Barnum Lake by Patrick Sean Lee (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📖

suit with more snow, and then they bounded down the hill together and jumped out onto the ice. They whisked along in clumsy circles as they gained their bearings, rusty since the last time we’d flown like the wind across the frozen surface here. I watched in silence for a moment or two, then followed them out onto the sparkling surface of the ice. I met them seventy-five feet away from the bank. Both of them stopped as I leaned and dug the sharp edges of my runners into the ice beside the first low mound of snow.
“Who said it got too hot this week? This stuff’s hard as a block of granite,” Jimmy assured us, jumping up and down.
“Wasn’t me. Let’s crack the whip!” Mickey said, tossing his gloves onto the pile of snow.
“OK. I’ll lead the pack. Grab onto my hand," Jimmy said. "Skip, grab his!”
When we’d locked ourselves together in a chain, Jimmy dug the tips of his skates into the ice and we all took off, gaining speed as we shot across the ice toward the east shore. The shiish of our blades on the frozen surface was musical, the only audible sound except for the occasional clatter of studded tires on the pavement of Federal Boulevard a hundred yards away. Near the shoreline, Jimmy pumped his strong legs like the wheel connecting rods on a locomotive, and then leaned hard left in a sudden U-turn. Mickey flew behind him, tightening his grip on Jimmy’s hand, loosening it on mine. I knew what was next as I quickly entered the turn with rising momentum. Mickey yanked his hand free and I shot like a cannonball out of the barrel into the wall of dead weeds hanging down onto the ice. The crunch knocked me backward onto my rear.
“Oh, that was no fun!” I grabbed my belly with a forced laugh.
“Good show! Very graceful!” Mickey shouted from where he and Jimmy had stopped thirty feet away.
I rolled over onto my stomach, glanced at the ice beneath me, then pulled myself up onto my haunches. My reflection was dark and contorted in the rippled surface near the shore. Mickey skated over to me and stuck his hand out. “You ok? I didn’t mean to let go of you.”
“Liar. You wanted me to split my gut wide open so I could get stitched up like you!”
Mickey giggled. “Oops! You got me. Let’s race to the far end!”
“You’re on!” I said and took hold of his hand. He pulled me up, and we joined Jimmy, who was crouched low already, arms bent, and ready for the push off.
“On my mark,” Mickey said. “Last one to the north end has to kiss Sandra Baumgardner! Ready. Set. GO!”
Mickey and Jimmy lit out like a pair of Cheetahs. My rear skate raked the ice when I dug in and pushed forward, and I fell to my knee. By the time I’d regained my footing, both of them were twenty feet ahead of me and accelerating. I thought of Sandra. A nice girl in Jimmy’s class, but loaded with acne, and with hair that must have been dunked in an oil vat. I’d have to close my eyes and pinch my nose if they called my losing hand in the race. Before I’d gotten five feet in my futile attempt to make up the gap, a shout pierced the air from my left. Mickey heard it , too, and hesitated, allowing Jimmy to rocket on ahead.
“Hey fellas! I found you! Wait for me!”
Allen.

I stopped completely, knowing it was now impossible to salvage even a second place. Our pestering friend stood on the bank in his gleaming black skates by the inlet, one toe daintily poking at the ice.
“Wait up! I’m coming.”
Not that there was any hope of getting back into the race, but I wanted to thrash him good. Just for his persistence. Just for his stupidity in finding us. Just because he was Allen and wore horn-rimmed glasses. Mickey glanced in front of him at the back of Jimmy, then threw up his hands, turned, and motioned for me to come with him to drown Allen. We met a short distance away from the kid who was going to be led to the inlet somehow, and we stopped. Mickey furrowed his brow when he turned his head to me.
“Do you want the honor, or should I nudge him?”
“I think you’d better do it. Your mom probably won’t beat you half as bad as mine will if I do it.”
Allen tried to join us as we spoke, skating as though he had fifteen legs all working against one another. Why would God create such a drip, I wondered? Other than the glasses, his total lack of coordination, and his absurd devotion to being punished by us—what was it that made me want to pick on him? Especially in the light of what the Patterson Brothers had done to us over the months? It hit me that we were very much like them. They must have seen us as Allens.
“Wait, Mick. Leave him be. Let’s go get Jimmy—let that twirp hobble along after us if he wants.”
“Huh?” Mick curled up his nose.
“Yeah. C’mon. Let’s go.
“Hey Allen! Welcome aboard. We’ll see you over at the north end!” I gave Mickey’s arm a tug, and then we turned and sped off to catch up with the winner of the race. Allen clomped along, his ankles twisting with every step as if he were learning to walk in high heels.
