The Vanishing Season (21 page)

Maggie felt like she had moments to decide what to do. She walked to the edge of the snow-covered beach.

She put a foot out onto the snowy, gritty, slippery surface. And then another, testing. She picked up speed with each step.

It could have been five minutes or fifteen. Maggie only knew that she’d made up her mind to trust that the lake was truly frozen through, because she was deep into it now, and the tracks went farther, even as they were disappearing under the driving snow.

At first she wasn’t sure whether the dark speck ahead was a person. As she got closer, there was no doubt—Pauline’s skinny frame was silhouetted against the snowflakes, moving away from her, barely there at all.

“Pauline!” she screamed.

The figure came to a halt and seemed to swivel. An arm rose to wave as its owner shifted to the left.

And then she disappeared.
Whoosh.

Maggie didn’t scream or think. Her mind went as clean and clear as an animal’s; she wasn’t even afraid. She just knew that she had to get to Pauline. She sprinted, trying to keep her bearings toward where Pauline had been a moment before. She slid along the ice, to where it had splintered into a gaping gash in the snow, and threw herself flat. She plunged her arms into the icy water.

For a moment she felt nothing, only the searing pain of the frigid water digging right into her bones. Then she felt hair like cobwebs around her right hand, and she grabbed a fistful, then groped for Pauline’s shoulder, the long line of her arm. She tried to pull her out, but the ice crumbled at the edges. She shimmied backward, holding on to Pauline’s wrist, and tried again. Pauline’s head had surfaced now; she was sputtering and grasping Maggie’s hands loosely, as if her fingers couldn’t close into a real grip.

Finally Maggie forced herself still for a moment, agonizing as it was. She thought about where she was, distributed her weight better, and got a better hold of Pauline, under one arm. She scooted herself forward for leverage, but not too far forward. She leveraged her up slightly and then pulled. Once Pauline’s chest was on the ice, Maggie scooted back, slowly again. Pauline was mostly still. Maggie tugged her back, farther out of the water, inch by inch.

Pauline lay on the ice, shivering and jerking. Maggie pulled off her coat and wrapped it around her, so that now she was wearing only the ugly dress and boots.

After a few moments, she stood and hoisted Pauline upward and against her as much as she could.

“You gotta walk, Pauline. I’m not strong enough to carry you.” Pauline moved forward like spaghetti. “He’s hurt,” she said tiredly. “We have to get someone to come.”

“Who’s hurt?” Maggie asked. But she knew the only person she could mean.

Maggie looked in the direction of downtown Gill Creek, then back in the direction of home. She longed to turn back toward her house with every inch of her body. But by now, she reasoned, they were as far into the lake as they were out. It wasn’t for sure that one was closer than the other, because she couldn’t see home. But at least she could see town, small and far-off as it seemed, and she turned their steps in that direction.

They walked for about fifteen minutes without saying a word, just focusing on putting their feet forward. Pauline was slow at first but then seemed to gather strength as they walked, even though she shivered violently and the snow seemed to fall harder as the minutes dragged on. It took Maggie several minutes to realize that she too was wet through, from the top of her dress down. The top of her head felt numb and frozen without a hat. She’d never imagined cold like what she felt. It was stabbing pain all over her scalp and shoulders. She envied Pauline the coat she’d given her, but she didn’t take it back; she just wrapped her left arm tighter around her. Her terror of falling through the ice at any minute shrank into the background just slightly behind the icy pain of freezing, inch by inch.

The lights seemed to get only marginally bigger as they walked. Maggie began to wonder if really they’d been as close as she’d thought. And then Pauline interrupted her thoughts.

“So, do you come here often?” She smiled, looking near-delirious.

Maggie opened her mouth to speak and sucked in a lungful of cold air. “I’m practicing for the Olympics too. The ‘cross-country frigid death march.’”

“I think anything less than the silver dies a frozen death,” Pauline said, her voice underlined by fear.

By now the air seemed to be more snow than oxygen, and the wind was working hard against them. Maggie remembered the wind tunnels the streets made back in Chicago, how they seemed to spit the wind right through your skin into your organs. That had been nothing compared to the wind whipping at them now across the open lake.

