Wednesday, December 3, 2017

M

y body quaked in the shivering cold while I yanked my body over the fence. My eyes still burned from whatever toxins were in the water. I gritted my teeth and carried on until I hopscotched my body over debris close enough to touch Travis where the orange lamp light thinned.

"Travis," I begged. "Please, come on. Get up, Travis. Come one, please." I pulled his hand, his very cold hand. . . and it felt like rubber. I wasn't going to let him die here. The boys upstairs didn't even realize what they'd done to Travis. I was going to make sure they saw him so they could feel the terrible rotting in their hearts I was suffering.

"Come on," I cried. A mix of depression as well as adrenaline shook and confused me while I put my arms under him and breathed and bent my way into hoisting him onto the metal gate beside my knees.

I felt I was about to vomit from the smell of the waves, and the nauseating sway of the debris beneath us. I was able to shift his body onto the fence and push the fence like a floating platform across the water by kicking off the debris behind us. I spit the grossness from my mouth, and finally we reached the broken wooden balcony, where I shifted on all fours over Travis's body, and in a rickety balancing act, pulled us both onto the wooden landing that was still left hanging under the doorway. I pulled us inside the orange living room, and I gasped from exhaustion on the tile floor. When I examined the floor underneath us, I saw the blackened water had followed us in.

The waves kicked up from outside and splashed in through the doorway, as if the devil in the tsunami was trying one last time to swallow Travis.

Travis failed to breathe. Without hesitation, I kissed him to fill his lungs.

Travis might have turned his back on me, by passively excommunicating me along with Jack and the other boys. But unlike them, I wasn't about to turn my back on him. Travis was my friend and I planned for him always to stay that way. So, I engaged in this final kiss—wishing to save his life.

But as I performed CPR by pressing my hands under his diaphragm over and over to pulsate his breaths, I noticed the venomous taste in my mouth that wouldn't go away. And on top of that, I saw the water underneath Travis's head turn from black to red. I realized he was bleeding, and likely suffering concussion-- if he wasn't already dead.

I started to feel queasy. And this feeling increased as my CPR performance dwindled. My hands that pushed into his abdomen slowed. I looked over, suddenly seeing the world at a tilt. And over by the window, I saw two things. Two animals. One alive, one dead:

The first animal I saw was a kitten George had thrown off the balcony, a ball of wet fur, as it limped in a stammering crawl off the wooden debris and in through the doorway. The kitten was as big as my hand, and his back leg was dragging. It meowed in a painful, high-pitched cry.

And as it embodied the pain I felt in my heart, for both Travis, for it, and for myself, my attention was then taken away from the kitten, when beyond, in the water, I finally recognized the reason for the poisonous taste in my mouth. The taste I had also tasted from Travis's lips when I had poured air into him. . .

In the water something yellow floated up to the surface. A yellow-bellied snake, rolled up against the wooden debris by the door, a dead yellow-bellied snake, with a pool of venom swimming neatly in a long radius across the water.

I had no doubt, that Travis and I had kissed it, and the little kitten, too. . . because I heard a thud— and the kitten landed on its side. Without a sound, it closed its eyes.