“W-w-where’s Q?” I sputter. Every breath, a struggle. Like suddenly if I want my lungs and nose to work, I have to consciously tell them to.

“Where’s Q? Is Q okay? Where is he?”

Autumn’s disappeared, and no one else answers.

But then I see him. Q’s not five yards away, lying faceup atop a blanket, the large quilt barely long enough to keep half his body off the sand.

I start to stand but they pull me back.

“Just relax,” they say.

Except no one else is relaxed.

Kids I’ve known all my life semicircle around Q, hands covering their horror, hands gripping other hands, hands wringing, praying.

I jerk from their grasp, but I’m moving too fast, too soon.

And I nearly topple onto Q, crashing beside the woman now pumping Q’s chest.

And this isn’t TV CPR.

This is bones cracking, wrists popping.

This is watching life empty from someone you thought you’d know forever.

Watching them drain so fast, it’s like there’s a pump attached to their feet, sucking the life with such efficiency that you can actually see it receding, dropping from their head to their waist to their ankles, dipping lower and lower.

He’s still not breathing, she says to the man forcing air into Q’s lungs.

As if just now Q’s made a choice.

But they keep rotating—from his head to his chest, chest to his head—as if it might go on forever. And if it did, if they never stopped, then in a way, it would be like Q was still here.

I beg Q to wake up. I yell at him. I make him promises I can’t keep.

Why’s it so easy to die?

Each of us is a stupid fuse waiting to trip, with no one to flip us back on.

Moments ago, Q’s breaths were jagged and shallow, but they were breaths.

But now—I raise my hand to Q’s nose—and, nearly nothing.

I feel next to nothing.

88

There was this resuscitation scene in, I forget the movie, where the near-victim’s eyes spring open and she’s coughing, and all of the onlookers’ faces go from panicked to relieved because she’s gonna make it, and she even tries to sit up as if waking from a dream.

And I remember Q’s mom, Ms. Barrantes, shaking her head, rolling her eyes. It rarely happens that way, she said. Most of the time, you can’t save them.

So, when Q suddenly gasps for air, I’m happy but stunned.

Not that it should surprise me. Q, he’s always been the type of person who defies all odds.