Pauline was slowing down, and Maggie could feel her legs turning into jelly—frozen jelly but jelly nonetheless.

“Jell-O pops,” she said out loud.

“What?” Pauline asked.

“Nothing,” Maggie muttered. She felt loopy. Her scalp wasn’t in quite so much pain though. “We should have turned back,” she said, but Pauline either didn’t hear her or just didn’t have the strength to answer. “We’re stupid,” Maggie added anyway. “We’re fatally stupid.”

There was a shape up ahead. It was impossible that there could be, because they were still way out on the lake, but there it was, nonetheless. Pauline saw it too; she lifted her arm and pointed.

It grew and grew, so she knew they were getting closer.

Finally she made out what it was. It was the hull of an old, rusted ship, sticking up out of the water. It was the eeriest sight she’d ever seen, and it also seemed impossible. But Pauline was pulling her toward it with her babylike lack of strength, and Maggie let herself be pulled.

They walked right up behind the hull; it was maybe only ten feet above the surface, but behind it the air suddenly went blessedly quiet, relatively speaking.

“Do you think the ice somehow pushed it up?” Maggie asked. “Like, made the air bring it up?”

“It blocks the wind,” Pauline said, then shook up and down the length of her body.

They huddled against the decayed metal, pushing up against it as tightly as they could and put their arms around each other. Pauline was still shivering like crazy. But the longer they sat, the less she shivered. Maggie glanced toward the lights of Gill Creek, so tempting, seemingly so close, and then she ducked back her head, thinking they’d wait a little while longer behind the welcome windbreak. Pauline was as pale as the snow; her eyes looked like big, black bruises in the eerie half-light of the moon trying to peek through the clouds.

“You came to get me,” she said finally, as if she were just realizing it.

Maggie nodded.

“You’re my great friend,” Pauline said. “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re mine too,” Maggie said. “And I’m going to forgive you. When I can.”

Pauline looked around, as if in disbelief at where they’d found themselves. She seemed to come back to herself more every minute. “Maggie,” she finally said, now sounding completely alert. “Do you think we could die here?”

“No.” Maggie shook her head, her whole body feeling numb. She felt punchy, almost giddy. “That doesn’t happen. That’s the kind of thing that happens in, like, 1832. To, like, explorers.”

“I know, but I’m so cold,” Pauline said, coughing a ragged laugh.

“I won’t let it happen. I’ll look out for you.” Maggie blew on her hands. She talked to keep herself feeling like herself. “You know, we have so much to do. We can’t die.”

Pauline huddled closer to her. Maggie felt numb; the thin fabric of her dress was about as useful as being naked. She couldn’t think right.

She tried to get warm by thinking about her parents in some warm hotel in Chicago or about being on the beach in Florida. She thought about drinking tropical drinks and sleeping under a palm-frond fan. Maggie wanted to sleep under a palm tree sometime. She promised herself she would.

“Maggie?” Pauline shifted.

“Yeah?”

“Just making sure.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Maggie heard her own voice say. She wanted to tell Pauline she was sorry about her envy, the dark pieces of her heart that were hard and jealous, but it seemed less important than the warmth; it seemed small and silly and forgettable. “We’ll get somewhere warm,” she said, “as soon as the snow lets up.”

She seemed to be there already.

28

PAULINE WOKE WITH A JERK, BLINKING IN THE BRIGHT SUN.

Light was beaming down from a blue sky, as if the snowstorm had never happened at all.

She pulled her coat around her and stood up fast, spots swimming in front of her eyes with the sudden movement. It took only a moment to come back to her. Liam, Maggie, getting to town. She peered around the side of the hull, her heart picking up speed.

They were closer to the edge of the lake than she’d thought last night. In the distance gray clouds were just drifting off over Lake Michigan, dissipating, moving away from one another at top speed. The sun was picking its way out and up from the horizon, warm-looking and orangey yellow, a pure morning sun that cast its early, bright rays on Pauline’s face.

