Helen’s eyes on the sky, unable to follow the bird’s path. It was far away now.
I’m sorry, I said between chattering teeth.
I hauled myself up. Not shivering but quaking, my whole body racked and shuddering as I scooted away from the water then hauled Helen toward me, till we was on thicker ice. An hour, two, a whole day, it seemed, to strip her of her coat, her pants, her socks, and boots. Another whole day to strip myself, a week to crawl into her clothes, not warm but dryer than my soaked-through clothes, at least. Do this. Just do this one last thing, and you can go back home. Like this never happened. Except it had. Would continue to happen. Always.
I pushed at her bare feet and she was a plank of wood scooting headfirst toward the water, till the ice broke under her. I inched myself back toward the sled. For a long second, she floated. Till she begun to drop, feet first. Her eyes the last thing visible before she disappeared under the water.
My teeth clacking so hard my whole skull felt about to shatter. My bare hands stuck to the ice and I peeled them off, one then the other, as I crawled to the sled. The ice creaked, panic squeezed the breath from me, till I realized it was just the normal twanging of a froze-over lake. My arms and legs dumb, hard to work. Fumbling to pull myself into the basket. Under the blanket I’d used to cover Helen.
I might of fallen asleep then. I might of got a whistle out first, something to tell the dogs it was time to go home. That’s where they went, back down the trail, without me to encourage them or holler them faster. They raced through the woods under snow-crusted branches, the day noontime bright and glittering, the kind of day you ought to spend outdoors. I stared at the patches of sky, struggled to keep my eyes open. Afraid of what I’d see when they closed. But when I couldn’t keep them open no more, when I finally did drift off, I didn’t see nothing. There wasn’t nothing left.
Back at the house, still more to do. I left the dogs on the line and attached to the sled, tethered to a tree so they wouldn’t run off, while I hauled myself inside and crawled out of Helen’s clothes and into the shower. Lukewarm water likes needles all over me at first, till my skin begun to warm and I finally stopped shaking. I was lucky nothing was frostbit.
Downstairs, I built a fire in the woodstove, stoked it, then fed Helen’s clothes to it, piece by piece. Her Carhartts smoldered while her wool socks burst into flame instantly. I would have to take her boots to the burn barrel, they would smoke something awful. I held her shirt to my face, remembering how after Mom died I had sometimes hid in her closet, where her blouses and sweaters still hung, and pressed my face to the fabric to catch the scent of her, clinging like a ghost to her things. Helen’s shirt smelled faintly of sweat, of metallic cold air, of dog and fabric softener and things baking. When I took it away, it was damp, and I threw it into the fire.
Back outside to take the dogs off the line. I left the sled parked in front of the barn, the gangline strewn across the snow, while I fed the dogs again then rubbed their paws and checked them for cuts since I hadn’t took the time to fit them with booties.
The ground where Helen had laid all night was rusty with the blood that had run out of her. No puddle, I’d disturbed the snow when I drug her onto the sled. But there was enough red spotted on the ground to tell something had bled there.
I fetched a rake from the barn and tried not to think about how it was the same kind I’d seen through Jesse’s eyes. Used it to comb the red out of the snow.
Exhaustion was creeping over me, ready to fell me like a tree. But it was after noon now, only a few hours before the Lesters would bring Scott home from school, and there was one last thing to do.
I climbed into Helen’s Jeep and found her keys where she always left them, in the ignition, like anyone was welcome to use her car if ever they needed to. I turned the Jeep round, got it onto the highway, and drove. A half hour south I pulled to the side of the road and got out, locked it with the keys still in the ignition. A VSO or a state trooper would come across it sooner or later and start wondering who it might belong to. By then Dad would of already reported Helen missing, I imagined. People would search for her, police and coworkers from the clinic and folks from the village, she was well liked. They would find her, eventually. But not till spring.
I run back home.
When I got there, I finally crawled into bed. Certain I would plummet into sleep, every bone and muscle and inch of skin shredded. But when I closed my eyes, it only made finding Helen easier. I searched for sleep and found her life, lived it moment by moment and all at once. I stared at the ceiling and seen Helen, not a breath or pulse in her, just a pair of eyes under the ice.
At first, I thought it was a dream. A hunger gnawing at my stomach, my trip to the refrigerator automatic, not an option but a routine. Then a checklist, one intention lined up after the next, an evening full of plans: Snack. Homework. Drawing. Anything good on TV tonight? Dinner, maybe I should offer to make it so I don’t have to eat Tracy’s cooking—
I sat up in bed, my head pounding. Thoughts like bubbles continuing to float to the surface, then burst open, exposing me to—
Scott? I hollered.
His footsteps on the stairs, irritation pricking his skin, how he hated yelling, why couldn’t people just talk in normal voices?
I clutched my head. These thoughts wasn’t mine, but they couldn’t be his. I wasn’t looking for them, hadn’t drunk him in ages. And the thoughts I’d got from him before wasn’t like this, clear, loud, happening inside me soon as he had them.
What’s up? he said when he poked his head in my room.
Concern that my sister looked sick again. Exasperation, there was always something going on with Tracy, trouble all the time. Hunger still scratching its nails at me, my shirt too tight at the armpits, I didn’t know why I picked this one to wear today, and a washed-out feeling, all I wanted to do was hide in my room a bit and draw or read in quiet, it had been too many days away from home and too many hours with a friend I now realized I only sort of liked.
Nothing, I gasped, and I got up, shoved past him and shut myself in the bathroom.
With a little distance, Scott was fainter but not gone. I could still find him, except there wasn’t no finding, he was there, present inside me without me needing to conjure him up, and the feeling and thought and impulse and experience wasn’t old but new, now. It didn’t make no sense. The taste I had got of Scott when we was younger was like the taste I had got of the first animal I ever caught, the chipmunk that wriggled out of my hand and bit me. Before I drained it I only got fleeting impressions, the briefest sense of its fear and the instinct that drove it to protect itself. A taste only gives you moments. I had got moments from people, too, thoughts and memories that was on their mind when I drunk. From Aaron, from Scott. From Jesse. Sometimes I could suss out what was on his mind even without drinking, we was so close, but I hadn’t never heard his thoughts, loud and unfiltered inside my own head. I had drunk from hundreds of animals as they died warm in my hands, lived their lives. But their lives hadn’t opened me up to every other critter in the woods.
Never make a person bleed, that’s what Mom had told me, what she’d made me promise.
I had broke that promise plenty. But I hadn’t never drunk from a person as they died. Not till Helen.
I crumpled to the floor as Scott knocked and asked, You okay, Trace?