Chapter 1 - The Hollow

        The world was on one side, and Jake was on the other. He sat with his back to one of the gigantic white pine trunks that formed his special place. They had been old when they fell; if they had been standing, Jake wouldn’t have been able to get his arms halfway around. The two fallen pines marked the boundary of his territory. No one ever came down here except for him and Sebastian, but that was before. Now it was only him. Just Jake, the river, and the ferns just beginning to push their way out of the rich loam beneath his feet.  

He watched the river snake its way between banks still caked with thick ice. Above him, the buds on some of the trees were just beginning to open, tiny leaves waving against the brisk air coming off the river. Jake hadn’t thought to bring a jacket with him, so he sat huddled against the tree with his knees against his chest.

Most of the snow was gone, but here and there patches of white, icy winter still clung to the moist earth. Some of the birds had returned, and so the silence was broken by the occasional bird call or the flapping of wings in the branches above. Golden light broke through the treetops and dappled the thick carpet of pine needles. Jake always thought it was like church, except not the way church was, but the way church should be. All beautiful and peaceful, like someone inviting you to rest, even if you were suspended from school, which Jake was.

Two days suspension for ripping Peter Nichols’ essay off the bulletin board, spitting on it, then sticking it back to the bulletin board    using the wet side to make sure it stayed there. That, Mr. Meyers said, was the last straw. Jake didn’t know what straws had to do with being suspended, but that’s what Mr. Meyers said, leaning over the big metal desk, jabbing his finger in the air with his right hand while he dialed the phone with his left.

Mr. Meyers never bothered to ask him his side of the story. It didn’t matter that Peter had hit him in the back of the head three times with paper clips, then lied about Jake calling him a pecker. Mr Meyers probably didn’t even read far enough down the referral form to see it. Jake spit on Peter’s precious South Dakota report, so he was suspended, and that was that. And Peter just sat there smiling, pretending to study his times tables. Precious Peter, already on the eights. Mrs. Collins loved to point out that Peter was already on his eights. Peter could spell big words like “excavator”, and Peter could type forty-five words per minute. Jake believed that even if she had seen him shooting paper clips, her precious Peter wouldn’t have been punished. She probably would have found a way to blame Jake for allowing his head to get in Precious Peter’s way.

At least it was too early for the mosquitoes and black flies. He could sit by the river as long as he wanted and stare at the water without beating himself pink. If he had just remembered to bring a coat before he slipped out of the bedroom window, being suspended wouldn’t have been bad at all. Almost perfect, in fact.

Except that Sebastian wasn’t next to him. Jake felt his absence a hundred times a day; Sebastian wasn’t there in the morning to leave a wet streak across his face  when his room was still dark and cold. He wasn’t at the door, bouncing in circles and barking, when Jake arrived home from school He wasn’t there to crawl up onto the bed with him in the dark and listen while his parents fought in angry, hushed voices because they thought Jake was asleep. Sometimes it felt like a hundred years since he’d seen Sebastian. Sometimes it felt like two minutes. When he slipped out the window, he had to remind himself not to call Sebastian to the side door so they could sneak off together.

You’ll see Sebastian again. That’s what Jake’s father told him when he took Sebastian away. You’ll see him again. I promise. And when you see him, he’ll be the Sebastian you played with when you were little. Then he picked up Sebastian and looked down at Jake with a strange, glassy-eyed, faraway look. Sebastian looked at him too, as if both he and Jake’s father knew something that Jake didn’t, and wanted to keep it that way. When Jake asked to go with him, his father told him no, Jake. Not this time. You’ll see him again, I promise. The last thing Jake saw was a wisp of a white tail at his father turned and left the kitchen, closing the door behind him.

Dad came home alone.  

All Jake had left were pictures in a faded green photo album Mom kept under the coffee table in the living room. He looked through the entire thing every day when he came home from school. He envied the the sandy-haired little boy in the photos. He envied the bright smile on the boy’s face, his mouth a patchwork of missing teeth, because in most of the photos Sebastian posed with him, eyes sparkling from a sea of white fur across his muzzle, receding into a rich gray along his back. Near the back of the album was a picture of Sebastian chasing a ball, all four legs off the ground. In the picture Sebastian was flying, a look of pure joy in his face.

Jake had been looking at that photo when his mom finally took a break from her studying to come in and lecture him about controlling his anger. Jake had heard the entire lecture before. He tried to control his anger at having to listen to it again by looking up that the ceiling and breathing, but that only made things worse. Don’t you roll your eyes at me, she said. I’ve put up with just about as much of your attitude as I can stand. He had tried to make her understand that he was looking at the ceiling, not rolling his eyes, but that only made her angrier, and he had to listen to ten minutes of I Am Tired Of Your Excuses, followed by a litany of everything he’d ever done wrong since he’d spoken his first word. Then he made the mistake of looking at the ceiling again.

When she told him to Get Out Of My Sight Mister, he shoved the photo album across the coffee table. Maybe he had shoved it a little to hard; it slid right off the opposite side and into his mother’s shin. He didn’t wait around to see if he had hurt her; he stomped down the hall and slammed the bedroom door, but not before throwing his Xbox into the hallway, the cables still attached to the back. She was going to take it anyway.

