“Help us!” Gabi screamed into the treetops. “Somebody!” She shook her hand, trying to restore sensation before reaching over the ruptured ice and clamping Bradley’s wrist. The velocity and volume of the thundering water were so loud that Gabi could barely hear Bradley’s pleas, though their faces were only a foot apart. The whites of his eyes were enormous, his pupils shrunk to terrified pinpricks as tears and snot streamed down his face. “I’ve got you, Bradley,” Gabi yelled, but she didn’t, and they both knew it. There was nothing for her other hand to grab on to so that she could pull both of them back from the hole. She tried using both hands to tug at his wrists, but that only brought her closer to the rushing water, adding her weight to his on the collapsing ice.
“Don’t let go,” Bradley pleaded, his lips cooling to a hue that Gabi recognized all too well. “Please don’t let me go.”
“I won’t, I promise, but I can’t pull you in by myself. Can you kick your feet harder and try to pull with your hands while I pull on your wrist?” Gabi was crying now too.
“Okay,” Bradley shouted, “but you have to really pull. One, two—”
“Wait!” Gabi shouted, swiping one hand and then the other on her legs to dry them. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“One, two, three!”
The spray from Bradley’s flailing feet rained down on their heads. Gabi’s body slid toward the edge of the slab as she pulled with all her might, her own feet kicking on the ice behind her. Bradley’s arms bent as he raised himself a few inches across the inclined ice, but as he kicked, Gabi saw the ice under his hips tilting deeper into water. The kicking and Bradley’s pulling were causing the floe to separate totally from the surrounding sheet, raising it to an eighty-degree angle and threatening to overturn.
“Stop!” Gabi screamed. “Bradley, stop kicking!” But the boy was a wild animal, thrashing his legs as the ice rose. She felt the familiar sensation of his relentless hold on her wrists and knew from experience that Bradley would not let her go, no matter what. “Bradley, you have to let go of me so I can find something in the woods that I can pull you out with. Or I can hold on to you until someone comes, but you have to stop kicking!” The edge of the ice dug into Gabi’s ribs as Bradley’s weight reeled her toward him, and the slab rose higher. She was completely off the ground from hips to knees, her feet dragging as Bradley tried to climb her arms to safety.
“Fucking try!” Bradley screamed. His hands clawed at her shoulders, gripping until he and Gabi were cheek to cheek. The edge of the ice scraped across her belly, catching on her protruding hipbones before grinding past them to scour down her thighs. Hands free, she tried to reach backward and grab on to the edge of the slab, but when she tried to pull away, Bradley gripped the back of her neck with both hands.
As they began their unchecked slide toward the sucking hole, Gabi heard a voice screaming her name. Mathew, she thought, the water rushing up toward her. Mathew was coming, but would he reach them in time? Maybe she and Bradley could hold their breath until the water carried them to another break in the ice? The stream was roaring down toward the valley where it was warmer. If she could just hold on to Bradley and ration her breath, they might make it. Bradley’s grip loosened on her neck as the frigid water paralyzed him. He began to slip away. Gabi drew the deepest breath of her life, thrust her hands at Bradley’s chest, and twisted the fabric of his uniform around her fists. Like a dropped anchor, his weight towed her after him as the black water closed over their heads.
GABI WAS on fire. The backs of her eyelids glowed red, and sweat drenched the shroud that enveloped her. Bound up like a trapped housefly in a web, the heat felt as though it were about to peel the skin from Gabi’s face. Her tortured body tethered her, refusing to release her back into unconsciousness. Gabi’s first thought was that she had died and gone to hell. Her second was that surely Bradley was there with her, as if being in hell weren’t bad enough. Her third thought, spurred by the memory of slipping beneath the ice curled around Bradley like twin embryos in a womb, consisted of just three words. I am dead.
Being dead hurt. Was it supposed to? Why couldn’t she move? Had she been mummified? Self-pity consumed her as she assessed the implications of being dead. She would never see Mathew again, or Marnie or Jordan. She would never again feel giddy warmth unfolding like petals inside her when Marnie smiled at her or crushed her in a hug. Was she here because of her “unnatural” feelings for Marnie, or because the two of them had questioned the existence of God? Or was it all the lies she had told since Gram died or her failure to honor Gram’s dying wish? It turned out there was whole a laundry list of explanations for why her afterlife migration had been down rather than up.
Gabi turned her face away from the stifling heat with a whimper, surprised to find the warmth dispersed in cool night air. The whipcrack sound of a fire was layered with the saw of wind in the trees and that seductive water music that had consumed her and Bradley. There was another kind of music woven through that—melodic voices chanting in a strange tongue. The act of turning her head activated
