Raise It Up, page 23
How could Georgie do this to us?
I could not understand it.
What were we supposed to do now? Would someone adopt the three of us—me, Charlie and Kay—or would we get split up and sent to different “homes”? Would they send Charlie to the nut house with all the other crazy people there? How could he survive such a thing?
We could fill our backpacks with camping equipment and extra clothes and leave, I thought. Just do what I was doing. Head off into the woods. Find a way to survive. Tell all of them to fuck off and die.
Stupid idea.
Stupid stupid stupid, as Charlie would say.
I could try to talk Georgie out of it, but I knew him. When he made up his mind about something, that was it. He was a stubborn shit, and make no mistake. And he’d gone out of his way to tell me he’d already been to see the county folks, so this wasn’t some spur of the moment thing, but something he’d been thinking about and planning and wanting to do, and just waiting for the right time to tell me.
I heard a tree branch snap, and I stopped in my tracks, instantly on alert.
My breath formed clouds on the air.
I turned my head back and forth, listening.
Sometimes snow weighed down branches, broke them.
Sometimes.
And sometimes bears snap branches when they walk over them….
I refused to think about that.
I waited a full minute, but there was silence.
I began to shiver from the cold. It was either at or just above freezing. Either way, I should have known better than to go out at night in nothing but my coat and tennis shoes. I wouldn’t freeze to death in the time it took to get to Oliver’s house, but I’d been damned uncomfortable.
Rubbing my hands together again, I hurried.
From the lay of the land and the way the trees sloped to the right along a small ridge, I knew the river was close at hand. I hadn’t gotten lost. Bully for me.
The river was only about twenty feet across. It was not a huge thing, not by any means. Maybe seven or eight feet deep, at the most. In this part of the woods, it was rather placid and slow. As I emerged from the trees, I saw the sheen of ice across the top of it.
At least I could slip-slide my way across and not have to go out of my way.
Relieved at this bit of good fortune—at least one thing had gone right—I hurried onto the ice, which was solid but not quite as thick as I had first thought. You can’t see through really solid ice, which looks white and impenetrable. But when it’s more bluish in color, or dark, that means the ice isn’t quite so thick.
As I got out to the middle of the river, I realized all the ice around me was dark. When I squinted at it, I could see water flowing beneath it in the faint glow of moonlight.
As I pondered whether to turn around, which would have been the safest thing to do, I heard a sudden, loud snapping noise.
The ice had cracked.
As I turned to retreat, the sheet of ice I stood on dipped suddenly and water came gushing through the break. Before I knew what was happening, I had fallen and was sliding into the water and beneath the ice.
FORTY-SEVEN: A tough break
IT WAS the strangest thing, floating in the water, looking upward at the ice above my head. I was puzzled, mystified.
What the hell?
I was in shock, perhaps. Disbelief. Stunned by my stupidity.
But then suddenly the cold of the river water, which had soaked through my coat and clothes and shoes, gripped me like a vice. The weight of it pulled me down. Down and down. I kicked with my feet, aimed my head for the ice above, but the slow current pulled at me and did not care about my protestations.
With a dawning sense of horror and panic, I realized the gentle current of the river was pulling me downstream, away from the break in the ice above. If that happened, I would not be able to get out. I would not be able to smash my way through the ice. I would drown, swiftly and surely, and I wouldn’t be the first to have suffered such a fate.
Galvanized, horrified, I kicked at the cold, dark water.
My coat was weighing me down too much for me to surface. I fought to shrug it off so I could lighten myself.
It took too long. By the time I got the coat off, I was a good five feet down the river and away from the break in the ice. I swam for it, but the current rebuffed me. I pumped furiously with my feet and my arms, but the opening seemed to get farther and farther away.
Shit!
I reached up, banged on the ice above me, which was solid. An inch thick, maybe, if that, but solid. I would never be able to punch out an opening.
I needed to breathe.
One moment I was okay, the next I was out of air, could hold my breath no longer.
Why had I gone through the woods?
What the hell was wrong with me?
I kicked furiously, banged on the ice with both hands, which only forced me back down, deeper into the water. I rose up again, banged my right fist as hard as I could. This was greeted with a brilliant, piercing pain, as though my hand had been cut off.
