Bridge to Terabithia

by Katherine Paterson

He said that to think of the book now, all these years later, is emotionally rending. He said that he has this vague memory of blaming me. And then he told me about a devastating loss one of his students was enduring, and that he was able to imagine his way into that student’s loss by remembering the feelings he had reading Bridge to Terabithia.

Jess drew the way some people drink whiskey. The peace would start at the top of his muddled brain and seep down through his tired and tensed-up body. Lord, he loved to draw. Animals, mostly. Not regular animals like Miss Bessie or the chickens, but crazy animals with problems—for some reason he liked to put his beasts into impossible fixes. This one was a hippopotamus just leaving the edge of the cliff, turning over and over—you could tell by the curving lines—in the air toward the sea below where surprised fish were leaping goggle-eyed out of the water. There was a balloon over the hippopotamus—where his head should have been but his bottom actually was—“Oh!” it was saying. “I seem to have forgot my glasses.”

Miss Edmunds would play her guitar and let the kids take turns on the autoharp, the triangles, cymbals, tambourines, and bongo drum. Lord, could they ever make a racket! All the teachers hated Fridays. And a lot of the kids pretended to.

“Daddy!” May Belle screamed with delight and started running for the road. Jess watched his dad stop the truck, lean over to unlatch the door, so May Belle could climb in. He turned away. Durn lucky kid. She could run after him and grab him and kiss him. It made Jess ache inside to watch his dad grab the little ones to his shoulder, or lean down and hug them. It seemed to him that he had been thought too big for that since the day he was born.

“Jesse Aarons. Bobby Greggs. Pass out the arithmetic books. Please.” On the last word, Mrs. Myers flashed her famous first-day-of-school smile. It was said in the upper grades that Mrs. Myers had never been seen to smile except on the first and the last day of school.

Mrs. Myers handed out books almost as though she were President of the United States, dragging the distribution process out in senseless signings and ceremonies. It occurred to Jess that she, too, wished to postpone regular school as long as possible.

A fight broke out at the finish line between Jimmy Mitchell and Clyde Deal. Everyone rushed to see. Jess was aware that Leslie Burke stayed at his elbow, but he was careful not to look her way.

He heard her say “Jess” once, but the bus was noisy enough that he could pretend he hadn’t heard. When they came to the stop, he grabbed May Belle’s hand and dragged her off, conscious that Leslie was right behind them. But she didn’t try to speak to him again, nor did she follow them. She just took off running to the old Perkins place. He couldn’t help turning to watch. She ran as though it was her nature. It reminded him of the flight of wild ducks in the autumn. So smooth. The word “beautiful” came to his mind, but he shook it away and hurried up toward the house.

She plunked herself down beside him on the bus and squeezed over closer to him to make room for May Belle on the same seat. She talked about Arlington, about the huge suburban school she used to go to with its gorgeous music room but not a single teacher in it as beautiful or as nice as Miss Edmunds.

It started with Mrs. Myers reading out loud a composition that Leslie had written about her hobby. Everyone had to write a paper about his or her favorite hobby. Jess had written about football, which he really hated, but he had enough brains to know that if he said drawing, everyone would laugh at him.

Mrs. Myers’ sharp voice cut Leslie’s sentences into funny little phrases, but even so, the power of Leslie’s words drew Jess with her under the dark water. Suddenly he could hardly breathe. Suppose you went under and your mask filled all up with water and you couldn’t get to the top in time? He was choking and sweating. He tried to push down his panic. This was Leslie Burke’s favorite hobby. Nobody would make up scuba diving to be their favorite hobby if it wasn’t so.

“Both sides of the paper?” “One side will be enough, Wanda Kay. But I will give extra credit to those who do extra work.” Wanda Kay smiled primly. You could already see ten pages taking shape in her pointy head.

Leslie named their secret land “Terabithia,” and she loaned Jess all of her books about Narnia, so he would know how things went in a magic kingdom—how the animals and the trees must be protected and how a ruler must behave. That was the hard part. When Leslie spoke, the words rolling out so regally, you knew she was a proper queen. He could hardly manage English, much less the poetic language of a king.

Leslie’s favorite place besides the castle stronghold was the pine forest. There the trees grew so thick at the top that the sunshine was veiled. No low bush or grass could grow in that dim light, so the ground was carpeted with golden needles. “I used to think this place was haunted,” Jess had confessed to Leslie the first afternoon he had revved up his courage to bring her there. “Oh, but it is,” she said. “But you don’t have to be scared. It’s not haunted with evil things.” “How do you know?” “You can just feel it. Listen.”

“It’s not a great present like yours,” she said humbly, “but I hope you’ll like it.” He wanted to tell her how proud and good she made him feel, that the rest of Christmas didn’t matter because today had been so good, but the words he needed weren’t there.

Jess tried going to Terabithia alone, but it was no good. It needed Leslie to make the magic. He was afraid he would destroy everything by trying to force the magic on his own, when it was plain that the magic was reluctant to come for him.

Jess’s feelings about Leslie’s father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and worse instead of better. You spend a lot of time trying to keep your teeth away from it. Then sure as Christmas you forget the silly thing and chomp right down on it. Lord, that man got in his way. It even poisoned what time he did have with Leslie. She’d be sitting there bubbling away at recess, and it would be almost like the old times; then without warning, she’d say, “Bill thinks so and so.” Chomp. Right down on the old sore.

There was a rule at Lark Creek, more important than anything Mr. Turner made up and fussed about. That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn’t believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to protect them. By tomorrow every kid and teacher in Lark Creek Elementary would be talking in half snickers about Janice Avery’s daddy. It didn’t matter if their own fathers were in the state hospital or the federal prison, they hadn’t betrayed theirs, and Janice had.

