“This is hell. Why would you possibly want to stay here?”
I pulled on my arm and turned my body away, just in time to see Decker running down the hill toward the lake. “No,” I said. I flung my free arm over my head and held out my hand, hoping he’d get the message. “Stay back!” I yelled, though he couldn’t have heard me over the wind. Decker listened though. He raced along the side of the trail back and forth, trying to figure out what was going on out here.
I looked back to Troy and shook my head. Because it wasn’t hell. Not always. Sirens blared in the distance, and Troy’s grip tightened on my arm.
He pulled me tight to his body so I had to lean back to look at him. “What the fuck did you do?” he spat in my face.
“I called for help.”
“Why the hell would you do that? You said it yourself, I’m dying. You can’t change that.”
“There’s always hope.”
He let go of my arm, giving me a slight push. I slipped but caught my balance. “You’re a damn fool,” he said. “The hope is killing you.” Then he put his arms out to the side, like a vision of the Crucifixion.
I stepped back, understanding. Troy shook his head at me. “I’m doing you a favor,” he said.
I took another slow, steady step, and then another. Then he tipped his head backward and let gravity take over. He fell, his body stiff, and crashed into the ice. And a thousand cracks spread outward, around me, under me, past me.
The wind blew a voice across the lake. “Run!” it said. The cracks multiplied under my feet. The ice opened under Troy and the lake consumed him.
I spun on the fractured ice.
I ran.
I wasn’t careful. I ran, pounding the ice beneath my feet, propelling myself forward. I pumped my arms, cutting through the wind pushing me backward. With each step, I heard the crack, the ice weakening, the fracture chasing me.
I didn’t look down. I looked in front of me, at Decker, waiting for me on the shore.
“Run!” he yelled again. I was getting closer. Close enough to see his expression. To see the panic in his face, like when he lost control of the minivan on the way home from Les Mis. Close enough to see his hand, reaching out for me.
Take my hand and lead me to salvation
Close enough to hear him pleading with me to run faster, the same way he’d pleaded when he said he loved me.
Take my love for love is everlasting
I ran faster, the ice giving way beneath me as soon as I lifted each foot back up. I ran away from Troy as he sank deeper into hell.
And remember the truth that once was spoken
Troy was right. This could be hell. But it could also be heaven. Decker and I heard the words together that night.
To love another person is to see the face of God.
I kept my eyes wide open as the fracture caught up to me and I fell.
Chapter 20
Again.
First, came the pain. Needles piercing my skin, my insides contracting, everything folding in on itself, trying to escape the cold. Next, the noise. Water rushing in and out, and the pain of my eardrums freezing.
But then, something new. Gritty earth under my soles. A distorted voice from above. I had run close enough to the shore to be able to straighten my legs, plant them on the lake bottom, and push myself to standing. My head broke the surface, and I sucked in the cold air. My shoulders emerged, and I dug my elbows into the surrounding ice.
I coughed and sucked in another gulp of air, and then I laughed. I tipped my head back toward the sun and smiled like it was the hottest day of summer.
Decker crouched beside me on the ice, grinned, and reached a hand down.
I grabbed his palm with both my hands, and he pulled me up.
We inched back toward the shore, me and Decker both shaking. Me from the cold, him from panic, probably. When we reached the cluster of trees, I heard someone clear his throat from above.
“Didn’t you kids see the damn sign?” An officer stood on the ledge with his hands on his hips. Decker and I walked up toward him. He wasn’t alone. There was a fire engine in front of his police car and an ambulance behind it. I guess when I failed to provide the details of my emergency, my town decided to cover all the bases.
“It’s not me,” I said, my finger tracing the fissure from the shore all the way to the gaping hole in the middle. “My friend fell in.” Then I hiccuped and caught the horror before it spilled over.
The officer looked from me to Decker. “He looks okay.”
I shook my head and whispered, “Not him.”
The officer’s eyes grew wide. He spun around and shouted at the people in the ambulance cab and the fire truck. They ran. They ran with axes and ropes and hand-held radios. They ran with buoys and blankets and waterproof gear. Decker took my hands and blew his warm breath onto my blue fingers, and the shaking subsided.
There was nothing to be done. Troy was dead.
A car pulled onto the shoulder behind the ambulance. A man got out to watch the commotion, then looked over at me and Decker. There’d be more coming. So we walked home to Decker’s house. If my parents saw me in this condition, they’d lose it.
By the time we snuck in his back door, my hands were shaking again. This time from the cold, the freezing air smacking my wet skin. My teeth chattered so much I couldn’t speak. I tried to tell Decker I needed a shower, but no words formed. It didn’t matter. He walked me to the bathroom, turned the water on, and pulled off my stiff outer layers as he waited with me until steam filled the room.
Then he left, but I could see his feet on the other side of the door, pacing back and forth. I stood under the warm water until my blue fingers turned pink and blood ran hot under my skin again. I still felt the cold in my bones, and I tried to shake it off. It’s not real, I thought. Just the absence of heat. Just a void. Like darkness is the absence of light. Like death is the absence of life.
Maybe hell was just an absence of something. A void waiting to be filled.
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped myself in a thin beige towel. Decker must’ve come in sometime during my shower, because a pile of sweats lay at the base of the door. I threw on his oversized sweatshirt and too-long sweatpants and gray wool socks, grateful that he liked his clothes baggy.
I padded down the hall to the open door in Decker’s room. He was sitting on the bed, staring at the bare wall over his desk. I sat next to him, and he stood up and walked to the window. He craned his neck, trying to see down the street, to the lake. We both knew he wouldn’t be able to see that far.
“What were you doing out there?” he asked without looking at me.
I shook my head and pressed my eyelids together tightly. “I was trying to save him.”
“What was he doing out there?”
I opened my eyes and looked at Decker. I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t know, to deflect the question, to lie. He didn’t deserve that. So I told him the truth, or part of it at least. “He was trying to save me. Or, that’s what he thought he was doing.”
Decker threw his hands into the air. “Really? That’s the answer you’re going with?” He tapped his pointer finger on the window. “They’ll come for us, you know. They’ll ask what we were doing out there. You might want to come up with a better answer than that.”
“Decker.”
He waved me off. “Look, I’m glad you’re okay. More than glad. I just can’t listen to you lie anymore.”
I wondered whether he’d believe me—believe what I’d become, and what I was still becoming. If he’d understand what I could do and what I could not do. Then I realized I was worrying about nothing. Decker was always able to believe in the impossible—that I could live when I was dead, that it could snow in August, that loving me was enough.
“I won’t lie to you,” I said. It was a promise to him and to myself.
“No. It’s what you don’t say. That’s worse.”
He was right. I didn’t tell him I loved him, and now it was probably too late.
“He was sick,” I whispered.