Think, dammit!
Think!
There had to be something I could do, some way out of this situation. There had to be. It couldn’t end like this. How ridiculous, how stupid.
Why had I gone through the woods?
I could not see anything around me, but I realized suddenly I had one chance. If I could get to either shore, get my feet on solid ground, I might hope to break through the ice using my back as a sort of battering ram.
But there was little time.
I picked a direction, kicked out, paddled my arms against the water desperately, putting every ounce of strength I had into it. Now that I wasn’t fighting the current, I made better progress and I could see by the light above that I was moving at a good speed.
Then, suddenly, there was ground underneath my feet.
I walked forward several more steps until I was bent over, the ice on my back, the ground solid beneath me.
I pushed up, my lungs screaming for air, the strength in my body almost gone, my back pushing against the heavy ice.
No use.
The ice probably weighed a ton or more.
It was stupid to think I could break it.
Desperate, panicked, I walked forward a few more steps to give myself a bit of extra height, and tried again. I pushed upward with everything I had. I pushed with such force my knees and ankles screamed from the pain of it.
Suddenly the ice broke around me.
I stood up fully, took a huge breath of air.
Trembling from the cold, all I could do for a long moment was stand there and breathe.
I was about five feet from the shore.
I hurried forward, felt a sudden, sharp agony in my right foot, and collapsed, darkness filling my mind.
FORTY-EIGHT: Don’t leave us
WHEN I came to, I did not, at first, remember where I was.
I felt peaceful, relaxed, like I’d been slumbering. Not sleeping, which was too mundane, but slumbering. Like an angel floating on a fluffy cloud. Slumbering peacefully like a baby. Not a care in the world.
It was a wonderful feeling.
I felt wonderful.
I felt….
I noticed suddenly that my body was full of strange, sharp pain. I struggled to sit up, put out my hand to brace myself, then cursed as pain shot upward through my arm. I had broken my hand. I couldn’t put any weight on it.
I rolled over, scooted backward on my backside to get out of the water entirely. When I tried to stand, I experienced another moment of intense agony when I put weight on my feet. My right foot would not support me. I had broken that too, it seemed. Or fractured it. Or something.
Then, suddenly, I realized it was cold. And not just cold, but frigidly cold, deathly cold. I began to tremble and shake from head to foot. My body felt like a million pins were being stuck into it. I coughed up water, which spilled down my front. Looking at it, I remembered that I had removed my jacket and now sat there in a wet flannel shirt that was quickly hardening.
“Oh God,” I muttered, looking around, feeling afraid now.
I had survived, yes, but if I couldn’t get on my feet and start walking, I would perish from the elements. Not immediately. It took a few hours. But still.
I muttered under my breath for the Sacred Heart of Jesus to help me. I did it without thinking.
I had never experienced such cold. It was both outside me and inside me. Down in my chest, my lungs, my belly, my legs and feet. It felt cold, but it also felt hot and sharp and painful. Like a sword that was on fire and slicing through me.
“Sacred Heart, please,” I whispered.
The woods were silent. The river was silent. The moon shone down through the opening the river made through the trees and found me, but it too was silent.
I tried to get to my feet again. If I had to, I could hop, couldn’t I? When I put all my weight on my left ankle, it too complained with sharp agony. I managed five hops before it became too painful to continue.
I fell into the snow.
“No, please,” I whispered to God, hoping he could hear me, knowing he could not. “Don’t do this to me. I’m sorry, God. I know I’m a bad person and I’m sorry. Please don’t do this to me. I can be better. You’ll see. Give me a chance. Please.”
Something caught in my throat and I began to cough. For a scary moment, I couldn’t swallow properly, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t dislodge whatever was in my throat. It was the cold, I knew. Cold did things to you. Screwed with you.
Please, God, I thought, hugging my arms to my chest to get warm.
Please, please, please….
“Cee Cee?”
For a moment, I thought I heard someone calling my name.
Sounded like Georgie.
I was imagining things, no doubt. But still.
“Georgie?” I called as loudly as I could, which was not very loud.
I waited for what seemed an eternity for him to respond.
There was only silence.
I had to get moving. Why was I sitting there like an idiot? If I couldn’t walk, and couldn’t hop, then I’d crawl, but I had to keep moving. Wasn’t more than a mile back to the house. It would take a while, but I could do it.
