In one swift moment Cody almost drowned and Jemmalyn became a hero. At the time, he had been new to the village and no one –not the children—really knew who he was. Michael had pointed him out to Jemmalyn as they had ambled home from market one Saturday afternoon, their arms laden with the ears of corn, carrots, and heads of lettuce that Grandma had sent them to retrieve. She had given Jemmalyn a couple extra dollars so they could buy rock candy, and Jemmalyn was walking as slowly as possible in order to suck on the bright pink candy while trying not to drop the lettuce. Her pace annoyed Michael, who was saving his blue candy for back at the house, partly because he found candy a sign of childhood and didn’t want anyone in town to see him still wearing the vestments of that phase of his life which, now nineteen, he had decidedly left behind. He claimed. His shoulders were broad, he could grow a scraggly beard in under two weeks. But at the house he was still going to eat the crystallized sugar.

Cody was sitting outside an IHOP, the very one frequented by all young persons of Hideaway after football games, late movies, theatre events, parties, what-have-you. Anything that kept them out after 11 PM, at which point almost everything in the town shut down except for an IHOP and Sonic. He sat on the plastic blue bench, his dark hair cropped short but shaggy with a streak of bright blue yelling from the back of his head up over his crown; he had a cowlick. His thick-rimmed black glasses, square against his long oval face, matched his black-and-white checkered Vans. Fitted dark denim jeans showed the world just how scrawny his legs were, and his black and red plaid shirt came down over his hands, an odd collection of half-a-dozen plastic and beaded bracelets peeking out. They looked like something a six-year-old girl would wear, and with the thinness of his wrists, this just all served to rob him of absolutely any strength or masculinity at all. Even his stance lacked any backbone, sitting as he was with his knees together, his back rounded, and his forearms running parallel down his lap. He looked homeless, dejected, completely out of place among the down-to-earth traditionalism of Hideaway.

Michael had pointed him out, snickering, “Kid doesn’t really belong here, does he?”

“Not at all! Do you think he’s got any tattoos?”

“What does that matter?”

“I’m just curious,” Jemmalyn shrugged.

Michael paused, then shook his head, “Nah. Look at him. The kid’s punk, not tough. He dresses like that to make you think he’s all different and opposed to societal trends, but really he’s a wuss. I could snap his arm with my two fingers.”

As it turned out, Michael’s bravado was a bit misplaced and bully-like: read: completely unnecessary. Cody had just moved into the area with his mom and two younger sisters following his parents’ divorce in which his father may or may not have run off with a dental hygienist. He told Jemmalyn they had moved to Alaska but perhaps the most exciting thing about Cody, aside from his bitterly sarcastic view of the world, was that he seemed completely incapable of differentiating between what actually happened and what he supposed did. So really there was no telling where his father wound up, since he never did contact his ex-wife or children again. Cody was dark and depressive, artistic and intelligent, but somehow immature in his emotions despite his circumstances. Fifteen but still emotionally a child, Jemmalyn always thought, though he verbally sounded much older. Still, she thought, his selfishness made him young; he should have been at home helping his mother with his two baby sisters instead of running around town with them. But after Jemmalyn saved his life, there really was no losing him.

It had been raining for almost four days straight, which was very unlike Hideaway in June. Even now, though the deluge had quit for a while, the sky remained foreboding and grey, sunlight struggling to filter through the veil. Still, it was enough to get Jemmalyn, Michael, Catherine, Kelly, Alex, Zane, and Timothy out of doors to take advantage of the clear air. With yells far too young for their late-teen-ages, the seven adolescents took off from Alex’s house, Kelly gripping a bucket of cookies Mama Loula had baked for them that morning. Jemmalyn grabbed Kelly’s arm and pulled her along as Catherine and the boys ran faster, gaining distance. This meant they were the last two to arrive at the Clubhouse, but then they were the ones with the cookies.

“Send up the goods and we’ll lower the rope,” Catherine yelled down as Zane slowly let a bucket down over the side.

Jemmalyn rolled her eyes, “No way, Cat. I’m not stupid. Let us up and then maybe we’ll share the cookies.”

“They’re my cookies,” Alex pointed out.

“Well I carried them,” Kelly retorted, peeling the lid of the plastic bucket. Popcorn had come in it originally, and the sides were decorated with cheery red and green designs supposed to convey the Christmas spirit. She pulled one out, took a huge bite, and moaned how good it was while Jemmalyn also reached in to grab one.

“What do you think, Catherine?” Zane asked, giving her a sidelong glance. Michael and Alex were both staring hard at the cookies.

Catherine shook her head, “We’re in the Clubhouse. They play by our rules. No admission until the cookies are up here with us.”

At this point, Jemmalyn frowned. The joke had ended now. They won the race to the clubhouse; Jemmalyn and Kelly were eating cookies; it was time to let them up now. What was this business about playing by their rules – and by “their,” Jemmalyn of course meant Catherine, because the boys all seemed ready to let her up and yank the cookies away.

