Free Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

siren. Only then was she able to slowly pull it all together. Only then did she buy the ticket.
    Now when Joanna thinks about dying, she thinks of the day she almost did, the careful planning, the way the light looked there in the late-afternoon sky. It was only four but already nearing dark. It was her favorite kind of day and she had come to New Hampshire seeking it, seeking some resolution to what felt like a really lousy story. There was wood smoke in the air, birds rustling in the leaves, her breath visible as she stared at the distant outline of the White Mountains. There was a Chinese dogwood—bright red stems against the backdrop of snow—and it occurred to her that if she were staying, she would cut some and put them in a vase.
    The hot tub on the deck was almost as big as the rented cottage and set inground like a pool. The rental person, a middle-aged soft-bodied guy who smelled like Febreze and chicken soup, told her the heater was busted and he hoped she wasn’t disappointed. “It’s got these powerful jets and holds up to ten men,” he said, clearly well versed in hot tubs and their potential, and she told him a big vat of poached men was the last thing she cared to think about at the moment, in fact it left her feeling nauseated. If he had meant to be flirting, and he may have been—she had always had such a hard time telling—that cooled it all. He handed her the key and a free DVD rental and she drove straight to the liquor store and then down the long wooded dirt drive to the small somewhat rundown cottage. Nothing worked quite right—burned-out porch light, two of the gas burners not working, the bed soft as pudding and stale-smelling—but what did it matter? She poured a glass of vodka and went outside. The giant ten-man hot tub with jets should have been covered, a light snow already falling, but it wasn’t her job. She was just a weekend renter, someone on a shitty vacation, a dog looking for a place to die. She took pills so it would all be an accident, just the right amount for a distracted insomniac to accidentally take. She had even practiced a couple of times. This is the right amount, sloppy notes told her, scrawled as she passed out . Fuck you from the bottom of your fucked-up heart.
    She closed her eyes and imagined the ocean, the rhythmic sound of her childhood, the rocking motion of waves against sand like the lava-wave lamp Ben had in his dorm room all those years ago—back and forth, back and forth, steady as a pendulum. He had not been expecting her visit and it was awkward in a way she would never have thought possible. They were partners, after all, best friends bound by the secret oath, she reminded him, and so he canceled his plans—clearly a date—and they ended up having a night together that pretty much finished the friendship if, in fact, anything had been left. He treated her no differently than he would’ve the girl who got stood up or probably any other average ordinary girl. He treated her like nothing. Now you see her, now you don’t.
    She imagined a plug pulled from the ocean, sucking and swirling and spiraling downward, until all that was left visible there on the sandy floor was shell and rock and glass and bone. She felt the ice cold water—puzzling the irony of it being a hot tub—and she felt how heavy her boots were, full and heavy; she was thinking how people have drowned in little bowls of water and she was thinking of her childhood, the magic shows, the way Ben had her tie his hands and then his legs together before he jumped from the small bridge over the river where they used to all gather to swim. She had learned slipknots and they had practiced often; still, she held her breath as she watched him below the murky brown water, twisting and writhing like a snake. Those standing there would begin to count, and then there was nervous laughter, one boy already stripped of his shirt and ready to dive in and then poof! Ben broke the surface, grinning and