Underwater: A Novel by Reichardt Marisa

Author:Reichardt, Marisa [Reichardt, Marisa]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780374368876
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2016-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-five

“Hop on my back and I’ll take you to the river,” Ben says. He’s sprawled out on his bed long after Evan and Taylor have gone surfing and then some. His hands are tucked behind his head.

I scan the page for my line. “But the river is so far, and it’s getting dark.”

“That’s not how it goes. You’re supposed to say: ‘It’s getting dark, and the river is too far.’”

“Geez, excuse me.”

“It’s supposed to be exactly right. That’s what Ms. Belford said.”

“Okay, start over.”

Ben has memorized all his lines from the play along with everybody else’s. I guess memorization is some great hidden talent of his. He recites his parts, and some of the extras, too, as we lie across from each other on our beds. I know most of the lines as well, so I try to take all the parts in between. When I stumble, Ben helps me to remember. It takes us almost an hour to get through the whole thing. When we’re finished, I get up, turn off the light, and crawl back into bed. Ben rolls over to his side and flicks the switch on a new bedside lamp my mom won in a raffle at the hospital. It makes our room seem like it’s underwater. Tiny yellow fish swim across the walls. I watch them move, around and around in circles, never really getting anywhere.

Ben speaks up when I thought he was practically asleep. His voice startles me. “You’re coming to my play, right?”

I bury myself deeper into my sheets. “I hope so.”

He sighs, and I can feel the weight of his exasperation in the air. A disappointed five-year-old is a brutal thing.

“But why wouldn’t you go?” he asks. “What are you afraid of?”

What am I afraid of? What if I throw up? What if I can’t breathe? What if I get sweaty and have a panic attack and can’t get out of the building? What if being in an auditorium reminds me of the last time I was near an auditorium?

“I don’t want to embarrass you,” I say.

“It’s okay if you clap the loudest. I won’t be embarrassed. I want you to come.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to be there. You get that, right?”

“All I know is if I wanna go somewhere, I go. You can, too.”

My brother is too smart for his own good.

I remember reasoning out those exact same thoughts about my dad that time he didn’t show up for Christmas almost a year and a half ago. I’d worked so hard putting together a scrapbook of the best moments my mom and Ben and I had shared over the past year without him. I thought he’d love it. But he didn’t even show up. He wasn’t in Afghanistan that Christmas. He was right down the coast. He could’ve been with us in a matter of hours. My mom had given him a chance to make things better. He could’ve been unwrapping the presents that Ben had made at preschool and diligently wrapped in tinfoil.

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