Jennifer Echols - Going Too Far  

T hats the worst idea I ever heard, I told Eric. Then I took another sip of beer and swallowed. Lets do it.

Meg, Tiffany called after me. But I was already out the door of Erics Beamer. My beer sloshed onto the gravel as I led the way across the dark clearing to the railroad bridge.

Eric caught up with me. His hand circled the back of my neck, stopping me at the end of the bridge. We shared a hungry look. Hed been mad when I told him Tiffany and Brian were coming along tonight. And I knew why he was angry. If we werent alone, we couldnt do it. If we couldnt do it, what were we hanging out together for?

Now, without sharing a word, he and I understood we would do it after all. The four of us were drunk past the point of needing privacy.

In the light of the full moon I searched his handsome face a moment longer, marveled at his carefully mussed black hair. He was hot. We turned each other on. We were about to screw on a railroad bridge. It was a shame we didnt like each other very much.

I gazed to the far end of the bridge. Its not long enough for those kids to have gotten killed on it. Seems like they could have run to one end or the other when they heard the train coming.

You dont believe that story, he said.

Party pooper. Why do you want to cross the bridge if you dont believe the story? Its not a daring deed unless you think its dangerous.

The girl got her shoe caught in the tracks, Brian said behind us. Thats what I always heard. And the boy got killed, too, because he went back to help her.

Thats so romantic, Tiffany cooed. She sounded like she actually meant it. She was completely wasted on her first three beers ever, way too drunk to produce sarcasm.

And then, blammo! I said. Very dangerous. Thats more like it. I swirled my beer in my cup. Maybe we should take our shoes off.

Despite his party pooping, Eric took his shoes off. We all left our shoes at the base of the sign that proclaimed No Trespassing and offered the number of the city ordinance we were breaking. We stepped in our socks across the railroad ties, toward the center of the bridgeEric and me, with Tiffany and Brian behind us.

Through my cotton socks, gradually I began to feel the cold, hard ties. The air seemed colder, too, as we walked farther from the riverbank.

I heard Tiffany trip, then laugh. Brian probably thought tonight was The Night, and maybe it was. Hed been bugging me for months in the back of calculus class about how to take his relationship with Tiffany to The Next Level. I had told him I wasnt that close with Tiffany anymore. I wasnt that close with anyone. He said it didnt matter. He seemed to think I was an expert on sex in general.

What did I expect? Good news traveled fast.

And I was pretty much getting what I asked for from Eric. I looked the part. As the only teenager in Shelby County, Alabama, with blue hair, I was everybodys go-to girl for bad behavior. Tonight I wore a low-cut T-shirt that said Peer Pressure in the hope of luring Eric into another sexcapade. As if he needed any luring. He was pretty much self-luring.

As we reached the middle of the bridge, he steered me by the neck to the metal wall of the trestle. I didnt mind being held around the back of the neck, but I minded being steered. The rich, dirty scents of rust and tar made me dizzy. I was about to shake him off when he slid his hand down to my butt and parked me against the wall.

I sipped beer and gripped the rusty wall with my other hand, looking down at the reflection of the white moon in the black river so far below us. Trees clung to the sides of the gorge, their tiny spring leaves glinting white with moonlight. People had said the view from the bridge was beautiful, but no one seemed to have actually seen it. Now I had seen it.

Now I had seen everything . Brian Johnson, salutatorian, math team captain, had Tiffany Hart, valedictorian, yearbook editor, sandwiched against the bridge wall in front of him. At least hed taken the precaution of putting his beer down. He wore all the wrong clothes, a sure sign his parents didnt let him watch TV. She wore the right clothes, clean version, no skin in sight. His hands moved up her sides toward a risqu area and I almost laughed. Every few seconds, he glanced over at Eric and me as if he needed instructions.

Oblivious to Brians groping, Tiffany shook her blonde windblown curls off her face and asked, Why didnt those kids just jump over the side of the bridge? Is that a stupid question? I cant tell whats a stupid question. She was so drunk . I began to regret letting her and Brian, innocence incarnate, tag along tonight on my walk on the wild side.

Were really high up, Brian said in the tone of the Professor from Gilligans Island . Hitting the water from this height would be like hitting concrete.

Getting hit by a train is painful, too, I said. But the girl got her shoe caught, and the boy wouldnt leave her. So they were stuck up here anyway.

Im telling you, Eric said, that story cant be true. What kind of dumbass would let himself get hit by a train because his dumb girlfriend got her shoe caught? Immediately after declaring that true love was something he couldnt fathom, he proceeded to kiss the back of my neck and work his way toward hickey-ville.

I tried to enjoy him, despite the irony. The cold March wind kissed my cleavage as he kissed me. A tingle of excitement spread through my body, and I tilted my head down to expose more of my neck for his mouth.

Id grabbed him like a life preserver to float me through my last three months of high school. He wasnt much, but he was the only thing that kept me moving, besides anticipating my spring break trip to Miami one week from tonight. I would live as high as I could that week, which would tide me over until I graduated in June and moved to Birmingham for college. It was only twenty minutes up the interstate, but at least I was getting out of this tiny town. In the meantime, I was seventeen, a boy wanted to do me on a railroad bridge in the middle of nowhere, and I knew I was alive.