Back Again (the novel)

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

1990

Dawn felt like a puppet, her body movements controlled by the nimble fingers of a puppeteer. Her hands flew to her mouth and, for a shocking moment, it felt as if all the air was sucked from her lungs. A sick, peculiar feeling in her stomach threatened to expel the cookies that Anna and she had wolfed down almost as soon as they’d left home.

It wasn’t possible that her sister was lying dead, broken and bleeding, amid this tangle of rocks and bushes. Any moment now, she must simply open her eyes and laugh at Dawn for being a worrier.

But Anna still wasn’t moving, and her chest was as still as the rocks around them. Dawn had to do something. She couldn’t just stay here and stare at Anna. She needed to get help. Fast.

A doctor at the hospital could do something. They could put those electric paddle things on her. Zap her back to life.

They could do that, couldn’t they?

If Dawn could just get her heart under control and stop this sick feeling in her stomach, then she could think properly and make some decisions. That’s what Anna would do; she would be calm and smart if the roles were reversed.

Dawn considered going back up the hill following the same route by which she had come down. Then she could get her bike and peddle like the wind back home. Her mother’s angry face loomed large in her mind.

She would be in so much trouble for leaving Anna on her own and she wasn’t even sure if she could get back up the hill.

Following the creek might work. If she could get to Metter’s Bridge and the main road, from there she could stop a car and get a ride back up the hill. She looked around wildly, searching for something familiar, but she found nothing. If she didn’t know where she was, then she had no clue of the distance she would need to travel to get to the bridge. Based on how far they’d come along the trail, if she had to guess, she thought maybe at least an hour’s walk. Then there was no guarantee a car would stop, and she wasn’t supposed to get into a car with a stranger anyway. So that idea wasn’t great.

Why, why had she listened to Anna and come down here?

Dawn stood and began to pace around Anna, her eyes never leaving her sister. Her fingers scratched at the back of her neck; it felt as if small bugs had burrowed into her skin. Tears rolled, unchecked, down her cheeks, her mind flitting about wildly, as she tried to figure out what to do.

Then the reality of the situation hit her, stopping her in mid-pace. Every ounce of energy drained instantly from her body as if she were a robot whose battery pack was pulled. She fell to her knees beside her sister. Her heart felt ragged, torn apart.

“Anna. Anna. Nooo. You can’t be—” she whispered, too afraid to say the words louder, in case that made them real.

They are real.

Anna was dead.

Slowly, as if her body were melting, she lay down next to Anna, gently resting her arm across her sister’s chest. Her head snuggled into the crook between Anna’s head and her shoulder.

Dawn squeezed her eyes shut and wished the day to be different. She wished that Anna and she had never gone for a ride. She wished they’d never decided to go down the hill. Most of all, she wished that she’d never found her sister lying dead in the dirt, by this creek, where they should be playing right now. She wished it were all just the funny trick that she originally thought Anna was playing.