Robin Wasserman - Frozen

He was the strong one, the smart one.

And, although I knew he would never admit it—not to me, not to Zo, not to anyone—I was his favorite. He was the one who knew me the best, who loved me the best. No, things hadn’t been the same since the accident, but they were getting better. It would take some time, but I would get him back. Because he saw me for who I was, Lia Kahn.

His daughter.

I knew Zo was lying. I was sure. But not so sure that I stayed in my room and lay down in bed and closed my eyes. Not so sure that I didn’t need proof.

My parents always turned on their soundproofing before they went to bed. So they wouldn’t have heard Zo and me fight, not if they were already asleep. As they should have been at three in the morning. But when I crept downstairs, I saw the light filtering through the crack between the door to the study and the marble floor. And when I pressed my ear to the heavy door, I heard something.

Gently, noiselessly, I eased open the door.

He was on his knees.

He faced away from me, his head bent. His shoulders shook.

“Please,” he said, in a hoarse, anguished voice. I flinched, thinking he must be speaking to me, that he knew I was there and wanted me to leave before I hurt him even more. But it was worse than that.

“Please, God, please believe me.”

My father didn’t pray. My father didn’t believe in God. Faith was for the weak, he had always taught us. Backward-thinking, cowering, misguided fools who preferred to imagine their destiny lay in someone else’s hands.

“I’m sorry.”

And worse than faith in God, my father had taught us, was the ridiculous faith in a God who listened to human prayers, who had nothing better to do than stroke egos and grant wishes. An omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being who troubled himself with the minor missteps of the mortal world.

“Please forgive me.”

He hunched over, bringing his forehead to his knees. “I did this to her. It was my choice. I did this. Please. Please forgive me. If I could do it again…” His whole body shuddered. “I would make the right choice this time. If I had a second chance, please…”

I closed the door on his sobs.

The right choice.

Meaning, the choice he hadn’t made.

The choice to let me die.

There was only one place I wanted to go. And only one person I wanted with me. If he was willing. I left two messages, voice and text, both with the same apology, the same request, and the same coordinates. Then I snuck out of the house—easy enough when no one cared where you went or when—and pushed the car as fast as it would go, knowing that the longer it took to get there, the more likely I’d be to turn back. The waterfall looked even steeper than I’d remembered it.

I had forgotten how at night, you couldn’t see anything of the bottom except a fuzzy mist of white far, far below. I had forgotten how loud it was.

But I had also forgotten to be afraid.

Auden wasn’t there.

But then, I hadn’t told him to meet me at the top. My message had been very clear, the coordinates specific. If he’d woken up—and if he’d forgiven me—he would be waiting at the bottom. I would tell him everything that had happened, what my sister had said. I might even tell him how my father had looked, trembling on his knees, bowing down to a god in whom he was, apparently, too desperate not to believe. And just telling Auden would make it better. I knew that.

But this was something I had to do without him. Just another thing he could never understand, because he was an org. He was human, and I was—it was finally time to accept this— not . Which is why he was waiting at the bottom, if he was waiting at all. And I was at the top, alone.

I took off my shoes. Then, on impulse, I stripped off the rest of my clothes. That felt better. Nothing between me and the night. The wind was brutal. The water, I knew, would be like ice. But my body was designed to handle that, and more. My body would be just fine.

I waded into the water, fighting to keep my balance as the current swept over my ankles, my calves, my thighs, my waist. Wet, my brain informed me. Cold. And on the riverbed, muddy. Rocky. Sharp. The temperatures, the textures, they didn’t matter, not yet. But I knew when I got close enough to the edge, when the water swept me over, the sensations would flood me, and in the chaos the distance between me and the world would disappear.

Not that I was doing it for an adrenaline rush. Or for the fear or the pain or even the pleasure. I wasn’t trying to prove something to anyone, not even myself. It wasn’t about that.

It was about Zo and my father and Walker and all of them—all of them who hated what I’d become. Maybe because it had replaced the Lia they really wanted or because it was ugly and different and, just possibly, if Jude was right, better. Maybe they were scared. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I just knew they hated me. I knew my sister didn’t believe I existed, and wanted me gone. My father wished— prayed —I was dead. Maybe it would be easier for all of them if I was.

Too bad.

I was alive. In my own unique, mechanical way, maybe. But alive. And I was going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. They would age, they would die. I would live.

There were too many people too afraid of what I’d become. I wasn’t going to be one of them. Not anymore.

I didn’t take a deep breath.

I didn’t close my eyes.

I stretched my arms out.

I shifted my weight forward.

I let myself fall.

The world spun around me. The wind howled, and it sounded like a voice, screaming my name. The water thundered. The spray misted my body. And then I crashed into the surface, and there was nothing but rocks and water and a whooshing roar. And the water dragged me down, gravity dragged me down, down and down and down, thumping and sliding against the rocks, water in my eyes, in my mouth, in my nose. It was too loud to hear myself scream, but I screamed, and the water flooded in and choked off the noise. There was no time, no space in my head, to think I’m going to die or I can’t die or Why am I still falling, where is the bottom, when is the end? There was no space for anything but the thunder and the water, as if I was the water, pouring down the rocks, gashed and sliced and battered and slammed and still whole, still falling—and then the river rose up to meet me, and the water sucked me down and I was beneath, where it was calm. Where it was silent.

Still alive, I thought, floating in the dark, safe beneath the storm of falling water.

Still here.

I closed my eyes, opened them, but the darkness of the water was absolute. I was floating again, like I had in the beginning, a mind without a body. Eyes, a thought, maybe a soul—and nothing else. But this time I wasn’t afraid.

I let myself rise to the surface. The water slammed me, like a building crumbling down on my head, and again sucked me under.

And again the silence, again up to the surface, again the storm, and again sucked down to the depths.

I wasn’t afraid. I knew I could stay below, swim far enough from the base of the falls to surface in safety. When I was ready. Which I wasn’t, not yet. I was content to stay in the whirlpool, limp and battered, letting the water do what it wanted, filling myself up with the knowledge that I had done it, that I had jumped, that I had fallen. I had survived. I was alive; I was invincible. I wasn’t ready for it to end.