The Telling Read Online Free

straightened up after suctioning his mouth to Maggie’s a fourth time. He keeps his purposeful stare on her. “Because it’s not bringing her back.”
    Rusty squints at the neon digital face of his wristwatch. “You don’t know that,” he says. “It’s only been a few minutes.”
    â€œSpaz, we’ve been here the whole day. She’s been under for hours.” Duncan throws a sopping-wet towel at Rusty.
    â€œBut you can’t just give up on someone.” Rusty stoops over Maggie, gets right in Josh’s face, and starts shaking him by the shoulders. “Do something.” Rusty’s voice goes uneven. His seams are ripping.
    â€œGet out of his face.” Duncan steps forward and shoves him. Rusty trips back, catches himself with a wide, wobbly stride, and then a second later, pivots to throw his weight into a punch. Rusty’s fist connects with Duncan’s square jaw. Duncan absorbs it, groans, shrugs off the pain, and tackles Rusty. The exchangetakes only five seconds, as the rest of us are frozen.
    Rusty isn’t as broad and muscular as Duncan, who spends mornings lifting weights. Rusty is corded and flexible, built for stealing bases, and he crashes to the rocks, landing with Duncan on top of him. Rusty’s head snaps back and collides with the rough surface. Duncan’s instantly off him. “Bro, bro,” he cries, “are you okay, man?”
    Carolynn rushes forward. Becca starts crying, “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
    Rusty rolls onto his side. His eyes are squinched shut as he coughs big, whooping barks. I almost cry out in relief. Carolynn kneels at his chest. She looks to Duncan coldly. “Were you trying to give him a concussion?”
    â€œHe punched me first,” Duncan says lamely.
    â€œYou pushed him first,” Carolynn snaps.
    â€œCar,” Rusty wheezes. “I’m okay.”
    Josh remains crouched at obviously dead Maggie’s sternum. Carolynn keeps laying into Duncan. “Why do you have to act like such an animal? Why does everything come down to you trying to prove you’ve got more testosterone than everyone else?”
    â€œJosh?” Becca whispers. “Can a hospital help her?”
    â€œNo, B,” Josh says, scrubbing one hand over his weary eyes. “She’s dead.”
    Maggie’s dark hair is a curtain over her face; only a sharp nose peeks through as a white little iceberg. Her pale form stands out against the night. She has the look of a character from one of Ben’s stories. My throat tightens. She reminds me of the lily-pad maiden who was strangled by a mad king and left in a watery grave. I never thought Maggie was pretty and now there’s a celestial quality to her, like we fished her from the liquid moon of an outlying planet. I spentyears trying to figure out what Ben saw in Maggie. And now she’s dead.
    I thought I’d never see Maggie again after she went missing seven weeks ago. I was glad— relieved . It hurt to look at her off-center ponytail of brownish-red, henna-tinted hair, her coal-lined eyes glaring, her clomping, steel-toed boots missing their laces and pulled over fishnets, and her bony, long fingers always two seconds away from flipping me off. What right did she have to be alive, and as pissed-off and disaffected as she wanted to be, when it was because of her that Ben was dead?
    As much as I didn’t want to, I also needed to see her, needed to corner her and make her tell me why and how. And now, with water bloating her lungs, it’s too late.
    Her lines blur and bleed into the night, as if she’s a wet ink blot spreading on paper. As if night has unhinged its jaw and is swallowing her whole, making her disappear like it did Ben. There’s static in my ears. A wormhole opens up in time, and I can see clear through its passageway to a night two months ago.
    The night everything that mattered changed.

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