Body Surfing

can’t control them?
    “You can do it. You’re strong.”
    Only because you made me strong .
    “No.” Jasper shook her head. “You. You’re strong. You were always strong.”
    Jasper could feel her doubt. Will you be there too?
    “Everything we had together. It’ll always be there.”
    A long silence. The water was cold on Michaela’s toes, but shedidn’t ask Jasper to step back. It was his last chance to feel it. To feel anything. She let him have it.
    You’re sure there’s no other way?
    “I have to end it. And this way I won’t hurt anyone.”
    I know. I just wish—
    “Don’t. It’s bad enough already.”
    Right. Okay then, let’s do this.
    They turned from the river. Q. sat on the grass a few yards up. There was soot on his face and hands, and his black hair waved in the breeze as if the top of his head were smoking. He looked at them expectantly.
    “We’re ready,” they said.
    Q. nodded. He stood up, walked over to them, stopped about a foot away. There was a sheepish grin on his face.
    “What a morning.”
    Michaela and Jasper laughed quietly but didn’t say anything. Another long pause. Q. reached a hand toward Michaela, then pulled back. He moved it toward his zipper, then stopped again. A nervous laugh gurgled out of his throat.
    “Oh man. This is weird.”
    Inside Michaela, Jasper retreated. He felt the frenzy coming on him, but knew he had to let Michaela do this.
    Michaela nodded. She reached out, caught Q.’s hand.
    “I want you to touch me. Otherwise it would just be gross.”
    “Michaela? That you?” Q. said.
    She nodded again. Drew his hand to her hip.
    “It’s just us, Q. Just us.”
    The words sounded like justice in Q’s ears, and Ileana’s words echoed faintly behind Michaela’s. There’s no such thing as justice . He would do his best to prove her wrong.
    He looked into Michaela’s eyes. Found Jasper there, swimming around like tiny phosphorescent fish.
    “Close your eyes,” he said to Michaela. “I don’t want Jasper to see this.”

Epilogue
    S he’s had a full life.”
    As the eldest surviving child (George had died thirty-four years ago, in Vietnam), Alison Myles felt it was her duty to say something. Felt it was important to use the present tense, even though the doctors had told her it was a matter of hours.
    “Four children, including George, who I’m sure is up there with Dad waiting for her.”
    Nancy and Ellen, her younger sisters, met her eyes and nodded. It was good to remember George, and Dad too.
    “Eleven grandchildren.”
    “Twelve,” Ellen said, rubbing her stomach. Smiling.
    “Twelve,” Alison nodded. “And more friends than you could fit in a church.”
    “Here, here,” Booker, Nancy’s husband, said, although Alison wasn’t quite sure what he meant by it.
    Alison looked down at her mother. Courtney, Nancy’s oldest, had come every day to do her hair, and a halo of soft mauve curls framed her mother’s face. Her mother always did like her bluing. The ashen pallor of the last few days seemed to have faded a bit, and Alison wondered if Courtney had put a bit of makeup on her as well.
    Someone coughed, and Alison pulled her eyes from her mother’s face.
    “This is probably the last time we’ll all be gathered together like this,” she said, “so if there’s anything you want to say, now would be the time.”
    They started with Frank, Ellen’s youngest, just four years old.
    “Bye-bye, Grandma,” he said in a grownup voice. “We love you.”
    She really did look lovely, Alison thought. As if she were sleeping, could wake up any moment.
    The rest of the grandkids filed after Frank, then the husbands, then Uncle Sam and Aunt Glenda. As they crowded between Alison and her mother, she found her attention wandering to the empty bed. Her thoughts drifted to the girl who’d been there. Michelle—no, Michaela. Michaela Szarko. It was Courtney who’d found her awake when she came in to do her grandmother’s hair. Not just awake but healed, restless even. She’d been walking around the room completely naked when Alison came in, pacing, trying to pry the cast from her broken arm. A miracle, the doctors said. Alison remembered the word, because it was what the doctors said after her mother’s last round of chemo. Only a miracle can save her .
    “Alison?”
    Booker was looking at her with a slightly puzzled, slightly bored look on his face.
    “Do you want to say goodbye?”
    Alison made her way through the crowd of