Devil’s Ledge

I lean my bike against the faded shingles of the Old Firehouse Lookout at the end of the parking lot where the day hikers come through. My lungs burn from the pedal up from the cabin—the jagged mountain air scraping out April’s chest cold and the clove cigarettes snuck from my aunt’s purse. It’s mid-morning, but the sun is hot and direct, getting right to the point. As I walk to the trailhead, I undo my braid and spread my hair out to cover the back of my neck.

I wait for Scarlett at the first vista point in the switchback down to the lake. Scarlett is my summer friend. I only have the one. Below me, the month at the cabin lies spread out like a picnic blanket—the thrilling blue of the lake dotted with fat yellow funyaks, the sandy sweep of Baby Beach, the crawdad-fishing dock, and the old riflery range where we dig melted brass bullets out of the silt. I’m on time, but I feel late. Already the shadows squat under trees.

While I wait, I scan the bluffs that rise to the ridge on the far side of the lake. I am ticking off the familiar shapes in the granite—the rounded back of Brown Bear here, the craggy chest of Wolf Rock there—when Scarlett strides around the bend in the trail.

Scarlett’s hair seems longer, but still the dark red color of cinnamon sticks. She wears running shoes, a turquoise macramé bikini top, and jeans shorts. I see that over the winter, her body has bloomed: the slender stem of waist stuck into the vase of her shorts, the sheen of bug spray at her calf, the rounded side of her breast against her ribs, the gleaming sunscreened shoulder. Each curve is a knife in my back. The chipped maroon nail polish and the smoothly shaved shins and the tiny hoop earrings—all betrayals.

I look down at my river sandals and my oversized swim team T-shirt pulled over a sports bra with nothing in it, at the mosquito bites on my ankles, at my basketball shorts, pockets lumpy with beef jerky and rolled-up string for the crawdad dock. Scarlett hugs me. Up close she is her old self—the dusting of cinnamon across her nose, the snap of Big Red gum.

Down the switchback, we plunge into the cool of the redwood grove, where our footfall is muffled by a pine-needle carpet and redwood trunks upholstered in thick, spongy bark. I tip my head back as branches spiral over us like the spinning spokes of a bicycle. The shade is pierced here and there by yellow-green spotlights of sun. When Scarlett passes under one, her hair shines like copper.

We follow the trail along the creek toward the lake. At the footbridge, we come across an older boy standing ankle-deep in the water. I recognize him from the boat dock at the lodge, where he hands out life jackets and oars from a little red shed—a Townie. He is shirtless, and muscles sparkle across his back as he pulls a fishing line hand over hand, hauling in a six-pack of beer from the cold stream. His fingers are long and tan with wide, white nail beds. Dark hairs march down his belly like a trail of ants, disappearing into his swim trunks. My stomach lurches and then plunges between my legs—like at the top of a Ferris wheel. I look away too late.

“You can keep a secret, right?” he says. He points his chin at the six-pack, and then I see he is talking about the beer. I nod stupidly.

“No promises,” Scarlett says, and he laughs. His eyes skid across my chest and with nothing to latch onto, slide away.

“We’re jumping from Devil’s Ledge.” He is talking to Scarlett, but he flicks me a smile. “Maybe we’ll see you there?” Scarlett slides her gaze to the creek and cocks an ear, as if listening for what her answer will be.

“Maybe,” she says.

“What’s your name?” he asks her. She looks back at him. Her eyes are two glossy wet river rocks flung wide across her face.

“Scarlett,” she says. She nods at me. “She’s Darcy.” When she starts off down the trail, shadows of the oak leaves overhead dapple the bare skin of her back.

Scarlett and I scramble along the creek, cupping our hands to drink where the water runs fast. We sit for a while with our backs against a big oak, letting the boy and two of his friends pass by on the trail. Scarlett uncaps a Chapstick, swipes her own lips and offers me some.

