Calvin (14 page)

You did care.

I knew you cared because you made Calvin for the world with this amazing brain that he could do amazing stuff with. It was like his imagination could look into the Great Bloodshot Eye of Reality and say, wanna fight? It was like his imagination could walk right up to the Golden Throne of Reality and refuse to bow. You made him that way, and if that didn't show you cared, I didn't know what would.

I loved my brain right then, Bill. Even a sick brain was a miracle when you thought about it. Time might be a dimension, but the human brain could chop it up into minute bits, observe it as a phenomenon of existence. Physics and chemistry weren't much without biology and the human brain to guess endlessly about what it all meant. Space might be infinite and full of an unspeakable number of stars, but it didn't know how beautiful it was. I knew. Calvin knew. Calvin of the unbegun English project, Calvin of the unfinished science project, Calvin the schizophrenic maladaptive daydreamer.

*   *   *

I made Susie sit up so I could tell her what I had figured out, but her head was slumpy and loose.

Susie (mumbling): I forget.

Me: What? What do you forget?

Susie: Why living is important.

Me: Well, there's Christmas, Susie.

Susie: Christmas.

Me: And hot chocolate.

Susie:

Me: And comic books.

Susie: And snow.

Me: And summer holidays.

Susie: And kissing.

Me: Best of all.

I kissed her, right on her chapped mouth.

Susie: I can't feel it.

Me: Me neither. But you know what? My amazing brain invented Susie the Figment, who looks exactly like Susie McLean, to come along with me on this hike. And if my brain can do that, it can invent you feeling strong and walking. You're going to get up right now and—

Susie: I can hear a helicopter.

Me: Or it can invent a helicopter—but there is no helicopter. It's the ice groaning …

But then there was a helicopter.

*   *   *

It just kept flying toward us from the south. It kept being real, real and big and loud, and it had lights, and it was a helicopter. I stood up and waved my arms and the flashlight and screamed.

Finally it hovered over me like a gigantic monster dragonfly, and I saw them heave a basket out of the opening.

And just then the ice to my right cracked open like a broken skull.

 

Another vein of black water opened up to my left.

Pretty quick we were going to be on an island of ice.

The wind from the propellers beat down on us, but Susie kept staring up, blinking from the wind blowing into her face. Hobbes's fur was blowing in every direction.

A man in uniform had launched himself in the basket and was being lowered toward us.

Paramedic (shouting over the noise of the helicopter): I'm taking her first!

Me: Her?

Paramedic: Pick her up …

Me: You see her? Yes, take her! Here she is! You see her!

I picked up Susie in my arms and put my mouth in her hair next to her ear and said, you're gonna be okay now, Susie, you're gonna be okay.

He took her out of my arms like a big rag doll and stuffed her into the basket. Then he crawled in after her and the basket started to lift.

Paramedic: I'll come back for you!

*   *   *

The cracks were slowly reaching around me and Hobbes. The roaring of the helicopter and the screaming and groaning of the ice were deafening and the cracks were widening.

The lake was in my brain. I put that vast lake into my brain, and I could zoom out and see it as a blue splotch on the big ball of the world, or I could zoom in and see each snowflake as a 10
158
possibility. I was standing on the lake and tucking the corners of it into my skull, but the lake didn't know me. It didn't feel me. It couldn't understand me, zoom in or out on me.

I might be tipping into a cold lake in a minute, but I could imagine a tiger, and a dinosaur based on bones, and monsters under the bed, and I could imagine flying. That's what a sick brain could do—it could know it was sick, it could know it might die. That was the Calvin brain, the human brain. Only the human brain could know about a hot tiger on a cold lake.

I had the lake in me, Bill. But the lake didn't have me.

Not yet.

The basket was coming down for me.

Hobbes: As long as you know—

Me: What?

Hobbes: As long as you know you have a tiger. Don't make me come out. Keep me in.

I nodded, not exactly sure what he meant, but knowing I could figure it out so long as that basket got down to us in time.

Hobbes: We're buddies.

Me: Yeah.

Hobbes: We're friends.

Me: Yeah.

Hobbes: Don't give up on the Lottery.

Me: Okay.

Hobbes: Don't give up.

Me: I won't.

Hobbes: Don't let Maurice push you around.

Me: Okay.

Hobbes: Remember there's a tiger in you.

Me: Okay.

Hobbes: Do your homework but don't stop having fun.

Me: Okay. Hobbes …

The ice floe was tipping and he was grinning his Cheshire cat grin.

Me: Calvin without Hobbes, it just wouldn't have worked.

Suddenly the basket was there and the paramedic was manhandling me into it.

Me: Hobbes! Get in!

Paramedic: Settle down, kid. I've got you.

Me: You have to get Hobbes…!

Paramedic: You're really cold. Come on, settle down, or you're going to cause trouble for both of us.

Me: Hobbes!

The basket lifted off and we were high over the ice and then we were in the helicopter.

As we pulled away, I could see Hobbes like an orange blanket floating in the black water.

 

That's the way things went, Bill.

The paramedic who was looking after Susie had started an IV.

Me: Is she going to be okay?

Paramedic 1 (busy):

Paramedic 2 (to me): I want you to wrap yourself in this blanket and hold this heat pack to your abdomen.

