Colorblind (9 page)

When it finally came to an end and we were freed, my legs were wobbly. Chloe found that hilarious.

I sat on a bench just outside the ride while Chloe went to get ice cream, and by the time she came back, I’d managed to catch my breath. “So what’d you think?” she asked, grinning. “Kinda fun? Just a little?”

“That was an experience,” I conceded. “One I’ll never have again, but I’m sure when I’m old I’ll cherish this memory. Really,
really
old.”

“I’ll take it.” She took a seat next to me and handed me my cone. “We can go do the kiddie rides again.”

“No way. You should go find your dad,” I suggested. “I can hang out with your mom while you guys do all the scary stuff.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’m not gonna leave you alone with my mother just so I can ride some extra rides. I’ll do it some other time.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you.” I smiled at her, licked at my cone, and then, mouth full, demanded, “Go find your dad.”

“Harper-”

“Chloe, go. Seriously. It won’t kill me to get to know your mom. Just be careful.”

“You sure?” She looked concerned, but one of her legs was bouncing with excitement. She probably hadn’t even noticed.

“Positive. Just tell them to meet us here and we’ll switch up the pairs. No big deal.”

A smile broke out across her face and she squealed quietly as she threw her arms around me, ice cream cone and all. “You’re perfect.”

“Remember this moment next time I host a Marilyn Monroe themed movie night, no action movies included,” I mumbled and then laughed when she groaned into my neck.

* * *

Mrs. Stephens and I went straight to the kiddie section of the park, where I belonged, and spent a couple of hours embarrassing ourselves by being the only guests in the park over four feet tall on almost everything we rode.

“I never got to take Chloe on these types of rides when she was a kid,” she told me during ride number three. “She and her dad were certainly cut from the same cloth. We couldn’t take her to places like this until she met the height requirements for the thrill rides, because otherwise there was no point in going.”

“So she’s always been like that,” I mused. “Total adrenaline junkie.”

“She gets it from her father. And his father. Her grandfather passed away about a decade ago, and one of the last things he told her was not to waste a second of life. I swear, that man’ll get her killed one day, the way she leaps into things without thinking about them first. I’m surprised my heart’s still functioning.”

I didn’t reply. Our line moved forward, and Hayley shuffled ahead of me. After a moment, I followed, half-hoping for a change in subject.

“So you and Chloe seem to be close. She talks about you quite a lot for someone she’s only known a month.”

That wasn’t exactly the change of subject I’d been hoping for.

Inwardly, I cringed and tried to think of an appropriate response in an appropriate amount of time. But I’d never been anywhere close to in this position before, and the result was a long, awkward silence that Hayley had to break herself.

“Sorry to put you on the spot like that, Harper. You seem like a sweet girl. I’m glad Chloe has a friend. She had trouble back where we used to live.”

“Trouble?” I echoed, confused.

“She had some problems with making friends. The kind she could bring home and have sleepovers with. She’s always been very blunt and I think a lot of time that doesn’t sit well with other kids your age.”

“I think I like blunt sometimes,” I told her. “Blunt makes everything easier.”

She laughed lightly. “Well, at any rate, I’m glad Chloe has you. You have a mother’s approval.”

I raised a hand to my head to scratch it, but that was only so I could use my palm to hide the eye Hayley could see. I was, very suddenly, a little teary-eyed. “Thanks,” I mumbled, hoping I didn’t sound choked up and that my voice wasn’t shaky. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

Chapter Seven

Chloe rested her head on my shoulder and slept during our ride home. I was exhausted, too, after such a long day. Too exhausted to go camping, especially given that I’d only agreed in the first place after a lot of convincing from Chloe.

When we got home, I nudged her awake while mid-yawn myself, and then admitted, “I just want to go to sleep.”

“I know, right? I didn’t expect it to be so draining.”

“Maybe Dad will let us take a rain check,” I suggested. That woke her up pretty quickly. She looked concerned.

“Oh, no, you can’t cancel on him. It’ll hurt his feelings.”

“What if I promise to let him take us next weekend?” I suggested. “We can spend the whole day at the camp ground instead of just an evening. And we won’t just be sitting around yawning the whole time, wishing we were back home in our own beds.”

She let out a sigh, like she knew I was just making excuses, but that sigh soon morphed into another yawn and she shrugged her shoulders. “Just try to be nice to him when you tell him.”

“I will,” I insisted. “I feel bad. But who knows? Maybe they’ll want the quality time anyway.”

* * *

As it turned out, Dad and Deborah did
not
want the quality time. As Deborah sat quietly beside him on the couch, Dad folded his arms across his chest and said stiffly, “First you didn’t want to go. Then you told me you
would
go if Chloe could come along. And now you’re telling me that we’re supposed to be leaving in ten minutes and
neither
of you want to go?”