“Well all right. Come on, K,” Jemmalyn shrugged, motioning for the brunette girl beside her to follow. Kelly, equally confused by this odd new play, closed the bucket and followed dutifully behind her classmate and dearest friend.

The two girls laughed and talked as they crawled over fallen logs and pushed their way through drenched branches that dumped water on their uncovered heads. Kelly’s mom had just had what she insisted was her last child, number six, and Kelly had been assigned to diaper duty more times than she cared to consider. Jemmalyn found the task of caring for a baby enviable; she always wished her mother had been more of a mother and at least given her a younger brother or sister so it wouldn’t be just her and Michael. He bullied her sometimes and she could have used the backup. Kelly always happily offered up some of her own siblings. She had more than she knew what to do with, and between caring for them and working full time waiting tables to help her parents make ends meet, would have happily traded Jemmalyn for her bullying brother. Really, it was extremely irresponsible for a teacher and a man who couldn’t hold a job for his life to have six children together, Kelly thought. She resented her parents, had not yet forgiven them, because she had missed signing the contract with her friends at the beginning of summer. They let her sign later, of course, etching “Kelly Bedivere” after Catherine’s name, but she had missed the ceremony which, as with many of their behavior during summer, was as juvenile as they could make it: war paint, candles, cookies, chants made up on the spot. Kelly had been working.

As refreshing as the cool collected water was on their heads and necks, it became slightly obnoxious, constantly dripping into their eyes and mouths, so Jemmalyn steered their course towards the beach. Kelly had no sense of the forest; in truth, it somewhat frightened her and she avoided the treeline unless with their whole group and only then in daylight. They munched on the cookies, both secretly hurt that they had been excluded from their own treehouse and not caring if they ate all the cookies and no one else got any. They were sixteen to nineteen; surely by this point in life they had outgrown bullying and ostracizing, but apparently not!

The beach was abandoned, and a rough wind whipped their hair into their eyes and broke the grey water up with white caps. The sky was darker, and that was the only reason that the water and sky didn’t just look like one total depressing mass. Even the sand looked grey in the dim light, hidden as it was beneath so much prickly seaweed.

The next few events happened so quickly that neither Kelly nor Jemmalyn could later explain much of what happened, and Jemmalyn seemed surprised to learn she had acted as she did. The two girls had commenced to walking down the beach when Jemmalyn spotted the boy Cody standing out on a rickety wooden pier. It had belonged to an old cottage right there on the water that had been destroyed and then abandoned during a hurricane a few years before, the owners moving inland to flee the angry sea.

“Oh, I haven’t met him, yet,” Kelly shrugged. With her busy schedule, she usually was the last one to hear gossip or meet newcomers or have any fun at all, and that really pissed her off. Jemmalyn continued to watch him for a few minutes, not as convinced as her brother had been about his inability to fit in. He just dressed a little different, was all. Grandma had told her he was from New York City. He seemed to have seen them, and Jemmalyn decided to be nice and wave. He lifted his arm uncertainly, took a step forward.

And then he was gone. At first Kelly and Jemmalyn just stared, not trusting their eyes and thinking maybe he had been a figment of their imagination all along. But no, he had been real, and Jemmalyn took off at a sprint. Kelly dropped the bucket of cookies and took off after her.

The pier had not been in good shape; many of the beams were broken or breaking, creaking even with just the pressure of the wind. Any of the village kids would know better than to walk out on such an insecure platform, but of course a city kid would have no experience. Cody had simply stepped too fully on some crumbling beams and disappeared down beneath. Jemmalyn didn’t even bother running out onto it; instead she came in from the side, forcing her way through the water. The storm had stirred up the sea so badly that even trying to keep her eyes open against the saltwater through the pain was pointless; she simply could not see. But then Kelly was standing on the rickety peer, yelling directions down at Jemmalyn.

Soon she saw him and dove down, his long-sleeved shirt hooked on a jagged beam of wood jutting out of the sandy bottom. He was frantically trying to loosen it, and in his panic losing both strength and oxygen too quickly. He went limp just before Jemmalyn grabbed him, apparently having resigned himself to his fate. This was actually a big help, however, since his thrashing could very well have hurt Jemmalyn or at least made it more difficult to help him. Instead, he went rigid when he felt her hands on him, perhaps mistaking her for a shark or jellyfish or some other unrealistic sea monster, then promptly passed into unconsciousness. Opening her eyes as much as she could bear, Jemmalyn got his arms out of his jacket and dragged him to the shore. He lay limp, not breathing.

Jemmalyn was not a trained lifeguard, had never been a lifeguard, and was certainly not certified to perform a rescue, much less resuscitation. However, she had taken a Redcross Babysitting course just that spring, and with some extra time at the end of class the teacher had showed them how to perform CPR. He made a big fuss about how they should remember that they were not certified, and therefore could actually be sued for saving someone’s life for performing the rescue maneuver. Jemmalyn thought that was rather stupid that he would bother showing them in such great detail only to tell them to never use this information. She understood the dangers of puncturing a lung or whatever, but just because you didn’t have a piece of paper didn’t mean you didn’t know what you were doing.

