When Samuel Brown saw a girl standing on a bridge railing, ready to leap to the dehydrated riverbed twenty-five feet below, he blamed himself.
Earlier that day, he had stopped inside a convenience store on his walk home from school. He bought a handful of candy bars and paid the cashier, who looked like a college student losing a battle against acne. Samuel stuffed the treats into his backpack and walked around the store. As he passed the alley behind the store, he spied in the corner of his eye what appeared to be a girl sitting beside the dumpster.
Was that a person? He backed up a few steps so that the dumpster and the brick wall behind the store didn't obscure what he suspected was a trick of his eyes. He found that his eyes were not toying with him and that there really was a person curled up beside the dumpster, out of sight to most passersby.
He couldn't see her face, since it was pressed into her legs, but she looked young, with her wrinkle-less legs and long black hair. A thin white gown with spattered dirt appeared to be all she wore.
He surveyed his surroundings, checking for any visible explanation of the girl's presence. He wasn't sure what to expect, but he thought he'd save himself the embarrassment of walking halfway and then realizing that she's part of an amateur film. Nothing of the sort stood out, and the girl didn't move at all, nor did she say anything.
She's not homeless, is she? he wondered. In his small hometown, the homeless population was practically zero, and when there was the occasional homeless person, they certainly weren't a young girl.
Samuel took slow, cautious steps as he neared the girl. He wanted to get close enough to where he could inspect her, but he kept his distance, so as not to spook her. Though he muted his footfall the best he could, he was sure that the girl should have heard his footsteps, yet she remained curled up. Her feet were bare and caked in dirt, and he could see the holes and tears in her gown. There also appeared to be a larger tear over her shoulder blades. Much of that exposed skin was shrouded by the girl's black hair, but standing on his toes revealed to Samuel two good splotches of dried blood.
He suspected the girl was the victim of abuse. He squatted so that he was more or less eye level with her and asked, “Are you okay?” A stupid question, he knew, but he thought it was a better decision to start conversation on this note.
The girl was still for a good moment, and several possibilities to explain her statue-like behavior occurred to him, one of which was morbid. When he settled on the option that perhaps she hadn't heard him the first time, he repeated his question but didn't get past the first letter before the girl lifted her head. She glare with him for one moment with an annoyed eye, then dropped her head to its previous position. Though Samuel hadn't seen much of her face, he was positive she was around his age. This piqued his interest, since there was but one high school in town and he didn't know too many girls who matched her features.
Why are you asking me stupid questions?: Samuel believed that's what her glare said. “What's your name?” he asked.
A moment went by before Samuel received a response, though it was a long, deep breath. Then he got an actual response: “Althea.”
“Althea, you said?”
Her head made the slightest motion, which he guessed was a nod.
“Althea,” he said, practicing the pronunciation. The name sounded Roman to him, maybe Greek. “Where are you from?”
Althea was still and silent for a moment before replying, “Why do you care?” Her words were mumbled so quietly—and with some crackle in her voice, like she could start sobbing any minute now—that Samuel didn't immediately understand.
“I'm asking because—” He stopped when he realized he was about to tell a lie about his interest in her birthplace. So he cut to the chase by saying, “Listen, I just want to help you. I saw you sitting here, and you look hurt”—he looked at the dried blood on her shoulder blades—“and I wanted to help you. That's all.”
“I don't need your help.”
“I don't believe that. You're sitting here with blood on—”
Althea revealed her face in full, and it wasn't a pretty one: a sneer threatening to bark—or perhaps bite, even—and wrinkles trenched into her forehead. “So you think I'm weak? Some pathetic little girl who needs help from a boy pretending he's a man?”
“I never said that. I just want to be able to help you anyway I can.”
“Help me how? Huh? How, do tell, do you plan on helping me?” She lurched to her feet and leered at Samuel with balled fists. “You know nothing about me or my dilemma!”
Samuel jumped to his feet, as well. “Then tell me what's wrong. If you have a broken leg and don't tell a doctor that it's broken, he can't fix it. And I can't help you unless you tell me what's wrong.” He clenched his hands also, but he chained them, else his old habits might resurface.
