Crybaby Bridge - Part III
In Part II of “Crybaby Bridge,” Sam goes to a basketball team sleepover, organized by Coach who recognizes the team (aka Sam) isn’t vibing. Sam gets into a fight with Tissy about Cedar Creek and tells her teammates about her abortion. When she returns home, she falls deep into the story of Crybaby Bridge.
Read Part III to see what’s next.
That Monday, Sam walked into her first period class and everyone went suddenly quiet. As swiftly as if she’d been punched in the stomach, Sam understood that they knew her secret. And they knew the version that Tissy had spun. Sam kept her eyes locked straight ahead as she slipped into her seat. She didn’t bow her head, even as she sensed the whole class watching her. She’d been practicing for this role for years: someone proud and persecuted. Someone who let all the crap the world hurled at her roll off her skin like oil.
At lunch, instead of sitting in the cafeteria with her headphones in and a book in front of her as she normally did, Sam ate her lunch in the gym. Kristen texted her to ask where she was and then appeared at the base of the bleachers.
“I don’t know who told first,” she said, “but most of the team is on your side. They feel terrible.”
“I don’t understand why everyone’s acting like it’s a huge deal. It’s not that shocking, as far as scandals go.” Sam let out a harsh laugh, which the gym swallowed.
“The rumor isn’t just that you were pregnant. It’s that you bragged about getting an abortion at the sleepover. Tissy is saying you acted as if you were proud of it.”
Sam covered her face with her hands, but then quickly took them away so Kristen could see she wasn’t crying. “I sort of did, didn’t I? God, I’m an idiot.”
“No,” Kristen said. “You just weren’t acting ashamed. There’s a difference.”
But that was bad enough, Sam knew. An indiscretion was forgivable, as long as it was swept under the rug. Mary Walcott’s ultimate sin was not the child out of wedlock, but the banging on the judge’s door. Her refusal to live the lie they wanted for her.
Sam waited for Kristen’s pity or condolences or insistence that this isn’t so bad, really. But there was only silence, and a slight shift in the bench as Kristen settled next to her.
*****
Sam knew that if she could hold the pieces of herself together for a little longer, the whispers in the hallway would pass. She kept her head down at school, did her homework, watched an hour of television with her parents in the evenings, and was fiercer than ever in practice. She talked to Ben on the phone, but he wasn’t any help. What could she say to him? It sucks that everyone in school knows about the time I got pregnant, which might come as a shock to you, since you think I was a virgin when I met you?
One night Ben showed up at her door with flowers, saying he could tell she was having a bad week. Her mother made a big fuss over putting the flowers in a vase. Ben took Sam for a walk around her neighborhood, gripping her waist. Sam rambled on about an essay she was writing for English class. She arrived home so exhausted she couldn’t bring herself to walk upstairs. She fell asleep on the couch and dreamt of Mary’s bridge.
Sam had been thinking about the story all week, hunting for records of a real Mary Walcott and reading accounts of sightings. In her dream, Mary was wearing a hooded cloak. The skin on her face was cracked and pale. Her eyelashes were long and crumpled like spiders’ legs. She looked like she wanted to tell Sam something. Mary opened her mouth as if to reveal an important truth, but instead a scream exploded from the ghost’s lips and Sam started awake. Her parents had covered her with a blanket while she slept. She imagined them standing over her, thinking she was finally starting to settle down: doing her homework, dating a boy who brought her flowers. She’s doing so well, Sam imagined her mother whispering to her father. And look how sweet she looks, asleep. This false belief in her was worse than their disappointment, worse than the worst fights she’d ever had with them.
*****
The next day, as the team was milling around after practice, Sam overheard a few of the upperclassmen talking about going to the movies. When Kristen saw that Sam was listening, she invited her.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” Sam said.
“It’ll be fun,” Kristen said. “You can ride with me.”
“Thanks, but I’m seeing Ben tonight, anyway. I should go home and get ready.”
