19. The Waterfall
Chapter nineteen
The Waterfall
Ican’t breathe.
My lungs burn. My backpack slams against my shoulder. My hair sticks to my face.
I run, and keep on running.
There’s no place in front of me, only the clinic somewhere behind me. And I need to be farther away from it.
Pavement. Gravel. Sidewalk. Pavement. Grass.
Keep running, Ellie. Just run.
The sun is too bright, sounds are too loud. The yelling fills my ears…
You’re fucking the doctor.
The words hit hard. I run faster.
You played mommy to his teenage brat all weekend.
No. That isn’t right. That isn’t what happened.
Is it?
Annie didn’t play anything. Annie took me fishing. Annie showed me how to hold the line and how to be patient without making me feel stupid when I wasn’t. Annie let me help in the kitchen. She listened when I talked about Mom. She told me about her parents.
She cried, too. That wasn’t fake.
It wasn’t.
Doesn’t matter how much you fuck him, Kitten. It’s still not going to get you a kid.
I almost trip on the uneven edge of the sidewalk and catch myself against a fence post. The wood scrapes my arm and catches my skin.
I keep running. My eyes are hot. I blink hard so I can see.
I wasn’t supposed to be at the clinic at all today. I wanted to stop by and ask her if she could help Erin and me on our health class project. Truth is, I just wanted to hang out with her for a minute.
Why did I have to go?
Who was that man being so mean? Why was he with Annie?
Was he being mean to her? Why did he call her Kitten?
Oh Kitten, did your shriveled-up, dried-out ovaries tingle taking care of the brat?
I should have done anything except stand there and listen. But then he started talking about Dad.
The doctor.
And then about me.
The brat.
I gulp in air trying to get enough for my lungs to keep up with my panic. It’s not working.
I run past the shops. Someone laughs somewhere behind me, it all sounds normal and impossible. A dog barks. The whole town keeps moving like nothing is wrong.
Everything is wrong, people. The sky is falling.
Annie and Dad. Dad and Annie.
Fucking.
The word is ugly and adult and it does not belong anywhere near Dad or Annie or my head. But it keeps coming. He kept saying it and talking about us.
Widower. New in town. Sad daughter. You fuck him enough and bat your eyes at his kid.
Dad didn’t tell me. He promised.
He promised we would be honest.
Dad said we were a team. He said I could ask him hard things. He said he would not shut me out because I was his daughter or because I was young.
He promised.
It’s hard to breathe. I pant. I slow for half a second and then the man’s voice comes back.
Is the plan to climb into his bed, play house with his kid, and hope grief makes him stupid?
I make a sound I don’t mean to make.
No. No, no, no.
Annie didn’t do that. She didn’t feed me and teach me things and let me stay in her house because of Dad. She didn’t sit beside me while I talked about Mom because she wanted something.
She didn’t.
But that man knew things.
He knew I stayed with her. He knew about Dad. He knew a lot about Annie.
He said it like he was telling the truth and being mean about it at the same time, and I don’t know how both things can happen, but I think maybe they can.
Annie yelled at him.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
She said that. I heard her.
You don’t get to talk about her.
That was about me.
I think it was about me.
But then he kept talking, and she didn’t make it stop, and I was just standing there with my whole body feeling too small and my feet glued to the ground.
Dad didn’t tell me. Dad didn’t tell me.
Daddy didn’t tell me.
Before I realize it the street drops away behind me, and I’m moving toward the trail. I know this.
The waterfall.
I stop so suddenly my shoes skid.
My mom loved the waterfall.
Dad told me that. He said when they were stationed here before I was born, Mom used to come here when she needed to think. He said she liked the noise because it made the rest of the world shut up for a little while.
I need that. I need her. She could help me figure this out.
I need you, Mom.
My legs start moving again. The trail is packed with dirt, stones, and roots I have to step over carefully. My breathing sounds too loud. Everything sounds too loud. The water is somewhere ahead.
Mom would know whether Dad lied.
She would know if Annie was real.
She would know what to do with the sick feeling in my chest that keeps getting bigger every time I think about Dad and Annie in the same sentence.
Annie can’t be fake.
She just can’t.
She made me breakfast and didn’t make a big deal out of it. She let me mess up the first batch of lip balm and said we could fix almost anything if we understood what went wrong. She told me her parents died in a plane crash, and her voice changed and made me feel like she understood.
People don’t fake that.
Do they?
Maybe adults fake all kinds of things to make kids think everything is fine.
I hate this.
