Calvin by Martine Leavitt Page A

Michelangelo’s David .
    Susie: And I wonder how they glow like that. It’s scary and pretty at the same time.
    Just then a thin thread of liquid water spurted straight up on my left. It started to freeze on the way down.
    Hobbes: The lake is spitting at us.
    Me: The water must be under pressure there. When the water finds a small hole or crack, it spurts up and makes these things.
    Susie: Amazing.
    Me: Yeah. And they just keep getting bigger and bigger, until—
    Susie: Are they dangerous? I mean, do they weaken the ice? Orvil said something about cracks in the ice …
    Me: Not as dangerous as snow goons.
    Susie: No. Not as.
    We both stared at the pillars.
    Me: Do you think anybody knows about this besides us?
    Susie: Nobody knows.
    Me: We know a secret about the lake.
    Susie: Yeah.
    Me: Don’t ever tell anyone.
    Susie: I won’t.
    Me: Besides, maybe we’re dreaming this.
    Susie: Maybe I’m dreaming you.
    Me: And I’m dreaming you.
    Susie: That would make me your dream woman.
    Me: Nah. I would have dreamed up a supermodel or something—ow!
    Can punches be meaningful, Bill? I didn’t mind that punch. I grinned and then she grinned and for a second I felt like we’d crossed a line. I stopped grinning and put my hand on her head. Right on the top of her head, and then my hand slipped to her cheek. She stopped grinning and looked down at the ice.
    Susie: Don’t—don’t you kiss me.
    Me: Who said I wanted to kiss you?
    *   *   *
    We walked around the snow goons which were just ice formations.
    The snow goons which were just ice formations weren’t the danger, Bill.
    I was. I was the danger.
    I had to protect her from me.
    But it was already too late for that. I’d brought her along with me, and it was getting on in the day, and our feet and legs had gone way beyond what feet and legs had evolved to do. I knew we weren’t making time like we should, especially not now that we were having to go out of our way to get around the snow goons which were just ice formations.
    We kept walking.

 
    It was half past four when we had to stop to rest and eat dinner because we were starving. Susie sat on the sled. We both knew we were eating the last of our gorp and beef jerky. We had two bottles of water left, some raisins, and two small tubes of peanut butter. That had to be breakfast the next day, our last meal on the ice. I didn’t say anything to Susie, but I was guessing we weren’t going to be having lunch in the U.S. of A.
    Susie: Next to Noah’s beans and bread, this is the best food I’ve eaten.
    Me: Hunger is the best sauce.
    Hobbes: Give me some.
    I dropped some bits of the gorp at my side so Susie wouldn’t see.
    Susie: How far do you think we are, Calvin? Will it take as long tomorrow as you thought? Maybe we’ll make brunch? How far?
    Me: Did you know that zebra mussels are killing this lake?
    Susie: That far? But you said we’d be there by lunchtime tomorrow. It’s going to be dark again soon, and I don’t see shore.
    Me: Zebra mussels eat all the microbes and make the water nice and clean and clear, but then all those microbes are what the fish eat. The zebra mussel is destroying the entire ecosystem of the lake. One day the whole lake will just be a big tank full of zebra mussels. All thanks to ballast water dumped in the lake by a European boat. I found that out when I was doing avoidance research on my biology project.
    Hobbes: That’s it? These crumbs are all I get?
    Susie: Tell me. I can deal.
    Me: And then they’ll go on to the next lake and destroy it.
    Susie: Wow. You-won’t-even-answer-me far?
    Me: The largest freshwater lakes in the world and we’re slowly turning them into cesspools, flushing our human waste into them, dumping our chemical waste into them, fishing them out faster than the fish can repopulate, tossing in anything we don’t want to see