I don’t know if he means have I ever bungeed? Or have I ever jumped off a dam? Or have I ever been to Switzerland? I shake my head no.
“They strap this elastic cord to your feet and you just dive into thin air, headfirst, arms wide. It’s like flying. That’s what they say, anyway.”
“What?”
“That falling is the same as flying.”
“Falling seems like the opposite of flying.”
“No, you know like things in orbit. Satellites or whatever. How it seems like they’re flying in space but really they’re just falling and falling around the earth.”
“How big is this dam?” I ask.
“It’s like seven hundred feet high.”
“Oh.” I start to see how what I’m picturing is different than what he’s talking about. I start to see where our perspectives diverge. “So if it’s high enough, falling is like flying?”
“Well, it’s not like you’re going to crash into the bottom. You’ve got the wind in your face and the view all spread before you and nothing keeping you on the earth.”
“Except the cord.”
“Right, except the cord. But not while you’re falling. It doesn’t kick in until the end when it yanks you back up.”
I’d have said that the difference between falling and flying is everything. Like the difference between a home and a library. Like the difference between broken and whole. Like the difference between a seven-hundred-foot dam you can fly off and this one. His legs are longer, but from where we’re sitting on the top, even mine dangle nearly a quarter of the way down, the silver tassels on Pooh’s mules glinting in the sun. It’s not seven hundred feet high. More like ten maybe. You could jump down without a bungee cord or anything else and you’d be fine, but it would be nothing like flying.
“Sorry I made you skip tutoring.” He’s got a magic coin in his hand which looks solid but flips open to reveal a secret hollow inside. He’s practicing clicking this open and closed with one hand, open and closed, clear blue sky above, fall trees getting naked all around us.
“You didn’t make me.” I want him to tell me what he has to tell me, but I don’t want to seem overly eager or overly selfish or overly anything.
“It’s nice of you to do that. Tutor.”
I snort.
“It is,” he insists.
“It’s the least I can do.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. They’ve been saying it my whole life.”
The coin clicks open, shut.
“Because you’re normal?” he asks.
“What’s normal?” I say. “Besides, it’s a Track A requirement for pretty much everyone but you. But yeah. Because I’m normal.”
“That doesn’t mean you owe everybody.”
“That’s not why I owe everybody.”
“Why then?”
Click.
“Because I’m going to leave them.” It’s out of my mouth before I’ve decided whether I’ll try to explain this—to him or even to myself.
In third grade, Petra and I started planning to go to college together and share a dorm room, and then get jobs together and share an apartment, and then marry brothers and share a giant house with a swimming pool. We were eight-year-olds when we concocted this plan, and, of course, it’s nuanced over the years, but we still plan to go, together and far away—we talk about it, study and prep for it, all the time—and how did I imagine that was going to happen while I stayed here with my sisters and my mother? I didn’t. I couldn’t have. But somehow, my brain disconnected that from leaving, not like I thought there was a way for me to be elsewhere and still here, like I thought there was a way for me to be elsewhere and still with them, a way for me to leave without leaving my family.
I glance over to see if River is appalled because it is appalling.
“Sure.” He is the opposite of appalled. “I mean, it’s not like you can go to college here.”
“Or maybe anywhere.”
“Anywhere?” Like he never knew anyone who didn’t go to college. “You might not go at all?” Like I said maybe after high school I’d still have earlobes but maybe not.
“It’s abstruse.”
“Abstruse?”
“Hard to understand. Complicated.”
“Oh.” Then, “Don’t worry, there’s financial aid.” He opens his fingers to reveal the coin sitting on his palm. Like all you have to do is turn your hand over to find it full of money. Maybe that’s true for him. “Or you could get a scholarship. You’re really smart.”