The Good
Guide
Fiction by
Shelley Savran Houlihan
• Art by Sunny Williams
I walked backwards. I'd gotten good at it, after four years of
leading tours. Good guides keep eye contact with
prospective students and parents and siblings who don't really want to
be there anyway. Good guides don't even step carefully
backwards. We move like it's natural, like the rest of the
world is moving in the wrong direction.
I was going to let out all the stops. I was fired up about this
tour, really more than any of the billions I'd done.
Because it was my last one. I wanted to remember it
forever. The warm day. The tulips and new
leaves. I thought of all I was going to miss. I mean not
the classes so much as the discussions. The arguments about
whether Tibet should be freed and whether there is free will or if
everything is fated. I still don't know about fate, even after all that
happened.
I was already thinking about that long brick archway.
Candles. Graduation. Walking forward with all my friends,
walking as the sun set. It's beautiful, even if you think it's kind of
dorky. I'd seen it before.
But on that tour, I knew I was freaked because it was the last time
I'd be walking backwards, maybe even in my whole life. I couldn't
have walked forward, even if I'd been supposed to. Like I was
ready to cross into another space I couldn't have gotten to
before? Everyone else was more ready to make it than I was,
though I couldn't have said it that way then. Friends already knew what
they were going to do. I made jokes about how I'd soon be unemployed.
Kind of lame. I hoped someone would think I was smart or funny,
and give me their card, you know? Not take pity on me so much as
recognize my talents. Give me a break. Deliver me from
having to work at that crappy restaurant till I found something
else. Something that'd make my parents think they'd gotten their
money's worth.
I was walking backwards on that last tour like always. Telling
them all about the legends at the pond. The kisses on the bridge
that were supposed to lead to marriage. To happily ever
after. Jobs and such. Even babies. I made it all sound so
promising. Romantic. People like that sort of thing. They want to
believe that the path is carved out for them, that they'll have it all
sewn up by the time they graduate. I guess I did too.
So I was going to do it that last day. Just step into the pond
with the lily pads and the sludge and the promises forever.
I mean, I wasn't supposed to. It was a rule. But it was my
last tour. And water is only water. So I took off my
watch and my glasses and fished my billfold out of my pocket and set
them all down on the post at the edge of the water. Then I
walked backwards. I was a good tour guide. I never walked
forwards. Only backwards. I stepped back into the
cold water. I could feel my chin touch the edge of something hard
and scratchy. Knocked my head up and back like a sucker punch.
Everything changed then. It was dark in there. It didn't
feel as weird as I thought it would. It hurt only for a second when my
spine snapped. After that, it was like I was already gone. The
water wasn't cold anymore. I floated down to the bottom, I guess,
and my eyes were open. It was dim and dirty even though it was
water, and it filled me up. I could hear nothing. The
taste was rank and bitter and then there was no taste at all. I
was happy for that.
I hadn't wanted that to happen. I'm sure of that. But just the same, I
was relieved that the wondering and the waiting were over. I could
relax. I still don't know why things happen or why they don't,
but I don't let it worry me. There's so much time now. No hurry.
Now I'm part of the folklore. I'm the dude with the freak accident, and
it's a shame that the tour guides will probably always know what
happened to me. It'll be passed down, whispered about from one group of
guides to the next. It's not the legacy I would have hoped for. They'll
see it as a cautionary tale. But it won't be part of their job to
divulge it. It'll just be something that they know, and they'll wonder
how and why it happened when they stop to think about it at the end of
their tours. My requiem. There's no getting around that.
So I walked backwards like a good guide. I was always a good guide. One
of the best. I knew how to tour.
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