Taken in My Sleep by My Stepfather David and His Friends novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Thin Ice

At noon I put on the grey coat and my good boots and told the cabin I was walking out.

"The road is four miles that way," Garson said from the porch. He was sanding a paddle and didn't look up. "Snow is knee-deep."

"Then I'll be wet."

"You'll be cold."

"I'm very good at cold."

He shrugged and kept sanding.

Nobody tried to stop me.

That made me angrier than a hand on my arm would have.

I crossed the yard and took the path along the shore, because the shore was flat, and because I wanted the lake between me and all of them.

The snow came over my ankles, then my shins.

By the first bend I was breathing hard.

I took out my phone to check for signal.

One bar, then none.

I stepped down off the bank to go around a fallen birch, and the ground under my left boot wasn't ground.

It gave with a sharp wet crack.

I went in to the knee, and the cold hit my leg so hard I couldn't make a sound.

The next step broke too.

Then I was in to the hip, with my hands on a ledge of grey ice that came away in pieces when I pulled.

The phone went into the water.

I saw it go.

"Don't kick," Garson said.

He was on his stomach on the ice shelf beside me. I hadn't heard him come.

He had a coil of rope around his shoulder and one hand locked on the collar of my coat.

"I can't feel my legs," I said.

"You will. Don't kick. Give me your arm."

I gave it to him.

He pulled once, and the whole front of my body came up out of the lake onto the ice, and he dragged me backward along it on his own belly until the bank was under us.

Then he was on his knees, hauling me upright.

I couldn't stand.

Everything below my waist was ice.

"Okay," he said, low. "Okay."

He picked me up.

He did it without a word, one arm under my knees and one at my back, and I was too cold to say rule one.

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