#Wattys2015 The Ghost of James Fitzpatrick

Chapter 2

James

I didn't feel cold, but I knew it was. It was damn cold. It  was winter. I won't be hard to spot in the water, my jacket is red, and dammit, I really liked that jacket. I worked hard for it. It was a letter man's jacket from Arden High School, and I know this sounds irrational, but I have to admit that at that moment, I felt more upset at seeing my jacket in the water than my own body. The jacket was red with white sleeves, and it wasn't going to be difficult to figure out who I was. My last name "Fitzpatrick", in white block letters, glowed up from beneath the dark water at the two men in the little rescue boat, just in case there was any doubt in their minds it was me.

It may as well have been a label: "Floating Dead Kid"

The older man elbowed the other that he had spotted something. He talked excitedly, and his lit cigarette bounced up and down between his thin lips.

"There he is, there he is! Cut the motor, goddammit, I see him!" They were both silent as the small skiff  coasted to a slow stop above me.

They threw a pole out into the water and tried to fish around for a grip, maybe my collar. They made a couple of attempts and finally hooked in to the waistband of my jeans. They pulled me toward their little boat and I saw myself come out of the dark water. My shoe was missing, and I was waterlogged inside and out. There was not a part of me left with any memory of what dry was. 

They pulled me over the edge of the little boat, being careful not to tip it, and I finally saw my face. I looked like a stranger; my face was pale and smooth like a river rock, but I could still see my stupid freckles, and the scar on my forehead from a sled ride down Snake Hill with my brother on my back, that ended at the base of an oak. My hair was darker than ever in contrast, and it dripped all over my forehead and into my eyes, but they didn't blink. They were still, and only half open, but I saw that they were ironically, at their brightest blue in death.

The older man grunted as he strained to pull me out of the water. I saw the other boats had begun to putt their way to us from all directions. The younger man put a life vest beneath my head when they finally laid me down on the floor of the little boat. The older man motioned to the other boats with a signal wave to go back to port.

"We gottem!" he yelled toward the others. "We got the kid!" 

He looked at the younger man in the boat, "My brother's nephew drowned in Louisiana about 30 years ago, and his mother never got over it. It broke her heart."

That was the first thought I had of my mother, and I suddenly felt sad.

Sarah

I hate mornings, especially winter mornings, but this morning, I actually managed to upright myself without the help of my mom. She sometimes puts my feet on the floor, while the rest of my body is unconscious on the bed like a drunken relative. She will either nag me, hissing through her teeth, "Get out of bed" or she will threaten me, "The bus is going to leave without you" or she will simply fake surrender, "Fine, I'll just let your brother eat the last toaster waffle", and none of it seems important in the midst of my slumber induced stupor.

This morning I was intrigued by the text. It wasn't so much that is was random, it was what it said. I naturally assumed someone could see me here in the dark, cold morning of my second floor bedroom, while I had been sleeping.

I rose from my warm bed rather slowly and set my feet into the rug next to my bed, half expecting to be grabbed by the ankles and pulled under, which would mean no calculus test for sure. All was silent.

I felt I might as well get up and begin the ritual, the half-asleep breakfast, the hot shower I wish would go on forever, the brushing of the tangled hair, the applying of my  make-up, but just enough to not catch my dad's attention. Every year my dad would leave for more than two weeks for the Air National Guard, and we drove him to the airport in St. Louis last night. That being said, a couple more strokes from the mascara brush wouldn't hurt.

Never mind that I'm seventeen. Most girls at my school look like Victoria's Secret models. They clomp their way down the halls at school like show horses with their hair symmetrically  wanded, and their make-up perfectly blended. They toss back their manes and laugh at their stupid inside jokes. They cuss a lot because it makes them feel cool, as if they need to be any more cool.

But I will say this, if they ever had to run from Godzilla or some other over-sized, mutant lizard that some days I wish would crush Arden High, they would just fall all over each other and be devoured immediately . Their ridiculous skinny jeans would be too tight to make an effective get away.

So, back to the reality of my morning, my little brother Josh did eat the last toaster waffle after all, which left me a speckled banana. We grabbed our lunches and stepped out into the cold for the school bus. I was thinking I should tell mom about the text, but she might freak. I could rarely judge her reactions effectively, but I did know, as a general rule, she despised texting. She already thought I sat in my room and unknowingly conversed with strangers while I texted my friends.

"How do you know that's not some 50 year old man pretending to be Lucy?" she asked me once.

"Well, if it is some 50 year old pervert mom, he's got the same math class I do, and he's pretty good at exponents and logarithms, so I don't really care if he's strangling a puppy with his free hand."

"Well," she calmly replied, "I don't understand why you girls won't just call each other on the house phone and talk like regular people. My friends and I just used to meet after school at the library."

She had walked right in to this one.

"Those stone tablets must have been awkward at the library tables." I smiled at her.

"You're right Sarah," she replied without missing a beat, "the librarians were constantly having to ask us to keep our chiseling noises to a minimum."  She  squinted her eyes like Clint Eastwood, and threw a wadded up napkin my direction.

My mom's actually 'ok' as moms go, so I'm not sure why I didn't mention the text to her. I  would take it to "The Court of Lucy", my partner in crime, my math tutor, my confidante, my best friend on the planet since we were six.

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