The Boy on the Bridge

—an excerpt—

Judy’s coltish legs quiver with fatigue, and she drops onto the park bench, her denim-covered buttocks meeting cold, hard wood. Crusts of rotten snow and ice lie along the edge of the sidewalk and scattered over the flattened grass. Past the railing in front of her, sand spreads down to the darkly gleaming water. Across the deep, narrow lake, Mammoth Mountain rises—a rocky, forested wall, its top half shrouded in cloud. To her right, concrete pylons thrust up from the water to support the bridge soaring over the lake. Looking up at the guardrail, she thinks of the boy who disappeared from that bridge, shivers, and pushes her hands deeper into the pockets of her pea coat, curling her body inward against the cool, damp air. Grimacing, she swallows, the events of the morning coming back to her.

She had awoken with an aching, scratchy throat. “Get up and go to school, Judith,” her mother called out as she passed the bedroom door. With a groan, Judy let her fevered head fall back onto the pillow, listened to the clatter of dishes, the thumps of her mother’s and sisters’ steps, the screen door banging in succession as they left the house--only four times, her eldest sister married and gone now.