I got on my belly and started to crawl through the snow, which was about a foot deep and thus right in my face. The feeling of the snow on my face, my shoulders, my arms—after a few minutes, I was shaking so badly I could hardly move. The snow had gone down the front of my shirt, into my sleeves, down my pants, everywhere.
“Shit!” I muttered, wiping snow away from my face with my good hand. “Shit, shit, shit!”
It wasn’t fair.
That was the thing.
It wasn’t fair.
None of it was.
What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to fix these problems? How was I supposed to stop my father from beating my brother John John senseless? I was a fucking child! I was forty pounds of nothingness and impotence. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to protect Charlie when Daddy went after him with a frying pan? How was I supposed to fix these things?
It wasn’t fair!
“Goddammit,” I swore. Purposefully. Intentionally. “Goddammit!”
If God was so great and wonderful and all of that, why wouldn’t he help me? Why did I face all of these things alone?
Now Georgie was going to wash his hands of us and walk away.
Fuck him.
And fuck God.
The anger that swept through me was frightening.
It wasn’t fair.
I kept thinking that, over and over.
It wasn’t fair.
Weren’t your mom and dad supposed to take care of you? How could they let you down so badly? How could you survive, knowing you couldn’t count on them, knowing when you needed them the most, they wouldn’t be there?
I was not making sense. Part of me knew that. It was ridiculous to think about such things when I was cold and scared and in serious trouble.
I needed to get moving.
Yet I sat there and cried uselessly, angrily, and if I thought my insides had unraveled before, it was nothing like this. It felt like the whole world was spinning madly out of control, leaving me nauseated and bewildered and terrified.
“Cee Cee?”
A voice. Faint. But distinct.
I wiped at my eyes, tried to breathe.
Every breath caused my chest to heave in agony.
“Georgie?”
“Cee Cee?”
It was Georgie.
I tried to stand. Could not.
“Georgie?” I cried out, my voice hoarse, weak. “Georgie!”
“Cee Cee?”
The voice was louder.
Suddenly I saw a light bobbing along the riverbank.
“Georgie?”
“Jesus, Cee Cee! Is that you?”
George hurried through the snow in my direction, the light of his flashlight blinding me.
“Jesus! What the hell?”
He crouched down.
“Georgie,” I whispered.
“What are you trying to do?” he demanded, taking my head and shoulders onto his lap. “What the hell, Cee Cee?”
“Georgie, please don’t leave us,” I said. “Please, Georgie. We’ll be better. I swear. We will. You’ll see. But don’t leave us.”
“You’re going to freeze to death. Were you in the water?”
“The ice broke.”
“Can you walk?”
I shook my head.
“Jesus!” he said again.
He seemed scared. I’d never seen Georgie scared. It was odd.
“I’ve got to get you home,” he said, nodding to himself as if he’d reached a decision. “Jesus, you’re going to freeze to death. And by the way, the next time you run away, you might want to try not to leave huge tracks through the fresh snow. Anyone could have found you, the tracks you left. And I knew I’d better come after you, you’re such a dope.”
He removed his jacket, draped it over me.
Then he stood, picked me up and carried me in his arms.
“Georgie?”
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Don’t leave us, Georgie. Please? I’ll be better. I’ll do everything you say. Just please… don’t leave us.”
“Just be quiet now.”
“Promise me, Georgie.”
He did not answer.
“Promise me,” I ordered.
“I can’t understand what you’re saying, bud,” he replied, glancing down at me.
“I’m drowning, Georgie. You understand me? Don’t let me drown, Georgie. I don’t want to go down there anymore. I’m scared, Georgie.”
“I can’t hear you, bud. Just be quiet.”
“I don’t want to drown, Georgie.”
“Don’t try to talk.”
I tried to explain what I was thinking, but I couldn’t get the words out.
I settled my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes.
BOOK THREE
ONE: Why won’t you help me?
IN THE dream, John John and I were swimming. He dove beneath the surface. I did too. He swam very fast, surfaced, and I rose up after him, desperate for air. I looked around to see where he had gone, but suddenly I was standing on dark ice, bundled up in my snowmobile suit as the frigid Michigan cold tore at me.
