“Why are you out here?”

“I was just thinking about you. About why you didn’t die. I’m trying to understand.”

“I’ll tell you all about it, just come back with me. We need to get back.”

“We? You’re back to we, now? And here I thought you spent the night on the couch with your neighbor.” He sneered, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. He had been out there. I was right to fear. But I didn’t have the time.

“Come with me,” I said.

“Do you want to help me, Delaney?”

“Yes.”

“Help me understand.”

I squinted against the glare on the lake and pointed toward the center. “I fell out there. I couldn’t find the surface. And then Carson got a rope and—”

“Show me,” he said.

“Show you?”

“Yes, out there.” He pointed to the sign. “It’s not thin anymore. You know that, right?” I did. We’d be skating across the lake now if I hadn’t fallen through. The sign was a lie. The ice wasn’t thin this time of year, but nobody would risk it now. After all, how many miracles could one lake grant?

I looked up the hill, wondering if anyone could see us. If the help I called would find us. I couldn’t see the road or the homes beyond. We were in a pit. Fitting. This was, after all, my hell. This pit around the lake. The lake that had taken so much. My friendship with Decker. My humanity. Quite nearly my life. And I was so angry with it. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was furious.

And Troy, who never gave me enough time to make a decision on my own, gripped my arm and pulled me with him onto the ice.

Troy moved like Decker across the ice, with sure-footed confidence. The surface was slick from the melting snow. It was uncharacteristically warm for January. Still cold, just not as cold as usual. For a moment I was panicked that the ice would melt, but then I remembered how it took a while for the water temperature to catch up to the air. It’s why the lake was still painfully cold in June, and why the water took longer to freeze than the air in the autumn.

I heard a splash with each step, experienced a small moment of panic before I felt the ice beneath my feet. I couldn’t even look down to check. The sun hit the ice at a slanted angle and refracted through the thin layer of water pooling on top, distorting the image.

I bumped into Troy’s back. “Here?” he asked. We were in the middle of the lake, the point of no return, the farthest spot from land. I looked to the far shore and remembered that day, seeing Decker reach Carson on shore, knowing I was slightly closer to them.

“A little more,” I said, feeling more secure once we were nearer land. I shaded my eyes with one hand and squinted toward the far shore and the McGovern home beyond. “Right around here,” I said. Then I looked down, trying to see into the depths. Into hell. I thought I could see movement under the ice, a current, water lapping against the surface.

I stepped back. “It’s too thin.”

Troy gripped my shoulder. “It’s fine. It’ll hold as long as you don’t fall again.” This was a terrible idea. This ice was too new. It had shattered when I fell in, and it hadn’t had time to re-form solidly. I looked back toward our starting point, toward home, and tried to gently dislodge myself from Troy.

“Tell me what happened here,” he said.

“I was going too fast,” I said. “And I fell. Nothing happened for a minute, but I didn’t move. I didn’t try to get up. And then everything just fell apart underneath me.”

“I hear drowning is very peaceful.”

I looked away, back toward the shore, wondering when help would arrive. Wondering if they already came and left. Wondering if they thought it was a prank call and wouldn’t ever come. Drowning was not peaceful. I was terrified. I was frozen. I was useless. But I kept that to myself. I didn’t want to talk to Troy about dying anymore.

“But you didn’t die,” he said. “So what happened?”

“Like I was saying, Carson got a rope. Decker came in after me.”

“So, you would’ve died without Decker. This”—he released my shoulder and gestured toward my body—“was an accident. A mistake.”

“I guess.” Miracle, anomaly, fluke. Nobody had called my life a mistake before.

“So,” he said slowly, thinking while he spoke, “if it hadn’t been for Decker, you’d be dead.”

“I don’t know,” I said. Maybe someone else would’ve saved me. Unlikely, but possible.