“I’m good,” I say. I am mad, but I can’t say why. It is damp here and we swat at swarms of bugs. Mushrooms grow like white fists in the rotted logs.

Finally we reach the lake. We take off our shoes and stand barefoot in the cold water. On the opposite shore, sharp Manzanita branches claw at the red shale slope up to Devil’s Ledge where the Townies jump to the dark pool below. The tree line along the water lies like the serrated edge of a knife against the exposed flesh of the slope.

Scarlett and I wade out to the sunning rock to watch the jumpers. Little clouds of silt swirl up from the lake bottom, and my feet and ankles look bloated and corpse-like in the water. A pack of teenage boys climbs the ridge to Devil’s Ledge, Scarlett’s boy among them. I can pick out the caramel cast of his skin, the sun-faded hair. He is the first to stand on the ledge, legs and arms wide, commanding the attention of the teenagers sunbathing on towels on Baby Beach and the Summer People drifting in funyaks on the water. It’s close to a twenty-foot drop to the water below. Scarlett stands up to watch, shielding her eyes from the sun with her forearm.

The boy salutes, then jumps, arms pinwheeling. His friends’ shouts echo across the lake. “Cup your junk!” they yell. At the last second, he crosses one leg over the other and balls his fists. When he hits the water, he is submerged for longer than I’d hoped before breaking through the surface, whipping his wet hair across his forehead, then swimming a choppy crawl to the beach. Several more boys jump, and one girl. The bellows of the boys and the girl’s shrieks bounce across the water.

Scarlett’s boy beckons to her now. He stands on a boulder at the water’s edge, waving her over to his side.

“Scarlett!” he calls.

“Let’s swim over,” Scarlett says to me.

“No,” I say.

“I’m going to.”

“Are you going to jump?” I ask.

“Maybe.”

Scarlett swims out to the turnaround buoy and keeps going. She reaches the shallow water where the boy waits, and I see them scramble out at the path to the cliffs. They disappear up the trail to the ridge, but here and there I see her turquoise bikini top as she makes the climb. I find a spot on the rock to stretch out. The warm granite on the backs of my legs gives me gooseflesh.

The shouting and whooping from Baby Beach start up again and when I look up, Scarlett stands on the ledge.

“Hey, Red!” a boy shouts. “Does your cuff match your collar?”

Scarlett holds very still and for a moment I think she won’t do it. But then she jumps, arms crossed over her breasts like a carving on the bough of a ship or a sarcophagus. Her hair and her bikini strings float upward and for a moment she is suspended against the red shale backdrop—held there in our gaze—before dropping to the water.

Her pointed toes pierce the water like a skin. I don’t wait to see her sleek red head pop up before I turn away to wade back to shore. I imagine Scarlett underwater, running in place, deep down where the watery murk is the green-brown of a Scooby Doo forest. Riblike branches from long-submerged pine trees curve up at her from the lake bottom. Her thighs flash fish-belly white, tiny bubbles cling to her eyelashes, and her hair streams around her face like red kelp.

Even when I reach the rocky bank where we’ve left our shoes, I don’t turn around to look for Scarlett on the other shore. I step into the trees and strap my sandals on there, already shrugging off whether she’ll wonder where I went and why I left without saying goodbye. I hike alone back up the mountain, passing a troop of Cub Scouts trudging in clumps down to the lake, and I reach the Old Firehouse Lookout hot and thirsty. I have a moment of regret when my bike is not where I left it—I should have locked it. I face a long walk back to the cabins, but by then, the afternoon alone looms long and empty and it doesn’t matter where I go or whether I get there on time. 

KATIE DICKSON

Katie Dickson has published short stories in The Penn Review, 3Elements Literary Review, and The Coachella Review. Her story “A Matter of Weight” was nominated for Best of the Net 2017 and New Stories from the Midwest Anthology 2018. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she enjoys swimming, hiking with her clingy pitbull mix, and sleeping.