When I opened the window to check on the noise outside, there was Bojan yet again threatening to slit his wrists with a rusty edge of a tomato can lid. His yellow eyes watched me with a mix of daring and hatred.

“Yes or no,” his lips whispered.

I shook my head no.

His friends goaded him on. “Do it Bojan. Show her how a man suffers.”

His intense eyes glued to me, he pressed the lid to the pulsing vein and gritted his teeth. My heart sank. “Nooo,” I screamed.

Bojan dropped the can. “Not this time,” he said. “I was just kidding. But I’m not giving up. I’ll be back.”

At school Bojan pretended like I did not exist. We never spoke. I didn’t know if he publicly avoided me because he was too shy and fearful of other students’ teasing or because he was deliberately hiding his pursuit of me.

A boy put his arm around Bojan’s shoulder. They laughed at the horror in my face and, arms intertwined, headed downhill towards the town center. Only moments after the suicide ultimatum, his mood had completely shifted. He seemed careless again. I watched his tall, angular body disappear behind the jasmine tree. When the last trace of his shadow was erased from the pavement and I could no longer hear the boys’ chatter, I threw myself onto the bed. I buried my head in the pillow. My heart was beating fast. This was the third time Bojan had tried to slit his wrists because I refused to be his girlfriend. He’d been following me home after school and hanging out by my window for weeks. At least my parents weren’t home to admonish me for this latest episode. They were getting annoyed with Bojan and his gang.

“Get rid of these boys Nina. Every time they come here, they steal my grapes,” my father said. “Who knew having a teenage daughter would be such robbery.”

“I tell him to leave me alone all the time, Tata. He doesn’t listen to me. What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m sure he’ll move on to some other girl soon. Just tell him to stay away from my grapes.”

My parents thought Bojan was just playing around and it was all a childish game. But I had a strange feeling about him. During the lunch break at school, I tracked his movements from the other side of the yard. He towered over everyone. I could easily spot his yellow head and gaunt face through the crowd. We were in the same year but had completely different friends. I hung out with the popular students by the school entrance. He spent the lunch break far from us, by the emergency exit with the boys from Carevo Polje village. My friends teased these boys because they ate smoked sausages with bread that their mothers had wrapped into handkerchiefs rather than pastries from the Klas bakery like everyone else. When it rained, they wore the traditional peasant rubber shoes. Other students wouldn’t be caught dead wearing those. At school Bojan pretended like I did not exist. We never spoke. I didn’t know if he publicly avoided me because he was too shy and fearful of other students’ teasing or because he was deliberately hiding his pursuit of me. Regardless, as soon as the bell rang and I headed home, he’d start haunting me.

Bojan came from an established Jajce family. His father was Vladimir Simic, a man known for running the oldest shoe repair shop in town. My father showed me their house one afternoon. “This is where that little rat lives that’s been stealing my grapes,” he said and pointed to a home perched on the hill right by the waterfall. It was a traditional turn-of the century house with white walls and a black rooftop. These houses were a historic landmark. After the war they became part of a UNESCO restoration project. His home was in a prime location. Nested among poplar and jasmine trees, it was visible on all the postcards of Jajce. If Bojan walked to the end of his garden and pulled aside the shrubbery, he’d look straight down at the waterfall. “The waterfall is my obsession,” he once told me. I could completely understand the feeling.

The waterfall was one of Jajce’s proudest attractions and the center of our town. Surrounding it was a park whose many benches were a popular destination for teenage lovers. At the top where the Pliva river finished its course and spectacularly merged into the Vrbas river was a small observation point with a gazebo. I loved to stand there and watch the water cascading down as stray drops hit my face. From this spot, I spied on couples kissing on park benches and obligingly took pictures of Belgian and German tourists posing at the precipice. There was a metal fence at the observation point for safety reasons, but it was easy to climb over it. Some people leaned so far against the fence that I worried they’d accidentally trip and fall into the abyss. Everyone knew this meant certain death. It wasn’t only because of the 30 meter height. The bottom where the two rivers converged was shallow and full of sharp rocks. Grandmas who wanted to scare children told the cautionary tale of a high school student who dived into the waterfall to honor a lost bet. He was tricked into jumping and was fool enough to believe he could emerge alive. They never even found his body.

…I wondered how my idyllic adolescence had so quickly become overwhelmed with worry about some wild boy and rumblings of war.

Two days after Bojan’s last wrist slitting incident, I was waiting for my parents to go on our usual walk through town. Still wearing their pajamas, my parents’ eyes were glued to the television. They didn’t want to go out. There was a demonstration going on in Sarajevo and more talk of war. “Is the war coming to Jajce too?” I asked. “Will we have to leave?”

They ignored me. I was furious. Why were they treating me like I was stupid? I could see what was going on.I left them staring at the news and ran down the Volijak hill towards the town center. The park was eerily quiet. I realized that I hadn’t seen any people on my way there. On weekends, Jajce’s streets were usually packed with crowds strolling around. Was everyone already too scared to go out? I continued towards the waterfall. I noticed a group of boys gathered at the gazebo. When I came closer and realized it was Bojan with a couple of his friends, I quickly turned around. Hoping he hadn’t seen me, I tried to duck behind a poplar tree. But it was too late.

“Nina,” he yelled out. “Is that you? Come here.”

“No.”

“Don’t act so shy. You don’t want me to jump into the waterfall because of rejection, do you?”

He dangled a foot above the abyss and laughed.

“Don’t,” I said with a mix of annoyance and fear. This was probably another empty threat. Why was he continuing to torture me? Still, I walked towards him, in case he tried to do something stupid. The smile on his face from just a moment ago vanished.

“Will you be my girlfriend or will you not? Tell me right here and now.”

“I won’t.”

“Then you’re responsible for my death.”

I started to walk away. I would not let him intimidate me. I suspected he didn’t have the guts to jump. I’d had enough of this cruel game. But just as I was about to turn into the lane leading towards the park exit, I heard a scream. I turned around again. Bojan was sprawled on the ground by the edge of the waterfall. The other boys tried to hold him back, but he crawled forward. He wiggled out of the jacket they’d grabbed, got up and climbed across the fence. I rushed back to him. He was already on the other side of the fence. His feet could barely fit on the tiny speck of ground. If he made one move forward, he’d fall. He looked at me in triumph, his eyes glossy and crazed.

“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.

“That Bojan is a nice young man. But something’s not quite right with him. Everyone says so,” the waiter said and picked up Bojan’s empty glass.

I followed Bojan with my eyes as he walked away from us into the park and towards the waterfall. From the cafe I could see his tall head and shoulders leaning against the fence by the gazebo. He stood there for a while and stared at the water gushing down. After his endless burst of energy at the table, his silhouette from afar seemed ominously quiet and subdued. As my dad and I walked home from the cafe, I could not shake off a certain misgiving. I still worried about Bojan.

I left Jajce a few days later to start graduate school in America. My father stayed behind to finish some repairs on our house. I was so busy with the trip, unpacking and the thrill of a new school that I forgot all about Bojan yet again. A call from my father changed that. Three days after we’d spoken to him, my father said, Bojan had jumped off the waterfall. Just as he’d once threatened he would.

I skipped classes that morning. What was the source of Bojan’s immense sadness, and why couldn’t he shake it off? Did seeing me play a role in his final act? I wondered if anyone could have stopped him, or if it was inevitable that Bojan’s life would end this way. I wondered what it was about the waterfall that captivated him so, that compelled him to plunge in. I don’t know any of the answers. It’s too late to change anything anyway. I just know I never want to see that waterfall again.