“It does not have shell rot,” I say, though I know she’s right.
“Listen to me,” says Gwen. “You haven’t been changing the water enough; it doesn’t get enough sun; the terrarium is too small; and it’s getting lesions all over its body! We have to transfer it to something clean right away, or it’s going to get even sicker. And we can’t release it into the wild because it’ll infect other turtles.”
At this point, I’m so overwhelmed, I just want to hang up, go to my room, and curl up under the blanket. I’m flooded by guilt and shame.
“But RJ loves it,” I say.
“Who’s RJ?”
“Ralph,” I say. It feels so weird to say his actual name. “He loves the turtle. We can’t take it away.”
She pauses for a second. She knows this is true.
“This is what we’re going to do,” she says definitively. “I’m going back tomorrow. I’m going to clean off the rot and apply antibiotic and change the water and install proper lighting and a better dry area for it to bask.”
“Don’t let the nurses see you,” I say.
“Or what?” she asks. “They’ll make me take it home?”
I have nothing to say to that.
“And we’ll divide up the work. I’ll go and put antibiotic on its shell and clean the tank on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. You go on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We’ll keep it clean through winter, and in spring, we’ll let it go.”
“Good plan,” I say. She’ll be visiting one more day a week than I will, but it doesn’t seem like a good time to argue.
“Maybe we’ll just switch the turtles in spring,” she says. “I’ll source an ethically raised turtle: a box turtle or musk turtle, one that isn’t endangered. Knowing Ralph, he won’t even notice the difference. And once he gets out of the hospital, hopefully, it’ll be warm enough so that we can all let the Blanding’s turtle go together.”
Once he gets out of the hospital.
Gwen talks for a while longer, but I’m not listening. With every last nucleus of every cell of my heart, I want RJ to leave the hospital, but I know the truth. He’s only leaving that hospital one way. And it’s not the good way.
We agree on the plan, and as I hang up, I’m hit by another chill: RJ didn’t tell Gwen the truth about his condition.
And neither did I.
It’s Friday. Ms. Kuper has gone to Madison to try to speed up the process to declare the Back 40 a protected refuge. There are about twenty of us gathered behind the old bank in the freezing cold. We’re going to catch the county officials when they arrive to sign over the property. Mom is here, along with Mr. Firenze, Max, and Shirah and a couple of sixth graders from Max’s lunch table gang. The other adults are reporters from a couple of newspapers, including the one my mom works for; a camera operator; and members of various community groups: bird-watchers, ecologists, and a handful of adults who went to Prairie March as kids. They hold posters saying SAVE THE BACK 40! and THE BACK 4OUR KIDS!
Mom puts her hand on my shoulder. I’m glad she’s here. She wrote a note to the school, excusing me, red-inked in sharp, neat letters: Will won’t be in school today. He’s going to save the Back 40.
With the windchill, it’s definitely below zero. I can hear the crunch of snow under forty boots. Just before noon, we hear a whistle. We begin moving rapidly, and as quietly as twenty people can move, to the side, then to the steps of the bank.
A gray-haired couple in a blue Prius arrives. The man helps the woman out of the car. They look like regular, nice people.
“Those are the government officials?” I hear a voice ask.
“What were you expecting?” someone else says. “Giants?”
“Excuse us,” yells Mr. Firenze. “Can we have a word with you?”
The couple turns and looks at the approaching group with surprise and apprehension.
“We’re not here to harass you,” says Mr. Firenze. “We’re actually here to save the county from making a very bad and very expensive mistake. We can prove that this land is home to an endangered species.”
The crowd pushes forward to hear the conversation.
“Let me guess,” says the woman. “You found the last unicorn back there.”
Mr. Firenze doesn’t smile. “I’d like to introduce to you one of Prairie Marsh’s finest students, Will Levine.”
My mother pats me on the shoulder, and I step forward. At least five phones and a camera are in my face, recording. My knees are shaking.
“This is the Blanding’s turtle,” I say, my voice quavering, holding Mom’s phone up for the officials to see. “Latin name, Emydoidea blandingii. Notice the signature bright yellow chin and throat. And also, on the carapace, the upper shell, those yellow flecks on a dark background. My associate and I found this specimen in the Back 40.”
I know turtles don’t feel emotions beyond aggression and fear, but this one looks proud, with its snout up in the air, its eyes wide open, and its signature yellow chin by far the most colorful thing in RJ’s hospital room.
I step back and feel a pair of hands clasp securely around my upper arms, supporting me on my trembling legs. Mom’s hands.
“If you sell the Back 40,” Mr. Firenze continues in a voice at once gentle and brimming with power, “you might be accused of intentionally dumping a federally protected wildlife refuge for a quick profit. Even children are asking you to stop. This is not going to look good come election time.”
There’s an excited chuckle from the crowd.
“We aren’t irrational people,” says the woman. “If there is an endangered species dwelling on county property, one that would block our ability to develop the land, we certainly want to know about it.”
“Dolores, they’re fleecing us,” says the man. “Who knows where they found that thing.”
