Читать книгу A Man to Rely On - Cindi Myers - Страница 9

Cedar Switch, Texas, 1988

“D ID YOU HEAR ? She’s going to do it. She’s really going to do it.”

“Do what?” Scott Redmond struggled to keep up with his friend, Sam Waite, as they splashed through the muddy shallows above the swimming hole in the Brazos River. It was after noon on a Thursday in August, and the river was the temperature of bath water. The air smelled of weeds and mud and the beachy scent of Coppertone oil.

He lunged through the thigh-high water. At fourteen, Sam was a year older and a head taller. His legs were longer too, and he moved faster in the water.

Scott scrambled for purchase on the slick river bottom. With a loud splash, he fell, and came up sputtering, muddy water filling his eyes and nose. Sam didn’t even notice, he was so intent on reaching the bridge. Around him, other kids were making their way upstream toward the bridge too. In local swimming hole hierarchy, the bridge was the territory of older kids, who took turns daring each other to leap from the creosote posts that supported the guardrail beside the highway.

“What’s going on?” Scott asked, as he stood and slicked his hair back out of his eyes.

“Marisol Luna is gonna jump off the bridge,” a boy Scott’s age said.

“So?” Kids did it all the time. He hadn’t yet, but he probably would soon. At least by the time he was in high school.

“She’s gonna do it naked! ” The other boy’s eyes lit up with a wicked gleam. “C’mon. You don’t want to miss this.”

The chance to see a female naked in broad daylight was not something that happened very often in the lives of most thirteen-year-olds in Cedar Switch, Texas. Inspired by this rare prospect, Scott floundered through the water again, determined not to miss the spectacle.

When he joined the crowd gathered beneath the high concrete span, he could see the group of older kids on the bridge. Danny Westover was the high school football team’s quarterback. His sometimes-girlfriend, Jessica Freeman, was there, along with half a dozen other high school boys and girls. And in front of them all was a girl Scott thought he had seen around town before: a Mexican girl with curly black hair that hung past her shoulders. She wore a modest one-piece tank suit, red with black roses printed on it.

“That’s her. That’s Marisol,” Sam said, pointing.

Scott nodded. “I know. What makes you think she’s gonna jump?” He couldn’t even say the part about her being naked. It was too impossible to imagine.

“Jessica dared her. She said if Marisol thought she was such hot stuff, she ought to let them all see.”

“And she said yes?” The girls he knew got mad if you said something about the strap of their training bras showing. He couldn’t imagine one of them voluntarily taking her clothes off in broad daylight before God and everybody.

A hush fell over the crowd in the water as Marisol stepped up onto the flat top of the thick post that supported part of the guardrail. She didn’t look at any of them. Instead, she stared out across the water. Scott held his breath, awed by the expression on her face. She wasn’t that much older than him—maybe fifteen or sixteen. But she looked so determined. Not scared at all. He’d seen girls jump before—with their swimsuits on—and every one of them had looked like she was about to cry before she dove into the water.

But Marisol Luna looked calm, as if she was waiting to cross the street in front of the school.

“Take it off! Take it off!” Someone started the chant and others picked it up, until it was a deafening chorus, echoing off the water.

Scott remained silent, watching the girl on the post. She glanced down at the water, and in that moment, her expression changed. She looked angry, he decided. Was she angry at Jessica and her friends for taunting her? Or at all of them for watching?

He ducked his head, feeling ashamed, then quickly brought it up again, unable to resist seeing her fulfill the dare. He looked at her again, and this time, he saw hurt alongside the anger. He felt the hurt in his own chest, but still could not turn away.

She brought one hand to the strap of her suit, and a half smile formed on her lips. She reached back and undid the strap slowly, then let it fall down across her still-covered breasts, taunting them.

“Take it off! Take it off!” The volume of the chant increased.

The same amused expression fixed on her face, she grabbed the top of the suit with both hands and shoved it down, then quickly stepped out of it.

The chant faded away in the heavy, hot air. Scott stared at the girl, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. She had small round breasts, tipped with dark brown nipples, a small waist and round hips. He could see the tuft of dark brown hair between her legs, and felt a stiffness between his own legs. He stifled a groan and sank deeper into the water, not daring to take his eyes from her for a moment.

She raised her hands over her head and held the pose for what seemed like a full minute. No one said anything. Scott could hear the water slapping against the concrete pilings of the bridge, and the buzzing of dragonflies that hovered on the river’s surface, and his own frantic pulse throbbing in his ears.

Then she dove, her legs and arms folded together in a perfect jackknife, cleaving the water like a bullet.

The mournful keening of a siren broke the stillness, and a sheriff’s car came to a halt on the bridge. A deputy climbed out of the car, his uniform shirt plastered to his back by sweat. “What are you kids doing?” he bellowed. “Y’all know you’re not supposed to dive off here.”

They scattered then, swimming or running away from the site. When Scott looked back, the deputy was holding up Marisol’s swimsuit and talking with Jessica and Danny. He dropped his gaze to the water, but Marisol was nowhere in sight. Scott froze, half sick with fear. What if she’d drowned?

Then he saw her, farther down the bank, half-hidden in the salt cedars that grew beside the river. She was picking her way through the shallows, moving away from the bridge, as graceful as a mermaid, and as naked as the day she was born. Scott stared until he couldn’t see her anymore, then he reluctantly made his way home.

That night, and many night afterwards, he dreamed of Marisol, standing on the bridge. Of the beauty of her body, and the defiance and pain that shone from her eyes. In his dreams, he wanted more than anything to comfort her, but she was unreachable, someone he could only long for from afar.