I hate that I like Annie. I hate that I want her not to have done anything wrong. I hate that part of me still wants to go back and have her explain it, even though another part of me never wants to look at her again.
I hate that the man said they are fucking. My face gets hotter.
I don’t want to think about that.
I don’t want to know anything about that.
I want Dad to be Dad. I want Annie to be Annie. I want Mom to be alive, and I know that is stupid because wanting it does nothing, but I want it so badly I can’t think straight.
The sound of the waterfall gets louder around the bend. It fills up the spaces between the trees and pushes me forward.
Then I see the falls.
They are bigger in person. I have seen pictures. I have heard Dad talk about them. None of that is the same as standing here with cold spray hitting my face and water crashing so hard it feels like the whole world is coming down.
Behind it, barely visible through the white rush, is the dark place in the rock.
The cave.
Not a real cave. Dad said that. More like a pocket behind the falls. Mom found it once when they were stationed here, came home soaked and laughing, and told Dad he was not allowed to tell anyone because it was hers.
He told me.
That made it special. Now it makes my throat hurt.
Mom stood here.
If I can get there, maybe she’ll feel closer and I can tell her everything and try to make sense of this.
It’s a steep climb up there and the first rock is slippery. I stop with one foot on it and one foot still on the path.
This is where I should turn around.
The rock shifts under my weight. My hand shoots out and smacks hard against the wall. Pain runs up my arm.
Water pounds in front of me. Spray gets in my eyes. My jeans are wet at the knees already, and my shoes do not feel like shoes anymore. They feel like sponges with laces.
“Stop being stupid,” I say. The waterfall eats the words.
I cannot go home and look at Dad while those words are still inside me. And I cannot ask Annie if she used me.
I need Mom first.
Another step. Then another. The rocks are loose and I’m sliding all over them, but I’m doing it. The cave is only a few feet away.
Almost there.
Almost.
I reach for the last hold in the rock. My left foot slides. My right leg jams down hard to catch me, and my knee twists the wrong way.
Something pops.
For a second, I can’t make any sound. Pain blows up from my knee into my thigh and down into my shin, so sharp and hard that my stomach twists.
I grab and slap at the wall with both hands, desperate for a finger hold to keep me from falling. I’m half in the falls, half behind it, and if I let go, I am going down.
“No,” I gasp. “No, no, no.”
My knee won’t hold me, and it starts to give out. I grasp for one last rock hold and drag myself toward the cave behind the falls.
My leg folds under me as I fall into the cave, landing on the rock floor on my side.
For a while, I can’t move.
The water roars in front of me, bouncing off the rock and shaking through my bones. My knee is swelling quickly with hot pain. My hand and arm are bleeding, and my elbow hurts.
But I made it, Mom.
The thought comes from some dumb part of my brain that does not understand anything. I start laughing. It lasts maybe one breath before it turns into crying.
“Mom,” I sob. The word disappears.
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Mom.”
Nothing. Only water.
I open my eyes.
The dark rock curves around me. The space is smaller than I thought it would be. Colder. Water sprays in from the sides and dots my jacket, my hands, the floor.
This was supposed to feel like Mom. Instead it feels like being trapped in a place Dad warned me not to go alone.
That thought scares me and I reach for my phone.
My pocket is empty.
I pat it again. Empty.
I check the other pockets. Nothing.
“No.”
I check again, harder, like my phone might be hiding in denim or somehow stuck in the lining. My fingers shake so badly they fumble with the zipper on my backpack and dump it out onto the rock.
No phone.
“No, no, no.”
I had it when I left school.
I can’t call Dad.
I can’t call anyone.
No one knows where I am.
My knee throbs so hard my vision blurs.
I grab above it with both hands, not touching the knee itself. My jeans are wet and cold. The skin underneath feels too tight. Something is wrong in there. Something more than a bruise.
I try to straighten my leg. Pain slams through me.
I choke on a cry.
“Stop it,” I shout. “Stop, stop, stop.”
I start to cry. There is nothing left to do, just sit on the rock and cry like a baby.
I start thinking about that stupid man. The man who said Annie wanted Dad. That she wanted me. I keep trying to remember that part.
Her voice was not weak. She sounded furious. She sounded like she wanted to hit him.
Then he said the other things. The gross things. The things about Dad and sex and Annie’s body.
I want it all out of my head.
Maybe this is what adults call complicated. I hate complicated.
My teeth chatter. I don’t know if it is from cold or fear.
“Mom,” I say again.
This time it comes out angry. “Where are you?”