She took another step backwards, away from him. Her body bisected the outline of the Giant, a bright red beacon in the middle of all that grey. She jumped up and down, once, twice, then shrugged as if she had just proven something. “Are you just going to stand there, my Waiting Walter?” she asked, reaching out her hand to him. “Or are you going to come out here with me?”

Walter put one foot on the edge of the ice, and then pulled it back. He could hear the laughter of his classmates far behind him, and he wished he and Kate were there with them, where they’d be safe and he wouldn’t have to choose between being Waiting Walter and being out on the ice with Kate. “Come back,” he called, “and I won’t make fun of you for not knowing who fought in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham anymore.”

“I know who fought in it. It was Montcalm!”

“Montcalm and who?” Walter called. “Come back here and I’ll tell you!”

“I know it!” yelled Kate. She fixed her gaze on him. Walter could feel it all the way across the ice, generating a vibration that built up in his veins. Then she turned her back to him, facing the Giant, and jumped a third time, his heart leaping up and down with her. “It was Woooooooolfe!” she yelled at the Giant. “Aroooooooo!” She howled out over the lake, the icy air vibrating with the church-bell ring of her voice. Walter laughed, shoved his hands in his pockets, threw his head back, and began howling along with her, his own voice mingling with hers. When he stopped howling and looked back down to the lake, Kate was gone.

Walter stared, his brain moving at an alarmingly sluggish pace. That tiny puddle of darkness couldn’t really be a hole in the ice, it was too small for a body, surely. There had been no crack, no splash, no sound at all. Kate hadn’t even let out a breath, a gasp. Walter would have heard it. He knew he would have.

She must be behind him, playing a prank, sneaking around him while his eyes were closed in his howl, setting up to scare him. She had to be there, but he couldn’t make himself turn around. Because if she wasn’t behind him, it meant she was still out there. And if that was true…I just need a few seconds, he thought. I just need to figure out what to do. And yet there he was, as immovable as the Giant, his body turning to rock.