Jake hadn’t climbed out the window until his dad came home. It wasn’t that Jake was afraid of what his dad would do; he’d heard the Respect Lecture at least a hundred times, and he could probably predict his punishment word for word. No Xbox, no bike, no four-wheeler, no nothing until you smarten up. Jake, you’re better than this.

Nothing that his Dad said to Jake bothered him in the slightest. It was after. Brad, you have to do something, in that strange, perfectly clear whisper that carried out into the yard. I’m out there every day busting my hump trying to keep food on the table. Dad didn’t bother to whisper. That was how it always started. Brad, you have to do something. Once Mom said it, Jake knew what was next. They didn’t notice when he slid the window open, dropped onto the soft grass, and headed for his special place by the river.

The quiet was a relief, but it didn’t take long for things to get too quiet. Jake missed Sebastian all the more; he could have sat there for hours by the river, watching the water flow past, telling Sebastian about everything. Sebastian was probably the best listener on the entire planet. But Sebastian was gone, gone to whatever place dogs go when they don’t come back from the Vet.

Jake looked up at the sky, thankful that he could finally look up without causing a meltdown, and wondered how long he’d been out of the house. It seemed like hours. He stretched his legs, and felt the cold air raise goosebumps underneath his shirt. His room was warm, at least, and he did have colored pencils and paper. Not as good as an Xbox, but at least it was something. If he was lucky, the fight would be over, and he could sneak back into his room before they knew he was gone and draw until it was time for dinner.

He clambered to his feet and dusted himself off. The cold air forced a shiver from his body. He took one last look at the river before turning to the trial that led up the hill. Something in the river made him pause, and look closer. A chunk of ice floated lazily past him through the dark water. He had to look again. As he climbed over the pine trunk, he lost sight of it, but spotted it just as it was about to round a bend in the river.

It looked exactly like a ship.

At first he thought it was his imagination, but the closer he got, the more it became apparent that nature had somehow created an ice ship. It had a pointed bow and a flat stern, and Jake could almost imagine tiny ice sailors working below the deck.

He had to have it.

Jake darted after it, weaving through the pines and cedars that grew along the riverbank. He almost called out for Sebastian to follow, but he caught himself, and ran harder to keep himself from crying. The ice ship had already covered a good distance, but the river curved to the north, giving him a chance to cut across and get ahead of it. At the next bend, the river widened where another stream ran into it from the north side. He had to catch it before it drifted into the middle and disappeared. Jake ran as fast as he could through the woods, scratching his arm on a hawthorn and nearly tripping over a fallen sapling still hidden in the snow. He shook off the obstacles and pushed on, determined to get his hands on the prize heading toward him in the icy water.

He reached the place where the river flowed back toward him. At first, the ship was nowhere to be seen, and he feared he’d lost it. Then it sailed into view, slicing through the water as if it were under full steam. Jake marveled at it, but it had drifted close to the opposite bank. He’d never catch it from where he was.  

A sheet of ice still extended out from the next bend in the river. Jake hesitated as he stepped off the bank. It would get him out close. He’d only have once chance to get his hands on that ice ship, if the ice was even thick enough to hold him that far out. One more look at the ship convinced him. He made his way carefully and quickly across the ice. As he neared the edge, he got down on his hands and knees, and finally on his belly, inching his way across like a soldier beneath barbed wire.  

It seemed solid enough. His dad had always told him not to trust ice. River ice was never safe, he said, but especially in spring. Jake considered turning back, but there was the ship, only a few feet away. A little more, and he’d be able to grab it and pull it out of the water. The ice chilled his belly, but the prospect of getting his hands on the ship overrode his discomfort. Only a few feet now.

The ice ship was gone. Not the ice itself; the chunk floated past him, but something had happened to it. Had he been seeing things? Jake lay on the ice and watched what had been his ship float buy, suddenly no more than a miniature iceberg, like a thousand others he’d seen on the river. Disappointed and suddenly very cold, Jake reversed course and began creeping back toward the bank. His arms and legs felt numb, and he could no longer feel his fingers. Dejected and shivering, Jake wanted nothing more than to get back to his warm bedroom. Creeping on his belly wasn’t getting him to the bank fast enough. He decided to stand up.

Drawing his legs underneath him, he struggled into a kneeling position, and attempted to stand. An ominous crack sounded beneath his feet, and Jake became still as a statue, his heart racing. As slowly as he could, he got back to his knees, doing his best to distribute his weight evenly across the ice.

Stupid, Jake, Stupid, he told himself.

The ice cracked again, and Jake launched himself toward the bank in a panic. He felt the ice give way beneath him, and the river seemed to reach up through the shards and wrap cold tendrils of water around his waist. The frigid water closed over his head, pulling the breath from his body. He tried to fight his way back to the surface, though his limbs were so numb he couldn’t make them fully obey. Blind, mindless panic robbed him of any conscious thought, and when his face splashed through to the open air, he choked down a single, ragged breath before the river pulled him back under.

Darkness closed around him. All at once his vision seemed to blend into a gray mist. He kicked for the surface again, but with less energy than he had before. The relentless cold was winning. Jake felt his body tingle and then he felt nothing. His head broke the surface once again. He sucked in a final breath.

He had time to yell for his mother once before the river took him.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two