Page 31 of The Strawberry Field
“What if you meet someone else?” she asked.
“You will,” I said.“Someone better.”
“No. I won’t. I don’t want to.”
Her voice was so sure, so full of belief in me, it scared me. Because deep down, I didn’t believe in myself the way she did. I didn’t know if I could become the man she saw in me.
But I wanted to.
So I told her the truth:“I want to be your friend, Sawyer.”
She smiled softly.“I want to be yours, too.”
And that night, under a sky full of stars, we were.
Just that.
Just friends. There with each other and for each other.
For then, anyway.
“Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Chapter Eleven
The Day Tommy Died
Sawyer
I CAN STILL see it as clearly as if it happened yesterday. It was the kind of summer day we’d had a hundred times before. But the heat had a weight to it that afternoon. Heavier than usual. Like the sky was holding its breath.
Sunlight flickered off the lake, bouncing against the dock like a thousand tiny mirrors. The air smelled like gasoline and sunscreen, like damp wood and hot asphalt. Boats eased in and out of their slips with a kind of lazy rhythm. Nothing urgent. Nothing unusual.
I was sitting on the edge of the dock with a Dr. Pepper in my hand, my feet dangling in the water, the plastic cup dripping condensation down my leg. Tommy had just come in from a run, soaked through his shirt and still grinning. He'd already shucked his running shoes and was barefoot.
He always grinned after he ran. Like it shook loose something unbelievably happy inside him.
Jake was already down by the water, helping a couple tie up their ski boat. Tommy jogged over, called out something teasing in Jake’s direction, and bent forward to grab the lift wire.
There was a sound—abrupt and strange. Like a crack or a pop.
And then Tommy froze.
His whole body seized, rigid and wrong, and then he fell onto the dock. His limbs jerked violently. A faint hiss rose from his hand, the air filling with the acrid scent of burned skin. The smell hit me, sharp and horrible.
For a second, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
Then the cup slipped from my fingers and hit the water, sinking.
Jake shouted his name. “Tommy!” And ran flat out to reach him.
The next moments came in fragments. Voices rising around us. Someone yelling to call 911.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
