“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“Says the lady who’s about to push me off a cliff!”
“I would never push you off a cliff. We are going to jump. Together. It’s going to be great. And don’t you see the parallel here? It’s kind of ingenious.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t know what I’m...Alvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods!”
Oh. Right. At the very end ofAlvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods, the Overcoat Man catches up to Margo and Alvin. He knows they’ve found a way to get into the house that holds all the magic of the world, and he wants them to tell him how. In a final life-and-death struggle, the Overcoat Man pushes Margo to her death over the cliff and then flees. But of course she doesn’t die, because she’s already drank the Everlife Formula, and she’s immortal (Alvin drinks it right after this, because he can’t deny the appeal of not dying when pushed off cliffs).
“But we’re not Margo, Em. We are going to die.”
Em kept trying to give me the bathing suit, and I keptpushing it back at her. Finally she threw it at my feet and took her clothes off. She was wearing her own bathing suit already: black with teal polka dots. She shoved her clothes in her backpack and crossed her arms, staring at me.
“Em...”
“Look, Lottie, I get it. I get that you’re scared of hurting yourself and you’re scared of dying, but you can’t go through life that way.”
“I can absolutely go through life without ever jumping off a cliff,” I argued.
“Yes, you can, but you can’t go through life without taking risks. And this is a risk, sure, but it’s a relatively small one compared to the risk of getting into an accident every time you get in a car or the risk of losing your luggage when you go on a plane or the risk of getting a paper cut every time you pick up a notebook. Life is a risk, Lottie. Sometimes you have to answer its call.”
She had gotten more and more exaggerated throughout the speech, and by the time she finished she had jumped up on a rock and was practically screaming.
“Did you practice that?” I asked.
“Obviously, yes. On Jackie in fourth period.”
I stared at her for a minute. She was an inimitable staring-contest contestant; she could go without blinking for hours.
“Okay, fine,” I said, already pulling my shirt over my head, kicking my shorts down to my ankles.
“Fine, fine, fine,” before I could change my mind.
“Fine, fine, fine,” before I could think of the million reasons this was a terrible idea.
Em picked my bathing suit off the ground and held it out for me as I stripped naked. She’d seen me naked a hundred times, but I appreciated that she squeezed her eyes shut (and held her breath, like a dweeb) until I snapped the shoulders of the suit, signaling that I’d gotten it on. She had brought my one piece, a very old suit that was starting to fade. I felt twelve in it, like a kid only playing at the idea of maybe one day being an adult. Em turned around and raised her eyebrows and whistled in appreciation.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Can’t a friend tell a friend she looks like a super cutie?” Em said. Then she dug around in her backpack for her phone, and we took a photo of the two of us. Okay, we took about ten photos, smiling in some and laughing in some and making weird faces in some. Then Em tucked the phone back in her backpack and took my hand. “No more stalling.”
My stomach flipped over as she pulled me closer to the edge.
“What about your bag?”
“There’s no one around. We’ll come back and get it after we jump.”
“What if we die?”
“Then we won’t be around to care about the bag. Win-win.”
I looked down and my stomach flopped again and my heart started racing like mad. I couldn’t do this. If the fall didn’t kill me, the heart attack would.
“What about... I mean, we’re going to be wet. So. We’re just going to be really wet.”
“There are towels in my trunk. Relax. I’ve thought this through. You need tobreathe.”
