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.”