# Read the first page of Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward Read the opening of Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward free, no signup. Twin brothers finish school and struggle for work in the rural South. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/where-the-line-bleeds-jesmyn-ward - Genre: Literary fiction - Year: 2008 - ISBN: 9781501164347 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781501164347&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781501164347 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781501164347 ## The opening The river was young and small. At its start it seeped from the red clay earth in the piney woods of southern Mississippi, and then wound its way, brown and slow, over a bed of tiny gray and ochre pebbles through the pines, shallow as a hand, deep as three men standing, to the sandy, green lowlands of the gulf of Mexico. It slithered along, wide and narrow, crossed by small wood and concrete bridges, lined by thin slivers of white beach, in and out of the trees, before it divided itself into the bayou and emptied itself into the bay. Near the river's end, at one such bridge, two teenage boys, twins, stood at the apex. Legs over the side, they gripped the warm, sweaty steel at their backs. Underneath them, the water of the Wolf River lay dark and deep, feathered by the current. They were preparing to jump. The sun had only risen a few hours ago, but it was hot even for late May. Christophe, the thinner of the two, let his arms loosen and leaned out, testing the height. His muscles showed ropy and long over his shoulders and down his back. Christophe wondered how cold the water would be. Joshua, taller, and softer on account of the thin layer of fat across his stomach and chest and bigger in the arms, rested his rear lightly on the steel of the railing, shying from its heat. Christophe looked at his brother, and thought the air around him seemed to waver. Joshua kicked, spewing sand and gravel from the edge. He laughed. Christophe felt his hands slip and grabbed at the rail. He looked over at his brother and smiled, the side of his mouth curving into a fishhook. Christophe knew he was sweating more than normal in the heat, and it was making his hands slippery. He and his twin were still drunk from the night before. They were graduating from high school in three hours. “What the hell y'all doing?” Dunny, their cousin, stood below them on the sand at the edge of the water with a beer in his hand. He'd parked the car and walked to the bank while they'd taken off their shirts and shoes. His T-shirt hung long and loose on him except where it pulled tight over his beer belly, and his jean shorts sagged low. This was one of the tallest bridges on the coast. When they were younger, all the kids from Bois Sauvage would ride their bikes there and spend all day in a circuit: plummeting from the bridge, swimming to the shore, and then running on their toes over the scalding concrete to fall to the water again. Now, the twins were almost too old to jump. Christophe thought he and Joshua had jumped once the previous summer, but he was not sure. While Dunny had egged Christophe on when he thought of the bridge at 4 a.m. after he and Joshua finished off a case, Dunny had refused to jump. He was twenty-five, he had said, and while the twins could still balance on the iron railing like squirrels on a power line, he couldn't. “Y'all niggas gonna jump or what?” Dunny asked. Christophe squinted at Joshua, at the face that was his own, but not, full lips, a jutting round nose, and skin the color of the shallows of the water below that named them twins. If he leaned in closer, he could see that which was different: freckles over Joshua's cheeks and scars where Christophe's skin was clear, Joshua's eyes that turned hazel when the sun hit them while Christophe's eyes remained so dark brown they looked black, and Joshua's hair that was so fine at the neck, it was hard to braid. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-vanishing-half-brit-bennett.md) - [Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh](https://uncovered.ink/read/lapvona-ottessa-moshfegh.md) - [Wounded by Percival Everett](https://uncovered.ink/read/wounded-percival-everett.md) - [Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan](https://uncovered.ink/read/walk-the-blue-fields-claire-keegan.md) - [The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-reading-list-sara-nisha-adams.md) - [Intermezzo by Sally Rooney](https://uncovered.ink/read/intermezzo-sally-rooney.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.