I glanced around, confused.
Daddy, standing on the shore about twenty feet away up to his knees in snow, shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Help him!”
He pointed frantically at the ice.
I looked down.
John John was banging away at the other side of the ice, trying to break it, to free himself.
I crouched down, scared, my mittened hands banging uselessly at the black, cold glass that separated us. John John looked up at me, his eyes full of fear.
Why wasn’t I helping him?
Why was I so useless?
I banged my hands on the ice as hard as I could, desperate to help him.
His lips opened. He mouthed words I could not understand.
The ice was iron, unyielding, cold, merciless.
The current pulled at John John, and he drifted away beneath the surface of the ice. I crawled after him, frantic, sliding on the slick, black surface, thinking if I could just keep up with him, I might be able to do something, but the current pulled him farther and farther away.
I glanced around. I was far out on the ice of the lake now. Daddy was a tiny figure on the shore, far, far away.
John John had disappeared, leaving me alone on the ice.
I called John John’s name over and over. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. If anyone would know what to do, John John would know. Me, I didn’t know.
I never did.
John John did not answer.
The sound of the ice suddenly cracking was like a shotgun blast.
TWO: He needs to sleep
“CYRUS?”
I opened my eyes, squinted at the harsh lights.
My head hurt.
“Cyrus?”
It was a female voice.
I tried to focus on the owner of the voice, could not.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so badly, my whole body aching and unhappy.
Georgie had taken me home, put me to bed. I woke the following morning with a godawful fever. I remember how scared he looked as he drove to the hospital in Bay City.
“He needs to sleep,” a male voice said. “Two milligrams should do it. Did you write that down on his chart?”
I tried to open my eyes again, but I was tired. Just so tired. So sleepy.
THREE: I wanted to see
“HEY, CEE Cee,” Oliver said, reaching over the railing of my hospital bed to take my good hand. “Heard you went swimming.”
I offered as much of a smile as I could.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“What’s a few broken bones and pneumonia, eh? Man, I’ve been waiting three days to see you, but they wouldn’t let me. I guess you’re going to live, so that’s pretty cool. At least you kicked the fever.”
I could not understand it.
What were we supposed to do now? Would someone adopt the three of us—me, Charlie and Kay—or would we get split up and sent to different “homes”? Would they send Charlie to the nut house with all the other crazy people there? How could he survive such a thing?
We could fill our backpacks with camping equipment and extra clothes and leave, I thought. Just do what I was doing. Head off into the woods. Find a way to survive. Tell all of them to fuck off and die.
Stupid idea.
Stupid stupid stupid, as Charlie would say.
I could try to talk Georgie out of it, but I knew him. When he made up his mind about something, that was it. He was a stubborn shit, and make no mistake. And he’d gone out of his way to tell me he’d already been to see the county folks, so this wasn’t some spur of the moment thing, but something he’d been thinking about and planning and wanting to do, and just waiting for the right time to tell me.
I heard a tree branch snap, and I stopped in my tracks, instantly on alert.
My breath formed clouds on the air.
I turned my head back and forth, listening.
Sometimes snow weighed down branches, broke them.
Sometimes.
And sometimes bears snap branches when they walk over them….
I refused to think about that.
I waited a full minute, but there was silence.
I began to shiver from the cold. It was either at or just above freezing. Either way, I should have known better than to go out at night in nothing but my coat and tennis shoes. I wouldn’t freeze to death in the time it took to get to Oliver’s house, but I’d been damned uncomfortable.
Rubbing my hands together again, I hurried.
From the lay of the land and the way the trees sloped to the right along a small ridge, I knew the river was close at hand. I hadn’t gotten lost. Bully for me.
The river was only about twenty feet across. It was not a huge thing, not by any means. Maybe seven or eight feet deep, at the most. In this part of the woods, it was rather placid and slow. As I emerged from the trees, I saw the sheen of ice across the top of it.
At least I could slip-slide my way across and not have to go out of my way.
Relieved at this bit of good fortune—at least one thing had gone right—I hurried onto the ice, which was solid but not quite as thick as I had first thought. You can’t see through really solid ice, which looks white and impenetrable. But when it’s more bluish in color, or dark, that means the ice isn’t quite so thick.
