Matt and Elena - Tenth Date: On Wickery Pond, L.J. Smith [best ereader under 100 .TXT] 📗

to drown—
—and then something poked his shoulder.
It was a stick.
It was a stick. Elenaʼs stick. And Matt had hold of it, pulling
strongly, and somehow he was being pulled up by it, too.
There was someone else in the world and they were helping him!
Elena! Elena was pulling him home!
And then Matt broke through the surface of something like a giant
sheet of glass and freezing air hit his face and then there was air rushing
into his lungs, delicious, delicious air.
“Matt! Oh, Matt! Oh, thank God! Oh, dear God!”
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Matt was thanking God, too, but in his mind because his body was
busy breathing, which was the most wonderful exciting excruciating thing
ever because he kept coughing up icy water, but the air that went in was
better than one thousand cups of raspberry cocoa.
But then he felt his neck wobble and his head fell into the water,
facedown. He couldnʼt even hold his head up on his own.
Hands pulled him up by the hair. Hands pulled up his arms, first
one, then the other, to lie on the ice at the edge of the hole.
“Matt! Matthew Honeycutt! You look at me!” The voice was like a
whiplash and Matt blinked and focused.
What he saw was the Princess Elenaʼs face, but she didnʼt look
much like a princess. There was a scratch on her forehead and dark tearlines
streaking her cheeks. She was blue-white with the cold and her
teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Her golden hair was soaked,
hanging in utter dishabille about her shoulders.
Jeez, she must have had some mascara on, Matt thought, knowing
he was disoriented, but focusing on that bit of trivia anyway. Or maybe
eyeliner, like those ancient Egyptians. I couldnʼt even tell before.
“Matthew Honeycutt,” she said again, and this time with a sudden
refocusing, Matt saw another facet of her. Her blue-white face seemed
merely a trick of the light. The scratch was to show that she was no
inhuman angel. The chattering teeth, the dripping hair were evidence of
what this princess had endured on her journey to save life. And the dark
tears were more like the adorable stains on the face of a child, tracks that
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should be wiped away by a kindly hand or kissed by a mother smelling of
cookies.
“Do you know who you are?” the princess in front of him said, and
again, Matt glimpsed another facet, a nurse who had traveled many miles
under abominable conditions to help a fighting soldier. Her professional
aplomb couldnʼt quite conceal a special interest in this one.
“Matt. Iʼm Matt,” he said. He looked at his arms, heavy even in
shirtsleeves lying like two crooked white logs on the dirty ice. “Elena,” he
added, getting the words out, with difficulty, “I have to . . . pull up now. Or
else . . .” His head wobbled again on his neck. Somewhere, far away but
perfectly audible, children were keening, crying.
“Liddy,” he said. “Ponytail girl. We got . . . her out?”
“Lindie,” Elena said sharply, the professional nurse at once. “Do
you remember her?”
“She . . . squeezed my hand . . . then she fell through . . .”
“You got her out, Matt. You pulled her out safe and sheʼs still safe,
and help is coming. Do you hear me? Help is coming. All the kidsʼ
parents and the police.”
Dully, Matt could feel hands on his face. Elena was holding his
head out of the water. She was pinching with sharp nails, but he felt . . .
comfortably numb.
“I have to pull,” he said. It was all he could focus on. “Head and
shoulders out of water.”
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Elena nodded. Now the facet he saw was all confidence and
helpfulness. “Iʼll pull when you pull yourself,” she said. She gripped him
under his arms. “After a three count? One, two, three, pull!”
Together, with all their strength, they pulled him up . . . about an
inch.
“One, two, three, pull!”
They tried again . . . and again—four times in all.
And gained maybe another half inch.
The trouble was that Matt was too dense. And Elena was a strong
girl, but the bitter chill of the wind, the walk on the pond, the “adventures”
with the children, the saving of Lindie, and, finally, heaving Matt up this far
had sapped her strength until Matt could she was fighting
unconsciousness from cold herself.
And then the ice kept crumbling. Together, Elena and he were
moving him, but only forward on increasingly mushy ice. God, at any
moment the ice could break—and then Elena . . .
“Get up,” Matt told Elena, feeling surprisingly lucid. “Look, Iʼm
gonna . . . say something . . . canʼt even think of a way . . . tʼmake it less
corny. Even Uncle Joe . . . didnʼt have enough imagination . . . ”
“Then tell Uncle Joe to shut up,” she said, and for a moment he was
back at the hospital, angry with the sharp-tongued nurse, a guy who had
always banged his cart against the waste container in Uncle Joeʼs room
just when Uncle Joe had fallen asleep.
“Matt?”
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Elenaʼs voice. Matt was back in reality. “We have tʼsay . . .”
“Tell Uncle Joe to shut up!”
“I canʼt. He wonʼt . . . let me. Mom . . . I mean, ʼLena, no, Eh-lehna,”
he pronounced it carefully with a tongue that felt too large. “You have
to . . . get up. Get in shelter. You have to . . . to save your life. Save
yourself.” The corny line finally said, Matt shut his eyes, just for a moment,
and the next thing he knew his face was in the water. Then sharp tongs
were pulling it up. Sharp—fingernails.
