This is Not the End
Chandler Baker
For Rob, we’ve created some
wonderful things together
The most formative memory of my life isn’t even my own. It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t there to see it happen, that I didn’t feel the rip of pain or hear the solitary shriek followed by silence, I’ve still managed to live that moment a thousand times. One thousand times I’ve told myself the story from his perspective. One thousand times I’ve tried to rewrite history and failed.
Here’s what I recall.
Big, soggy clouds hanging low in the sky, the last drizzle having been wrung out of them. It’s not an important detail, but if it hadn’t been a rainy day, we would have been on the back porch or down on the shell-y stretch of gray beach behind our house. I know the rain must have made Matt bored, because usually I was the one climbing things and getting scraped-up knees those days, mainly because Matt was too old. He did still read to me about talking lions and magical queens that turned the world to ice, but I also caught him talking on the phone to girls occasionally, and I didn’t like it.
In the memory, I’ve tried to edit the weather, but it never works. The story won’t hold together without it.
Our neighborhood has a palm tree infestation, which is to say that there are palm trees everywhere and their roots try to choke out any plant that dares to grow nearby. They can make other kinds of trouble too. The tall ones that mark the property line around our house have to be supported at the base with wooden beams so that the giraffe-like trunks don’t topple over and gouge holes in our roof.
So it’s notable that we have one of the only oak trees in a one-mile radius. Since nobody can climb palm trees, I can attest to the fact that looking at a nice, solid oak does tend to give you the urge to hike an arm over one of the branches and climb it. In other words, I get where Matt was coming from. I just wish for the thousand-and-first time that I could change it. But, like I said, he was bored and must have just finished a book—actually, yes, I remember that, one of his books about aliens or sorcerers—and that oak tree is right outside his window. Maybe if the previous owners hadn’t planted it there or if Matt and I had swapped rooms, maybe none of this would have happened. But they didn’t, we didn’t, so we’re stuck in it.
Matt went outside. He rubbed his hands on his pants and over the bark. The air smelled like damp wood with a hint of seaweed, since we’re so close to the shoreline. He could see bits of sand trapped in the tree’s crevices because, of course, sand gets everywhere—even in our ears sometimes. There are times when I relive this story that I find myself wiping my own hands, and then I realize that I’m not in the memory and Matt’s hands don’t work anymore.
He had a new paperback shoved in his back pocket, and he’d decided to read it from up in the tree, like one of the boys in The Swiss Family Robinson. So he stretched onto his tippy-toes until he could reach the lowest branch. The bark stung the inside of his arm as he hoisted himself onto the lowest branch. He enjoyed the sensation of his dangling feet and climbed higher so that there was more air between his shoes and the ground.
The branches creaked under the soles, but there were fat, sturdy limbs above him. So Matt scaled farther up the oak, careful not to slip on the wet wood. This is the part where I try to tell Matt to stop. End the story here. Turn back. Go no farther.
The last branch that he hooked his arm over looked like all the others. He didn’t see the gash between the limb and the trunk. He didn’t feel it give under his weight until all of it was already pressing down and it was too late.
I wish I didn’t remind myself of this so much. Then maybe I could un-remember the memory.
Too late.
The sound was the cracking of bone. Flashes of leaves and twigs that tore at his shirt and neck. His stomach shot up to his throat as his torso fell unevenly toward the dirt, which was packed hard from the rain. Time stopped. Just like it does in the movies. Everything else crawled into slow motion.
It felt like he was falling forever.
Then, when his back hit the ground, it seemed like there would never be breath in his lungs again, and his spine splintered like thin ice under a footstep, forking off into spidery veins that fractured the world—into before and after.
When I was eight, I watched a woman jump from a bridge while my mother and I were stuck in traffic. Her arms spread out like a bird’s wings, and for a moment she was suspended, the wind catching her blouse like a sail. Then the moment snapped and she fell from the air. Her body cracked against the water. And her existence was snuffed out. Gone.
So for as long as I can remember, I’ve known that water’s strong and solid enough to kill. I think of an early memory of my brother standing on the shore behind our house while I picked my way barefoot across a stone jetty that protruded out into the sea. “If you fall,” he said, “I’ll bring you back.” He had puffed out his chest and pushed his crop of sandy-blond hair out of his eyes, squinting into the sun that reflected off the water. He was so unbroken then, his forehead crumpled into a worried knot of skin at the top of his nose as he tried to sound brave. I’ve always been the daredevil between us.
I watch the water now frothing against the rocks below me like a rabid animal. My toes hook precariously over a jagged rock face. The distance is thirty-odd feet, far enough to send needle pricks through the soles of my feet, not far enough to crush my bones on impact. I consider this a happy medium.
Then there’s the thwack of bare soles behind me. A shadow crosses. A foot plants inches from mine. “You snooze, you lose, suckers!” My boyfriend, Will, tucks his bronzed legs into a cannonball. His hair—which at this stage of the summer now matches the color of his skin—spikes up and trails after him, fluttering in the furious rush of wind as he plummets into the ocean. Behind him, a white plume of water gushes up and he disappears below the surface.
I glance back. “You’re next.” I gesture to Penny, who stands three carefully measured feet from the ledge. She is so not a daredevil. More the yin to my yang.
From that vantage point, I imagine she can see the horizon, but not the drop waiting below.
“No.” She shakes her head, swishing a so-blond-it’s-nearly-white ponytail across her shoulders. “I can’t. I want to. I really do. I just…” She has this way of bowing in her knees like she has to go to the bathroom, literally shrinking into herself. I know this as the first telltale sign of chickening out.