“You can't help those who don't want help,” Althea said. “You think you're my knight in shining armor, come to sweep me off my feet? You here to play Robin Hood and steal from others to give to me? Or are you here to help the poor and ask us to stroke your ego in return? I don't need your help, and I certainly don't want it. I only want to be left alone, understand?”
“So you'd rather sit here and suffer than accept help?”
“I'm suffering just by being around you!” Her hand sliced through the air and slapped Samuel so hard on his cheek that he found himself looking at his shoulder. Samuel hadn't been hit like that in a long time. Althea reminded him of what sort of pain a strike to the face wrought—even just a slap compared to the fists he was used to. The last time he had been hit like that, he returned the attack, doubled. Though Samuel thought it was a habit he had broken some time ago, he learned that old habits die hard. His fist clobbered Althea in the cheek, whirling her around and knocking her to her knees.
Samuel started shaking. There had been times he had wanted to hit a girl, times he had come close, but that clean record was marked for the first time. He had socked many boys onto their backs or onto their knees, many in the same position Althea was in. He pitied them, because they looked so weak in that position. But looking at Althea now, seeing the dried blood glued to her exposed shoulder blades...well, it unsettled him, to say the least. He refused to believe her earlier claim that she was weak, but that seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy now.
“I-I-I-I'm...I'm so sorry. I-I-I didn't mean—” He reached for Althea, but she smacked his hand away.
The glare she shot at him was terrifying and her face ferocious and red with fury. She looked like an agitated Tasmanian Devil ready to pounce and tear its rival to shreds. “Don't you dare touch me!” she shrieked so loud that Samuel felt like needles had been jabbed in his ears. She leapt to her feet and ran away.
“Wait!” Samuel started chasing her but stopped when he saw that she had vanished around the convenience store already. Even if he could catch up to her somehow, he wouldn't be able to do it without attracting the attention of the police or some bulky gentleman who could curb stomp him into next century. He debated his options for a spell. Logic suggested that he flee before he really did attract unwanted attention. But his emotions urged him to chase after her, like when he caught her, he might have a romantic movie moment where the two of them spill their confessions, with their faces drenched by their own tears.
His feet shuffled to and fro each side of the store before hurrying back to the sidewalk and finishing his walk home as though nothing happened.
While he put on the appearance to passersby that all was sunshine and roses in his life, he wished he could have done the same to his thoughts, which were bound by a short leash to Althea. Thoughts that she had stopped some police cruiser on patrol and told the officer about his antics put some pep in his step. Thoughts that she had found some new corner to sit and cry in sent his feet into a shuffle. Thoughts that she'd spend a night out on the streets, only able to put herself to sleep through tears turned him around and sent him flying down the sidewalk, looking every which way for a sign of Althea.
He returned to the convenience store and pondered which way she might have run: east toward the edge of town, west toward the most crowded portion of its business district, or south toward the river that cut through. “Gut, now would be a great time to start speaking to me.”
But his gut offered no advice.
“Of course, you never work when I want you to.” He danced awkwardly between the road heading west, the road heading east, and the street heading south. Yet he couldn't make up his mind. He checked inside the convenience store and saw the acne-inflicted college student stocking shelves.
“Good afternoon,” the cashier said.
“You wouldn't happened to have seen a girl in a white gown run past the store, would you?” Samuel asked before the cashier had finished his greeting.
“Girl in a white gown?” The cashier looked out the windows, as if replaying his memories. “Now that you mention it, I think I did see a girl run—”
“Which way did she go?”
“She went that way,” the cashier said, and pointed south. “It looked like she was heading toward the bridge,” he said louder as Samuel took off.
“Thank you!” he shouted as he battered the door and soared toward the bridge at a speed his school's track team could have used.
As Samuel crossed streets, checking with the quickest glances, he was glad for the mostly vacant roads. His chest heaved, and his thighs itched. He tried to slap away the irritation, but that only roused it. He stopped twice to soothe it, and he cursed as he did; the sun was flirting with the mountains. He still had three to four hours of sunlight, but three to four hours was how long it took to walk the town's perimeter, not thoroughly search in between its houses and businesses. He bet his chips on the bridge and made a beeline for it.
