Reprise

Chapter 40

Chapter Forty

I don't know what type of car Lucas has, but he pulls up outside my house in a car I recognise as being his older brother's.

I swallow and take a moment to brace myself before opening the passenger door. Lucas doesn't say anything when I hop in. It feels so weird getting in his car. He has one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift, and his knuckles are white because he's gripping hard. I put on my seat belt and as soon as I do he takes off. I can't say anything. Two Soap Dolls is blasting from the speaker system and it's too loud to talk over the top of it, so I just sit in silence and watch him drive. I like the way Lucas drives. He moves between gears smoothly and turns corners sharply, all without glancing at me once. It's like I'm not even in the car. I have no idea where we're going, but I just sit and wait, because I'm too nervous to speak.

Something about the song we're listening to makes me want to sing out loud, but I stop myself and instead keep watching Lucas. His lips are pressed tightly together and his hair is pushed back off his forehead. He's just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, like always. He's never affected by the cold.

I remember learning to ride a bike with Lucas, and he grazed his knee and he made me kiss it better. I remember swimming with Lucas and being so smug that I was the first one allowed to take off my floaties that he pushed me in the deep end and I almost drowned. I remember riding my bike with a rope so I could pull him along on a skateboard. I remember playing trading card games with him and he would always make the trades favourable for me. I remember starting grade eight with him and promising that we'd still be best friends even though he was in Prisley and I was in Cernette. Then I remember all the pain I went through after Lucas spread rumours about me and told me he hated me. Somehow I can forgive all that, and I just want to go back to that time he grazed his knee and I kissed it better.

Lucas pulls up in a car park and turns the engine off. The music dies and he glances over at me. 'You ready?' he asks.

'Where are we?' I say. It's too dark now to clearly see out the window of the car so I really have no idea where Lucas has brought me.

'The place where George supposedly jumped,' Lucas says. He leans over into the back seat of his car and grabs a jumper from where it's thrown over the seat. I'm still staring at him. When he pulls the jumper over his head his hair sticks up a bit with the static and he must see me looking at it because he runs a hand through it, making it even messier. 'You coming?' he asks.

'Uh, yeah,' I say, opening my door as he opens his. I walk around the car and follow him across the car park and to where I can now see the lights along the bridge. There's a tall fence along the pedestrian walkway now, although all those years ago there mustn't have been anything stopping George from jumping. That is, if he did jump.

I cross my arms over my chest as we walk onto the bridge. The wind picks up from the water and sends icy chills down my spine. Lucas doesn't look back as he walks across the bridge, and I follow him until I see where he's going. Across the other side of the bridge the walkway curls down towards the river, where a bike path runs parallel to the river. We walk down there and he sits down, sticking his legs through the bars so that his feet dangle over the water. I follow his lead and lean my forehead against the cold metal rails.

'So this is the bridge,' I say. 'I've driven over here so many times without even thinking about it. It must be so painful for our fathers every time they have to come past here.' I have to raise my voice because of the wind.

Lucas nods and opens his mouth to say something, but a bus hurtles past us and I don't hear him. When the noise subsides he says, 'His car was parked over there,' he points over to where his own car is parked. During summer plenty of people come down to the river for picnics and bike rides or to watch the fireworks at New Years, but tonight his car is the only one in the lot.