A pair of red arms appeared through the hole, followed by a little red hat bobbing above the ice. Like a goddamned lump, Walter stood and watched his best friend claw her way out of the frozen lake, heave herself onto the ice, and inch her way on her belly towards land, her eyes dark, terrified. Then, as if he’d just been waiting for her to make up her mind to come join him, he reached out for her and pulled her onto the shore.

Walter doesn’t know how he got Mr. Mulligan’s attention. He doesn’t remember everyone running to the shore, all their classmates shedding their own coats and hats to wrap around Kate, or the trip to the hospital, or going home afterward still not knowing if she would live or die. He doesn’t recall the long bouts of pneumonia, the weeks that Kate was confined to her room; he doesn’t even really remember her coming back to school, or what she was like after, the ways in which she had changed. He only knows what Kate has since told him about that time – how she had nightmares about the darkness she saw beneath the ice, how she couldn’t sleep properly for months – and that he never saw her jump the creek again.

Walter’s only memory is of Kate’s face as she lay there on the beach, white and waxy and ethereal, and thinking that she was dead, that she had died beneath the ice and it was a ghost he had seen emerge from the lake. Kate was gone and it was his fault. Waiting Walter had finally waited too long.

—

On the boat ride into Nipigon, Walter finishes naming the constellations, ending with one of his favourites, Vulpecula – once Vulpecula et Anser, or “The Little Fox with the Goose,” until astronomers separated them. He can remember Kate being sad about that when he described it to her. “But what happened to the goose?” she had asked. “How could he just disappear?”

“Well, there’s a star in the new Vulpecula constellation called Anser. So he didn’t disappear – it was more like he was consumed.” Walter shook his head. “Poor goose. Eaten by his closest friend.”

“Poor fox,” Kate said. “He couldn’t help it.” She tilted her head back, looking up at the sky. “He was only doing what nature intended him to do.”