“Let’s give them until Monday,” the woman replies. She turns back to Mr. Firenze. “We need better evidence. An endangered population. Not just one—we expect to see multiple turtles. Otherwise, first thing Monday morning, we’re back here to turn the land over to the developers.”
Saturday was a wash. We got a late start because the hole under the fence Ms. Kuper and I have been climbing through was blocked with snow and ice and it took hours of digging to open it wide enough to enter the Back 40. Then, already exhausted, we looked and looked but found nothing.
Now it’s early Sunday morning, and we have a much smaller crowd. “All right, gang,” says Mr. Firenze. “This is our last shot, but no matter what, we have to stop when the light begins to fade.”
“It’s hopeless,” I say. “Turtles burrow down into leaves and dirt. They could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t even see them. They could be under the ice.”
“We have to do our best, Will,” Mr. Firenze says gravely. “You’re one of Prairie Marsh’s finest students. Your expertise is not to be underestimated. Plus, another graduate of our fine school will be joining us shortly. She’s quite a herpetologist, I’m told.”
“Wait a minute,” Max says to me. He’s been silent, taking this all in. “How can they live under the ice? Don’t turtles have lungs? How do they breathe?”
“They do something called cloacal breathing,” I say. “They absorb oxygen through a cavity near the end of their digestive tract.”
Max’s eyes widen, and he grabs me by both shoulders. “They breathe through their butts?!” He turns to the nearest sixth grader and says, “Turtles can breathe through their butts.”
“Ah, here’s our expert now,” says Mr. Firenze.
A familiar figure climbs to her feet from the hole under the fence.
It’s Gwen.
“Looks like everyone’s ready,” she says, approaching. “I’d say the best way to find a turtle is to think like a turtle. Let’s go where you found the last one. Gra
b a stick and everywhere you see a mound of dirt or leaves, carefully move it aside and let’s see who we meet.”
Max gallops down the path to the edge of the pond, pulling Shirah along. I walk alone until Gwen trains her eyes on me. I get the feeling I’m in trouble, and in fact, she veers closer, intercepting me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she hisses, her breath puffing like smoke in the frosty air.
Instantly, I know she’s talking about RJ.
“You tricked me,” she continues. “Why didn’t you tell me he’s dying? You and Ralph— No one told me! I finally got it out of him yesterday!”
“I was trying to help him,” I say. “He was lonely. What was I supposed to do?”
“Tell the truth!” she says. “Tell people the truth!”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She looks at me and shakes her head. “I’m not sorry I reconnected with Ralph. He’s a special person. Really special. I just…I wish it wasn’t the way it is.”
I keep my hands jammed in my pockets and we walk silently following the sixth graders until we reach the pond, the cold wind whipping between us, stirring up a cloud of fresh snow.
* * *
• • •
Over the next few hours, I watch Gwen. Her technique is fascinating. She stands and gazes at a number of spots, each for a long time. Then she walks to one of the spots, takes a quick look, as if checking her vision, and moves on.
“Guys,” calls Mr. Firenze. “Gather up.”
Everyone circles around him. The sun has begun to set behind the trees.
“I want to thank all of you for coming out here in the cold today,” he says. Everyone takes a deep breath, as if they’ve given up and are trying to adjust to the reality of our failure. “We’ve done our best, but our hunt is over.”
“No!” I say. “No! No! No! We are not quitting!”
My feet are on autopilot. I run from the group, and I’m shuffling leaves and digging down into rocks by the edge of the pond, and suddenly, there’s a feeling like knives biting into my foot, gnawing up my leg, all the life draining out.
I don’t know what’s happening until I look down and see that my right foot has plunged through the edge of the ice.
“Don’t move,” says Shirah. She comes closer and steps up next to my shoulder. “Put your arm around me.”
I lean on her, and she supports me as I yank my foot out of the ice.
“It’s cold,” I say, in shock.
“Here,” says Gwen. She pulls her boot off. “I’ve got a spare pair of hikers in my backpack. Somebody get his wet shoe and sock off.”
Max and Mr. Firenze unlace my wet shoe and pull it off, along with the sock. My foot is pink with cold, like a fresh piece of salmon. They slide Gwen’s boot over my foot.
“That should keep it warm long enough to get inside,” he says.
I hang my head. It’s over. We’ve lost.
“Where’s Gwen?” Mr. Firenze looks around. “Gwen!’
I look along the edge of the pond where Gwen, still as a statue, is staring out across the frosted ice.
“What’s that, over there?” she shouts our way. “It looks like an island; maybe it’s a sandbar?”
I hear Mr. Firenze speak to the remaining adults. “We’re not going out there. Will just learned his lesson about walking on ice.”
“Turtles love sandbars,” Gwen calls. “And that’s one place we haven’t looked.”
“Maybe there’s some fallen trees,” says Max. “Like a bridge?”
Max takes a few steps down to the edge of the pond and jogs toward Gwen.
“Will, come on,” he calls, and I gallop over the best I can in my mismatched boots.
“Look,” he says, pointing. A huge fallen tree is frozen into the ice. The trunk is thick, and then it narrows as it reaches out toward the sandbar.
“You have to come with me,” says Max. “I don’t know what to look for.”
