Try Not to Breathe
Try Not to Breathe
JENNIFER R. HUBBARD
VIKING
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2012 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Jennifer R. Hubbard, 2012
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hubbard, Jennifer R.
Try not to breathe
by Jennifer Hubbard.<
span>
p. cm.
Summary: The summer Ryan is released from a mental hospital following his suicide attempt, he meets Nicki, who gets him to share his darkest secrets while hiding secrets of her own.
ISBN 978-1-101-56690-9
[1. Suicide—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H8582Try 2012
[Fic]—dc22
2011012203
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Contents
This book is for those who survived, and in memory of those who did not.
ONE
It was dangerous
to stand under the waterfall, but some kids did it anyway, and I was one of them. The water pounded my mind blank, stung my skin. It hit my naked back, chest, and shoulders so hard I couldn’t think. That water could knock me over, force the breath out of me, pin me to the rock, and I knew it.
But I kept doing it.
My parents’ heads would’ve shot through the roof if they’d known. They’d done their best to wrap me in cotton since I’d gotten out of Patterson Hospital a few months before. My mother panicked if I missed a dose of my meds, so I sure wasn’t going to tell her about the waterfall. How could I explain it, anyway?
Because I needed it. The roaring water shot over the ledge and beat down on my shoulders and head, a thunder I felt even through the slick stones under my feet. My nerves crackled and buzzed. It was all I could do to stand still against the water.
Whatever else I had messed up in my life, I could do that much: stand still. Okay, so I wasn’t setting the bar too high.
• • • • •
There were rumors that a guy had drowned here once, or that he’d fallen from the cliff and smashed his head on the rocks, his brains spilling into the pool below. Each version of the story was bloodier and less believable than the last.
There were rumors about me, about what I’d done back in the spring. Everyone snuck looks at me in the school halls after I got out of Patterson. Sometimes I was tempted to foam at the mouth and babble to invisible people, because the other kids seemed so disappointed that I didn’t. But I couldn’t be sure they would realize it was a joke. The few times I’d tried to make anyone laugh, all I got were nervous glances and squirming. Nobody expected me to have a sense of humor, and it was safer for me to let them think I might be crazy than to give them proof.
So I knew about rumors, how they were 95 percent bullshit with maybe one kernel of truth. I wasn’t sure where the kernel was in the story about the dead guy at the waterfall.
• • • • •
I first went under the waterfall in May, and I kept it up all summer. July was so hot, I imagined steam pouring off me whenever the icy rush hit my skin.
Early in August, we got rain. I watched the waterfall from the stream bank, waiting for the cool stormy weather to pass, for the heat to return.
I was sitting there one day when Kent Thornton’s sister came by. Kent was going into eleventh grade like me, and I knew his sister was a year younger, but I’d never talked to her much. Last year she’d been at the junior high, since Seaton High didn’t start until tenth grade.
“Hey, Ryan,” she said, planting her feet in the moss.
“Hey.” I tried to remember her name, but couldn’t.
She stood watching the water charge over the cliff. Ferns waved in the breeze. “Are you going in?” she asked.
“No, not today.” All that rain had swelled the creek and the waterfall. I was tempted to see if I could stand up under the cold weight of that water, but I wasn’t completely insane, no matter what kids at school might whisper about me.
“I do it all the time.” She grinned. “My friend Angie won’t even stick her foot in the water. She says the rocks are too slippery.”
“They are slippery.” Not that it had ever stopped me.
Kent’s sister wiped sweat off the back of her neck. “You live up at the glass house, don’t you?”
“It’s not glass.” I hated when people called it that. It sounded like we were expecting some TV show to feature us in our architectural wonder of a home.
Lifestyles of People Who Have Way More Money Than You
. “It just has a lot of windows.”
“Whatever. That’s your house, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Her face flushed pink. “Just wondered.” She waved at the waterfall. “Dare me to go under there?”
“Nah, it’s too cold today. And strong. It’s kind of dangerous.”
She stepped into the water. Ripples spread out from her foot. She wore a tank top and shorts, which she didn’t take off. She walked toward the waterfall, slipping once on the mossy rocks.
I followed her with my eyes. Dread squeezed my stomach and wedged a lump at the back of my throat. I didn’t even know this girl, but I had no desire to see her crushed, drowned. She disappeared under the silver curtain of water.
I stood up because I couldn’t see her anymore. I squinted at the foaming water, trying to see into it, through it.
My fingers tapped the sides of my thighs as if counting the seconds she’d been under. How long should I wait before going in after her? If I should go in at all—there being a narrow line between heroes and idiots.
Kent’s sister ducked out, spitting, hair glued flat to her head. I exhaled. She lifted a handful of wet hair off her face, shook herself like a dog, and laughed. She splashed toward me.
“You all right?” I said.
Her lips were purple; her skin prickled with goose bumps. Her teeth hammered against each other.
“I should’ve brought a towel,” she said.
I’d done that before—remembered the towel only
after
I was wet. “I can get you one.”
“Okay.” She rubbed her arms. “That sounds fantastic.”
• • • • •
I led her to my house, a ten-minute walk through the woods. I didn’t know how to act: whether to make eye contact, how long to look at her, how close to walk. I didn’t talk to people much, except Jake and Val, and with them I could talk about anything. What were you supposed to say to people you barely knew? That was the kind of thing I needed lessons in—forget algebra and history.
Her wet clothes dripped on the evergreen needles covering the path. A few times, she reached out to brush the white-pine needles that hung in soft bunches from the trees along the trail. “So I get to see the glass house,” she said, through chattering teeth.
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not that exciting.”
“It’s got to be more exciting than my house.”
What was she expecting—champagne fountains? A private theater? I tripped over a root, staggered a couple of steps, and decided to glue my eyes to the ground from now on.
“I think I saw you at the waterfall yesterday,” she went on. “Reading. But you left while I was coming up the trail.”
“Oh, yeah—I was there.”
“What were you reading?”
“This book about some guys who tried to cross the Pacific Ocean on a handmade raft.”
“The Pacific? On a raft?” She shook her head. “That’s wild.”
That was why I’d wanted to read it, but nobody else I knew seemed impressed. My dad had said, “Huh, how about that”—exactly the same response he’d used when my mother told him the price of asparagus had gone up. Val had said, “God, some people have to do everything the hard way.” My friend Jake didn’t seem entirely clear on which ocean was the Pacific.
“Did they make it?” Kent’s sister asked. I was wishing I could remember her name now, wishing I hadn’t waited too long to ask. Not only because she cared about the guys on the raft, but because she didn’t choose every word as if she had to wrap it in tissue paper before she gave it to me—as if I might snap if she said the wrong thing. Which was the way practically everyone else at school talked to me.