But of course she was going to use it now. Cody could sue her if she wanted. But she knew what she was doing, and they couldn’t wait until one of them could run back home and call for an ambulance and get the ambulance out there. The chances that she would puncture his lung or breaking all his ribs were probably less than his chances of making it if they waited.

Ironically, Catherine was trained as a lifeguard and certified in CPR. Jemmalyn didn’t realize it until after she had already begun CPR, but sometime during her stint underwater, Michael, Timothy, and Alex had come sprinting along the beach and now stood huddled around with Kelly. They had felt bad when Jemmalyn went stomping off and had gone in search of her. However Catherine had remained behind, as had Zane, both insisting Jemmalyn needed to not be so dramatic.

But as for her first time performing CPR in an actual emergency situation: Jemmalyn only had to pump his chest maybe twice before Cody was spewing out water and coughing up a lung, rolled onto his side with sand caking his back and the blue in his hair. Jemmalyn smiled with relief and patted his back comfortingly.

“Come on. We should get you back home and all dried off,” she encouraged, wrapping her small hand around his arm. He stared up at her with wide eyes, unable to speak.

Kelly knelt beside him and took his other arm, inquiring gently, “Can you walk?”

“I . . . I think so . . . the boards just gave out, and then I couldn’t get my jacket off . . . I thought . . .”

“Well you’re fine now. No need to worry about it. Come on, my house is only a few minutes away.”

Michael was looking between the two girls with uncertainty, as though he wasn’t quite sure what his role was supposed to be here. It was awkward, walking in three-fourths of the way through a drama as they had.

“My camera is still out there,” Cody suddenly remembered, looking out at the pier.

“I’ll get it—“

“No, let me,” Kelly argued. When Alex made to press the issue, she insisted, “It’s not stable at all out there and I’m lighter. Why don’t you run back and get the cookies? I dropped them over there somewhere.” Alex sighed but took off at a quick trot while Timothy took Cody’s other arm.

Kelly hopped lightly onto the pier, but from there treaded carefully, sticking close to the railing where there was more support. She could see where Cody had fallen through and wondered how he could have not realized the wood there wouldn’t support him, light and wispy as he was. His camera was all the way at the end of the dock, and it was really very fortunate it hadn’t fallen through on its own. It was a nice camera, though. She pulled it up and glanced over it quickly: film, entirely manual, an old beat up Canon but clearly high quality. She continued to look it over, turned on her heel, and had not taken but one step when the boards cracked beneath her.

Instantly Michael was at her side, having followed her out just in case he had to go in after her. He had lagged behind, sticking to the edge as she had. He was quite as easily discouraged as Alex, and fortunately so. He slowly helped her pull her right leg up from the tight hole created in the boards. The rough wood had ripped her leg up, and bright red welts were already beginning to ooze blood where sharp splinters had ripped the skin.

“Oh, geez Kelly, can you walk on it?” Michael gasped. Her face was distorted with pain as she tried to keep her breathing deep and steady against the throbbing stinging on her leg. “You have to walk to the land and I can carry you from there.” This was managed with her hobbling along after him, gripping his shoulders once she had looped the camera around her neck. From there, Michael swung her into his arms, and they caught up with the rest of the group.

“God, how many members of our party are we going to lose to that pier?” Alex frowned, glaring back at the dilapidated wooden structure.

Jemmalyn nodded, but pointed out, “Fortunately we didn’t lose anyone. Right, Cody?” He squinted and nodded; his blue hair was sticking up in back.

“Well, at any rate, we’ll go back out tomorrow and tear it down. You in, Tim? Alex?” Both boys nodded.

This idea was good to Jemmalyn, who added off-handedly, “I’m sure Zane will want to help you tear down — speaking of which, where is he?”

“Oh, him and Catherine are still at the fort! They were pretty annoyed with you for stomping off like that,” Timothy explained. He was glad Cody was being able to walk more on his own because he sure wasn’t enjoying having to drag someone along. “Anyways, someone should go get them, let ‘em know we’re headed in.” Though of course he had meant that he would go, Alex stole the quest, which made sense seeing as his only current use was carrying the cookie bucket. So off he ran to fetch them, meeting up with everyone at Jemmalyn and Michael’s house in time to see Grandma putting a crock of tomato soup on the stove to boil and handing out mugs of hot chocolate. He still clutched the cookie bucket, stony-faced between Zane and Catherine’s chatter and light laughter.

The next day, true to their word, the boys went out and tore down the pier while Catherine, Jemmalyn, and Kelly watched from the shore, glad to see it go. Cody helped the boys, managed to get his shirt back (though Jemmalyn demanded to know how he could wear long sleeves in the Texas summer) and by the end of the day was even a little more comfortable around them, the way a younger brother is around his older brother and his friends. Because of that awkwardness, though, that always remained between him and the boys –though he and Catherine and he and Jemmalyn would be rather good friends—Cody never got to sign the pact, and Jemmalyn always did sort of regret that.

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