“You’re out of your mind,” I say.
“I’m going,” says Max. “I hope you’re going to come with me.”
He grabs onto a few of the larger roots of the fallen tree with his gloved hands and pulls himself up and begins to balance along.
What the heck? I tell myself. I’m doing this.
I climb up—not as nimbly as Max—and I follow the path he took. He made it look easy. It’s not easy. It’s really slippery. The bark of the tree is filled in with ice. The rest of the group has run over to the roots of the tree, but now I’m about twenty feet out.
“The tree ends here,” Max says. Up ahead, there’s a smaller tree, also fallen, thinner and longer than the first. It stretches out farther toward the sandbar, but it’s hard to tell whether it makes it all the way.
Max looks at the lower tree, takes a deep breath, and leaps off the side of the trunk we’re standing on, landing in a crouch on the second, longer tree. He follows it along and comes to the edge of the sandbar.
“I made it,” he says.
I’m starting to panic.
“Come out to the edge,” says Max.
I inch a little more, a little more, holding onto whatever branches I can, my gloved hands trembling with fear.
“Keep your center of gravity low and keep creeping forward,” says Max.
Pretty soon the second tree is just a few feet away.
“Okay,” he says. “Now I want you to jump to the second tree. I’ll be waiting to grab you.”
I look at Max. This is Max, who never considers the consequences of his actions. If I jump, will he catch me?
“It’s getting dark,” says Max. “Stop thinking about it and do it. Do it for the turtles!”
That’s exactly what I need.
I leap.
* * *
• • •
We find the first Blanding’s turtle under a clump of dirt and leaves.
“Well, what have we here?” asks Gwen, leaping from the long tree in her mismatched footwear and squatting by a mound of dirt and dead reeds. She gently digs her gloved fingers around a sluggish turtle. “Our treasure, Blanding’s turtle number one.”
Not a minute later, we sift through another pile of leaves and find another—speckles on the shell, golden chin and throat.
“A female. A mating pair,” says Gwen.
“Max,” I say, “can you get a video?”
He pulls off a glove and pokes at his phone, finally saying, “Okay, action. Everyone say hi.” He sweeps the camera around, capturing our setting—proving that we’re right here in the Back 40. He then zooms in on the two Blanding’s turtles.
“What if this isn’t enough?” I say. “We need evidence of a population.”
It’s getting dark now, for real. We’re down to our final minutes of light, but I’m not satisfied we’ve completed our task. I don’t want the minimum. I want one more. One more turtle makes four.
“Hey, Turtle Boy,” says Max quietly. “Come look at this.”
Gwen and I walk closer to Max. He’s pointing down through the ice, capturing it on video.
I don’t know what I’m going to see. What is there to find on the other side of the line that divides this world and the underworld? But there it is. On the other side of the ice, on the opposite side of the universe, where living things die, there it is. Another turtle. Clearly a Blanding’s turtle.
Drifting.
Drifting and swimming with the invisible current.
As alive as I am.
Rabbi Harris presses the hospital elevator button. On the way here, he told me he’d seen me on the news, saving the Back 40. He was really proud of me. Then we talked about the flashes of memory, how I’ve been seeing Dad from time to time. When it happens, it’s a bit scary, and yet I want more.
That led us to talking about
Mom.
I told him that she doesn’t go out much, that her only friend is Aunt Mo, and that she won’t tell me about Dad. He listened, but I got the sense that he already knew these things. In return, he told me a few things I knew, but didn’t know I knew: he told me that Mom loves me, but she isn’t always sure how to help me.
“She doesn’t understand how badly you want to know about him,” Rabbi Harris says as we get on the elevator to visit RJ.
“Oh, come on. Of course she knows,” I say. “I ask her questions all the time.”
“Sometimes we ask questions,” says Rabbi Harris, “but we don’t want to know the answers. She can see that. She doesn’t want to hurt you.”
“How can learning about Dad hurt me?” I ask. “I don’t even know who he is.”
“You know the saying ‘What you don’t know can’t hurt you,’ right?” he says.
I nod.
“Well, it isn’t true,” he says. “But we wish it were. It makes sense she doesn’t want you to know. We all have our ways of protecting ourselves and the people we love from danger. I have my ways. You have yours. She has hers.
“You’ll need to find a way to help her see that knowing your father and feeling the loss is better for you than living in the dark.”
The elevator doors open, and Rabbi Harris gestures with an after you. He used to be the first one out of the elevator. Now it’s me.
As I lead the way down the hall, I find myself hoping that Gwen won’t be around. I miss how it used to be with just RJ and me. No luck: we walk in and she’s here. She doesn’t greet me with the usual sass, maybe because I’m with Rabbi Harris. Or maybe it’s because of RJ. He looks much worse than last time. His breathing tube and monitors have returned. He’s sitting up, but he’s leaning back against the pillows, with no strength of his own. His face is blank, like he’s there but not really there.
Gwen is sitting next to the bed, holding RJ’s hand, the one with the wire running to his fingertip, the IV in his arm. More wires run to a bank of screens. Green dots zip across the monitors.
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