But something sank inside him. He was building a life around her in his fantasy world. She was two years younger but he had a crush on her that went back to the elite prep school they had both attended. They both sang in the choir. He never even thought she noticed him until he got back to Cincinnati and she called out to him one day when he was at the Kenwood Towne Center mall. Since then, they had been to a movie and a concert. He had sent her roses from Jones florist. And she had let him kiss her. Something about him was traditional and romantic.
She was smart, creative, and interesting. She read books as he did, and somehow she seemed different: maybe she was an outcast like him. Her looks did not carry the perfection of many of their classmates. Her mouth was wide and her features were beautifully off-center. That imperfection drew him. Now his brain calculated: perhaps he could go to Yale, too, or she would stay in Cincinnati, even though he hated Cincinnati and hated living off his mom.
He had the kind of rich fantasy life peculiar to young men. He watched the curve of her cheeks, but it could not save him from the growing angst. He already knew she wanted to become a doctor. Her announcement should not be a surprise. Now…well, maybe they could have a summer together. He bargained in his own mind, trying to find the words.
“Heather!”
The shout was a girl’s voice, calling from a boat as it made a dramatic curve, cut a frothy wake, and came to a stop at the foot of the Serpentine Wall. One young man and two teenage girls were aboard.
Heather stood and ran gracefully down the wide concrete slabs, almost as if they didn’t exist. John enjoyed the view of her svelte legs and hips as she moved down to the embankment. Her bottom nicely filled out the shorts. He saw other men watch her, too.
“It’s Zack Miller!”
Her voice sounded different. He looked longingly at the picnic basket, stared at the little plastic ants, counting them until she returned.
“Come on, John. Bring the basket.”
He didn’t even think of keeping the disappointment out of his face as he saw her beckoning him. He packed up, taking time to replace each plastic ant into the Ziploc bag, hooked the hasps of the picnic basket, and rose. He went over to the steps, moving carefully and down, with none of Heather’s easy agility. He had never been well coordinated.
The trio was laughing and making easy small talk with Heather from the sleek new boat. It was towing what at first glance looked like a blue-and-gray lifeboat with an outboard attached. On closer inspection, it was sturdy and, of course, expensive. On the side was an emblem: “Zoom.” John was familiar with that kind of boat.
“You remember John,” she said and the two girls nodded distractedly. They both wore bikinis even though the weather was a little cool for that, their bodies young and flawless, both with long manes of golden hair. They looked so alike that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. But they were ordinary princesses, with none of the special attractiveness of Heather. Zack Miller was at the wheel, skillfully using the engines to hold the boats in place, and he barely acknowledged John.
“We’re going up the Licking,” one of the blondes said. “It’s party time! Hop in, Heather.”
Heather looked over her shoulder and smiled at John. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
He was barely aboard when Zack gunned the engines and swung around, knocking John into a seat. “Sea Ray 260,” Zack called to no one in particular.
“Isn’t this the most epic boat?” Blonde No. 2 said. They were all younger, all classmates. To John, they were rich, stuck-up, and shallow despite their star-quality SAT scores. Exactly the kind of people John hated. Even though his mother had become well-off working at the bank, John identified with the working-class roots of his stepdad. He knew, too, that most of his classmates came from old Cincinnati money and held it against him that his mother had started out as a mere teller at Fifth Third Bank.
The boat accelerated effortlessly, the empty Zoom skimming playfully along behind, as they shot under the big arched bridge that carried Interstate 471. Painted a yellow gold, it was not surprisingly nicknamed the Big Mac Bridge, even though it officially honored Daniel Carter Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts. They moved east, upriver on the wide Ohio, with the condominium towers on the Cincinnati side sprouting out of the lush slope that led up to East Walnut Hills. The headwind destroyed the hair he had so carefully combed. Heather’s lush shoulder-length mane caught the breeze like an auburn sail. Spray from the river made the air wet and warm.
The girls all looked great, of course. And Zack. Zack Miller was Mister Perfect, with preternaturally bright blue eyes set into a classically good-looking face. Chiseled chin, a bit of stubble, an arrogant tilt to his head. The last time John had seen Zack, he boasted thick, dark-brown hair. But he was a champion swimmer and now his head was completely shaved. Of course, he made the look cool. It helped that his skin was tanned and flawless. Zack’s father was a high-ranking executive at Procter and Gamble.
The two blondes laughed, talked, and texted, all at the same time. John tried not to be too obvious about hanging on against the rough ride. He hated being on the river, especially at this speed. Looking at the extravagant white wake behind them only made his foreboding grow. Other boats flashed by, boats they could collide with. It happened all the time. The inner gyroscope of his mind was calibrated to disaster. The river could be as much as forty feet deep and so soupy thick you couldn’t see two feet in front of you if you tried to swim underwater, a river filled with two centuries of effluent from the Industrial Revolution, and god knew how many dead bodies. Dead bodies from the gangster glory days of Newport, Kentucky, the carp and catfish having long since picked them to skeletons, the remains from yesterday’s mishap upriver. When the river ran at flood stage in the early spring, all manner of mayhem ensued. Once he had been sitting at one of the floating restaurants when the river was running high and fast and had glanced over to see a dead pig slip by. It was not a flying pig. Every now and then, one of the restaurants was lost to flood season.
“You okay?” Heather patted his arm.
“The river makes me superstitious.”
“Oh…”
John’s biological father had a sailboat in Boston, and took him out on it when he visited in the summers. A few years ago, the man had decided he wanted to be part of John’s life again. The sailboat and the open sea really frightened John. And the company of his stepbrother and stepsister, such as it was, and his father’s chirpy young girlfriend of the moment—they all looked alike, attractive, and slender—made him feel even more alienated from the world. His father looked like the kind of man Zack would become at fifty, right down to the flawless blue eyes. He despised such men.
By this time, Zack had come about and brought them back downtown, then they turned south into the mouth of the Licking River. As the boat slowed, the dread in John’s middle eased.
“Brought along the Zodiac in case we picked up more to party,” Zack said to Heather, indicating the small craft he was towing. John’s real father owned the exact same boat and had taught him how to pilot it in Boston Harbor. The man had done it, John knew, to help him overcome his fear of the water. Part of John wondered if he had also done it out of a streak of cruelty. But John had mastered the Zodiac out of spite, even if it didn’t fully cure his sure knowledge of the sorcery of the river. He even grew to like the little craft. It was similar to ones used by Navy SEALS.
Zack said, “Should we cruise for company or go up the Licking. We don’t have an even number of guys and girls…”
“Let’s go,” Heather said. “Maybe we’ll find more people we know.”
“Or m
ake new friends. Lot of licking goes on in the Licking River,” Zack said over his shoulder, and the blondes laughed as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Indeed, the tributary had a reputation for summer socializing: men in fast boats picking up young women at the Serpentine Wall and bringing them up here for sex. John looked at Heather and could only dream. He didn’t own a fast boat or have the inclination to be such a man or even know how to become one. It came so easily to guys like Zack Miller. It was in their DNA. Could it even be learned? Heather detached herself from the other two girls and sat next to him as they moved slower up the narrowing river.
“Better?”