Underwater New York

Lazy Boy by Sara Weiss

Rickie’s got a foot on my head, I’m holding onto a fistful of his hair and he’s pressing my nose so far back it feels like it’s ramming into my brains. Whenever we get together, he beats the crap out of me. I’ve known Rickie since we were little, since baseball camp, when I had thick glasses and a patch to correct my lazy eye. Sometimes, my eye still goes berserk.

“Let him go,” Jodi says. She’s skinny with blue eyes and black hair and she dresses like a boy with cargo pants and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. The wind makes her t-shirt ripple revealing a strip of her white stomach.

Rickie holds me down a few seconds longer and then releases me.

“Got to work on your leg drop,” he says.

We’re sitting on a cliff overlooking the Hudson. Our town is an hour north of Manhattan. There’s a power plant, a scenic view of the river and nothing to do. Kids make their own fun. They drink forties, dump bottles in the river, jump off cliffs and some of them drown. Our high school holds assemblies after this happens and all the girls cry even though they’d never talked to the kid who died. These aren’t the girls I like.

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Tags: Hudson River, Sara Weiss, Submarine