The thing is, I didn’t know how to swim yet. But apparently, I was pretty good at sinking. You know that warning about how kids can drown in very little water? Quite true if the kid panics and forgets to close his mouth. You can imagine my surprise when the water hit my lungs and I did not immediately start singing, “There’s so much that we share.”
The last thing I remember before I started to lose consciousness was my mom screaming to stop the ride while crushing Jenna to her chest in case she got the urge to jump too. Above me, lights and sound blended into a wavy distortion, everything muted like a carnival heard from a mile away. And then I had the weirdest thought: They’re stopping the ride. I got them to stop the ride.
I don’t remember a whole lot after that, just fuzzy memories filled in by other people’s memories. The story goes that my dad dove in and pulled me out, dropping me right beside the igloo, and administered CPR. Official Disney cast members scampered out along the narrow edge of EskimoSoontoBeInuit, yammering into their walkie-talkies that the situation was under control. Slack-jawed tourists snapped pictures. An official Disney ambulance came and whisked me away to an ER, where I was pronounced pukey but okay. We went back to the park for free—I guess they were afraid we’d sue—and I got to go on the rides as much as I wanted without waiting in line at all because everybody was just so glad I was alive. It was the best vacation we ever took. Of course, I think it was also the last vacation we ever took.
It was Mom who tried to get the answers out of me later, once Jenna had fallen asleep and Dad was nursing his nerves with a vodka tonic, courtesy of the hotel’s minibar. I was sitting in the bathtub with the nonskid flower appliqués on the bottom. It had taken two shampoos to get the flotsam and jetsam of a small world out of my hair.
“Cameron,” she asked, pulling me onto her lap for a vigorous towel-drying. “Why did you jump into the water, honey? Did the ride scare you?”
I didn’t know how to answer her, so I just nodded. All the adrenaline I’d felt earlier seemed to pool in my limbs, weighing me down.
“Oh, honey, you know it’s not real, don’t you? It’s just a ride.”
“Just a ride,” I repeated, and felt it sink in deep.
The thing is, before they pulled me out, everything had seemed made of magic. Like I really believed in this crazy dream. But the minute I came to on the hard, glittery, spray-painted, fake snow and saw that marionette boy pulling the same plastic fish out of the hole again and again, I realized it was all a big fake. The realest thing I’d ever experienced was that moment under the water when I almost died.
And in a way, I’ve been dying ever since.
CHAPTER TWO
Wherein the Cruelties of High School Are Recounted, and the Stoner Dudes of the Fourth-Floor Bathroom Offer Me Subpar Weed and a Physics Lesson
“Who the heck is Don Quicks-oat?” That’s what Chet King wants to know.
It’s early February, six weeks into the new semester, and we’re in English class, which for most of us is an excruciating exercise in staying awake through the great classics of literature. These works—groundbreaking, incendiary, timeless—have been pureed by the curriculum monsters into a digestible pabulum of themes and factoids we can spew back on a test. Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary. For the record, our friend Chet King has read exactly three books in his life, but I’m not sure that sitting through The Happy Bunny Easy Reader twice should count. The other book was, no doubt, about football.
“That’s Don Quixote,” Mr. Glass says, pronouncing the “x” as an “h,” the proper way.
“Don Key-ho-tay,” Chet repeats, exaggerating Glass’s somewhat effeminate enunciation. The other jocks snort in laughter, like backup singers on steroids. They’ve got their jerseys on. Chet does too, though he won’t be playing today or any other day. Ever since a bad slam on the practice field cracked two vertebrae near his neck, our former all-state quarterback has been permanently sidelined. Another guy might’ve gone out drinking over the loss of a big-time sports career. Not our guy Chet. He went to the other extreme, claiming that the accident must have been God’s will, a way to steer him toward a new direction in life. He gives this little motivational speech, “God took away my football scholarship but I’m still happy, happy, happy,” at Kiwanis club dinners, pep rallies, churches, youth groups, any place that will clap and cheer for him. I guess when your drug of choice has been applause and adoration from the stands it’s kind of hard to give that up.