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I shuffle to the edge. Below, I can see waves crashing against the rocks, sending up white foam. He’s right. No one can hear you out here.
I take in a deep inhale. I think about Donovan’s words. I think about my father, most of all. I imagine I’m inhaling every yes, sir and no, sir. Every word I held back when he uttered bigoted phrases. Every time I repeated his own words to other people—people like Donovan.
And then I let it out. I scream. I can hear the sound carry across the water, echoing back at me.
It’s a powerful feeling.
The act feels exhausting and invigorating at the same time. I step away and move back beside Donovan.
“Better than meditating?” Donovan asks.
“No comment.”
“Your turn, Otto,” Donovan says.
Otto stares at the cliff for a second, eyes wide. I sway beside Donovan. Our shoulders brush. “You think we might’ve scared him?”
But then he lets out a shout of his own. It’s a shrill, pitchy noise, but it’s a damn good scream. He doesn’t stop there, either. He takes a rock out of the ground, chucks it at the water, and shouts, “Screw you, Kevin!”
Donovan and I exchange a look, and immediately, I know we’re on the same page. We take Otto’s lead and reach down, unearthing small rocks from the hardened ground beneath us. We chuck them at the water, and all three of us shout at the top of our lungs:
“Screw you, Kevin!”
Our voices echo and carry. I imagine them skipping like stones across the flat surface of the ocean, traveling who knows where. Far away.
Otto sniffles. When he turns back to us, I can see his cheeks are splotchy red and wet with tears. “I think I’m ready to go back home,” he says.
This kid is so brave. So strong. And my heart cracks wide open in my chest for him.
I give his back a rub. “You’ve got it, buddy.”
We pile in the car, and Otto is still quiet. But he seems in a better mood somehow. He doesn’t have that faraway look in his eyes.
The screaming took it out of all of us—him especially—because he falls asleep against the window.
It’s getting dark outside now, and Donovan has to put on the headlights on the way to Kenzi’s. The weather is picking up a little. Small white snowflakes sparkle in the car’s beams.
“That was a good idea,” I tell Donovan.
“Yeah, well. The Screaming Rock has been good for me over the years.”
“So, what. You’d just go out there and scream?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I’d curse people out. Or things. Fuck you, MCATs was a popular refrain for a minute.”
I can picture it: teenage Donovan, the kid who smiled as he cleaned other people’s yachts and then went home to a trailer behind the marina. Peddling his bike out to the cliff edge at sunset and screaming his heart out.
A thought nags at me. “Did you ever scream my name?”
His eyes flash over me briefly before latching on the road again. “In your dreams, Hotshot.”
55
Donovan
Yeah, idiot. I screamed your name.
More times than I can count.
