“Sorry,” Veronica says with a toss of her hair, unconcerned.
We start off together, Ruth taking the lead despite her short stature, thanks to her business-like stride, Veronica and me in the middle, and Zoya drifting just behind us.
The only way down to the Narrow is through a gap in the fence behind the old chapel. In my six years at the school, it’s never been fixed.
“Aren’t the boys coming?” I ask, glancing around for a sign of Diego or Remi—Ruth’s and Veronica’s boyfriends, respectively.
“No boys allowed. Just the four of us, one last time.” Veronica throws an arm over my shoulder.
One last year at Atwood, away from the world.
“Are you okay?” Veronica asks. She’s looking down at me with a quizzical expression, and a lie springs to my lips—yes, of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?
I’ve been lying to Veronica since the first day I arrived at Atwood. There’s no reason to stop now. My tongue nudges the lingering seam where my lip split, and I look away. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like I’m here yet.”
“That’s because you haven’t jumped. The real world doesn’t go away until you jump,” Veronica says confidently. And then we’re at the back of the chapel, and we have to break apart to walk single file down the path. We pick our way along in relative silence.
We hear it before we see it. For the deadliest body of water in the county, the Narrow doesn’t sound very threatening—no crash and rush of rapids or waterfalls, just a cheerful babble that suggests a friendly forest creek. At first glance, that’s all the Narrow is: a thin ribbon of water flowing amid moss-covered rocks beneath a swaying canopy of branches, the banks little more than one long stride apart. But appearances can be deceiving.
Only half a mile up, the little babbling brook is a river, wide and shallow. Then its banks tighten. Through some quirk of geology, they cleave together, forcing all that water through a channel only a few feet wide. Over the years, the river has carved a path not out to the sides but straight down. Essentially, the river turns on its side, running narrow, deep, and fast. So fast that it snatches anything or anyone unfortunate enough to fall into the water, and no matter how hard you struggle or how fast you swim, there is no way to fight the pull.
Legend says that no one who’s ever fallen into the Narrow has survived. Not only that, but the currents and the pockets and caves in the rock mean that any bodies will likely get trapped, never to emerge. No one who ever goes in comes out again. Or so they say.
Veronica and I know better.
By tacitly letting us get away with the jump, the staff can encourage certain limits. You only jump during daylight when the ground is completely dry, and only at the one small section where the boulders overhanging the water shrink the gap to a manageable four feet. Lower School students—sixth, seventh, and eighth graders—aren’t allowed, and there has to be someone on the other side to grab you if you slip. Officially, no student has fallen into the Narrow in forty years.
By the time we reach the river, there’s a crowd gathered. Other students, like us, trying to get their jump in before the rain starts. You can’t jump after the first day of classes. It doesn’t count.
A little knot of Lower School students clusters along the near shore. A couple of them are already wearing uniforms. A gangly boy in a He-Man T-shirt is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, arms swinging as he psychs himself up. I don’t recognize him, so I assume he’s a freshman—that is, in his first year at the Upper School. Lower School students are either collectively known as Littles or just by grade level. The Upper School is much larger than the Lower School. Not a lot of parents think it’s a good idea to ship their eleven-year-olds off to the middle of the woods to learn Latin. Ruth, Veronica, and I are all lifers, as Lower School veterans are called, but Zoya enrolled when she started high school.
“Hurry it up!” Ruth hollers, clapping. “You can do it! Don’t think, just leap!”
“Ten bucks says he can’t,” Veronica calls loudly, and the boy flashes her a panicked look. She folds her arms, one eyebrow raised.
“She’s really very nice once you get to know her,” I promise him, and Veronica snorts.
The boy gives one last full-body shake, sets his feet, and dashes across the rocks. They’re coated with shaggy green moss. Even a whisper of rain could make them treacherously slick, but dry, they provide plenty of traction as he takes three long strides and flings himself across the four-foot gap. He clears it easily, and the crowd on the other side catches hold of him, dragging him in for back slapping, hooting, and hollering.
“My turn!” Ruth yells, and charges forward.
“Go for it, Hwang!” someone yells, but by the time they get out the last syllable, it’s already old news. She’s on the other side, brushing imaginary lint off her shoulder.
“Let’s get this over with,” Zoya says, her faint Russian accent sharpening the th. She’s so tall, she can practically just step over the gap, but she does it in an elegant hop. On the other side, awed freshmen scatter, gawking up at her. She wraps her cardigan tight around herself and stalks over to Ruth.
“Together?” Veronica asks, putting out her right hand for me to take.
Her hand hovers in the air. My left hand stays wedged in my pocket, my forearm pulsing with dull pain. We always jump together since that first illicit mission down to the water. “You go ahead,” I find myself saying.
A frown tugs at the corners of her mouth. But then she wheels around, and with a whoop, she runs. She jumps. She lands in an ungainly crouch on the other side, wheezing laughter like a hyena, and bounces to her feet to beckon me.
“Your turn!” she calls.
I’m the last Upper School student on the near side. A group of jumpers are heading upstream, toward the bridge half a mile away. That’s another rule: you only jump once. Jumping back is tempting fate. For the Narrow is greedy and lonely and cruel.
We jump to defy it. We jump to feel alive and free. We jump because the real world can’t follow us across the cold water.
Ruth calls my name. Veronica stares at me, expression unreadable. I’ve been standing still too long. Gingerly, I take my hand from my pocket, gritting my teeth against the zips of pain that follow. I force myself into motion, running up the gentle slope of the big boulder that hangs out over the water. Dozens of feet have churned up the shaggy moss, tearing at it with every step, leaving small slick patches of brown. I plant my foot at the edge of the rock to leap.
Mud shifts beneath the sole of my foot, twisting my heel maybe half an inch to the left. I push off.
I’m in the air, but my balance is off. I hit the other side. My foot shoots out from under me. I pitch back toward the water. Someone in the crowd screams—