“Thanks to you, I think I now have one and one-half friends at Lark Creek School.” It hurt him for it to mean so much to Leslie to have friends. When would she learn they weren’t worth her trouble? “Oh, you got more friends than that.” “Nope. One and one-half. Monster Mouth Myers doesn’t count.” There in their secret place, his feelings bubbled inside him like a stew on the back of the stove—some sad for her in her lonesomeness, but chunks of happiness, too. To be able to be Leslie’s one whole friend in the world as she was his—he couldn’t help being satisfied about that.

Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.

Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

It wasn’t so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing—one of May Belle’s puzzles with this huge gap where somebody’s eye and cheek and jaw should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

He hardly slept the rest of the night, listening to the horrid rain and knowing that no matter how high the creek came, Leslie would still want to cross it.

May Belle was as scrawny as Brenda was fat. She stood a moment in the middle of the floor in her underwear, her skin white and goose-bumpy. Her eyes were still drooped from sleep, and her pale brown hair stuck up all over her head like a squirrel’s nest on a winter branch. That’s got to be the world’s ugliest kid, he thought, looking her over with genuine affection.

He pressed his forehead against Miss Bessie’s warm hide. He wondered idly if cows were ever scared—really scared. He had seen Miss Bessie jitter away from P. T., but that was different. A yapping puppy at your heels is an immediate threat, but the difference between him and Miss Bessie was that when there was no P. T. in sight she was perfectly content, sleepily chewing her cud. She wasn’t staring down at the old Perkins place, wondering and worrying. She wasn’t standing there on her tippytoes while anxiety ate holes through all her stomachs.

He tried to think of some way to protest without ending up with the bill, but couldn’t,

He cleared his throat. “No ma’am, thank you. Well—” He hated to leave without being able to really thank her, but the words were not coming for him now. Later, of course, they would, when he was lying in bed or sitting in the castle.

But, Leslie, what if you die?

Leslie—dead—girl friend—rope—broke—fell—you—you—you. The words exploded in his head like corn against the sides of the popper. God—dead—you—Leslie—dead—you. He ran until he was stumbling but he kept on, afraid to stop.

He tried to run faster, but his father passed him and stopped the pickup just ahead, then jumped out and ran back. He picked Jess up in his arms as though he were a baby. For the first few seconds Jess kicked and struggled against the strong arms. Then Jess gave himself over to the numbness that was buzzing to be let out from a corner of his brain.

He wanted to get out of this house. It was smothering him. Why wasn’t Leslie here to help him out of this? Why didn’t she come running in and make everyone laugh again? You think it’s so great to die and make everyone cry and carry on. Well, it ain’t.

him. Making fun of him like he was Mrs. Myers. She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there—like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.

He landed slightly upstream from Terabithia. If it was still Terabithia. If it could be entered across a branch instead of swung into.

They went into the castle stronghold. It was dark and damp, but there was no evidence there to suggest that the queen had died. He felt the need to do something fitting. But Leslie was not here to tell him what it was.

She looked at him in disbelief. “But you weren’t scared.” “Lord, May Belle, I was shaking like Jello.” “You’re just saying that.” He laughed. He couldn’t help being glad she didn’t believe him.

“Well,” Bill said. “If there’s anything we’ve left that you want, please help yourself.” “Could I have some of the lumber on the back porch?” Jess asked. “Yes, of course. Anything you see.” Bill hesitated, then continued. “I meant to give you P. T.,” he said. “But”—he looked at Jess and his eyes were those of a pleading little boy—“but I can’t seem to give him up.”

And when he finished, he put flowers in her hair and led her across the bridge—the great bridge into Terabithia—which might look to someone with no magic in him like a few planks across a nearly dry gully.

have been afraid of death since I was a child—lying stiffly in the dark, my arms glued to my sides, afraid that sleep would seduce me into a land of no awakening or of wakening into judgment.

We listened to him and cried with him, but we could not give Lisa back to him, these mere mortals that he now knew his parents to be.

No one interrupted me. But when I finally shut up, Ann Durell said very gently, “I know this sounds just like an editor, but you should write that story. Of course,” she added, “the child can’t die by lightning. No editor would ever believe that.” I thought I couldn’t write it, that I was too close and too overwhelmed, but I began to try to write. It would be a kind of therapy for me, if not for the children. I started to write in pencil on the free pages of a used spiral notebook so that when it came to nothing I could pretend that I’d never been very serious about it. After a few false starts, thirty-two smudged pages emerged, which made me feel that perhaps there might be a book after all. In a flush of optimism I moved to the typewriter and pounded out a few dozen more, only to find myself growing colder with every page until I was totally frozen. The time had come for my fictional child to die, and I could not let it happen.

I caught up on my correspondence, I rearranged my bookshelves, I even cleaned the kitchen—anything to keep the inevitable from happening. And then one day a friend asked, as friends will, “How is the new book coming?” and I blurted out, “I’m writing a book in which a child dies, and I can’t let her die. I guess,” I said, “I can’t face going through Lisa’s death again.” “Katherine,” she said, looking me in the eye, for she is a true friend, “I don’t think it’s Lisa’s death you can’t face. I think it’s yours.”

I still mourn for Leslie, and when children ask me why she had to die, I want to weep, because it is a question for which I have no answer.

It is a strange and wonderful thing to me that other people who do not even know me love Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke. I have given away my own fear and pain and faltering faith and have been repaid a hundredfold in loving compassion from readers like you.