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Theo wanted to be our friend. We never wanted to be his. But he was always asking to come along — comic in one hand, inhaler in the other — and we got a kick out of seeing what we could dare him to do. By the time school let out for summer we’d convinced him to eat crickets; and a ham sandwich from the trash; and tossed that inhaler over his head, laughing until his eyes welled up.

We spent that summer hanging around the river. They’d told us the water was too cold to swim in, so Tommy and Jason and I biked out there and spent afternoons coughing over puffs of Jason’s mom’s cigarettes and drinking Tommy’s dad’s beer.

One morning in early July, Theo came running out while we were riding by his house, asking if he could come, too. We exchanged glances, and Tommy arched a brow and smirked and said sure. When Theo walked his bike out, Jason tilted his head at the playing card Theo’d stuck between his wheel spokes. Tommy rolled his eyes.

We spent the afternoon introducing Theo to beer and laughing as he wheezed over his first cigarette drag. Tommy’d drank too much, and as the afternoon was winding down he called out to Theo and thumbed in the direction of the river. “You a good swimmer, Theo?”

“I’m all right,” he said, even though I could see him shaking.

“Dare you to swim over to that rock,” Tommy said.

Theo hesitated. “I don’t know. The water —”

“Don’t be a chicken,” Tommy said, then he swore and pushed Theo back a step.

“I don’t know, Tommy, the water’s cold and it’s moving pretty fast,” Jason said.

“Shut up,” said Tommy, red blooming on his cheeks. He took a stumbling step toward Theo, who scrambled back behind us toward the bikes. Tommy swore again. “You’re all a bunch of pansies.” he said. “I’ll show you.”

We told him not to. We told him he was drunk. The more we protested, the more irate he became, cussing us out and calling us names and asking when we’d turned into girls. In the end we couldn’t stop him stripping down to his trunks and climbing down into the brown water below.

Theo, Jason, and I watched his head bob slowly up the river toward the boulder he’d highlighted. When he reached it he stood up in the water and put his hand out on it, and we all let out the collective breath we’d been holding.

Tommy laughed and shouted something to us we couldn’t hear. He beat his chest with his fists and tipped his head back and roared. Triumphant, he started walking back across the river toward us.

He went under so fast I had to blink a few times before I realized. At first we thought he’d just gone back to swimming and dunked his head under the water. Then we stood, frozen, until Jason started screaming, “Tommy!” and Theo looked at me with wide blue eyes and asked me, high-pitched and scared, “What do we do?”

“He’s just swimming,” I said. “He’ll come back up in a second.” And I kept saying that until it got dark.

“We can’t leave him here,” Jason said. “What if he’s hurt? What if he needs help?” Even in the dark I could see Theo’s hanging head and the droop of his shoulders as he turned and started walking up the bank toward our bikes. The only sound on the ride home was the clicking stutter of the card Theo had clothespinned to his spokes.

None of us were there when they dragged him out. They told us he’d got his foot caught and they told us there wasn’t anything we could have done to save him. We didn’t even get in trouble for the alcohol and the cigarettes. Theo, Jason and I spent the blistering summer replaying it anyway, desperate to find the solution we’d all missed. I knew we couldn’t help, but we did it anyway, hoping our agonizing over every detail would earn us repentance if not time reversal.

After school started, Theo stopped trying to be friends with us. Jason didn’t really want to see me. I didn’t want to see anyone. To everyone else, Tommy’s death was stale by fall. I thought no one remembered but me, until I saw Theo and Jason at our ten-year reunion. Theo shot me a tight-lipped smile and Jason jerked his chin in recognition. For a moment I was back there in the dark, pushing my bike up the bank, listening to the slow tick of Theo’s playing card and the rushing of the river that took our friend away.