As I got out to the middle of the river, I realized all the ice around me was dark. When I squinted at it, I could see water flowing beneath it in the faint glow of moonlight.
As I pondered whether to turn around, which would have been the safest thing to do, I heard a sudden, loud snapping noise.
The ice had cracked.
As I turned to retreat, the sheet of ice I stood on dipped suddenly and water came gushing through the break. Before I knew what was happening, I had fallen and was sliding into the water and beneath the ice.
FORTY-SEVEN: A tough break
IT WAS the strangest thing, floating in the water, looking upward at the ice above my head. I was puzzled, mystified.
What the hell?
I was in shock, perhaps. Disbelief. Stunned by my stupidity.
But then suddenly the cold of the river water, which had soaked through my coat and clothes and shoes, gripped me like a vice. The weight of it pulled me down. Down and down. I kicked with my feet, aimed my head for the ice above, but the slow current pulled at me and did not care about my protestations.
With a dawning sense of horror and panic, I realized the gentle current of the river was pulling me downstream, away from the break in the ice above. If that happened, I would not be able to get out. I would not be able to smash my way through the ice. I would drown, swiftly and surely, and I wouldn’t be the first to have suffered such a fate.
Galvanized, horrified, I kicked at the cold, dark water.
My coat was weighing me down too much for me to surface. I fought to shrug it off so I could lighten myself.
It took too long. By the time I got the coat off, I was a good five feet down the river and away from the break in the ice. I swam for it, but the current rebuffed me. I pumped furiously with my feet and my arms, but the opening seemed to get farther and farther away.
Shit!
I reached up, banged on the ice above me, which was solid. An inch thick, maybe, if that, but solid. I would never be able to punch out an opening.
I needed to breathe.
One moment I was okay, the next I was out of air, could hold my breath no longer.
Why had I gone through the woods?
What the hell was wrong with me?
I kicked furiously, banged on the ice with both hands, which only forced me back down, deeper into the water. I rose up again, banged my right fist as hard as I could. This was greeted with a brilliant, piercing pain, as though my hand had been cut off.
Think, dammit!
Think!
There had to be something I could do, some way out of this situation. There had to be. It couldn’t end like this. How ridiculous, how stupid.
Why had I gone through the woods?
I could not see anything around me, but I realized suddenly I had one chance. If I could get to either shore, get my feet on solid ground, I might hope to break through the ice using my back as a sort of battering ram.
But there was little time.
I picked a direction, kicked out, paddled my arms against the water desperately, putting every ounce of strength I had into it. Now that I wasn’t fighting the current, I made better progress and I could see by the light above that I was moving at a good speed.
Then, suddenly, there was ground underneath my feet.
I walked forward several more steps until I was bent over, the ice on my back, the ground solid beneath me.
I pushed up, my lungs screaming for air, the strength in my body almost gone, my back pushing against the heavy ice.
No use.
The ice probably weighed a ton or more.
It was stupid to think I could break it.
Desperate, panicked, I walked forward a few more steps to give myself a bit of extra height, and tried again. I pushed upward with everything I had. I pushed with such force my knees and ankles screamed from the pain of it.
Suddenly the ice broke around me.
I stood up fully, took a huge breath of air.
Trembling from the cold, all I could do for a long moment was stand there and breathe.
I was about five feet from the shore.
I hurried forward, felt a sudden, sharp agony in my right foot, and collapsed, darkness filling my mind.
FORTY-EIGHT: Don’t leave us
WHEN I came to, I did not, at first, remember where I was.
I felt peaceful, relaxed, like I’d been slumbering. Not sleeping, which was too mundane, but slumbering. Like an angel floating on a fluffy cloud. Slumbering peacefully like a baby. Not a care in the world.
It was a wonderful feeling.
I felt wonderful.
I felt….
I noticed suddenly that my body was full of strange, sharp pain. I struggled to sit up, put out my hand to brace myself, then cursed as pain shot upward through my arm. I had broken my hand. I couldn’t put any weight on it.
I rolled over, scooted backward on my backside to get out of the water entirely. When I tried to stand, I experienced another moment of intense agony when I put weight on my feet. My right foot would not support me. I had broken that too, it seemed. Or fractured it. Or something.
