Preciprocated

If your best friend jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?

The age-old question, voiced innumerable times by generations of exasperated parents. I never thought I’d genuinely have to answer it.

It’s not like her to spring such choices on me. Forget fight or flight, for me it’s either freeze or fret away all my sanity, and I am quite literally frozen in place. I am still not sure how our casual spelunking expedition suddenly turned into being faced with what seems like the most important decision of my life, but again, here I am, toeing the brink of no return.

"Precipice." I feel out the word with my tongue as my frozen body slowly begins to thaw. "Press-sip-piss. Precipitation. Preciprocated." It occurs to me that I might have a third option: distract like my life depends on it.

"Not a word, Finn," Sera reminds me. "You're thinking of reciprocated."

"Precipice is a good word," I decide, "because it stands by itself."

"As opposed to?"

"I don't know. Edge. Brink. You're always of the edge of something, the brink of no return . . .”

It’s her turn to tense. "Not 'no return', Finn. You can get back up. It's just a painful and strenuous climb that some don't survive."

"Wow," I say. "Thanks for reminding me. Hey, should I put my hair up?" I twist it around a bit and then let it hang limp. "Do you have an elastic?"

I can tell Sera wants to remind me how many times I have agonized over this minuscule predicament: hair up or down? Figures she wouldn’t understand the struggle. Her own hair is always shaved as short as possible.

She extracts a hair tie from the many around her wrist and holds it out with only her fingertips, careful not to brush my skin as I take it. This has been happening more and more lately, as if indecisiveness has suddenly become contagious.

"So," I say, beginning to wind the elastic, "remind me why we want to do this again?"

Sera looks away. It might be the darkness of the cavern, but she is harder to make out. Somehow her features are dimmer, paler, more blurred. When she starts to speak, her voice has a catch.

"Because we have to, Finn. Because all our friends already have, and they're down there more and more and with us less and less and we're lonely. We're lonely, Finn, and frustrated and stuck, and now is the best age to jump, and if we don't we'll just end up regretting it."

I automatically cringe at the mere thought of such regret. Or maybe it's the discomfort as I unravel my twisted knot of hair. “And we need to jump from this height because-”

“Because it guarantees we’ll go deep. On the shallow side, the current is strongly against newcomers. We came here to dive in, not to wade around. Or wait around, for that matter.”

Waiting around happens to be my specialty. "Hold on. I was under the impression we only came here to look. You know, just to see what it was all about? What happened to all that?"

She turns and meets my gaze, as if searching for something. Her eyes seem to have no color.

"Decisions are so hard for you, Finn. Nearly impossible. If I’d brought it up from the start, you might not have even come. I really do believe that the best time to jump is now and the best way to jump is together, but it's also because I need to. Look at me. I can't be just a friend anymore."

It takes a moment for that to sink in.

"Sera, I'm sorry," I say softly. "You shouldn't have to remind me about you." Without another word, I form a ponytail and tie it up, tight and secure.

I peer down at the drop, at the water below. The surface is a warm, intense blue, quite an inviting gateway into such profoundly unknown depths. No one could chart these waters. I’ve heard no one even sees them the exact same way.

“You always have hair ties,” I realize suddenly. “You always have them, but you don’t have any hair to tie up.”

“Don’t, Finn. Just . . . ” Sera is barely an outline now, and still fading fast. “It’s too humiliating. I don’t want to force you, and I definitely don’t want your pity.”

“No, no, no, not pity. Company. Sympathy, even. But never pity. I’m just trying to be a good friend.” I step forward and try to hug her. 

She inches back, perilously close to the edge. “Don’t you get it, Finn? I can’t, can't stay here, can't be here, because . . .”

I wrap my arms around her, but suddenly there’s nothing. Nothing but thin air inside my embrace.

Because. Because she’s already down there. Alone. She has been for a while. She didn’t jump, she fell . . . for me. And I didn’t even notice.

I feel a single stab of grief, followed by a hundred pinpricks of dread. Not only is Sera gone, my decision just got so much more delicate. Each option is exponentially more important than before, and the weight of it is enough to tear me in half.

In the murky light, my eyes make out a scattered pile of hair ties where Sera had been moments before. 

I suddenly think of our friend Iris. Graceful, fearless, fast-blooming Iris. There was a certain game she used to play, years ago, back when she was first testing the waters. She would take a flower in her hands, and pluck off the petals one by one, swinging back and forth from one possibility to another. If the flower happened to have an even number of petals, the answer would prove to be negative, causing a mild droop of disappointment. If the petal count was odd, this meant her wish was affirmed, and Iris’s face would blossom into a smile as she lay back in the grass and gazed up at some delightful secret that Sera and I could neither see nor understand. 

Now, I kneel on the jagged stone and scrape the hair ties into my lap. This is what I am left with, the petals Sera has shed. Two options only. All I need to do is count.

One. I jump. The water could simply be as amazing as it seems. Both legend and rumor describe its many wonders.

Two. I stay. It is dangerous, though. People get seriously hurt down there, and that’s a cold, hard fact.

Three. I jump. It’s not just about me, though. Sera is down there and already hurting. She definitely wants me to come. Needs me, even. Am I really selfish enough to let her suffer?

Four. I stay. There’s always the possibility my presence will only make things worse. If something goes badly wrong, our entire friendship could be washed away. 

Five. I jump. But it seems like our friendship is already at risk. It isn’t the same when she’s a literal shadow of herself, unable to bear being vulnerable. Something tells me that if I stay behind now, she’ll need time to recover. Time to painstakingly pull herself back up the towering cliff. I don’t want to wait. If I jump, there’s a chance, however slim, of us being together immediately, of us being close again.

Six. I stay. But is Sera’s idea of closeness the kind of closeness I am prepared to offer? Is the fact that I even have to ask a sign that I’m really not ready? The questions twist into an impossible knot. My fingers reach for the next hair tie, but there is nothing there. I frantically feel around, to no avail.

This is it. This is all there is. The number was even, and the safe choice has won. In my mind I know that I should be relieved, but the lump in my chest only tightens. My anxious hands roam over my head, pressing my eyelids, rubbing my temples, raking my hair, adjusting my ponytail . . . 

My ponytail, which is secured by a seventh hair tie.

I could just pull it tighter, feel my tied-up hair whip behind me as I sprint out of the cavern, all the way home to bed where I can pretend all of this was the nightmare it seemed.

Or I could rip the elastic out, add it to the pile urging me to jump, let my long hair fall loose and my confused heart fall to the mercy of the waters below.

My conscience cries out to Sera, as it does for all those who have to suffer.

But it is so much harder for those who have to choose.