Shoebox
The river was the first place Rebecca drove to after the procedure. The air was hot and muggy, and her shirt fit too tight. Pine needles crunched under her white sneakers as she walked to sit on a bench under a willow tree. It was 1:00 pm and she was supposed to be in school. She had hidden everything, including her plummeting grades.
The riverbank was pretty much vacant other than a mother and a toddler who left not long after she arrived, the mother rolling up a picnic blanket and packing up the remnants of their lunch while the toddler wailed. A man and a woman also stood by the river about 20 feet away. Rebecca didn’t see them at first because they were as still as mannequins. The woman wore a thick grey sweatshirt and leggings even though it felt like 90 degrees in September, the heat causing Rebecca’s cheeks to flush with a mix of perspiration and shame.
The man wore a blue t-shirt and cargo shorts, one arm wrapped tightly around the woman. He was tall and sturdy; she was petite, like a hummingbird. His hair was black with hints of grey; hers was blonde and wispy, some of the pieces held together in a messy ponytail. The woman clutched a small wooden box about the size of a shoebox. The man leaned in as if to whisper something in the woman’s ear, causing the woman to shake. The box trembled. Rebecca couldn’t see her face, but she imagined tears running down the woman’s cheeks and pooling into the river until the river rose and opened its mouth to devour them all.
That’s what Rebecca wanted: to be swept away and disappear and never hear a heartbeat other than her own.
The heat was becoming unbearable; her stomach cramped, and her palms were sticky with sweat. She bit the inside of her cheek and could taste the blood that stained her teeth. She watched as the man took the box from the woman’s quivering hands while the air held its breath. He held on tightly to the box with one hand and to the woman with the other. She imagined the veins on the man’s hand perturbing, his knuckles turned white. She clutched her knees to her chest. Somewhere upstream the wind exhaled, and Rebecca could feel the air blow across her face and up her shirt, filling her up like a balloon where she could float high up and see her life carry on down the river where the water was cool and the air less thick.
It was the man and the woman against the tug of the river. They opened the box and let her out.
