The sleepiness makes everything fuzzier, less concrete. It should bother you, this not-seeing of what is coming. It is comforting instead. What do you expect, she asks you, amazed at your innocence. Once you’ve seen everything you might as well go lie down.
The friend had not seen it. He has, however, taken a blurry picture with his brother’s cellphone, stolen from him at the break of dawn because he downloaded pictures of naked ladies. The younger brother is none too excited about these in practice, in theory the implications are too adult to miss. The picture will be useless: a ball of color falling into a splashing field of a different color. It can be no proof of what happened here. “Ok, I did it,” he says as he stands there, shivering, putting his shoes back on. Now it’s the friend’s turn. He nods. “Tomorrow,” he promises. They hurry home in silence.
Again broccoli was eaten at the dinner table, again a fitful mother explained the essence of childhood to him: learn, play, obey. Leave the thinking for a different era in life, preferably that precious time between college and work that will be hardly enough to pay the rent. She was upset with her wet and cold son, fearing coughs and pneumonia if nothing worse. “What were you thinking” she asked and rubbed him too harshly with the towel. He shrugged. He may not tell. Not until he knows the results of his endevour: if his friend will really deliver his mother’s sleeping pills the next day.
The fall is not long enough to return to stages of his past, then he hits the water and his stomach burns like hell. He paddles around with feet and arms for a bit before gaining a sense of direction and swimming briskly towards the shore. It is a small river, a small bridge, small heights and little damage. He stepped up when he needed to. If only his friend had seen the value in that.
