“Out as far as you can,” he said again. “Go in straight, feet down and together. Back up and run for it. Now!”
She didn’t know how. Her feet wouldn’t move. She willed them to go, but they wouldn’t.
A shot made contact with the tree she was next to.
Time moved very slowly over the next few seconds. Nate was yelling for her to go, go go. She pressed herself back, crouching toward the ground. Nate did the same, then he pushed her on the back. She felt the ground for what may have been the last time, and then launched herself forward.
The edge of the rock was there to welcome her, and as she jumped out and made contact with the sky, she wanted to close her eyes but found she was unable to. She was tumbling. The mirror was coming up fast, and then . . .
25
FOR A MOMENT, THERE WAS NOTHING. SHE WAS NOWHERE. THERE was no Stevie. She was totally and utterly free from space and time, with the air a soft whistling noise in her ear. Something hard made contact with her left side. But that was nothing compared to what came a second later. It was like smashing through glass. Cold water shot into her mouth and nose. Everything was burning from pain and air hunger. She didn’t know where to go. She didn’t know what was the surface and what was the bottom. The dark water consumed her every sense.
She was going to die.
That was interesting. No effort was required on her part. Just some bubbles in the dark and a fall to some unknown depth. She was aware enough to know that her backpack was still on her back and was weighing her down. She wriggled, through the confusion and burning, trying to get it off. It came off easily on one side. She didn’t understand how the other side of her body worked in the water, but eventually she turned in the right way and it gave. It buoyed her a bit, but she still couldn’t figure out which way to go. The panic swept over her, blanketing her in a rush. The world fragmented into black and white dots as she slid toward unconsciousness. In the next moment, the world next to her exploded—some weird mayhem of turbulence and violence and she was going to the bottom of the lake and her lungs were . . .
Something was on her arm, something pulling her. She broke the surface, gagging and coughing. She couldn’t make herself breathe. There was water in her. Nate slammed her as hard as he could on the back and water came pouring out of her mouth and nose, thick with mucus. She retched as it tried to figure out how to take in air, how to clear itself. There was water in her ears, so his words were muffled, and she couldn’t see from all the tears in her eyes.
She was too weak to tread water, but they weren’t too far from the rocks at the bottom of the point. Together, they managed to pull each other toward them.
“The diary-y!” she screamed between shivering breaths. “It’s gon-n-n-e.”
“It do-o-es-n-n’t matt-tt-ter. Forget it-t-t-t-t. Stevie. Stee-e-e-vv-ie.”
Stevie gripped the rock with her right hand, but it was tiring out. She went to switch to the left, but when she did so, a shock of pain shot through her arm. She almost slipped down the rock, but Nate grabbed her shirt and pulled her back.
“I think-k-k my arm-m-m . . . ,” she said, but that was all she could manage before the pain blotted out the sentence.
The water was black and still, with a tiny cartoon moon bobbing on the surface. She tried to look up to see if anyone was visible above them, but it was all rock and darkness.
“Do-o you think they’re g-g-g-one?” Nate sputtered.
She shook her head, unsure if she meant no or that she didn’t know.
“Hey!” came a yell from the other side of the lake. “Hey! Are you okay?”
David’s voice. Was she hallucinating? Had any of this happened? The shots, the fall . . . did she die in the water?
“No-o!” Nate screamed back.
“Nate? Hang on! Hang on!”
“Well-ll, yeah-h-h,” Nate said, his shivering growing worse.
Not a hallucination. That was David.
Stevie watched David and his kayak come closer through the water. Whether it took him five minutes or five hours, she had no idea. Everything was cold, and her hold on the rock was ever weakening. She wanted to try to belly-crawl on top of it to get out of the water, but she didn’t have that kind of strength.
As David glided up to them, Stevie was surprised to find that the first emotion to bubble back to the surface with the rest of her body was annoyance.
“What-t-t the hel-l-l-l a-r-r-re you doing-g here?”
“Getting your ass out of the lake,” he shot back. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Oh-h my Go-d-d,” Nate said. “Shut-t up-p.”
That tiny burst of emotion drained whatever reserve of energy Stevie had. Her body was numb and exhaustion took over. She began to slip from the rock.
“Whoa . . . whoa . . .” David swung his legs over the side of the kayak and slipped into the water, catching her in a clumsy hold. She was dead weight and he struggled to get a grip on her and keep the other hand on the kayak.
“Okay,” he said, seeming to sense the gravity of the situation, “how do we do this? Nate, do you think you can get over here and grab the kayak?”
“I think-k so,” Nate said, reaching for the kayak. He fumbled once or twice but finally got a firm enough grip on one of the ropes on the side and hauled his body over it.
“Arm-m,” Stevie mumbled. “Doesn’t-t-t work-k.”
“Okay,” David said, trying to sound calm, and failing. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
He reached up into the kayak and pulled out a life vest, which he put over her functioning arm. Nate was holding the back of the kayak, so David helped guide Stevie into a resting position slumped over the front.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s a short distance to the beach area there. Nate, hold on.”
David climbed up on the rock and got himself into the kayak, pushing back with the paddle and narrowly missing Nate’s head. With choppy strokes, made to avoid striking either of the people attached to the front and back of the kayak, David began to paddle. The closest stretch of dirt beach was about thirty yards away—not a great distance, but impossible in Stevie’s current state. Stevie felt herself growing sleepy at points. She wanted to close her eyes, but her inner voice and David’s outer voice kept telling her to wake up, hold on. She needed both arms through the life vest. She tried to move her left arm again, and a white-hot pain shot behind her eyes, causing the world to scramble into black-and-white dots. No left arm. Instead, she put further demands on her right. Her right arm was going to give the performance of its life. She commanded it to ignore cold, ignore fatigue. It was the strongest, best arm in the world.
She could feel something under her—her feet were dragging on the ground.
“Almost,” David said. “Here . . . here . . .”
Nate released his grip, which caused the kayak to turn a bit. He staggered onto the beach. By this point, Stevie’s right arm was numb from overwork and she felt herself slide, but she held on until the ground hit her knees. David got out of the kayak, half falling, and got her up under his arm and moved her to the shore. The kayak, its job finished, decided to embrace the moment and float away.
David leaned over Stevie and Nate on the cold, rocky sand.