Then, suddenly, I realized it was cold. And not just cold, but frigidly cold, deathly cold. I began to tremble and shake from head to foot. My body felt like a million pins were being stuck into it. I coughed up water, which spilled down my front. Looking at it, I remembered that I had removed my jacket and now sat there in a wet flannel shirt that was quickly hardening.
“Oh God,” I muttered, looking around, feeling afraid now.
I had survived, yes, but if I couldn’t get on my feet and start walking, I would perish from the elements. Not immediately. It took a few hours. But still.
I muttered under my breath for the Sacred Heart of Jesus to help me. I did it without thinking.
I had never experienced such cold. It was both outside me and inside me. Down in my chest, my lungs, my belly, my legs and feet. It felt cold, but it also felt hot and sharp and painful. Like a sword that was on fire and slicing through me.
“Sacred Heart, please,” I whispered.
The woods were silent. The river was silent. The moon shone down through the opening the river made through the trees and found me, but it too was silent.
I tried to get to my feet again. If I had to, I could hop, couldn’t I? When I put all my weight on my left ankle, it too complained with sharp agony. I managed five hops before it became too painful to continue.
I fell into the snow.
“No, please,” I whispered to God, hoping he could hear me, knowing he could not. “Don’t do this to me. I’m sorry, God. I know I’m a bad person and I’m sorry. Please don’t do this to me. I can be better. You’ll see. Give me a chance. Please.”
Something caught in my throat and I began to cough. For a scary moment, I couldn’t swallow properly, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t dislodge whatever was in my throat. It was the cold, I knew. Cold did things to you. Screwed with you.
Please, God, I thought, hugging my arms to my chest to get warm.
Please, please, please….
“Cee Cee?”
For a moment, I thought I heard someone calling my name.
Sounded like Georgie.
I was imagining things, no doubt. But still.
“Georgie?” I called as loudly as I could, which was not very loud.
I waited for what seemed an eternity for him to respond.
There was only silence.
I had to get moving. Why was I sitting there like an idiot? If I couldn’t walk, and couldn’t hop, then I’d crawl, but I had to keep moving. Wasn’t more than a mile back to the house. It would take a while, but I could do it.
I got on my belly and started to crawl through the snow, which was about a foot deep and thus right in my face. The feeling of the snow on my face, my shoulders, my arms—after a few minutes, I was shaking so badly I could hardly move. The snow had gone down the front of my shirt, into my sleeves, down my pants, everywhere.
“Shit!” I muttered, wiping snow away from my face with my good hand. “Shit, shit, shit!”
It wasn’t fair.
That was the thing.
It wasn’t fair.
None of it was.
What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to fix these problems? How was I supposed to stop my father from beating my brother John John senseless? I was a fucking child! I was forty pounds of nothingness and impotence. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to protect Charlie when Daddy went after him with a frying pan? How was I supposed to fix these things?
It wasn’t fair!
“Goddammit,” I swore. Purposefully. Intentionally. “Goddammit!”
If God was so great and wonderful and all of that, why wouldn’t he help me? Why did I face all of these things alone?
Now Georgie was going to wash his hands of us and walk away.
Fuck him.
And fuck God.
The anger that swept through me was frightening.
It wasn’t fair.
I kept thinking that, over and over.
It wasn’t fair.
Weren’t your mom and dad supposed to take care of you? How could they let you down so badly? How could you survive, knowing you couldn’t count on them, knowing when you needed them the most, they wouldn’t be there?
I was not making sense. Part of me knew that. It was ridiculous to think about such things when I was cold and scared and in serious trouble.
I needed to get moving.
Yet I sat there and cried uselessly, angrily, and if I thought my insides had unraveled before, it was nothing like this. It felt like the whole world was spinning madly out of control, leaving me nauseated and bewildered and terrified.
“Cee Cee?”
A voice. Faint. But distinct.
I wiped at my eyes, tried to breathe.
Every breath caused my chest to heave in agony.
“Georgie?”
“Cee Cee?”
It was Georgie.
I tried to stand. Could not.
“Georgie?” I cried out, my voice hoarse, weak. “Georgie!”
“Cee Cee?”
The voice was louder.
Suddenly I saw a light bobbing along the riverbank.
“Georgie?”
