The Gap Year (16 page)

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

A
ll right! The quarry. That is the correct answer, Aubrey Jean.”

We keep the windows rolled down and our seat belts unbuckled. He looks over at the tornado of hair whipping around my face and I know that he likes it that I don’t roll up my window or hold my hair in a ponytail clutched at the side of my face. He hits the gas and we leave the cramped little cars and minivans behind.

We drive far out into the country. When we get to the quarry, no one else is there. Before it was abandoned, the quarry supplied the granite for all the state buildings constructed around the turn of the century. Since then it has filled up with rainwater supposedly a hundred feet deep. The water is clean, but the quarry has a dirty reputation. It is where the wild kids hang out to drink, do drugs, have sex. I don’t know about water depth or drugs. I have never been to the quarry before.

“Great idea to come here on a weekday, Aubrey Janine,” Tyler says, parking at the edge of the cliff that is one wall of the quarry. “We have the place all to ourselves.” He hops out of the truck, careful to land on his good foot, and has his shirt off before he hits the ground.

Swimming. Of course, I should have realized that swimming would be involved.

Already unbuckling his belt, he looks back at me still sitting in the truck and asks, “Shirts or skin?”

I don’t know what he means, but neither one sounds good. I know it is already too late to introduce “parasol and bloomers by the side of the water” as an option. I take off my shoes and T-shirt since I am wearing an exercise bra that covers up more than a bikini top would. The Nike shorts are definitely not coming off. Outside the truck window, Tyler makes a big oval of his arms above his head as he tugs off his T-shirt. His jeans drop. He leaves his underpants on. Boxer briefs. Gray. He hops to the long rope hanging from an immense cypress tree at our backs and grabs onto it. “Come on, Lightsey! Let’s see some hustle, girl!”

I climb out of the truck in time to catch a glimpse of him pushing off from the edge of the cliff with his good foot. He swings far out above the quarry. At the top of the arc, he lets go of the rope. Arms thrown out wide, face tilted up to the sun, water forty feet down, nothing behind him but sky, Tyler hangs in the air for one impossibly long moment.

Suspended.

The water in its granite tub far below is almost black.

Tyler flips in midair, makes a wedge of his hands, and, without even a splash, slides into the dark water clean as a knife. I peer over the edge, down the sheer face, and wait for him to reappear. In my mind, I see him popping back up to the surface, slinging a high Mohawk of water into the air as he whips his hair out of his eyes.

But he doesn’t pop back up.

“Tyler?” My voice echoes off the stone cliff. There is no answer. “Tyler!”

I will his head to burst up. It doesn’t. I imagine him trapped underwater, his arm driven into a crack in the stone, leg tangled in a sunken tree, eyes bulging, hair floating around his head like ink swirled into water as he fights to come up. Maybe the water only looks a hundred feet deep. Maybe it is actually shallow and he dove into stone and is paralyzed, his head lolling forward on his spine like a wilted tulip.

I am afraid of deep water, more afraid of heights. Getting up on a stool to change a lightbulb makes me swoony. I don’t jump off cliffs. I had planned to crawl down, slowly picking my way along the path looping almost to the far side of the quarry before reaching the water. Tyler will be dead by the time I get down. I think about living the rest of my life as the girl who was with Tyler Moldenhauer at the quarry when he died and did nothing, and I jump.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010

W
hat now?” I ask Dori as we drive away from Chopper Babe Palace.

“The bank?”

“What good would that do? Aubrey and I both have to be there.”

“Well, who knows? Maybe they can tell you if there are any extraordinary circumstances clauses or something. Or you can get them to just transfer the money straight to Peninsula. I don’t know. Do you have a better idea?”

“Besides beating Tyler Moldenhauer like a circus mule? Not really.”

Which is how I end up in a line at the bank while Dori takes my car to zip over to PETCO and pick up the gourmet cat food that her grumpy, obese cats, Three-Way and Green Beer, insist upon.

When, at last, I actually get to speak to a teller she looks maybe thirteen. I thrust the irrevocable trust document at her and explain that I know I can’t withdraw any money without my daughter being present, but I just have a few questions.

