The river beneath the overpass is barely more than a creek, a brown trickle of run-off sluice from the surrounding factories that dries up completely in the summer and smells of rank mud. But it’s cooler down here in the shade of the bridge when the hardtop feels like it’s melting underfoot. We listen to the cars and trucks hissing and rumbling past above our heads and we smoke cigarettes we’ve stolen from our parents. We pass them around, talking as we imagine adults might, about what we think are important things––the things that we might do or that might happen to us in some far-off, never-coming future. We talk around the empty space on the perch that belonged to Sarah, our words weaving densely to create an entity out of a nothing we are determined to ignore. And, as the drinks grow lighter in our hands, sometimes the boundary of no-man’s land is breached and we can no longer ignore what isn’t there.
It never starts intentionally. Someone, usually whoever had had the most to drink, accidentally lets her name slide into a sentence, as fitting and yet disconcerting as a flashing minnow would be in that almost-river we call our own. The sound of it jolts us, momentarily, out of the comfortable numbness we draw around ourselves. Though none of us have seen or even heard from her in months, her name carries the sting of bittersweet memory. It smarts with love, pride, and a subtle edge of betrayal that none of us would ever acknowledge while sober. We pause, suddenly adrift. Someone eventually breaks the silence and for a brief time we share stories of our time with Sarah. We lean into those old days, gratefully, eagerly, twisting that honey sweet knife of remembering just a little deeper.
Though she eventually joined us under the bridge, we first met her above it. By the summer before senior year, we’d long since claimed the concrete slopes of the underpass for ourselves. If our parents knew where we were, none of them cared. So we carved out our own place and blocked all the other shit out, just for a little while. We told jokes, tried on new personas, imagined increasingly ridiculous futures for ourselves, and pretended that they could be true. Day after day, everything was the same. Until it wasn’t. We were tumbling, laughing down to the banks when someone (no one can say for sure who) saw a figure teetering on the edge of the overpass. At the following expletive, we all looked up and froze. Brilliantly traced by the searing sun, Sarah perched on the very edge, contemplating the deadly drop beneath her.
We all knew her, of course. In a town that small, everyone knows everyone. We knew that she was the golden cheerleader, the shining girl who was always laughing, always surrounded by friends. It didn’t matter that her family lived in the trailer park that ours did; she was miles removed from us. That parched afternoon, we learned something new about Sarah.
She’d always wanted to fly. That day was so dark that she almost tried.
The next part was a blur. One of us ran towards her, calling her name, and then we all were. Somehow, someone convinced her to come down, and she did, slowly, carefully. Sarah turned her back on the empty nothing and screaming traffic and joined us on the banks. The mere feet beneath us felt unnavigable as we analyzed each other. How does one proceed after something like that? Then we noticed her eyes; they flickered with fear and shame. But more than that, we saw a desperation to escape: to be anything, anywhere but where she was. Looking at her, we recognized ourselves.
And just like that, she was one of us. Though on the outside we seemed as different as gold and coal, we were the same. There was no need to mention the hunger that ate its way into our dreams when there wasn’t enough for dinner or bruises blossoming on cheekbones when one of us got in the way. We shared the burden of absent or detached parents and spoke the language of smashing bottles and thundering stepfathers. We didn’t have to explain the fucked-up messiness of our lives because each of us lived it.
All through that summer Sarah was our spark. She brought fresh life to our days and a second wind when we were running on fumes. Inventive, whip smart, and tough as nails, she picked up a sword and joined our battle to forget our reality. That summer we burned hot as the sun and chased every mad dream we could. We laughed, we screamed, we railed against the shit we’d been handed. We were glorious. And as for Sarah, she was golden all the way through.
Summer ended, and we didn’t see much of her at school. Though she blended back into her old life and friends, we didn’t fault her for it. We still exchanged smiles in the hallways, eyes sparkling with shared memories. And come June, as soon as we’d tossed aside our graduation caps, she was running with us back to the overpass.
But all too soon, Sarah was leaving us again, this time for college. She’d applied, won a couple of scholarships, and bought a train ticket. We said goodbye to her the only way we knew how: with a brief hug, a couple jokes, and a few tears we tried our best to hide. That was in August. Now it’s October, and we’re still here. For all of our talk, all of our denunciations, we are stuck here in the lives we’ve tried so hard to deny.
Sarah got what all of us longed for, something we knew could never be ours: an escape. She left our world of dead ends and crumbling concrete into one where she could be the architect. She had a wild, beautiful, screaming chance, and she ran with it. How could we fault her for that? We couldn’t. But parts of us couldn’t forgive her either.
Though the conversation eventually meanders on to different topics, I know that each of us is holding some piece of Sarah close, traces of her lingering like smoke in our memories. At least, she does in mine.