A FIELD TRIP WITH CONSEQUENCES

Transcription

1 A FIELD TRIP WITH CONSEQUENCES Whoosh. Laughter pealing through the air. A quick smile, sparkling eyes. Whoosh. One of those small hands with the long fingers reaching for me. Whoosh. Panic now, panic in those fathomless black eyes. Whoosh. Falling, falling away from me, reaching for me, falling, falling, falling. Whoosh. Then a moment of clarity. She s not falling anymore, she s fallen, almost too far down in the ravine for me to make out, and as I look closer, I see there s a creek running through the valley down below and her body s being washed away already, like she s no more than an unloved doll a child had carelessly thrown into the creek, and as I look closer now as I look closer now, I can see her limbs sticking out at strange angles, the water around her turning red or is it just my mind playing tricks on me? Then she s falling again. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Wait, it screams from somewhere inside my head, that happened already! She s fallen already and now she s she s Shut up, another voice says. Just shut up and let me die. Die? We re dying? We got hit, remember? Ring a bell? Hit? Hit by what? That would be convenient now, wouldn t it be, if we knew. Can t say we re dying, then, if we don t even know what hit us. I mean, where are we even? How did we get here? Em, remember? Remember the social studies class Em made us take? Em. Em. Something about Em. Whoosh. Falling, falling away from me, reaching for me, falling, falling, falling. Woosh. A high, inhuman sounding noise. It takes me a moment to realize it s me making that noise. Don t. There s that voice again. Don t think about that now, concentrate. Concentrate. Where are you? Illusions, I think suddenly, dying brain cells, people seeing lights at the end of tunnels because of their dying brain cells. Dying. I try to move, but that just makes me remember the last time I tried to move, when I allowed myself a few seconds of rest in order for the pain to subside. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. There it is again, my breathing, so loud in my ears, so shallow, nothing more than gasps, really, and so, so desperate. It sounds almost wet, I think suddenly, puzzled. Such a gurgling sound, almost like my lungs are filled with water instead of air. Breathing becomes harder trying to sit up, so I settle for trying to make someone notice me, but it soon becomes obvious that talking is impossible. Fear courses through me now, instant and unexpected, making me go hot and cold at the same time. It s gonna be alright, I tell myself, everything s gonna be fine. It s all gonna work out somehow, it always does.

2 Sooner or later, someone s gotta find me. They ll call 911 and in the blink of an eye, I ll be all patched up again. Just don t panic. I have to believe in that, believe that it s gonna be alright, else I ll go mad. Believe in that. Don t panic. Think of something nice, like home. I ll go home. When was the last time I was home? It seems ages ago, somehow, and it takes me a moment to understand that the ache I feel now has nothing to do with the physical pain I m feeling, it s simply me missing my parents, my little brother, peaceful evenings in front of the TV, playing football after school. The smell of the lilies mom keeps out in the garden and dad coming home from work in the evenings. When was the last time I was home? C mon, don t be a bore, she taints me, sitting cross-legged on the little loveseat in the corner of the room while I m once again chained to the desk by useless homework. It s gonna be fun, promise. I do my best to ignore the mischievous glint in her eyes, so familiar, and pretend not to have heard, almost managing, until, all of a sudden, a pillow hits me sideways in the face. I throw it back at her, acting like I m putting all my heft into this one throw, but in the end, she manages to catch it easily. It s gonna be fun, she repeats. When I don t say anything, her eyes light up the sun rising in the east and she squeals: So you re in? I never said that! I remind her, but she s not even listening anymore, dancing round the room, laughing. I know I should be alarmed that it s become this easy for her, that there s no way I can resist her in anything, nothing she wants I can give her that I don t give her, that she s convinced me again to do something I never had any intention of doing, but in that moment, I can t make myself feel anything but happiness, happiness that this girl is mine, that I ve somehow managed to make her laugh, and so I laugh with her. I remember that now. That day she convinced me to take part in the field trip for Social Studies, the one that includes you camping out in the forest for a whole week, no mobile phones, no flashlights, no pre packed food. Whoever had thought that would be a good idea. There s forest floor underneath me, treetops above, so that must be where I am, the Social Studies field trip, but how did I get here? How is it I don t remember? The term dying brain cells pops up again and I give my best not to throw up, considering that I can t even move or breathe, as for that matter.

