We come to the bend in the river that I promised would look like an alien landscape and you say it looks more like the bones of a massive dinosaur, being slowly revealed by the eroding earth. Something enormous, Godzilla-sized. We set down our things. It’s a nice afternoon and we’re lucky there are only a dozen other people at the swimming hole. I say this as we lay out the blanket. We take off our shirts. Your bikini top is one I don’t recognize.
You never jump first. You need to see someone survive. In high school, a girl you grew up with fell from a water tower while trying to graffiti her own initials. She was made a quadriplegic, and died when she was twenty, from septic shock, because her mother was a drunk and couldn’t keep her tubes clean, or so people said. You don’t have to remind me of this. I know the stories encoded within your choices.
I climb the backside of the rock outcropping, every step a little landslide. I get to the top and try to see the bones. You’re watching me with your hand over your eyes, as if saluting.
I jump.
I love to jump, but what I really love is to fall. That helpless acceleration. I think the perfect distance to fall is when you wonder, for a fraction of a second, if you fucked up and jumped from too high, or if the water is lower than it looked—right before your feet break the surface.
I swim until I can stand, losing sight of you. You must be climbing up the outcropping. I bend my knees, because the flies are biting, so that my eyes are just above the water.
You appear at the top, looking small from down here. Your hair is tied up, but soon it will be dark and heavy on your back. As we drive back to Austin, water will bead on your chest and run down your legs. We will talk about everything else. Our shoes will still be wet when I drop you off, but your hair will be dry enough to catch sunlight. Tomorrow, my truck will smell like the river.
You look down, hesitating. Your river shoes are holey checkered Vans that were new when we met. You’ve kept on your cutoffs. Your bikini top is black and printed with little dots in yellow and pink and blue and pale-green, like the edible confetti on a birthday cake.
Last night you came over and we slept together and smoked the hash I’d been saving, and we passed out with our legs entangled, but this morning you changed in the bathroom.
Somebody shouts encouragement at you and for an instant I can see you as others see you. I see you as a stranger, as a subject, framed against the white sky. I look at you and think, I know girls like that.
You step off, wearing your falling face.