The teller’s long, silky brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a gray empire-waist dress with a tiny white cardigan pulled over it. Her smooth skin wrinkles as she studies the trust agreement. “You’ll have to speak with an officer of the bank. If you’ll just have a seat in our waiting area, someone will be with you as soon—”

“No,” I interrupt. “You don’t understand. I’m not cashing out or anything. I just need to know—”

“If you could just step over to the waiting area,” she repeats, already holding her hand out for the deposit slip the man behind me is passing her over my shoulder. He eddies around me and I am edged out of line.

In the waiting area, I mechanically drink bad coffee until I realize that I’m sending myself into tachycardia and my heart is beating like a hummingbird’s. This causes me to recall that I hate coffee and never drink the stuff. After a long wait, I’m ushered into an actual office inhabited by an actual grown-up wearing a reassuring blue shirt with white cuffs and collar. He looks familiar, but it’s not until he leans across his desk, and sticks his hand out for me to shake that I remember him. “Brad Chaffee.”

Perfect. Of course. Of course I would get Joyce Chaffee’s husband. Luckily, it doesn’t appear that he remembers me. “What can I help you with today?”

I hand over the trust agreement. “Actually, as I tried to explain earlier, I just have a few questions.”

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He spreads the trust out on the desk. Turning it toward me like a car salesman, he produces a Cross pen, touches Aubrey’s name, and says, “And the beneficiary?” He glances up, looks around.

“Aubrey’s not here. Again, just fact-finding. I know I can’t get any money unless she’s here.”

“And the grantor is …” He searches the document, finds Martin’s new, famous name, takes another look to make certain he’s reading correctly, and asks, “Stokely Blizzard?”

The first time Martin used his new Next name was when he had the trust drawn up sixteen years ago.

“
The
Stokely Blizzard who’s …” He rumples his eyebrows in my direction, prompting me to fill in the blank if his suspicion is correct and not wanting to insult me if it’s wrong. “With all those pictures with …?” He holds his hand out as if to block the lens of an intrusive paparazzo. Next has been in the news quite a bit lately, what with Singapore banning Nextarians from entering the country and an IRS investigation into their status as a church.

I give Brad a nod tight with censure, warning him to back off the celebrity chicken-hawking and be professional. “Could you check on this account? I’d like to see if there might be a way to just direct-deposit it as tuition payment. Or, really, all I want to do is find out what the options are, since Aubrey is … unavailable.”

“I can do that for you.” Brad swivels to face the computer screen. “Let’s take a look.” His fingers skitter over the keyboard. He works the mouse with needless flourishes, as if to emphasize the heroic measures he is taking on my behalf. “Come on, come on,” he urges his computer, circling his hand in a hurry-up gesture.

While he waits, he asks, “Where is Aubrey going this fall?”

I am flustered that, apparently, Brad Chaffee
does
remember me. But, of course, any boob-whispering single mom
would
be a Parkhaven gossip staple.

“Uh, Peninsula. That’s what the trust is for. And Madison? Duke, right?”

“Yeah. She’ll be closer to her mother out there.”

“Joyce? Joyce is …”

What? Going to college with Madison? Sharing a dorm room
?

“She moved out to Chapel Hill. After the divorce last winter. Joyce has family there. We made sure Madison got into Duke before we filed.”

“Oh. I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, you know. These things happen.” Brad is a little too cavalier: Joyce must have been the dumpee. I search his desk and spot a photo of Brad and a petite, dark-haired woman who looks young enough to be one of Madison’s friends. They’re both wearing running shorts that show off their matching long, muscular legs. Numbers are pinned to their tank tops. Gleaming with sweat, they hang on to each other and grin, having obviously just clocked a couple of personal bests.

“All right,” Brad announces, beaming at his monitor. “That’s the page I was looking for. Just have to access that account now.” He places his finger beneath a number on the document, types it in, hits “enter.” A few seconds later Brad’s smile fades and he hunches forward, squinting at the screen with his head poked out between hunched shoulders like a vulture.

“What?”

He ignores me.

“Brad, what is it?”

Brad straightens back up, swivels around to face me, states, “The available distribution has already been made.”

