Josh.mp4 - 10. Watching a video

Chapter 9

The sun is setting across the ocean. It feels like I am a thousand miles away from anywhere, standing here, at the edge of the deadly cliffs. There is no more wind anymore; everything around me is quiet except for the low murmur of the waves far below, among the sharp rocks that jut out from the water. I look at the ocean for a while, following the motion of the foam and the surf that fades into a solid gray-blue color further out and away from the coast. With the sun going down, the golden light of late afternoon gives way to the cool blues and grays of beginning twilight, but out at sea where the sun is setting it looks as if the waves themselves are on fire. It's a beautiful sight, but treacherous too, since I know too well that I am only one step away from a tumbling fall down until I hit the bottom and all the beauty in nature simply will not care.

I wonder if he jumped from here.

It's weird, that I feel so bad. So guilty. I was with Kate when I first heard that they had found Nathan in the ocean, half-drowned and very badly hurt, and I remember the sinking cold feeling in my gut that came over me very clearly. The words critical condition stuck in my brain and wouldn't come off. I told Kate what had happened as I hung up, dazed, and the very first thing she said to me was that it wasn't my fault. That Nathan had done this to himself.

I guess she's right, but only up to a point. In my heart I know that I played a big part in Nathan giving up the way he did and the awful knowledge is tormenting me. I look at the life I have right now, at everything Nathan never had, and it makes me feel like crap. I'm probably going to college next year, if I get around to doing it. I have friends who care about me. Kate and I have had some issues, sure, but we're still together and we’re already thinking of how to make it work in the long run. I have stuff to look forward to. I got my life to live. Nathan will have to rebuild everything from scratch, wherever he went.

I kick a little rock off the edge and watch it tumble down. What was Nathan thinking when he came here? What could make a guy feel so bad that he would think there was no way out? I look out, over the edge, and shiver. It's a long drop. I don't think I ever could have the balls to jump from here like Nathan did. Funny, though, how I overheard some people earlier saying that Nathan was a coward for trying to take his own life. Now that I'm here, in the place where he made his choice, I can't think of anything that would require more courage of an awful, desperate sort.

I back away. I'm losing light, and I still want to go down.

I turn around and something jumps out of the way, dashing beneath my feet and disappearing in a clump of tall dry grass. I cry out, surprised, and nearly wet myself until I realize that it's only a cat. I approach the grass carefully, but the cat knows I'm coming closer and he stalks off, bounding. It's the very same cat Nathan was chasing the day I met him.

I ball my hands into fists and shut my eyes tight to block the memories, but they come just the same. When I open them again, trying to be a little bit calmer, the cat is gone.

The path downward is not hard, and at first I think it's just because I've been here before and I know the way down. Little by little, though, I realize that it's actually because there are no more bits of random rocks strewn around in the main path, threatening to make you lose your footing. A couple of larger boulders that were in the way the last time I came are now gone, and somebody actually tied a thick rope between two saplings at a tricky spot near one of the larger bends in the path. It gives hikers something to hold onto during that bit. The more I descend, the more evident is that somebody has been using this path quite a lot until very recently. Then I see Nathan's name scraped on the side of a particularly large rock and I confirm my suspicions that it was him. He probably started coming here way more often after we stopped hanging out.

I make it down to the rocks. Thankfully, the tide is not high and the path to the cave is clear. I look up once at the towering cliffs and imagine how hard Nathan must have hit when he landed, how he hit the water. I can't help visualizing it, although I'm not even sure if he jumped from up there, directly above the cave, or if he did it from somewhere else altogether. He had a thing for this place, though, and it makes sense that he would do it from up there. I think.

