Badwater Read Free Page B

blare any louder in my head than a warning chime, like the stall indicator on an airplane that’s being pushed too hard. And I didn’t let the cold get to me, or the pressure in my ears, or the burning in my chest. All I focused on was those white limbs stretched over what I still thought of as jumbled coffins.
    I was being pulled downward so hard that I slammed into the logs. I slammed into the boy, too. A single big bubble rose out from behind a swirl of hair. His skin was cold and slimy to the touch, as were the tree trunks beneath him. The sensation was a little sickening, but it was nothing compared to the noise and friction of the horrendous volume of water sucking down past me. Praying I wouldn’t get pulled through the gaps in the logs, I placed my feet on each side of the boy and wrapped my arms around him.
    I pulled. There was only a tiny bit of give, then the body was yanked back as if the boy didn’t want to come with me, as if he were determined to cling to the logs. No, it was the whirlpool—it was unwilling to release its prey. I pulled again. More give, and a harder tug back. My lungs were on fire. And my body was frozen numb except for where burning needles were spreading over my skin. And not only would the fucking whirlpool not let go, it kept spinning me off balance, trying to rip me into the abyss beyond the screen of logs. My vision was starting to go black around the edges, blacker even than where the current wanted to take me.
    I let the current pull me down again until I was lying on top of the boy. He was so small. And as cold as a block of ice. I wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could. Then I planted my feet again on the slimy logs. I shoved for the light with all the strength I possessed.
    This time the river decided to let the boy come with me.
    There was a brief moment of elation—
Fuck you, whirlpool
—then the current rearranged its grip and began to pull again. As if it had just been screwing around with me, making me think I’d won. I battled for the surface, kicking weakly, feeling myself losing momentum. The current was again spinning me, drawing me back down.
    I released the child’s body from the bear hug I’d enveloped it with but didn’t let go all the way—instead I put my open lips on his shoulder, taking in a mouthful of shirt and hair and flesh.
It’s like a street fight,
I told myself as I bit down as hard as I could,
you do what you have to do
. Even if it’s biting a kid on the neck.
    Shooting out my arms, I stroked once, twice, three times, before feeling the body start to tear out of my mouth. I wrapped my arms around him again, thinking maybe those three strokes had freed me and my burden from the worst of the whirlpool’s grasp. But when I looked up, the light above was growing smaller instead of larger as the blackness swelled over my vision.
    In a second I was totally blind. Even the pinprick of light had disappeared. Some instinct urged me to inhale, to breathe the oxygen in the water—
H 2 O, after all, is one-third oxygen, right? You can do it.
The urge was almost overwhelming. I fought it, believing it would be the final gasp of a dead man. The acceptance of water into my lungs would be the acceptance of an irreversible fate.
    But I wasn’t deaf. I could hear voices, not just the hollow snapping and popping and cracking sounds of the river. Only these weren’t the voices I expected to hear when this moment finally came. I’d always thought that if death was anything but a ground fall on a slack rope, that the voices calling to me would be those of fallen climbing partners. But they wouldn’t be greeting me with yells and screams. They’d been my friends, after all.
    But what I heard were yells and screams.
Uh-oh
, I thought almost giddily.
Maybe there is another place.
A place where the inhabitants believe the lies that had given birth to the mocking nickname QuickDraw.
    I opened my mouth and took the breath. I had no choice. There was no