the night. As he tried to work out what the deal was with this kid, the kid took a swig from the flask and made a face. “That tastes like shit. Man, I wish I could get drunk. Even a nice buzz, y'know?”

As Jeremy took the flask back, he said, “Wait. If you can't even get a buzz, why would you want a drink?”

The boy shrugged. Something about him seemed almost familiar to Jeremy, as if they had met before, if only briefly. “Don't we always want what we can't have?”

Jeremy thought about his family, the long line of losers. All his life he'd wanted them to be anything but what they were. But it didn't matter what he did. They would never change. “I guess.”

“What about you? What do you want?”

Moonlight gleamed off the water below. A soft breeze rustled Jeremy's hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and whispered, “Peace.”

“You just proved my point.” He shook his head, gently biting his bottom lip for a moment. “Life is chaos. It's always been chaos from the first moment cells bumped into one another in that slimy cesspool and formed what we now call life. Even now, every cell in your body is bouncing around in existence. In chaos. You cannot achieve peace. It doesn't exist, yet you just said that's what you want.”

Jeremy shrugged. “If life is chaos, then death is peace.”

The boy looked at him, his dark eyes darkening further. He appeared both fascinated and repulsed by Jeremy. “You've got a lot to learn about the afterlife, my friend. But then . . . all of you do.”

“All of us?” People. He meant people. But he'd separated himself from the group.

“All of you. Every one of you who takes a razor to your wrist or swallows too many pills. Every one of you who jumps in front of a bus. Every one of you who stands on a bridge and thinks about jumping.” The boy shook his head again, his features filled with disgust. “You don't know shit about what's waiting at the bottom of that river. And if you think it means peace, then you know less than shit about it.”

Jeremy pressed the opening of the flask to his mouth, tipping his head back. The crap inside tasted god-awful, but after a few more sips, his heart had settled into a calmer rhythm. The boy next to him finished his cigarette and flicked it over the edge. Jeremy watched the ember as it tumbled through the night air and was finally swallowed by the darkness below. He wondered if he would land the way he hoped, headfirst, knocking himself unconscious before the water consumed his body and filled his lungs. But even if he landed flat, it wouldn't take long for his airways to be filled with cool liquid and for the fuzzy feeling of drowning to take over his senses. He pictured himself tumbling like that cigarette through the air, his ember bright, then suddenly extinguished. It would be beautiful.

“Is that the best analogy you can come up with?” He locked eyes with Jeremy. “Seriously. Some crappy cigarette plunging into less than clean water—probably sewer runoff? That's what you imagine as a beautiful death? No offense, kid, but you suck at metaphors.”

Jeremy's fingers trembled as he looked into the boy's eyes. He knew those eyes. But how? “How'd you know what I was thinking?”

The boy sighed. “C'mon, kid. Put it together. You know who I am. You know why I'm here. Don't make me say it.”

And Jeremy did know. He supposed he'd known for several minutes that he'd been carrying on a conversation with Death himself. The thing that surprised him was that he'd always thought of death as an act, a state of being. Not a person. Certainly not a teenager.

“Not what you pictured, eh? Were you expecting a long black cloak with a hood? Maybe a sickle in my skeleton hand?” Death chuckled under his breath. “I'm that way for some people. I sprout feathery wings and appear in a basking glow of light for others. For you, I'm just a kid. Somebody easily disregarded. Somebody nobody would believe is Death.”

“Bullshit.” It wasn't bullshit and he knew it, but he didn't exactly know what to say. So instead, he took a cue from Death and waited.

Below, on the banks of the river, frogs were singing. It was faint and so distant, but if Jeremy listened close, he could hear them.

Death sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment. He squeezed his eyes tight, like he was just trying to get through another day at work—which, when Jeremy thought about it, he was. “If you're hoping I'll go on and prove it
to you, you're sorely mistaken, kid. It's not my job to convince you who or what I am. It's not my job to make you jump or to talk you out of doing so. I'm just here. Waiting. For you to make a decision.”

“You're lying.”

“And you're shaking.” His tone shifted then, briefly. It was stern, serious. He meant business. Never call Death a liar. “No reason to shake. You're not afraid of me . . . remember? You sought me out. Well, here I am. So are you doing this or not?”

He looked down at the water. He was doing this. That much had been decided before he ever even reached the bridge. But that didn't mean he didn't have questions. “What's it like?”

“What is
what
like?”

“Death.”

Death rolled his head to the left and looked at Jeremy with raised eyebrows. “Seriously? You're asking Death what death is like?”

Jeremy shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. I mean, who would know better than you? If you are who you say you are, I mean.”

“You've got me there.”

“So. What's death like?”

Death sighed into the night air, giving the impression that Jeremy was making this night a lot longer than it needed to be. “Well, I'm a Sagittarius. I like puppies and long walks on the beach. I prefer classical music, which surprises most people.
They seem to think I'd be into this so-called death-metal. But I can assure you that all that screaming and heavy drums do not carry my endorsement. But to each their own, I guess.”

“Never mind.”

“Well, what the hell did you want me to say, kid? I'm Death, remember?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know that's not what you meant. You meant the afterlife.” Death raised a sharp eyebrow at him. “I'm not explaining that.”