I jump from rock to rock easily and there's still plenty of light to see by when I make it to the cave. I'm not surprised to see a permanent tent set up in there, a smaller one, made for only one person. There is some wood stacked up at the back and a very clearly defined circle of stones destined for campfires. I approach, but then I stop. I suddenly feel as if I'm trespassing, and I flat out consider going back up the way I came. I turn around, even, but then I make myself stop. No. I’m here; I have to do this. I walk up to the campsite and sit down on a flat rock that Nathan obviously dragged to the place to make a mildly comfortable seat. I sit there for a while, painfully noticing how lonely everything seems when it's only me in here, and I wonder how many nights Nathan came down here to spend the time alone.

I poke the ashes of the last fire he built and then I'm suddenly up on my feet, kicking the ashes everywhere, scattering and pushing the carefully laid rocks that formed the circle around them. Then I stalk off to where the tent is and I rip it off from the ground. I throw it away, out of the cave, and stomp on the sleeping bag as if I were trying to kill something underneath it. I hear something tear, and something made of glass cracks under my foot.

I turn around looking for something else to destroy. I grab the big flat rock I had been sitting on and drag it to the edge of the water, heavy though it is, and with a mighty heave I pick it up and toss it into the waves. It falls in, not very deep but with a gigantic splash that sprays cold water everywhere. Some of it falls on my shirt, drenching me instantly.

"Fuck!" I yell. "FUCK!" I kick up some dirt savagely and stub my toe with a rock. I don't even care about the pain.

Then I'm back in the cave, sitting on the trampled sleeping bag, hugging my knees with my arms and trying not to lose it, but it's so damn hard. I hit the ground with my fist, and again, clenching my teeth and shutting my eyes tight so I won't fucking cry. The motion shakes something from my pocket. My phone.

I open my eyes and look at the phone as if it were a dangerous animal that wants to bite me. I stare at it for a good five minutes or more before I work up the courage to pick it up. It's getting dark outside, but I don't care. I'm alone, finally alone after walking through the entire damn town, only to find out that even here there are memories of Nathan everywhere and I can't escape from them...

The night of the fight flashes in my memory again. Nathan's look after I had hit him. Then I look around me, at the dark cave, and I remember a warm and blazing campfire. Marshmallows. Even that kiss that must have meant so much to him.

I unlock my phone with my thumb and tap on the micro-SD folder. There is only the one file in there, a 120-megabyte high-definition video, the file I didn’t have the balls to watch back at the art school. Nathan's last video, the one thing he had on his phone at the hospital. My finger hovers over the icon, suddenly afraid. I don’t know if I can bear to watch it now. And I already know it's about me. It's named Josh.mp4.

I take my earphones out of my jacket pocket and plug them into the phone. I put them on. And then I tap play.

The screen goes black, and then the title appears in simple white letters on the black background. It says 'Josh'. Underneath it, it says 'Directed and edited by Nathan Wright.'

Background music begins playing. A clear, melancholy guitar track that begins softly and fades a little as the screen changes. It shows a cat running for its life, tail held high, and then a tall guy running behind him with his hands held out on either side in a futile attempt to intercept the fleeing animal. I realize with a little jolt that it's me last year. When we were up at the shack.

'Dammit!' I'm saying. My own voice sounds weird to me in the video. Deeper. 'I almost had him.'

The camera shakes a little and I hear Nathan's laughter. 'No you didn't.'

'You could help, you know,' I say, looking right at the camera.

'No way!'

Fadeout. Then the sounds of a big crowd over the guitar music, and a stadium comes into view. It's a soccer match, and the camera is at field level, close to one of the goals.

I see myself standing ready, arms spread wide as an enemy player rushes to the goal I'm guarding. He shoots. I jump. The crowd roars and I grab the ball with both hands, falling heavily on my side on the grass. I stand up, yelling something to the guys that were supposed to be defending, and I run and drop the ball expertly as I give it a kick that sends it flying clear over the middle of the stadium. The camera then swings back to me and does a close up. I have a mean frown on my face. The camera stays with me until I happen to look around in its approximate direction. Then it quickly swings away.

