Shadows On The River. Linda Hall
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she could—Tracy had played a trick on her. Tracy was probably at home with the popular girls and they were all laughing at her. She could imagine them, even now, sitting cross-legged on the wooden slats of Tracy’s sundeck drinking lemonade and calling her a loser.
The girl jumped down from the embankment and felt a tear at the edge of an eye. Angrily she wiped it away. She looked down the empty street for a long time deciding whether to walk home. That meant about a mile along the hot road until the main part of town with its stores and the drugstore her father owned. She could stop there, she thought, and wait for him and get a ride home, but she’d have to hang around in the back until closing time. And that would be like forever.
No, what she would have to do would be to walk right through town, turn left for half a mile until she came to her street. She’d have to walk fast past Tracy’s house. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. She let out a sigh, shifted her book bag, and started walking, the black pavement hot through the bottom of her sneakers.
A quarter of a mile later she decided to take the shortcut. Maybe it would be cooler. She turned down the gravel road, which would become a dirt path winding past the church and through the graveyard beside it down to the river. Then it would be across the footbridge. A few steps later, she would be at the edge of her subdivision.
She wouldn’t worry about that bridge. She knew what people said—that it was unsafe. She’d climb across the logs they put in the way and then hurry across it without looking down. A few minutes later she would be at her own house. She and Tracy had taken this way lots of times.
But it wasn’t cooler on the path. If anything, it was hotter. She walked faster, a cloud of insects beside her. Perhaps when she got to the graveyard she could climb down the bank and get a drink of water from the river.
Her head felt hot, her legs heavy. She shifted her book bag. This wasn’t such a great idea, she thought as she swatted away the bugs. Up ahead on the horizon was the church steeple. Good. Now it wasn’t too far. A big drink of river water and she’d feel a whole lot better. Maybe her mother would even be at the church. Sometimes she went there for Bible studies and things. Or maybe somebody she knew would be there, Pastor Arnold, or the funny fat guy who mowed the lawns. Because the nearer she got to the footbridge, the more afraid she was feeling.
She began to run, and as she did she thought about Tracy. They hadn’t spoken to each other in months. The notes she’d left in Tracy’s locker were ignored and when she tried to phone her, Tracy was always not home. So why today? Did it have something to do with Larry Fremont? All of the popular girls were in love with him. Sure, he was sorta cute, but he was a lot older. Sixteen and Tracy was only thirteen, although Tracy was quick to point out that she would be turning fourteen in a month. Lots of fourteen-year-old girls go out with sixteen-year-old boys.
But there was something else she didn’t like about Larry. That his family was the richest family in town, that they practically owned the town, had nothing to do with it. His mother owned the town’s coal mine, which was where just about everyone’s father she knew worked. No, it wasn’t that. There was something about Larry that was just plain creepy. Maybe that’s when she and Tracy stopped being friends, when she told Tracy what she thought of Larry.
She ran faster. She was running against the hot wind now, anger propelling her forward. She made her plans. This was the end of her trying to be friends with Tracy. Once she got home, she would act like she hadn’t been waiting in front of the school for hours. She would pretend like nothing had happened.
If Tracy said something like, “Were you waiting a long time? We forgot all about you.” Her answer would be, “Well, that makes two of us, because I completely forgot about going to your house. I got a ride home with my mom like always.”
Angry tears coursed down her cheeks. How could she have been so stupid? How could she think Tracy really wanted to be her friend?
The path brought her behind the Fremont Mansion, and from that vantage point she could glimpse the blue ocean, frothy with whitecaps. A bit farther down this path and she would be at the church.
No cars were there. Maybe she could get in and cool off. She tried the doors. Locked.
Then she heard the voices, looked down toward the footbridge and saw them. Tracy and Larry. She put a hand to her mouth and slunk close to the side of the church. They hadn’t seen her. Good.
She didn’t quite know why, maybe it was something in their demeanor, but she decided to stay hidden. So this is why Tracy wasn’t there to pick her up. She was with Larry!
She stole quietly to the graveyard where she hid behind a huge black gravestone under a pine tree. From here she could watch them.
They appeared to be arguing. She could hear their voices, high and loud, but not the words. At one point Larry placed his palm firmly on Tracy’s chest as if to push her backward. She shouted something, flung his hand away and backed into the railing.
She wanted to call out, to warn Tracy that the railing wasn’t safe. There were already parts of it that were broken, slats and boards that had fallen onto the rocks far below, but there she was, leaning against the railing with her whole weight. Larry put his hand on Tracy, only this time he was choking her.
The girl was about to call out. She didn’t. For years afterward she would wonder if she could have somehow changed the outcome of everything in her future—her parents having to leave the church, her dad losing his business, her mother being ostracized—if she had only called out. Instead, she knelt in the hot buggy grass and put her head between her knees for a few moments and watched an ant crawl on her shoe while the voices on the bridge grew louder, angrier, more frantic.
She looked up again.
Larry was holding Tracy’s shirt collar with both hands and glaring down at her. They were very close. Tracy was screaming, flailing. “Let me go! Let me go!” But he wouldn’t.
The girl in the graveyard was about to rush forward and say, “Stop!” but at that moment, Larry let go of her. Tracy began to laugh as she backed seductively against the railing and put one foot up onto the cracked slat.
Larry was moving toward her now and when he got to her, he put his hand on her face.
At that moment something bit the girl’s ankle. She looked down at it and scratched.
Tracy’s screams caused her to look up and when she did, Tracy was tumbling off the footbridge, arms flailing, trying to grab for handholds in the air. Screaming. Screaming.
Larry looked down at her and laughed.
The girl in the graveyard leaned her head into the warm black gravestone and vomited onto the grass. Above her in the sun a gull called.
ONE
25 years later…
I turned over onto my side, pulled the quilt up around my ears and listened to the snowy wind rattle against the outside of my house. I snuggled down deeper into the warmth of my blanket. Still, sleep wouldn’t come. I threw off the blankets and glanced at the alarm clock. 2:52 a.m. I sighed deeply, loudly and sat up on the side of the bed where I’d slept alone for eight years since my daughter, Maddy, was born. It was going to be one of those nights.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and stuffed my feet into my slippers and switched on my bedside lamp. Beside me the novel I was reading lay opened and facedown.
It wasn’t just the blizzard that was keeping me awake. Rod should have called today. We should have heard something one way or the other by now. This was stupid, I thought, yawning and tying my terry cloth robe around me. What could I do right now, anyway? I couldn’t exactly phone him at three in the morning, could I? I walked out into the hall, as another wintry blast shook my little house. The storm was worsening, as predicted.
I gathered my hair up off my neck and tried to still my thoughts. This was insane. I was just nervous, that’s all it was. This project that Rod and I had bid on was just that—another project. There would be more projects. At least, that’s