“Matt! Stop being a jerk! You donʼt die of hypothermia this quickly.
It feels bad, but you donʼt die. You donʼt die.”
But Iʼm in the water wearing only the remains of a shirt and
trousers—if the current hasnʼt pulled them off, Matt thought to Elena. It
was so much easier to just think things than it was to say them. And—I
remember, Uncle Joe, yep, I got it: water chills you twenty-five times faster
than air. So Elena has to get up. Sheʼs the one who has a chance.
He was so satisfied with this logic that he felt his eyes shut again.
“Save myself? So you want me to just leave you and save myself?
And maybe Lassie will come save you? Or maybe Britches? Thatʼs the
stupidest name for a pet I ever heard. Laugh? I almost!”
Matt felt his face come out of the water. Someone was hurting
Britches, the best old Labrador Retriever ever born—or dead. That did it.
That made him mad.
“Caroline, you brat!” he heard himself say, and it wasnʼt just thinking
it. He said it good and loud.
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“Good,” a voice told him, but this voice was tender and firm, “I
thought Iʼd lost you for a moment. Matt, I know it hurts to be in the water.
But help should be here any minute. Any minute. Donʼt give up now. I
donʼt know if I can hold you up much longer.” Elena was breathing hard,
as if she were climbing a mountain. And Matt noticed that the hands
holding his head up were trembling.
He giggled foolishly. There was something he should say,
something he should insist on. But heʼd forgotten it. Uncle Joe had
become a positive personality tonight, even if he was dead as a doornail.
Matt was looking to him for help, and he got it immediately. He shouted it
triumphantly.
“Bubala bubala
Bubala bubala
Bubala bubala BUM!”
That was what Uncle Joe had always said, scratching his stubble,
when he couldnʼt remember what he had been talking about. It always
gave him immense pleasure to see peopleʼs reactions to it. Matt had told
Elena the story on their second or third date and she had laughed
hysterically. Now, dizzily, hazily, Matt opened his eyes to see who was
there and what they thought of it, eh?
He saw a very beautiful girl, maybe some kind of snow girl. Her
hair was wet and chunks of ice were frozen on it. She was looking at him
with eyes that were dark blue, but the moon was shining full on her face
and the moonlight showed that, splattered across the deep blue, there was
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gold. Blue and gold eyes . . . should make green. But these eyes were
like lapis lazuli. The golden speckles and splatters didnʼt mix with the blue.
“Elena Gilbert,” he whispered.
The snow girl nodded weakly.
“Our anniversary date?”
Another weak nod.
“And this . . . is the end,” Matt said. He meant just to slide out of
her fingers and go under like that, but what she said next stopped him.
“No! Youʼre not dying, like Uncle Joe was. Youʼre just cold. You
can take it. Besides . . . are you leaving this time without—kissing me
goodnight?”
Matt felt some deep inner response. He should think about this, he
realized suddenly and gravely. End their important tenth date without at
least trying to kiss her?
“No boyʼs done that for years,” she whispered sorrowfully. “And
now youʼd rather die than do it one more time?”
“No,” Mattʼs whisper was husky and dry. He tried to put his tongue
out to lick his lips, but he couldnʼt feel with his lips very well.
“Okay, then. Iʼm going to kiss you. But if you give up I wonʼt be
together with you.”
Sheʼs keeping me listening, keeping me aware, Matt thought.
Like I used to talk to Uncle Joe. He had so little time after they found the
cancer—it had spread so far . . . I wanted every minute to be some special
memory.
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“O-kay,” Elena said, and there was a touch of the diva back in her
voice as she spoke. “Now Iʼm going to put your hands under my armpits.
Thatʼs the warmest place Iʼve got left. But Iʼm telling you, Matt Honeycutt,
that if those hands try to feel their way down onto something lower and
curvier that Iʼm going to push your head under water. Mm-kay?”
“Got it . . . boss-lady,” Matt said, half humble and half-laughing.
“Sorry . . . I mean, ʻboss-womanʼ . . . of course.”
“Of course,” Elena hummed. “But just ʻBossʼ will do.”
Meanwhile, she was stuffing his white, clawed hands under her
armpits. Matt was amazed to feel a bit of life return to them, something
that was not exactly warmth but the shadow of warmth. He could feel
them unclaw.
Elena was gripping him by the elbows, keeping his hands in place.
Slowly, Matt began to feel something else. Pins and needles, the agony of
life coming back into lifeless flesh. He knew that his eyes and his nose
were running, but he didnʼt care. He was too grateful for this gift of pain
that made him feel almost alive.
And certainly more alert.
“Do I still get a kiss?” he asked, giddily.
“Yes, but first weʼre going to do a little wiper-oo.” Elena said. Keep
your hands where they are—this will just take a second.”
She reached down and tore at one of the pearly bottom of her dress.
The material ripped off easily and then Matt was having a face bath from a
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catʼs scratchy tongue. That was what it felt like. But that was good, too; it
was good to feel his face, to know his skin was there.
“All better now. You look great,” Elena announced in her sweetest
drawl and Matt realized that he was going to be kissed by the most
beautiful liar whoʼd ever walked the earth.
She pushed forward