Change to a crowd cheering, celebrating, and the camera picks me up from among my teammates as they are high-fiving me after one of our big wins of the season. I have grass stains on my uniform and my hair is a mess, but I look incredibly happy.

Change again, a long-distance shot of the soccer field at school. The coach is there, yelling at us. I even remember when it was: right before Christmas break. Willy and I are training for penalty kicks. I see myself stopping five shots out of five-- my personal best ever. I see Mark clapping me on the shoulder. The camera zooms in on my stupid grin.

Change to Nathan's room. I see myself from behind, sitting down at Nathan's computer. I'm laughing, pointing at the screen, howling like a madman at a particularly good cat fail video of Nathan's where he caught one of the neighborhood cats jumping into a dumpster by mistake. Nathan swings the camera around and I see I'm all red from laughing, wiping tears from my eyes. I hear Nathan's laughter.

Change, and now I'm standing at the edge of the cliffs looking out over the ocean and Nathan must be a few steps behind me. I look like I'm posing for a movie poster or something, with my hands on my hips and the wind whipping my hair this way and that. The sky overhead is spectacular. The wind howls on the video over the soft-playing guitar.

Change to the two of us stoned out of our minds in Nathan's room. I'm trying to tell him a joke but I'm making no sense at all. He must have set the camera on a shelf or something beforehand. I try to stand up on his chair and trip, almost falling down, but Nathan catches me. We're out of the camera's focus for a second but then we stumble back, and Nathan is hugging me. He holds on for a split second longer than is necessary, and then lets go.

‘I love to hang around in here,’ I say, grinning stupidly and holding the stub of a joint in one hand. ‘I’m glad we’re friends.’

‘Me, too,’ Nathan says. Then we begin laughing at nothing.

Change to a time lapse of the sky over the school soccer field. The camera is set at ground level, and a few feet away from it is a soccer ball. The clouds float by and then the video fast forwards, showing an entire cycle of day and night in less than thirty seconds. At one point it starts to rain. Then the sun comes out. Night falls, and then there's dawn over the field. The only thing that doesn't move at all throughout all that is the soccer ball.

Change, to the flickering light of a campfire. The camera swings around and focuses on a man sitting a bit away from the circle of light, staring out over the ocean. It must have been when I was brooding over being stranded in the cave with him that night.

'What are you thinking about?' Nathan asks. Only he says it too softly for me to hear, and I don't answer.

Change. Early morning in the cave. The camera is set up somewhere and is filming from inside the tent, picking me up as I go out to pee. Then I see myself coming back inside, still half drunk, to lie down beside Nathan. I sling his arm over my shoulder and go to sleep.

The background music ends. There is one final change, and unmoving shot of a rock wall illuminated by flickering firelight. It's a shot of Nathan sitting pretty much where I'm sitting right now, looking straight at the camera. He looks troubled. Haggard, as if he hasn't slept in many days. It's probably not long before he jumped. He hesitates, looking away and then back at the lens. He has a piece of paper in his hands, facing down. He looks at it, manages a little half smile and slowly lifts it up.

It's only six words written in there, six little words that stab me right through the heart and make my eyes start burning with emotion that I can’t contain.

It says:

I LOVE YOU, JOSH. I'M SORRY.

Then Nathan puts the sheet of paper down. His half-smile wavers as if he, too, were about to cry. Then the video ends.

The phone drops to the ground as I bring up both my hands to cover my face and hide the hot, painful tears that break through the final hold I had on them. The dam is broken and I'm suddenly crying, sobbing aloud, feeling crushing guilt and terrible loss and the awful certainty that this is forever, that Nathan is gone, he’s GONE.

I cry like I haven't cried ever before, and the loneliness of the cave that was his shelter from the world that would never understand him feels like a dead weight on my shoulders, holding me down, forcing me to face the fact that I was his last friend in the world and I abandoned him when he needed me the most. I should have helped him. I should have been there for him. I should have known...

"I'm sorry, Nathan," I sob. My voice breaks on his name. "I'm so very sorry."