“Maybe you could bring him?”
“Another time.”
“You’ve got more exciting plans than us?” Tissy asked.
Sam rooted around in her gym bag to hide her angry blush. She hadn’t been able to look Tissy in the face since the rumor had spread—not because she felt betrayed, but because Tissy had bested her. She wasn’t about to admit that her big plan for the evening was to watch television with Ben and his mom. She straightened up and said, “Actually, my boyfriend’s taking me to Crybaby Bridge. We’re going ghost hunting.”
Tissy didn’t know how to respond, which Sam counted as a small victory.
“That’s awesome,” Kristen said. “Promise me you’ll report back. If you see or hear anything, you need to text us right away.”
Sam nodded, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the bottom of her jersey.
Tissy paused at the locker room door. “I think you might have some luck. If anyone can channel Mary, I imagine it would be you.”
“You ignorant townie bitch.” The rest of the team stopped shuffling with their bags and stared. “Your stupid hick ghost stories don’t scare me.”
“So there it is. She thinks we’re all hicks.”
“I said you were a hick. If you hate me so much, stop dancing around it and say so already.”
“Fine. I hate you,” Tissy said.
*****
Ben was hesitant to go to the bridge, but after a little persuading he seemed excited. Sam was eager to head out. When she got into Ben’s car, her teeth were chattering, and she didn’t think it was only from the cold. A nervous energy had been knocking around inside her all week and the shaking seemed like a way to let it out. When they reached the main crossroad, Ben headed towards an area of town Sam had never been to.
“Are you finally going to tell me what’s been going on with you this week?” he asked. “You’ve been acting really off.”
“School’s been tense.”
“I know something happened. Things were getting better—you were even saying nice things about the girls on your team.”
“I was being naïve. I’m never going to fit in here. I’m always going to be the weird new girl.” The road narrowed and the streetlights were few and far between. Ben flicked his brights on.
“Five months is a long time to be the new girl,” he said. “You might want to start letting your guard down a bit.”
“You don’t know these girls or what they’re like. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
“I sort of do. Things can’t have changed that much in four years. I just mean that you’re clearly capable of being wonderful. Why don’t you act around them the way you act around me?”
“How do you know I don’t?” Sam said, but then she thought it over. “I don’t know.”
Ben put a hand on her knee. “Tonight should take your mind off it.”
“That’s the idea.” Sam looked past Ben at the darkness that thickened as it spread away from the road. She wasn’t used to such vast empty spaces. The fields seemed to stretch forever, as if she were looking out across the ocean.
When they reached the bridge, Ben stopped the car and asked, “You ready?” Sam could make out the rusty railings illuminated in the headlights. She searched for movement in the gloom.
“Are you sure the bridge is safe?” Sam asked. “To drive over?”
“Are you having doubts, my fearless leader?”
Sam laughed. “I’m not the doubting kind.”
The car lurched and then crept onto the bridge. Sam listened to the tires gripping the gravel and the water running underneath them. Ben cut the lights. Sam couldn’t remember ever being in such complete blackness. She couldn’t even see Ben. The corroded railings disappeared. The sparse trees at the bank of the creek disappeared. The narrow cracking road disappeared. Only the sky, pin-pricked with light, remained.
Sam put her arm through Ben’s and squeezed. This was the moment she’d been searching for: two people pulled together against the harsh night. She wanted the intimacy of confronting something unfamiliar together, of having a moment so out of the ordinary they both were bound to remember it forever.
Ben rolled down the windows. “Listen,” he said. “Do you hear something moving?”
To be continued…
This story was first published in Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023).
Rebecca Turkewitz is a writer and high school teacher living in Portland, Maine. She is the author of the story collection Here in the Night (Black Lawrence Press, July 2023). Her fiction and humor writing have appeared in The Normal School, Electric Literature, SmokeLong Quarterly, The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from The Ohio State University.
Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and check out more of her work here.