She stared out across the ice, dazed, frigid. Then she turned her sights back along the rocky shore of the lake and toward town and then pivoted and hurried back toward Maggie.

She knelt beside her to wake her and was bewildered, at first, when she didn’t respond. She put a hand on Maggie’s thin sleeve, remembering that she’d slept in Maggie’s coat, that Maggie had wrapped it around her. Her confusion suddenly collapsed into concern and then panic as she took both of Maggie’s arms.

“Maggie,” she said. “Maggie, wake up.” She sank back on her heels, wiped fast tears from her cheeks, and said it again. “Mags. We have to go.”

Just around the hull, a shaft of light rose high enough to fall onto Maggie’s face, but she couldn’t see it—not with living eyes.

Still, I saw it anyway. I saw it all.

29

I’ve read articles; I’ve seen it in magazines: It’s dangerous to be young. When I was alive, I watched scary movies where young, beautiful girls were the first to die. I read magazines that told me all about how young actresses fell from great heights—how they got cellulite or turned into sloppy drunks or got into car accidents that were their fault. I once read about a girl who was kidnapped from the Walmart parking lot because her attacker liked the color of her hair. I suppose beauty can be dangerous too.

Pauline’s physical beauty was the smallest part of her. It distracted some people from seeing her. Sometimes, even me.

I know now I’m not here to take care of unfinished business or to get revenge or to set right something I did wrong, like you read about in ghost stories. I did right. And that’s left me knowing this: I’m still here, simply because it’s hard to leave. I’m here trying to say good-bye. I’m watching my life and my world flash before my eyes, but slowly, because that’s the right way for a person to make an exit.

It was always my story I was trying to learn.

I venture out of Door County. I float over the flat heat of Texas, down across the low, brown hills to Austin, moths trailing in my wake. (If it’s possible, there are more of them than ever.) I spot her from light-years away; her messy hair, her jerky movements, her way of trying to hide her looks.

I don’t know what year it is, but I can see she’s in her early twenties. She must be on her lunch break, because she’s stuffing a chili dog into her mouth as if it’s her last meal on earth, but I know it won’t be. I know she has a long and happy life ahead of her. I know that, inside the bar, she plays songs for tips and sings like a bird. But when she gets a break, she comes out to sit on the curb and soak up her beloved heat. Abe sits beside her, gray around the jowls, and gets the last bite. I don’t know how they found each other again, after I died; I haven’t seen that moment yet and I guess I never will. I do know Pauline only plays at bars that allow her to bring him with her.

She sits there on the curb with her face to the sun, moving on to her fries. Inside, a song is playing on the jukebox, and she listens all the way through, drinks the last of a Coke, and smooths out her tight, sparkly jeans and her tank top, then scratches Abe’s ears. She never seems to sense that I am there. She twirls her wedding ring around her finger when she sees him.

He walks up the street in a white T-shirt stained with grease. He’s been working on cars, but he always times his lunch breaks around hers. He’s filled out since his teens; his arms are thicker, his body is more muscular, and his face is older—but his skin is still that boarding-school creamy pale.

He sits beside her without a word, and they fight over her fries with their fingers. I know they talk about me; I know they try to keep me alive and with them all the time. But today they say nothing.

I don’t know if there’s a heaven or not, but I like to imagine anyway that the angels made me and that they did it carefully. They kneaded my skin into arms and legs. They caressed my human shape and patted it down so that everything would look right. They gave me a few extra caresses too, because they knew they were sending me into life on earth, and they knew life on earth can break your heart. They gave me a brain for a helmet. They massaged a heart in through the backs of my ribs so that I could feel pain and know when to back up. I haven’t seen the angels yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they appear. Like I said, there are so many things I was wrong about.

For instance, I used to think that things, in the end—if it was really the end—turned out neat, clean, and symmetrical. But that’s not how it is. And I know this because I know that the Door County Killer was never caught, that he was a stranger to us, and that we were just unlucky when he came onto the peninsula that fall. It could have been anywhere. He never killed again in our county after that winter. I don’t know why—what brain chemicals set him loose and what reined him in.