3 Why can t you think positive for once? There are tears in her eyes. She quickly wipes them away, but I can tell how much it bothers her that I just don t get it, that two days have passed and I m none the wiser for what this field trip is supposed to be all about. Nature, sure, I get that, nature s nice, but what s the point in relinquishing the pleasures of flashlights and pre-packed food? What ought to teach me that? The other seven people on this trip are all friends or loose acquaintances of Em s and I can tell that she s enjoying herself, that I, the one trudging along, not enjoying himself a teensy little bit, is, in fact, the only thing clouding her elsewise perfectly blue sky. I don t have a fraction of an idea what happened next, how everything went to hell so quickly, but the memory of Em falling comes to me again now, again unbidden, but this time in detail. I m pretty sure you can t eat those, I say, more to the berries than to Em; after the fight yesterday she s still hard to look at. What, are you the botanist now? Mr Pross decides what s edible and what isn t, not you. Still mad at me. Of course she is. And I can tell you Mr Pross will decide they aren t, you needn t bother gathering them. With a frustrated grunt she throws the berries at my feet and goes stomping off, disappearing in between the trees, leaving me standing there, wondering what to do next. Rule number two, just after rule number one, don t eat anything I haven t inspected first, is to never be out in the woods alone. The last thing I want to do right now is follow her, but I have always been one to follow the rules and the thought of Em alone out there makes me sick to the stomach. You d expect it to take ages to find someone in a big forest like this, but Em made a huge mess stomping off and I easily follow her lead: the snapped twigs, fallen leaves, and footprints in the mud, the mud that s still wet from all the rain these last few days. I see other footprints, too, larger ones that should make me worry, but they re human, after all, and when you grow up in a big city, surrounded by security and video cameras, you don t worry when you see a human footprint in the mud, not even if your girlfriend is the daughter of a peace activist with a thousand threats to his life. I find her standing just in front of a crevice, a huge crevice, more of a chasm, really. There are tears in her eyes again but when she sees me coming, she laughs. I knew you d come, you know, she says.

4 We stand there for some time, her looking down the chasm, me looking across to the other side, where it s pretty much the same as on this side, trees to no end, when suddenly a deer steps out of the trees there. Tapping Em, I mouth: Look! Almost like the deer feels us looking, it lifts its head to stare right at us, its big black eyes unblinking. God, it s beautiful, she whispers, looking at the deer. It is, I agree, looking at her. In fact, I m still looking at her when the bullet enters between her shoulder blades and makes her slump forward, loose her balance, reach for me, and fall. I m looking at her all the time, suspended in time, while she falls, seeing it, seeing it all and unable to do a thing, screaming inside but motionless on the outside. She reaches for me and I reach for her, but my pathetic attempt at saving her comes too late. Our eyes meet and I suddenly get why it s called eye contact, because our gazes, they clash together and interlock, as if I could keep her from falling simply by looking at her. There s so much pain in her black eyes, but also panic, Fear, the one written with a capital f, the one of losing, of dying, of nothingness, of oblivion. The thing that gets me, though, the thing that claws through me, tears me apart, is the surprise in her eyes. None of this should have happened, her eyes tell me, because when we woke up this morning, we were still ordinary people living our ordinary lives, you know, and now look at us. Maybe some things, once done, can t be made undone, because you can t just go back in time and undo this. It s final. One second she s there beside me, the next she s gone, and I think I might have done something drastic, like bolt after her, had not a second shot rang out just next to me, for then instincts took over. So now I m running, running, running, the trees vanishing in a green blur, the world turning over and over in front of my eyes, thinking of what I saw just before I started running, Em falling and Em lying down in the chasm, her body being washed away by the current; thinking that I m never gonna stop running. She didn t make a sound as she fell, maybe because it had all gone so fast, maybe because the pain had been too great, or maybe she did scream and the wind had ripped the sound away. A gun goes off again, directly behind me this time, and I feel like being hit square in the back, all the air going out of me as I fall. Maybe that s what they mean when they talk about your life flashing by when you die. I have to think about my little brother, suddenly, about who will play football with him when I m not there to do so, about my parents and how the news will kill them. My friends, who will replace me on the football team, and whether I ll be remembered, missed. I don t pray

5 to god, don t even think about whether there is a god, for what god would take Em s life? My dying brain shows her to me once more now, the day we met, when she shot me right off my bike with the Frisbee that was initially meant for Marble, her dog. I remember how I couldn t decide whether her eyes were actually black or just really, really dark brown. I realize suddenly that the Whoosh has stopped and think about how an average person can hold their breath for up to two minutes if need be, but your average person isn t lying on the forest floor with a pierced lung. I look up at the sky, the clouds passing by, slowly, so slowly, and listen to the Thump instead. Maybe it s nothing more than a nightmare and I ll awaken in the morning to find everything back to normal; I ll call up Jake and tell him to come over so we can play football, me, my best friend, and my little brother, but first I ll call Em, let her know how much I love her, that I couldn t stand to lose her. It s stupid, but it seems like the most important thing in the world now, to tell Em once more how much I love her, because I can t remember the last time I did, and it makes me wonder if I ever did at all. Does she even know? If I die, will she know how much she meant to me, that she was slowly becoming my all? Then I remember she s dead, too, and the tight grip the fear had on me just moments ago evaporates. I m not afraid anymore, but the absence of fear doesn t necessarily mean you re feeling brave no, I m indifferent. Like it doesn t really matter anymore, either/or, there s no difference, and maybe this isn t such a bad way to go. The pain will stop and it s so peaceful down here, why should I bother getting up? It seems very far away now, this moment, the pain, the blackness crawling in at the edges of my vision, and I almost feel like I m nothing more than a spectator, watching through a haze of detachedness, not taking any part in what s playing out in front of me, and I can see myself, see myself lying there on the forest floor, the life draining out of me. There is no dignity in death, they say, but up until now, as I m lying on the forest floor fighting for breath, unable to form a coherent thought, I ve never known how right they are. I hold on to the thought, as if the words will keep me alive. There is no dignity in death There is no dignity no dignity No dignity In death And my heart goes a-thump, a-thump, a-