Girl in Ice(23)

“You want this?” He dangled the square of chocolate close to her. “You want to try this?”

She jumped up shockingly fast. He fake-tried to keep the piece of candy from her, but she nabbed it, shoved it in her mouth, and chewed—eyes closed—face in ecstasy.

“Not bad, huh,” Wyatt said.

She opened her eyes and reached out her hand.

“Want some more, kiddo?”

She nodded.

“Then you have to understand what we’re doing here, sweetheart. We need to know what you ate to thaw out alive. Do you understand? What you ate”—he gestured at his mouth, then hers—“to thaw out alive. What your family ate. But mostly, what you ate. So you need to talk”—he pointed at me, at himself, at Jeanne—“to us.” He snapped up a picture book, stabbed at the illustrations with his finger. “Polar bear. Walrus. Iceberg. Learn these words.” He pointed at me. “With this very patient, very nice woman here, all right?”

Big-eyed, she nodded at him.

“You think about that, if you want more of this.” He rattled the candy bar in front of her; she snatched it from his grasp and rocketed down the hallway. Tripping on the double sweaters she still wore, she skidded into her room and slammed the door. We all chased her, but she’d disappeared under her bed deep into her sanctuary of pillows and blankets, the crying replaced by sounds of paper and foil tearing and little noises of pleasure. Jeanne stood in the doorway, arms crossed, mouth a straight line.

“We can’t let her eat all that!” I said. “She’ll be sick.”

Wyatt mumbled, “That was the last of my stash.” The three of us lifted up the bed and placed it down on the other side of the room. She sat in a ball, her hands, mouth, and much of her face smeared with chocolate, the wrapper empty in front of her.

“Fuck,” Wyatt said. “Fuck.”

The girl smiled, elaborately licking her fingers before her face went rigid. She threw off her covers, lurched a few steps forward, and vomited against the wall. Face flushed, she turned toward us with a look of embarrassment and stumbled out of the room.

Jeanne sighed and wandered off to the kitchen, returning with a bucket of hot water and some towels.

“Nice one, Wyatt,” I said.

“Hey, scientific method. She responds to chocolate.”

“Violently.”

“Hey, at least I tried something.”

“Like I haven’t been trying?”

He put a hand through his hair and blinked. “Maybe so. But you need to try a little harder, my friend. We’re running out of time.”



* * *



THAT NIGHT I dreamed I stood on the deck of a ship at sea surrounded by stories-high icebergs, each a sculpture carved by a madman. Creaking and groaning, they floated in a shimmering ectoplasm of their own vapor. Cold wafted off them; the air popping with the taste of carbon dioxide. A cathedral-shaped berg, awash in the golden glow of Arctic twilight, turned regally toward me, its wake foaming against the hull of the ship. As its flying buttresses rose and sank, something flesh-colored caught my eye, an eerily familiar shape. I ran to the bow of the boat, frantic for the apparition to reappear. The great berg swayed, its massive base jutting leagues beneath it in the jade-green sea, so much larger than what was visible above the waves, and I was reminded of something Andy used to say: Icebergs are like people, you only ever really know twenty percent of them.

The berg groaned, dipped, then torqued its new face toward me until I saw myself, naked and motionless in my aquamarine cage, frozen-open eyes staring out at the hissing salt spray. My body tilted side to side with the berg as it wobbled like a giant children’s toy in a tub, until the ocean seethed beneath it and spun it away.





nine


Scribbling notes in my journal at dawn the next morning, I paused to gaze out my lone window at a carpet of drift ice that clogged the bay, the silence so complete I thought for a second I’d lost my hearing. Coughed to prove to myself I hadn’t. Something white on the floor caught my eye. A sheet of notebook paper had been slipped under my door. In Wyatt’s sideways scrawl: “Had to get an early start. Nora and Raj at the Dome. Jeanne with me. Good luck with the kid. See you at dinner.”

I wandered to the living room, nearly tripping over a pile of blankets and pillows at the front door, which turned out to be the girl hibernating. For two nights she’d refused to sleep anywhere but curled up next to it, as if trying to breathe whatever glacial air made its way to her. I sipped my coffee and gnawed at a piece of toast, determination crystallizing. We—this girl and I—were going to have a breakthrough today. It was day nine. Already the ten hours of daylight we enjoyed the day I arrived had slipped to just under seven and was dropping fast.

I bent down and said in my sweetest voice, “Good morning, time to get up.” No movement. “Hello,” I said to the clump of blankets. “I’ve got fish here. Meat. Whatever you want.”

She poked her head out—expression comically cranky—evicted her blankets, and got to her feet, my unknowable girl in her fraying sweater-dress, most of the knitted reindeer stretched out beyond recognition. She flew down the hallway and returned with her special coffee can, now half-full, handing it to me with zero embarrassment. After emptying the contents, I found her sitting cross-legged on Wyatt’s desk, chewing on a piece of raw halibut. She’d obviously figured out the refrigerator. I cleared a space next to her on the desk and spread out the picture books, coloring books, toys, paper, markers.