It was the only bridge connecting the two halves of the town, and when school let out, traffic would have been bottlenecked as cars passed over on either direction. Traffic was steadier now, but that was the first of two reasons why he was cautious for the first time as he waited for the little white man on the crosswalk sign to light up. He was especially anxious now that Althea was within his sights. She leaned against the railing, overlooking the dry riverbed below. She didn't seem to have noticed him yet, which was the second reason he was cautious: he didn't want her aware of him until he was close enough to apologize.
When the little white man lit up, he power walked across the street, then slowed his pace once on the bridge sidewalk. The closer he drew to Althea, the slower his steps became. He rehearsed what he was to say and how he was to say it, yet wasn't satisfied with his drafts. He stopped about five meters from the girl and practiced his lines again and again. He wished he had his laptop with him so that he could type up the perfect manuscript, but even if he tried, his heart racing from his run and his anxiety—mostly the latter—would have inflicted him with a severe case of writer's block.
It appeared that Althea could stare down at the riverbed the remainder of the day and perhaps all night, too, but those hours might be too short a time for Samuel to concoct his opus. So he pulled in air with a shivering lip and called nervously, “Althea.”
She lifted her head from the railing and looked Samuel in the eye.
“I know you prob—”
“Get away from me!” she bellowed.
Samuel stepped forward while saying, “Althea, please listen, I just—” He stopped his approach when she climbed atop the railing, facing the riverbed.
The tires of a sedan squealed to a halt, and the van behind nearly rear-ended it. The driver's door of the sedan flew open, and the driver stepped out of his car.
“Althea, what are you doing?” Samuel asked.
“Don't you come near me!” Althea barked, her teeth bared like fangs.
“What is she doing?”
“Don't do it!”
“Someone call 911!”
“Just tell us what's wrong.”
“Shut your mouths!” Althea snapped at the various drivers and passengers who had stopped on the bridge. “I'll do it. I swear,” she said, slightly choked.
“Althea, please, I only wanted to—”
“I don't want to hear it,” Althea interrupted Samuel. Her expression had been red and wrinkled with anger seconds before, and it was red and wrinkled now but with sadness instead. “Why don't you leave me alone?” She dashed her head away as Samuel noticed shimmers at the bases of her eyes.
Due to a drought, the rounded rocks at the bottom of the riverbed had been exposed. There were still the smallest trickles of water snaking through the rocks, but water or no water, the drop was certainly lethal; a man two years earlier took advantage of this fact.
“How could I leave you alone, especially now?” Samuel's eyes darted between Althea's face and her feet. The railing was wide enough to support them—with some space left over—and he was thankful that today there only the gentlest breeze.
“What in God's name happened to that girl?”
“Did he do that to her?”
Samuel was already tense enough about Althea's predicament, and now he had to contend with people accusing him of being the mastermind behind the red splotches on her shoulder blades. But, he knew, only the most idiotic and stubborn of bastards would challenge him when a girl's life was hung on a railing. He took advantage of the lack of idiotic and stubborn bastards challenging him and said to Althea, “Please, listen to me for a moment.”
Without a wrathful retort or a passionate demand, Althea seemed complaint.
“I know you probably hate me, and I don't blame you. I hate myself for what I did.” He sidled inch by inch to her. “I'm not asking for forgiveness—I don't deserve it. But hear me out when I tell you that I'm sorry.”
There was chatter on the bridge; likely the birth of rumors but rumors Samuel could deal with.
“I don't want you to throw your life away. You don't deserve to die. Nobody does.”
Althea turned her head to Samuel, who halted his subtle advance. Streams about as thick as the trickles in the riverbed flowed down her cheeks. All previous anger had been replaced by a melancholy Samuel had before only witnessed immortalized in paintings and on actors' faces. “Why should I keep living? I have nothing. If I died, it wouldn't matter.” She looked to the eastern quarter of the encompassing mountain range, dangled her dirtied toes over the railing, and tipped forward.
Not enough oxygen existed in the world to supply the collective gasp that followed on the bridge. Many women screamed, and many people exclaimed, “Oh my God!”
“Althea!” Samuel bolted for her. He closed the gap to her so fast that whenever he later thought back to this moment, he sometimes speculated if he teleported. She was parallel with the bridge by the time he reached past the railing, and by the time he grabbed for her, she was falling headfirst for the rocks below.
