In the Heart of the Canyon - By Elisabeth Hyde Page 0,97

She tried to hold back a sob, but she was too afraid—afraid of the pain right now and also afraid of all the pain to follow. Don was right: there was no way out of this. Everywhere she looked, there was pain.

Voices shouted but they were in the next world over. “I can’t do this!” she screamed.

“Yes, you can,” said her mother. “Breathe!”

“I can’t!”

“Amy,” and she felt her mother’s hands upon her face, turning her so that she was looking into her eyes. Her mother held up her index finger, right in front of Amy’s mouth. “Amy. Look at my finger. See my finger? I want you to pretend it’s a candle. Now blow it out!”

Amy wrenched her head away, but her mother turned it back and continued to hold up her finger.

“Blow,” her mother commanded.

Amy pursed her lips and managed a little puff.

“That’s right! Blow! Blow the candle out, honey! Deep breath in! Now little blows! That’s great, honey. You’re doing great!”

Amy squeezed her mother’s finger and tried to blow. The pain was both within and without, evil, twisting and stretching, and there was no letting up, no lessening of the force.

“Blow,” her mother said, and Amy was so angry at the pain that she grabbed her mother’s finger and bit down hard.

Afterward her mother sat back and wrung her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Amy said. “Did I break the skin?”

Her mother held up her finger. There was no blood, just a row of pink molar tracks. “Next time maybe just blow?”

“Next time she gets a stick,” said Peter.

Amy didn’t laugh. “More ice.”

Susan stood up. “I’ll be right back. Before the next one.”

Amy didn’t want to be reminded of the next one. She closed her eyes and tried to go limp. The strangest images came to her from far away: her chemistry teacher’s voice as he handed out their final, the smell of rain on hot pavement. The lack of pain right now was cool and sweet. She had already lost all sense of time, but now she felt herself floating as well, and she heard a humming sound. Then she felt something touch her lips, and she opened her eyes and saw that Peter was holding a cup for her. His beard was bristly, and his hair rose in sweaty spikes from his forehead. Everyone else was gone.

Amy tried to take a sip, but it made her nauseous, and she belched loudly.

“It’s so bad,” she told him. “Its unbelievably bad.”

“You can do it.”

“How?”

“You will,” he said. “You just will.”

Amy had heard those words many times, but hearing them from Peter was different. For the first time, she believed them.

Although if anyone—Peter included—asked who the father was, she would get up and walk straight into the river and never return. She would. She really would.

“The camera!” she said, suddenly remembering. “I lost it! All those pictures!”

“Fuck ’em.”

This made sense. “Did you see what I did to my mother’s finger?”

“Hell yeah. Stay away from me.”

Amy closed her eyes. Peter held her hand, and as she began to pant (and no, she wasn’t getting good at it, there was just no other way to breathe), she sensed other people gathering around her.

But something different was happening now. Instead of feeling like she was being torn apart inside, she felt like she had to go to the bathroom. The pain was back just as strong as before, but now she needed to get to a toilet. This was terrible. The timing was awful. What were they going to do if she made a big mess on the sand? JT had made them be so careful the whole time, to protect the river ecology. And now she was going to pollute the whole beach.

But it was already coming, and there was nothing she could do but bear down and grunt like a beast and push.

46

Day Eleven

Below Lava

JT could feel it before he actually heard it, the thrumming in his chest that always put his nerves on edge when he was on the river. Automatically he looked up into the sky. Abo looked up too.

“Right on schedule, Boss,” he said, just before the sound of gunfire ripped through the canyon. Everyone on the beach craned their necks and shaded their eyes. In the next second, the helicopter materialized, a sparkling bubble sashaying up the river corridor.

“Get back!” JT shouted, waving his arms. “Over there, by the bushes! Sam! Matthew! Get out of the water!”

He and Abo ran out and rolled up the orange panels they’d laid