Chapter 21 #3
I stepped forward and leaned down as Seth reached up for my face with his gloved fingers. It was a chaotic kiss, our cold cheeks blurring as hot tears ran salty streams over our lips. When I finally pulled away, I had to catch my breath and wipe my nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said, more in love with him than ever, but still rocked by the image of his hand on Molly’s back. “I’m so confused right now. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“Okay,” he said, sounding resigned but determined. “Tomorrow.”
I watched from the frozen dock as Seth pulled away, first slowly, and then faster until he was flying toward the opposite shore.
He cut a straight line for a while, but as he neared the center of the pond, he turned a large circle.
All I could see was a headlight gliding around like a firefly.
Eventually, he veered toward the east bay.
I watched until he passed the peninsula that seemed to extinguish his light; but in the far dark, I could still hear the snowmobile’s engine ripping through the night air.
As I turned to go inside, I saw a firework pop in the sky above Greg’s house.
The bang found me a few seconds later as it reverberated across the ice.
Then another Roman candle whizzed skyward.
Before long, the cadence picked up and a shower of colorful fireworks bloomed in the sky, the sparks and booms creating a cloud of joyful mayhem.
I could hear whoops and cheers echoing across the pond as if they were determined to reach me.
It was a new year. I turned and trudged up the snowy slope to my house.
“Yes, she’s here. Yes. Around midnight.” I could hear my father answering questions over the phone as he ascended the stairs, his voice growing louder as he neared my bedroom.
I was still scrunched under the flannel duvet, unready to face the world.
My father reached the doorway and said, “I don’t think so. Let me check.”
I heard a faint knock. “Cricket?”
“Come in,” I grunted. The door opened and my father stood with the portable phone in his hand.
“Is Seth here…” He looked around and tried again. “Do you know where Seth is?”
“Seth?”
He waited, with an uneasy look on his face.
“No, I don’t know. He dropped me off just before midnight. On the snowmobile.”
My dad relayed these details to whomever was on the line and then said, “Okay, yes. Please do,” before hanging up.
Now I was awake. “What’s going on?”
It had been Mr. Seavey on the phone. Seth hadn’t returned to the party after dropping me off, and his cell phone was going straight to voicemail. Greg had assumed he was with me.
But of course, he was not with me. He had asked to come in, and I had sent him away.
At first, my brain spun theory after theory about how Seth must be okay.
He was too competent to be anything but fine.
Maybe he just went to sleep somewhere unexpected; maybe he left town early this morning; maybe he’s out for an early New Year’s walk.
But as the minutes passed, my body filled with anxiety.
I was still fruitlessly trying to reassure myself when the phone rang again. After that, everything blurred.
At first, it was just a frenzy of phrases that I couldn’t make sense of: a pressure crack, soft ice in the east bay, must have happened in an instant.
And eventually, the details came into relief.
Based on what the snowmobile tracks indicated, Seth had continued to turn ever-widening circles around the pond for quite some time after midnight.
Finally, though he was only a few yards from where he had passed earlier, he hit a pressure crack that had formed when the ice shifted during the brief thaw that day.
Though the fissure was narrow, it had created a two-foot-high ridge that jutted up from the otherwise smooth surface of the ice.
There was no way Seth could have seen it in the dark.
When he hit the snow-covered ridge at full speed, he was thrown from the snowmobile.
They found the machine around noon, partially submerged in the shallows of the bay where the ice was softest. Not long after, they found Seth: ninety feet from where the crash had occurred, lying on the surface of the ice, his body quiet as if he were merely asleep.
At one point, someone had tried to offer comfort by saying that at least he hadn’t drowned, nor frozen to death while incapacitated—he had broken his neck before either of those things could happen. As if this would make us all breathe a sigh of relief. Just a broken neck. Thank goodness.
Even before my shock subsided, the guilt set in.
If only I had invited Seth up to the house.
If only I had gone back to the party with him.
If only I hadn’t tried to cross the ice on foot.
If only I had never gone to the party. If only I had stayed in the city.
If only I had never broken up with Seth.
If only I had never met him. If only I had never existed.
There was no end to the “if onlys,” and I played them relentlessly, backward and forward, until they wore a deep groove in my mind.
My heartbreak doubled back on itself. There was the initial hurt that had sent me running from the party: the loss of my hoped-for love story with Seth.
That seemed almost inconsequential in the days that followed, but eventually, I would return to it again and again.
It was always amplified and complicated by the larger devastation of losing Seth himself—of having him leave the world entirely.