“In what sense do you mean ‘made,’ Brad? Because no distribution is possible since I wasn’t here.”

This is a mistake and it will be cleared up; Brad has confused me with some other boob-whispering ex-wife of a cult bigwig.

Brad resumes his vulture study of whatever carcass he’s seeing on the screen. “No, our records show that all available funds were distributed to Aubrey this morning.”

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

I
hit wrong. The air and sense are knocked out of me and I sink under. The water that fills my mouth tastes like it came from a tin cup, cold, clean, metallic. I will drown. My body will drift all the way to the bottom of the dark quarry to rest on top of Tyler’s. I fear even more that he is not dead and will see that I have made a fool of myself. Again.

And then Tyler is dragging me back up through the water. I soar to the surface, where he yells, “Breathe, A.J.! Breathe!”

I can’t obey. My mouth is open, but no air pulls into my lungs. As I flail about, panicked, Tyler holds us both up, treading water. The water is a hundred feet deep. The shore is too far away. I am going to die. I hope my face won’t contort in agony as I drown. I hope that Tyler will carry an image of me dying with a serene, yet ultimately incredibly hot, beauty.

Tyler hugs me tight, stares into my eyes until I stop struggling, and orders, “Aubrey, chill. I’ve got you.” He sounds the way he did when he called that kid “Son.”

I stop struggling and let myself be held aloft by the strong, steady surge of his legs scissoring together. The air is still knocked out of me, though, and I can’t fill my lungs. His tone is casual, like he’s making a suggestion, when he says, “Breathe.”

I cough, sputter. When I can tread water, he lets me go.

“Seriously, Puke, you have got to regulate your fluids. First not enough. Now too much. Props for the jump, though. Not that many girls jump.”

In a mousy, embarrassed voice, I say, “I thought you were going to drown. Or that you were down there paralyzed.”

“Paralyzed?” He almost laughs, then doesn’t. “You jumped to save me?” He stares hard, checking whether I am joking. When he sees that I’m not, he says, “No one ever tried to save me before,” in a suspicious way.

I feel my hair plastered to my skull like Wednesday from the Addams Family, take a big breath, and dive under to wash it back off my face. Tyler plunges under and soars past me, going deeper and deeper. He goes so deep that his tan skin turns pale and blue. I follow him until he stops and we face each other with our hair swirling around our heads and patchwork squares of light wobbling across our faces. He puffs his cheeks out and flutters his hands under his jaw, imitating a blowfish. I stretch my arms out and wriggle in
S
shapes, curvy as an eel, then clamp Tyler’s face between my powerful moray eel jaw hands.

He acts like my jaw hands have forced all the air out of his puffer fish lungs. He blows bubbles into my face, then grimaces, squeezing his eyes together, challenging me to try to stay under longer than him. My lungs are on fire, but I mime a yawn, look at the watch I pretend I am wearing, tap my fingers on my chin like I’m bored. I am stretching out for a nap when he shakes his fist in my face, then blasts off toward the surface. I am a fraction of a second behind him.

With the first breath I suck in, I yell, “Loser!”

“I don’t think so!” Tyler inhales a lung-busting gulp of air. I do the same, then we plunge back down. Tyler flips backward in elegant circles, going farther and farther down. Then he stops, crosses his arms over his chest, and tilts his head up at me, cocky as a rapper in a battle who’s just spit out some deadly rhymes, challenging me to top him. I dive farther down, do some body popping and a goofy, jokey robot, then freeze with my arms crossed over my chest, throwing pretend gang signs with both hands. We go back down again and again, break-dancing and having rap battles and seeing who can stay under the longest.

I always win because I can hold my breath forever, since I know how to move on the outside and stay silent and still on the inside.

1:13 A.M. NOVEMBER 2, 2009

=Is it a happy or a sad thing to feel like you just had the best day you will ever have in your entire life?

=For me, Aubrey, reading this, it is a very happy thing
.

=Does it matter if there will never be another one as good?

=There will be.

=How do you know?

=You will. More than you can count. It’s late. Why aren’t you asleep?

=Good question. G’night
.

=Sweet dreams
.

=Sweet dreams to you, Dad
.