August and Then Some Read Free Page B

over the side of the bridge, backs to chests. The water split apart at the back of Dani’s stone island and came together again at her toes, swirling up a little force field around her.
    Dani had been on the swim team since she was small. It was weird looking at her surrounded by all that unswimmable water—like an actor in an empty theater—you’d think she’dhave wanted to go in, but she was a quiet kid, you know? And quiet people, it’s hard to know what’s in their head.
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    We were hanging out on the bridge over the falls—the whole crew of us—we tied our six-packs to the bridge on a rope long enough to reach the river, to keep them cold and out of view. That day on the footbridge, Nokey was scoping Dani’s just-turned-thirteen-year-old chest and body that really did look like a woman’s. Being my younger sister or being someone Nokey’s known since before birth didn’t mean she was out of the game.
    (Nokey’s not his real name, by the way. It’s short for Gnocchi, which still isn’t his real name. It’s Eugene Cervella. But since the third grade, people have been calling him Gnocchi Cervella—in English it roughly translates to Potato Head. He hates the name, but he always acts like he’s got something else in his head besides brains, so he can’t shake it.)
    He went up to my sister and started with: “Listen, Danielle. I don’t want to be a rock in your shoe …” and followed with a hand on her shoulder.
    Whether he’s hitting on girls or not, he’s always working his hands. They’re big and heavy enough to separate at the wrists. His pinky is the only finger thin enough to fit in the neck of a beer bottle, and his nails are too thick to bite through—he has to use a scissor. His hands are smart, and make him a good mechanic. His father only had to show him how a torque wrench worked once like three years ago and it stuck—he never stripped a thread. It’s like his fingers memorize things on contact. When we worked at his father’s garage together, he’d handle customers and in the prints of his fingers record where and how they could be touched. This practice made repeatsout of first-time customers and kept the regulars revolving. Some guys he’d give the one-hand shake with a matching slap on the shoulder. Or the classic two-hand shake, grabbing their entire hand—or just tapping the tips of his fingers on the back of theirs. For the ladies it’s a hand on the back when he’d lead her to the office to pay her bill. With the older ladies, he would link his right arm with their left and lay his free hand on their wrist.
    He wore his mechanic’s coveralls cut off at the shoulders and below the knees, so all the married rich chicks could get a good look at his arms and cobra-tattooed-calf busting through the ragged edges. He was good for his dad’s garage business and swears that’s why his dad bought him the weight set. And this kid is a great wide receiver; he catches long passes like his palms are made of flypaper. He might even be scholarship worthy if he’d join the friggin football team already, but he has no time for organized anything; he’d rather set records hardly anyone will ever hear about.
    Two summers ago he decided to jump in the river from the footbridge, which nobody ever did before because at about fifteen feet high and with no running start it looks like you could never clear the rocks to the water—which is maybe five feet deep on rainy days. Well, he almost cleared the rocks. He fucked up his ankle pretty good, bruised his back and got seven stitches on his ass. You would think that might have been a sign, but he didn’t see it that way. When the cast came off his ankle and the stitches out his ass, he tried again. This time he didn’t do it on a whim. He told people he was gonna do it on a particular day so we could all