The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(44)

The trout's top half went down her throat like a big swal-low of oil with lumps in it. The taste was horrible and also wonderful. It tasted like life. Trisha dangled the trout's dripping lower half in front of her upturned face, pausing only long enough to pull another piece of bone out of it, whispering: "Dial 1-800-54-FRESH-FISH."

She ate the rest of the trout, tail and all.

When it was down she stood looking across the stream, wiping her mouth and wondering if she was going to puke it all back up again. She had eaten a raw fish, and although the taste of it was still coating her throat, she could hardly believe it. Her stomach gave a funny little lurch and Trisha thought, This is it. Then she burped and her stomach settled again. She took her hand away from her mouth and saw a few fish-scales gleaming on the palm. She wiped them on her jeans with a grimace, then walked back to where her pack lay. She stuffed the remains of her poncho and the severed hood (which had turned out to work pretty well, at least on fish that were young and stupid) into it on top of her food supply, then reshouldered the pack. She felt strong, ashamed of herself, proud of herself, feverish, and a little nutzoid.

I won't talk about it, that's all. I don't have to talk about it and I won't. Even if I get out of here.

"And I deserve to get out," Trisha said softly. "Anyone who can eat a raw fish deserves to get out."

The Japanese do it all the time, said the tough tootsie as Trisha set out once more along the side of the stream.

"So I'll tell them," Trisha said. "If I ever get over there for a visit I'll tell them."

For once the tough tootsie seemed to have no comeback.

Trisha was delighted.

She made her way carefully down the slope and into the valley, where her stream bowled along through a forest of mixed firs and deciduous trees. These were thickly packed, but there was less underbrush and fewer bramble-patches, and for most of the morning Trisha got along well. There was no sense of being watched, and eating the fish had revi-talized her strength. She pretended that Tom Gordon was walking with her, and they had a long and interesting con-versation, mostly about Trisha. Tom wanted to know all about her, it seemed - her favorite classes at school, why she thought Mr. Hall was mean for giving homework on Fri-days, all the ways Debra Gilhooly had of being such a bitch, how she and Pepsi had planned to go trick-or-treating as Spice Girls last Halloween and Mom had said Pepsi's Mom could do whatever she wanted, but no nine-year-old girl of hers was going out trick-or-treating in a short skirt, high heels, and a cammi top. Tom sympathized completely with Trisha's utter embarrassment.

She was telling him about how she and Pete were plan-ning to get their Dad a custom-made jigsaw puzzle for his birthday from this company in Vermont that made them (or if that was too expensive, they would settle for a Weed Whacker), when she stopped suddenly. Stopped moving.

Stopped talking.

She studied the stream for almost a full minute, the cor-ners of her mouth drooping, one hand waving automati-cally at the cloud of bugs around her head. The underbrush was creeping back in among the trees now; the trees them-selves were stuntier, the light brighter. Crickets hummed and sang.

"No," Trisha said. "No, huh-uh. No way. Not again."

The stream's new quietness was what had first distracted her from her fascinating conversation with Tom Gordon (pretend people were such good listeners). The stream no longer babbled and brawled. That was because the speed of its current had slowed. Its bed was weedier than it had been above the valley's floor. It was beginning to spread out.

"If it goes into another swamp, I'll kill myself, Tom."

An hour later Trisha pushed her way wearily through a snarl of mixed poplars and birches, raised the heel of her hand to her forehead to crush a particularly troublesome mosquito, and then just left it there, hand to brow, the image of every human in history who is exhausted and doesn't know what to do or where to turn.

At some point the stream had spilled over its low banks and drowned a large area of open land, creating a shallow marsh of reeds and cattails. Between the vegetation, the sun glittered on standing water in hot pricks of light. Crickets hummed; frogs croaked; overhead, two hawks cruised on stiff wings; somewhere a crow was laughing. The marsh didn't look nasty, like the bog of hummocks and drowned deadwood she'd waded through, but it stretched for at least a mile (and probably two) before coming to a low, pine-cov-ered ridge.

And the stream, of course, was gone.

Trisha sat down on the ground, started to say something to Tom Gordon, and realized how stupid it was to be pre-tending when it was clear - and growing clearer with every passing hour - that she was going to die. It didn't matter how much walking she did or how many fish she managed to catch and choke down. She began to cry. She put her face in her hands, sobbing harder and harder.

"I want my mother!" she yelled at the indifferent day. The hawks were gone, but over by that wooded ridge the crow was still laughing. "I want my mother, I want my brother, I want my dolly, I want to go home!" The frogs only croaked, reminding her of some story Dad had read her when she was little - a car stuck in the mud and all the frogs croaking To o deep, too deep. How that had frightened her.

She cried harder still, and at some point her tears - all these tears, all these goshdamn tears - made her angry. She looked up, bugs spinning all around her, the hateful tears still spilling down her mucky face.

"I want my MOTHER! I want my BROTHER! I want to get out of here, DO YOU HEAR ME?" She kicked her legs up and down, kicked them so hard that one of her sneakers flew off. She knew she was doing a full-fledged tantrum now, the first one since she'd been five or six, and didn't care. She threw herself onto her back, pounded her fists, then opened them so she could tear handfuls of grass out of the ground and throw them into the air. "I WANT TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! Why don't you find me, you stupid puppy-shit ass**les? Why don't you find me? I... WANT... TO GO... HOME!"