“Don’t you see I’m serious?” he said.

“Please don’t do anything.”

“Why? You obviously don’t care. You don’t want to be my girlfriend.”

“I care. I just need more time to think about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Maybe I’ll be your girlfriend one day.”

His features softened. He hesitated. The soft spring breeze blew through his blond hair. His shirt and jeans were getting wet from the stray water drops. I smiled at him reassuringly. “Okay then,” he said. “I won’t jump. I’ll wait for you to make up your mind.”

As we crossed the bridge and turned onto the road leading out of town, I threw a last glance at the waterfall, that majestic force of nature at the center of all my daydreams…

He climbed across the fence towards us. As soon as he was safe again, I ran away. Racing through the park I’d always loved so much, I wondered how my idyllic adolescence had so quickly become overwhelmed with worry about some wild boy and rumblings of war. On the steep climb home up the hill, I gasped for breath, unable to shake off the image of Bojan standing at the precipice, about to jump.

Two days later the memory still upset me. I decided to walk to Bojan’s house to make sure he was okay. I could never be his girlfriend, but I could try to be his friend. He seemed so troubled. Maybe he really needed help. Those boys he hung out with weren’t taking his suicide threats seriously. They probably thought that Bojan was just putting on a show for the sake of romance. Maybe they were right. Bosnian men had a flair for theatrical gestures.

I never went to see him. That morning my mother decided we’d flee Jajce on the afternoon bus that was taking women and children across the Bosnian border. By the time we boarded the bus, I was overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions that I no longer thought of Bojan. As we crossed the bridge and turned onto the road leading out of town, I threw a last glance at the waterfall, that majestic force of nature at the center of all my daydreams, and Bojan’s house perched right above it.

As years passed and my family moved to America, I hardly ever thought of Bojan and his frantic tendencies. I knew he had stayed in town, but I never heard any news about him, nor was I curious enough to inquire. In my memories I cataloged him as just another boy who’d briefly crossed my path.

A few years after the war ended, my father and I came back to Jajce for a visit. I was shocked to see my town so ruined. Even the waterfall was a shell of its former self. A major flood and damage to the hydroelectric plant up the river had reduced the waterfall’s size from thirty to just twenty meters in height. One day, as my father and I were sitting at a cafe near the waterfall, Bojan passed by. He remembered me immediately and stopped to greet us.

“Have a drink with us,” I said.

He sat down and ordered a bottle of Fanta. Bojan was even skinnier and taller than I remembered. His hair was thinning on top. When his soda arrived, he drank it in quick gulps. He was animated and gestured wildly with his hands. He talked about the UNESCO program and how they were restoring his rooftop that had been damaged by a grenade. He rattled off the names of classmates whose whereabouts he knew. Almost none of them had stayed in Jajce, he said. As he spoke, I searched his face for some sign of recognition of the strange moments that had passed between us. There was no indication that he remembered any of it. For a moment, I thought maybe I’d only dreamed it all. His feet were restless, his knees bobbing up and down. He seemed anxious. But then he smiled brightly and said in the most normal and pleasant voice how nice it was to see me after all these years. I suppressed my worry. He left us at the cafe soon after finishing his drink.