Page 64 of Shy Girl
This time, I could only wonder how I'd survived so many years. What if I'd hit my head? I could have become wholly paralyzed. What would my Mom have done if I had weeks’ worth of hospital bills? Surgeries?
“Damn,” Vik murmured quietly. “That looks worse than I remembered.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Stupid,” Grady said. “Stupid, stupid. What if your rug caught on one of those divots? Dude, you could have died.”
“We were complete morons,” Bastian said.
The video scratched a bit, then turned off. Two seconds later, another one popped up. Another previous classic, with a bright red lobster and Grady's shirt off. The lobster was a few inches away from his left nipple. On the video, Bastian burst out in laughter as the lobster attached to Grady's nipple, and he screamed.
Grady reached over, rubbing it. “Freaking hurt,” he muttered.
“Bled like crazy,” I said.
We fell quiet, and I wondered why this didn't feel as good as I'd hoped.
Another movie clip started. The smell of asphalt replayed through my mind as it baked beneath my feet on a hot summer day. Verdant green mountains surrounded our teenage selves while Vikram attempted to zipline down a ski lift on a homemade rig. Sparks flew out behind him as he fell, breaking an ankle with the crash of branches and a howl.
Vik hissed and sucked in a sharp breath as he watched the C-tape, then shook his head. His hand massaged that ankle.
“Still hurts sometimes,” he muttered.
Grady laughed. “Remember how we tried to splint it with a couple of sticks and some vines? I think we made it worse.”
Vik grimaced. “I will never forget that.”
Bastian chortled. “Some paramedics we were.”
We watched half-heartedly as the rest of the pranks cycled through the tape. Some of them felt childish, like shoving Bastian into a box and pushing him down the stairs. Most of them were dangerous, idiotic. We'd been more fueled by the camaraderie and thrill than the actual tricks, but at the time, it felt like they were everything. It felt like wewerethe tricks. Or maybe we were just notoriety seekers.
By the time the C-Tape flickered off, we'd fallen quiet. The replaying of our childhood idiocy, and the comments back and forth now, came with a mixed bag of emotions.
“Seemed so much cooler at the time,” Bastian murmured.
“We were cool . . . weren't we?” Vik asked.
“Just dumb,” Grady said with a shake of his head. “Just . . . really dumb. Maybe a little bit bored.”
Now it felt . . . crazy.
Filtered through the lens of adulthood and real-world experience, I felt gratitude that no one had died in our ridiculous stunts. After everything I'd seen working at the sheriff's office, the fact that we'd survived had been a literal miracle.
Vik fell into deep thoughts with a frown, his arms folded across his chest. Bastian pulled his bottom lip through his teeth, and Grady just stared at the screen. I pulled the other three copies out of the C-tape out of my pocket and tossed them to each one.
“Had copies made for all of us. So we never forget. Yes, we were dumb. We were lucky to survive long enough that any of us could get married. But we had each other, and that is what really mattered.”
A few murmured thanks followed, but I wasn't about to let them off the hook. I pegged a hard stare on Vik.
“Vik, it was good then. We had great times and a tight bond, and our crazy adventures took us down some wild roads. But it wasn't everything, and we can't live that life forever. You see that, right? Tell me you see that that was a different time and we're smarter people now. I need to hear that you can let this go.”
Vik glanced from me to Grady, then back to the TV screen, where I'd paused the movie on a shot of the four of us swimming in the water after a particularly long cliff jump that slapped so hard I'd been red for two days.
Vik nodded. “Yeah, you're right. It . . . it was good then. It's . . . it is different now.”
I swung my gaze to Grady.
“Grady, don't discount it for what it was at the time. Four idiots that were lucky to survive, but we always had three other people to lean on. Vik isn't upset about losing the danger.” I glanced back at him to confirm. “He's afraid to lose us.”