“We do! Just… not tonight,” I mumbled. “We’re tired. We spent all day walking around. We thought we could handle it and we couldn’t. I’m sorry. You should go without us.”

“We will,” was all he said. He wasn’t as angry as I thought he’d be, but I had a feeling that had something to do with Deborah being in the room. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes as he added, “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Go to your room.”

I did. And once I was safely inside, I pulled out my new cell phone and texted Chloe an update. She sent back a frowny face, but I knew she was just as relieved as I was. She’d had even more of an eventful day than I had, thanks to our trade-off and the resulting time she’d spent going on rides with her dad. The two of them were cute together. Kind of the way I wished my dad and I could be, were we both not such homebodies.

It occurred to me, then, as I sat on my bed, that maybe Dad saw some of the same things in Deborah that I saw in Chloe.

* * *

I made plans with Chloe and Robbie the next day, and made sure to leave the house before Dad and Deborah were back. Robbie picked both Chloe and me up and drove us out to my parents’ old secret spot by the cliff and the lake-like body of water. We brought bathing suits this time, but I laid out on a towel in the sand with a comic book while Robbie swam around. Chloe stood at the water’s edge, clearly antsy, and kept glancing up to the top of the cliff.

“Don’t even think about it,” I reminded her. “Rocks.”

“Yeah, I know,” she sighed out, and then waded out into the water. “Come in with us!”

“I’m reading!” I called back.

Once she was deep enough to immerse herself, Chloe flipped herself onto her back and breast-stroked away from me. I felt her judgmental gaze on my face even when I looked away from her.

“What are you reading?” she eventually asked me.

“A comic book Robbie loaned me,” I told her.

She laughed. “You guys read comic books?”

Robbie swam toward her and stopped just a few feet from her head, treading water. “It’s Batwoman. You might like it.”

She scoffed. “I didn’t know I was hanging out with
nerds
. Jeez.” She flipped around and immersed herself in the water, then swam away without resurfacing. Robbie arched an eyebrow at me.

“She’s kidding,” I elaborated.

“If you say so.”

Chloe came back up for a moment, and I called out to her, “Hey, don’t go too far, okay? We don’t have life jackets.”

“Life jackets and comic books: you’re super cool, Harper,” she joked and dived down again.

“I can see why you like her,” said Robbie.

“She’s kidding! Again.”

He swam toward me, leaving Chloe behind, until the water was at his knees. He stopped there and sat down on the rocks, relaxing with the water halfway up his stomach. “So, how have you been? Really?” he asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m alright. Not great… but alright.”

“You can always call me,” he reminded me. “I’m just… socially awkward and shit. You know that.”

I forced a laugh. “Yeah, I know. I’m glad you made me leave work early the other day. I needed a break.”

“Are you still thinking about quitting?” he asked me.

“Yeah. If I had another way to make money, I definitely would, but as of right now, I don’t.”

“What about your dad’s new girlfriend?” he suggested. “If they get married, your family income just doubled, you know.”

I gaped at him. “Oh my god, that’s awful. And besides, they definitely aren’t getting married any time soon.”

“That’s probably true.” He paused, and then lowered his voice. “So…” Then he turned and looked over his shoulder in a move I instinctively knew was to make sure Chloe wasn’t close enough to overhear.

Except Chloe wasn’t there at all. The water all around us was calm and flat, and she was just…
gone
.

I tossed Robbie’s comic book onto the ground beside me and raced into the water. “CHLOE! CHLOE!”

Robbie was already two steps ahead of me, swimming with everything he had toward the last place we’d seen her. I could only watch helplessly as he pulled ahead of me, arms and legs pumping furiously. I kept my eyes on him as I tried my best to follow, but I felt like my arms and legs had turned to rubber.

“CHLOE!” Robbie screeched ahead of me, but we both knew by now it was no use. She was underwater.

I scanned the surface desperately, trying to see something,
anything
, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. Bubbles? Was that something people just looked for in the movies?

Half of a palm and a few fingers splashed out of the water just a few feet ahead of Robbie, and he surged forward and then dived down. The seconds that passed felt like hours.

Later, the only thing I’d remember was how utterly useless I’d felt from the moment I splashed my way into the water.

Robbie came up with Chloe in his arms. Her hair hid most of her face, but she was already coughing up water. I started to head toward them, but Robbie called out, “Just go put out a towel for her to lay on. I think she’s okay; she wasn’t under long enough.”

I trembled as I did what he’d asked. He carried her all the way out of the water, even as harsh coughs wracked her body, and as he laid her out on the towel, he asked her, “Chloe, you can breathe, right?”

She nodded feebly, but she was trembling even worse than I was. I fell to my knees beside her and brushed her hair out of her face, hands shaking. Another series of coughs expelled more water from her mouth, but the ones after that were dry. As she slowly got her breathing back, I kept a hand on her forehead, my thumb moving back and forth over the center. I didn’t realize until she spoke that I’d been covering the number on her forehead with my palm.

