Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

“He didn’t jump here.” Kate keeps peering over the edge to check if Elgin is still there. She looks small and breakable from up here on the boulders.

“He did! He died right there.” I’m practically shrieking now, pointing at the cliff. As I climb further up the embankment, Kate yells, “Hey!”

I turn back and we stare at each other. “He’s just a guy,” I shout down at her. “What do you need to prove?”

Kate puts her hands on her hips without saying anything, her mouth twisted in an amused smile. She thinks it’s funny when I get angry.

“Do what you want,” I say, sucking in my cheeks, and by the time I reach the path and look again, Kate is gone.

BAREFOOT, IT TAKES A while to get back to the suspension bridge—my flip-flops are still on the rocks by our towels. I push through the cluster of people in the middle of the bridge and scan the pool below for Kate. Just when I start to consider notifying the authorities, I spot her and Elgin swimming together around the waterfall. “Bitch,” I mutter under my breath. People on the bridge are staring at me. My legs and arms start trembling from the cold, so I trudge to the other side to sit on a rock in the sun and scowl.

Almost an hour’s gone before Kate comes running onto the bridge, yelling chicken . People grip the rails, giving her dirty looks as they’re bounced left and right, but Kate’s oblivious, glowing; Elgin trails behind her, grinning like a goon.

“You guys took forever,” I yell over the glaring faces. The shivers start again. Kate strolls up to me and makes chicken noises in my ear. “ Bock, bock, bock .”

“I went down the waterslide,” I say, jabbing her in the leg with my big toe.

“That was nothing, right?” Kate laughs, looking to Elgin.

“You missed out,” Elgin says, throwing his arm around Kate’s shoulder. “It was awesome.” She hands me my flip-flops and my towel, which I wrap tightly around my shoulders, sulking into the terry cloth. There’s a moment of silence as we all stare at each other. Kate gives Elgin a rough peck on the cheek. “See you tonight,” she says, wrapping an arm around my waist and leading us with purpose out of the forest. When I turn to glare at Elgin, he’s standing there with the stupidest smile I’ve ever seen frozen on his face.

When we’re far enough away I ask, “What’s tonight?”

“Party at the creek,” Kate sings.

“Did you kiss him?”

“Of course!”

I MET KATE AT Outdoor School when we were ten years old. Outdoor School is a school where you learn about the outdoors. Once a year, they pile kids from elementary schools all over the North Shore into big yellow school buses and take them up past Squamish for a week to learn about animals and archery and canoeing and plants. It’s all kind of confusing; one day you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure out algebra and the next you’re plopped in the middle of the forest, learning which berries you can eat if you’re stranded in the wilderness. Max was my assigned learning partner. I was stuck beside him on the bus, a couple kids behind us made kissy noises on the backs of their hands, and he was never far from my side the rest of the week at camp. We had to share field notes, build a dam, and collect water skaters from a canoe. He called them Jesus bugs. He was strange and I was mortified, the way girls are most of the time when they’re ten years old. Wherever I turned, he was there, lurking nearby. Kate was my salvation from that week forward. We were placed in the same cabin group, and I noticed her because she wore electric-blue nail polish, and also because on the first night, one of the girls in our cabin peed in the top bunk and Kate laughed at her behind her back. I thought it was cruel, but it also made everyone want to be close to her, including me.

Our second day there we learned about salmon. We learned how they reproduce, swim the stream, and die. Our wilderness instructor held up a flailing Coho, poking and pressing him to get the sperm out to fertilize the eggs. I sat beside Max on the cold hard benches outside, trying to concentrate on the wind turning up the bellies of the leaves, but I couldn’t help watching the fish twisting above the bucket. He looked prehistoric, like he didn’t belong in this world, like the bucket was a portal that would take him back to the right time and place. Kate was sitting in the front row. She kept groaning, pulling the sleeves of her sweater up over her balled hands and sinking her nose into the wool. When the instructor asked her if she wanted to hold the salmon, Kate pulled her hands away from her face and flat out said no, her voice as cold as the water in the bucket. At Outdoor School, we were expected to touch everything in nature that couldn’t sting us or give us a rash. I’d already been forced to touch tree fungus and snake skin. As soon as Kate said no, Max started to laugh and couldn’t stop. It was October, but all he was wearing was a white T-shirt and I could see the outline of his bony shoulder blades under the thin cotton. He put his head between his knees and howled while we all stared at him. For some reason the instructor thought I was the cause of all the hilarity, and he pulled me down to the front row, seating me right beside Kate. “Psycho,” I whispered in Kate’s ear, Max hiccupping behind us, and from that point on, Kate and I were friends.

With the salmon still twisting in the air, the instructor sent Max away on pig slop duty, which I think Max secretly enjoyed, because he had a smile on his face — and some people do like pigs. I felt bad for him — not Max but that salmon, all of us gawking at his thrashing and his sperm. There was nothing there to protect him; even the air was too much. I just wanted the instructor to let him go, to hold him gently in the shallow river and feel the quiver of his body between his hands, a flicker of light through the water.

IN KATE’S CLOSET I sit on the floor, staring at her clothing piled in cubbies and falling off hangers. “I need something to wear,” I say, digging through a heap of tops on the bottom shelf.

“Take whatever,” Kate says into the mirror, naked from the waist up. She snaps on a pink bra with rhinestone-­studded straps. Her breasts are perfect, round like halved peaches and bigger than those of most of the girls our age. Mine are practically inverted — I mean, like raisins poked into raw dough. Maybe not that bad, but nothing to prance around with topless. “That bra’s pretty,” I say, turning my back to take off my shirt.

“Have it.” Kate unhooks the bra and tosses it at me.

“It won’t fit me.”

“Stuff ’em.” She walks to her dresser and pulls out some inserts, chucking them at me.

“Thanks,” I say, my back still turned as I tuck the pieces of foam into pockets inside the bra and adjust the straps over my shoulders.

“No biggie.” She puts on a lacy black one and a low-cut black tank top.

Earlier we napped in Kate’s basement on the Hide-A-Bed, legs intertwined, everything cool and peaceful underground. The only noise was from the wheels of her sister’s roller skates as she spun circles on the concrete floor. Her family is always in the basement. The TV’s down there and the video game box and her dad’s office too, which has been a shrine to their old family life ever since he moved out last winter. It actually isn’t really an office at all, but just a space in the corner of the rec room with a desk, a swivel chair, and a maroon rug. There’s a stash of porno mags on a top shelf above the desk, neatly arranged in grey file folders. Kate pulled them down once and showed me a page featuring buttholes. None of the girls had pubic hair and I realized I’d eventually have to get rid of mine. Since that day I’ve never liked Kate’s dad.