The moment was so fast and such a blur that it seemed like a gap in Samuel's memory; one moment, he was staring at a broken Althea, the next he was holding her by her ankle while he pressed his sneakers against the railing for support.
Althea dangled from the side of the bridge as though she had lost consciousness the second she tipped over, and she didn't flail one bit; not as her pantalettes were exposed, and not as the fat hands of another man grabbed hold of her shin.
Samuel glanced at the man and found him to be a middle-aged gentleman; balding, hairy arms, and a gut bursting—likely from alchohol—but arms that could probably bench press him and Althea no sweat. He made Samuel feel useless as he pushed him aside so that he could pull Althea up the way he might the rope for a crab cage. He held her high as he could, and he looked as though he had fished up the start of a murder case.
Samuel grabbed Althea's midsection and lifted her over the railing. She was light, thanks to the gentleman supporting much of her weight. They laid her carefully on the sidewalk, and two or three people clapped to no rhythm.
Before Samuel saw her blink after laying her down, he believed she was dead. He knelt, his knees at her head, which lay on its side. “I'm so sorry, Althea,” Samuel said with a lump in his throat. “I'm so, so sorry.”
Until the police arrived a few minutes later and an ambulance after them, Althea was silent, and her eyes didn't wander far from the curb. Some people approached her and Samuel, wishing them the best of luck and that God may watch over them. One older lady presented a blanket to cover Althea with, saying that she looked cold, before returning to her car. Sitting Althea up to lay the blanket over her shoulders like a shawl was a chore, since she was limp and Samuel was winded. As he lay the blanket over her, making sure to hide her injuries, as well, Althea glanced at him for a brief second.
“I'm sorry,” he said again.
Her lips remained sealed, and she titled her head away.
Two college-aged gentlemen, one wearing a beanie, asked what had happened that brought her to the bridge railing, and it was during this exchange that Samuel fabricated the story he would repeat to the police once they probed him about what had occurred.
"We got into an argument, I said some hurtful things, and she ran off. So here we are,” he told them, hoping they wouldn't inquire about further details.
“Harsh,” the one with the beanie commented. “Same thing happened to me once. Well, sort of. My girl and I got into an argument, and she ran off to the liquor store, spent her entire paycheck on booze and liquor, and got into an accident on the way home. It hurt me nearly losing her like that, so I know exactly what you're going through.”
“How'd she get injured?” the other asked.
Samuel found himself backed into the same corner he found himself in as a child when in trouble and asked a question for which he had no answer. “Oh, that,” he said to stall. His immediate thought was to blame someone else: an abusive family member or some drunk she was unlucky enough to cross paths with. He started telling his fib when Althea spoke up.
“My father attacked me.”
“No way,” said the one with the beanie.
“Your father?” asked the other.
Samuel thought the same things.
“What happened?”
“He wanted me to do something, and I refused. That's when he got nasty and attacked me. I ran away from him, and that's when he”—she flicked her eyes at Samuel—“suggested I call the cops, but I didn't want to do that, not to my father. So we argued, and I ran here.”
“Damn,” commented the one with the beanie.
“What did he want you to do?”
“I'd...rather not talk about it,” Althea said, lowering her face.
Each of the college-aged gentlemen looked at one another, both probably thinking the same.
When red and blue lights bathed the bridge beams, Samuel retold the officers the tale he and Althea had penned together. Neither of the officers seemed suspicious about its authenticity, though they pressed for her father's name, address, and appearance. She refused to disclose any of that information, but one of the officers managed to convince her to describe him.
“He's got a real long face; really boney, with refined cheekbones. Thin lips and sunken eyes. And he's completely bald.”
“What about his weight and height? What kind of body does he have?”
“He's slightly toned and tall,” Althea said.
“How tall?”
“Tall.”
“I need a number, sweetheart. 6' 4”? 6' 7”?”
“6' 5”.”
After they had wrapped up their discussion and the paramedics stood by impatiently with a gurney, one of the officers told Althea to let them know if she decides to disclose more information. They departed in their cruiser, and the paramedics wheeled Althea into the ambulance on the gurney.
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