“Got my foot stuck on something,” she managed to get out, and then let out another series of short coughs. “Tangled, I think. I’m okay.”

“We should think about taking her to a hospital to make sure,” Robbie told me. “I don’t know a lot about what nearly drowning does to someone.”

“I’m okay,” Chloe repeated. Her voice was hoarse and weak. “I coughed it all up.” She closed her eyes and took in a slow breath, and then exhaled just as slowly. When she spoke next, her voice was a little stronger. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

Robbie and I exchanged looks, and I saw him relax a little. But his gaze held mine long enough that when it slid to my hand on Chloe’s forehead, I knew we were thinking the same thing. As Chloe kept breathing slowly beneath us and her eyes fluttered shut, I stared down at the back of my hand. In that moment, only two thoughts were running through my head. Over and over again, back and forth, until I was sure that when I blinked I could see them in sentence form behind my eyelids.

The first was that Robbie had just prevented Chloe’s death. The second was that
I
hadn’t been able to do a single thing to help.

I moved my hand, and felt my rib cage cave in and crush my heart. My head dropped and I let out a sob as, at last, the tears I’d been holding back began to flow. And no matter how many times Chloe murmured, “Hey, I’m okay, I’m okay, Harper,” I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I couldn’t even look at her.

16.

* * *

Dad sat with me on the couch for a little while after Robbie took me home. Deborah made me a mug of hot chocolate while he rubbed my back, but none of that helped. I didn’t want to be home with them. I just wanted to be with Chloe.

Robbie’d gotten her parents’ phone numbers off of her cell phone and called them, and by the time we’d gotten back to Chloe’s house, they’d been poised to take Chloe to the hospital themselves. Thankfully, that was just precautionary; she’d been practically back to full health by the time we’d gotten back, other than a couple of coughing fits every now and then. She didn’t understand why I was still so upset.

I could tell that once Chloe was with her parents, Robbie wanted a chance to talk to me. Or comfort me. I didn’t know. But that wasn’t his place, even if he was the only one who could do it properly given the circumstances. Chloe nearly drowning had been a shock to my system, but seeing her number still there, unchanged even after Robbie had saved her, had done the real damage.

It meant that Robbie was right. It meant that Chloe had never been meant to drown today. When her time came, no amount of planning would stop it.
I
couldn’t stop it.

Chloe was going to die, and she was going to die soon. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.

* * *

“Sooo… predictably, nearly drowning sucks.”

“I can’t right now, Chloe,” I sighed out, phone pressed into my ear as I lay splayed out on my bed. “I’m sorry. Not yet.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I get it; it’s too soon.”

“No, I do have to, because joking is how you deal. But I just can’t joke about it.” I paused as my throat tightened, and tried to push the feeling away. “I just remember looking past Robbie and you were gone and we couldn’t find you. And now I can’t even see you.”

“Hey,” she replied, her voice taking on a soothing tone I hadn’t ever heard from her before. “Hey, I’m okay now. It was a freak accident and I’m okay. I promised I wasn’t going anywhere, remember? My parents are just a little freaked and they don’t want to let me out of the house yet. At least they let me see you for a few minutes yesterday…?”

“It wasn’t enough,” I muttered.

“I know. But I’m just gonna take a few days to cool off, and then I’ll be over to go on that camping trip with your dad and his girlfriend. Our double date camping trip.”

I forced a laugh and wiped at my eyes. “Okay.”

“Will you be okay tonight?”

I nodded, and then remembered she couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Robbie’s over right now.”

“Good. Tell him thanks for the thousandth time for what he did. Even though I was totally just about to save myself, I swear.”

“Chloe-”

“Okay, sorry, no jokes. I’ll text you all day and call you a hundred times until the weekend comes, alright?”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The call ended on her end with a soft click, and I put my phone down and looked over at Robbie, who sat at my desk chair with his head in his hands. He shot me a sympathetic look.

“Feel any better?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. How can I feel good about this? I mean… you were right.”

“I didn’t want to be.” He avoided my eyes, picking at something on the back of his hand, and then asked, “So where do we go from here?”

“We?” I echoed.

“If you think I’m letting you go through this alone after what just happened three days ago, you don’t know me at all. I carried her out of the water and watched her cough up a lung. She called me a nerd and made fun of my comic books, so I’m in this with you now.” He gave me a small smile when I let out a weak laugh.

“I’m glad you’re my best friend,” I told him.

“Me too.” He sat back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest. “We’re strong people, Harper. This won’t be fun, but we’ve been here before with people who were family. We can get through it again. And this time, we can stop being in denial and stop making lists and taking extra precautions that won’t change anything. This time we can help someone use the days they have left the way they should be used. In a way that doesn’t waste them. And I know that it’s morbid, and that it’ll be hard, but-”