Me: But is she going to be okay?

Susie: Where's Calvin?

Paramedic 1: He's here. You can talk to him in a minute.

Susie: Where? I can't see him.

The paramedic gave me a look that said, I have no idea why she wants you but she does, so get your skinny rear over here.

Me: I'm here, Susie.

I knelt beside the stretcher and touched her hair. It was the realest, truest hair I will ever touch.

Susie: Do you think this will make the papers?

Her voice was so small I had to read her lips.

Me: I hope not. I don't want Bill to know what I did to you.

Even while I was saying that, I knew I'd have to tell you everything, confess everything, apologize for everything.

Susie: You owe me. Big-time.

Me: I owe you for the rest of my life.

Susie: Yeah.

She smiled.

I held her hand and had this vision of owing her for the rest of my life, and me old and still owing her.

Me: Okay. Where should I start?

Susie: Take your meds.

I nodded.

Susie: And stick with me.

Me: I'm sticking.

Susie:

Me: Hobbes is gone.

Susie: Is it hard?

Me: It's hard.

Paramedic 2: Okay, kid, I need you to wrap up and put this heat pack—

Me (to paramedic 2): How did you know we were here? Out on the lake?

Paramedic 2: We got a call. All you need to know is that you'll be paying for this little rescue mission until you're well into your thirties.

 

Susie made me go back to school. Of course.

Maurice said the freak is back when I walked in, but everyone else was like, saw you in the paper!

Most said stuff like

what was the helicopter like?

is it true that you and McLean are a thing?

she says you guys slept in the same tent

why are your faces sunburned?

is it true her baby toes froze off?

is it true your toes turn black before they fall off?

I had never been so popular. I thought they would call me schizo or something, but if they did it wasn't to my face. Besides, it didn't seem like a bad name anymore. Just a fact. Sooz and I sat together at lunch the first day back and Maurice tried to grab my lunch but I stopped him and Susie told him to go clip his nose hairs so he grabbed her lunch and I socked him.

He told the principal I was bullying him and I got in trouble, but Maurice hasn't bothered me since. I have initiated an appeasement policy and hope to find a diplomatic resolution to our ongoing tensions.

My English teacher turned out to be a friendly alien and suggested I write all this down for my English project, and, given the special circumstances, she wouldn't even take marks off for being late. Maybe she was just being nice because I'm onto her about the whole alien thing, but when she sees how many pages it is, maybe she might give me a decent mark.

I also got an extension for my biology project, an essay about how we're polluting and destroying Lake Erie and how the other Great Lakes will be next. Susie read it and said if I don't get an A, no one will.

*   *   *

I got on medication and it helps. It helps a lot, and I don't get any of the side effects. Turns out Dr. Filburn didn't go to school for twelve years for nothing.

I visited soldier guy in the hospital. He didn't salute me this time because he's on meds now, too. Turns out we both like chess. He might be becoming my first guy friend.

Sometimes I can feel Hobbes in the room, or beside me when the fire is going and I'm sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows. I don't mind. I mean, a comic strip called just
Calvin
? It wouldn't have flown.

Hobbes doesn't talk, but feeling him around reminds me not to give up on the Lottery and to make sure I take care of myself.

Our parents thought Susie and I had run away together. Naturally Susie's parents gave me grief about hanging out with her at first, especially when they knew everything that had happened. But she told them we were Calvin and Susie and that's just the way it was. After I had groveled sufficiently they didn't hate me anymore.

Susie makes me do my homework every night and it turns out that if you do that, school isn't as horrible. Susie says get used to it because I'll be going to university for a long time so I can become a neuroscientist. Once I complained about not knowing birds, and she said let me introduce you to the joys of reading and bought me a book on birds. If I ever don't want to do my homework, she starts taking off her shoes and socks so I can see where her baby toes aren't there anymore and I tell her, stop I'll do whatever you want.

*   *   *

Well, Bill.

That's the story.

I'm okay now, even though my brain will be burping up Lake Erie for a long time. I know you didn't create me. You can't make me better and you don't control my destiny. I control me, and I can ask bigger questions than my brain can answer. It's scary to think about that, but it's also part of the adventure. I like to think of you out there doing new and amazing things with your brain.

And this is the second reason I'm writing you this letter: to say thanks. I never found out who told the emergency services to come for us. Apparently 911 callers do not have to give any personal information. Susie and I decided it could have been the cabdriver, or Orvil Watts, or the guy in the doorless truck who was looking for Fred, or Noah.

But why would any of those guys not want to identify themselves?

It must have been you, Bill.

You said yourself the world is a magical place.

Yours truly,

Calvin        

 

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My sincere gratitude to

Brenda Bowen

Valerie Battrum

Haley Latta

Patrick Downes

Candace Fisher

Sarah Gough

Asher Mason

Derek Bates

Katie Bates

Dallas Leavitt

Shawna Cordara

Dave Voelker

Margaret Ferguson

Shelley Tanaka

Alberta Foundation for the Arts

Canada Council for the Arts

—M.L.

 

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Martine Leavitt
has written several award-winning novels for young adults, including
Keturah and Lord Death
, a finalist for the National Book Award, and
Heck Superhero
, a finalist for the Governor General's Award. She lives in Alberta, Canada. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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