Mick and I flew like the wind, expecting to see Jimmy lounging at the shoreline, laughing and ready to demand that we both kiss Sandra. As we approached the gentle dogleg turn fifty yards from the shore, a momentary shot of confusion fell on me. He wasn’t there. I scanned the steeper shoreline to my left where a tangle of brown vegetation hung onto the earth plummeting down into the ice. Mickey stopped dead, digging his skates into the frozen surface beneath us, grabbing hold of me. The force of it and my momentum made me fall to my rear with a thump. Mick’s outstretched hand pointed across the field of ice straight ahead. Halfway between us and the bank near a lone mound of snow I saw Jimmy’s head and arms break the surface of water, waving wildly as he tried to get a grip on the jagged rim of the broken ice above him. His face was the color of a clean sheet of paper. The beret he wore constantly lay bobbing like a cork in the churning water. He saw us and screamed in a high-pitched, exhausted tone, “Help me.” Then he lost his hold on the slick, water-drenched ice and disappeared.
“Jesus! He’s gonna’ drown! Quick, we gotta’ pull him out! What the hell happened? Jimmy, hang on!” Mickey screamed.
Jimmy reappeared once again, dripping and half frozen, his hands batting aimlessly at the churning water. Somehow he found the edge of the ice, cracking jagged pieces away each time he put any weight on it.
Mickey yanked the neck of my sweater. “Quick! Go find a stick or a branch—anything! Hurry.” He left me and shot forward, pulling his own sweater off as he did. I jumped to my feet and turned in a rush of panic toward the steep embankment behind us
“Oh sweet Jesus, get me a branch!” A long root, I thought…a hunk of abandoned rope. A limb! There, at the top of the bank. Its thick end sticking out, tangled among overgrown, dead grass and weeds. I raised myself up onto the serrated tips of my skates and exploded toward the wall of grass. When I reached it, two, three breaths later, I scaled it as if I had claws instead of fingers. I grabbed hold of the inch-thick woody end and yanked it, the steel tips of my skates buried in the side of the low cliff. The branch gave immediately and followed me downward again, onto my back atop the ice. I raised myself up and returned close to the spot where Mickey lay on his stomach, throwing his sweater out like an anemic lifesaver, over and over and over. Jimmy clung precariously to a semi-solid shelf, shivering. “Not enough. Closer. I can’t get my skates off…” He disappeared again when his grip failed, but somehow returned a short second later, gasping for air, exhausted from the struggle and the freezing water. Mickey scooted closer, roundhousing the sweater. It fell short again.
“Mick! I got it!” I screamed. Mickey turned his head as I tossed the branch. He released his hold on the sweater and snatched the long branch, then quickly shoved the end of it to Jimmy. Jimmy’s head was barely visible, now, but one set of fingers still clutched the ice. I prayed more fervently than I had ever prayed before. Mick raked the end of the branch across Jimmy’s knuckles.
“Grab it! God, please…” And then I saw Jimmy’s hand loosen slightly. He took hold of the slender end of the wood; a tenuous, feeble grip, as though whatever remaining strength and will to be saved was wrapped up in his frozen fingertips. The top of his hair barely poked through the water’s surface. His head popped up, and then the other arm. He took hold of the branch, but the look in his eyes seemed vacant.
“Skip, get over here, quick!” Mick shouted.
I eased forward to within a foot of Mickey, listening for any sound of cracking, any feeling of movement of the ice under my feet.
“I’ve gotta’ go help him. Take the end of this thing,” he said.
“No, Mick! Don’t do…”
“Just do it!” He sat up, ripped off his skates, and then began crawling toward Jimmy. “If the ice starts breaking under me just don’t let go. I’ll get him!”
I heard the sound of skates clomping on the ice behind me as Mickey closed the distance between himself and Jimmy. It had to be Allen. I turned my head and yelled at him, “Go for help, Allen. Run! Take your damned skates off and go find somebody. Now!”
“Oh gosh! Oh…”
“Go!”
Allen stared at the scene for a split second, and then as if he had been born to it, undid his skates and flew off like the wind. I turned back to Jimmy and Mickey. Mickey was at the edge of the hole, one hand on Jimmy’s fingers and the end of the stick. Jimmy’s head had gone beneath the water again. And then I heard our best friend’s death knell; a low, terrible crack, followed by several more in quick succession. The ice beneath Mick gave way. He rolled on his side as it split, and followed Jimmy under the water. A fraction of a second later Mickey re-emerged, gasping from the shock of the freezing water, still hanging on to the end of the branch. Jimmy didn’t come up with him.
“Hold on,” he said to me with a gasp. “I’m going back for him!” He shot head first under the water. I waited, eyes glued to the spot where they’d been. The black, broiling water calmed. It felt like minutes—too many minutes. Mickey was in trouble, too. And then he burst out, arms flailing, eyes wide open. He grabbed hold of the branch, and as he took in a huge breath of air, shook his head. “Going back. Lost him…”
“No, Mick! You’re turning blue already! I’m pulling you out. Oh God, Jimmy!”
Mick let go of the branch and dove under. Seconds later he resurfaced, gasping again. “I can’t see, I can’t find him. Goddamit!”
“Grab on, Mick. Hurry. You’re gonna’ freeze and die, too. Jesus, hurry up before you don’t have