“Jesus, Cee Cee! Is that you?”
George hurried through the snow in my direction, the light of his flashlight blinding me.
“Jesus! What the hell?”
He crouched down.
“Georgie,” I whispered.
“What are you trying to do?” he demanded, taking my head and shoulders onto his lap. “What the hell, Cee Cee?”
“Georgie, please don’t leave us,” I said. “Please, Georgie. We’ll be better. I swear. We will. You’ll see. But don’t leave us.”
“You’re going to freeze to death. Were you in the water?”
“The ice broke.”
“Can you walk?”
I shook my head.
“Jesus!” he said again.
He seemed scared. I’d never seen Georgie scared. It was odd.
“I’ve got to get you home,” he said, nodding to himself as if he’d reached a decision. “Jesus, you’re going to freeze to death. And by the way, the next time you run away, you might want to try not to leave huge tracks through the fresh snow. Anyone could have found you, the tracks you left. And I knew I’d better come after you, you’re such a dope.”
He removed his jacket, draped it over me.
Then he stood, picked me up and carried me in his arms.
“Georgie?”
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Don’t leave us, Georgie. Please? I’ll be better. I’ll do everything you say. Just please… don’t leave us.”
“Just be quiet now.”
“Promise me, Georgie.”
He did not answer.
“Promise me,” I ordered.
“I can’t understand what you’re saying, bud,” he replied, glancing down at me.
“I’m drowning, Georgie. You understand me? Don’t let me drown, Georgie. I don’t want to go down there anymore. I’m scared, Georgie.”
“I can’t hear you, bud. Just be quiet.”
“I don’t want to drown, Georgie.”
“Don’t try to talk.”
I tried to explain what I was thinking, but I couldn’t get the words out.
I settled my head against his shoulder and closed my eyes.
BOOK THREE
ONE: Why won’t you help me?
IN THE dream, John John and I were swimming. He dove beneath the surface. I did too. He swam very fast, surfaced, and I rose up after him, desperate for air. I looked around to see where he had gone, but suddenly I was standing on dark ice, bundled up in my snowmobile suit as the frigid Michigan cold tore at me.
I glanced around, confused.
Daddy, standing on the shore about twenty feet away up to his knees in snow, shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Help him!”
He pointed frantically at the ice.
I looked down.
John John was banging away at the other side of the ice, trying to break it, to free himself.
I crouched down, scared, my mittened hands banging uselessly at the black, cold glass that separated us. John John looked up at me, his eyes full of fear.
Why wasn’t I helping him?
Why was I so useless?
I banged my hands on the ice as hard as I could, desperate to help him.
His lips opened. He mouthed words I could not understand.
The ice was iron, unyielding, cold, merciless.
The current pulled at John John, and he drifted away beneath the surface of the ice. I crawled after him, frantic, sliding on the slick, black surface, thinking if I could just keep up with him, I might be able to do something, but the current pulled him farther and farther away.
I glanced around. I was far out on the ice of the lake now. Daddy was a tiny figure on the shore, far, far away.
John John had disappeared, leaving me alone on the ice.
I called John John’s name over and over. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. If anyone would know what to do, John John would know. Me, I didn’t know.
I never did.
John John did not answer.
The sound of the ice suddenly cracking was like a shotgun blast.
TWO: He needs to sleep
“CYRUS?”
I opened my eyes, squinted at the harsh lights.
My head hurt.
“Cyrus?”
It was a female voice.
I tried to focus on the owner of the voice, could not.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so badly, my whole body aching and unhappy.
Georgie had taken me home, put me to bed. I woke the following morning with a godawful fever. I remember how scared he looked as he drove to the hospital in Bay City.
“He needs to sleep,” a male voice said. “Two milligrams should do it. Did you write that down on his chart?”
I tried to open my eyes again, but I was tired. Just so tired. So sleepy.
THREE: I wanted to see
“HEY, CEE Cee,” Oliver said, reaching over the railing of my hospital bed to take my good hand. “Heard you went swimming.”
I offered as much of a smile as I could.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“What’s a few broken bones and pneumonia, eh? Man, I’ve been waiting three days to see you, but they wouldn’t let me. I guess you’re going to live, so that’s pretty cool. At least you kicked the fever.”
