Drawn Away

by Holly Bennett

  “Oh, man. I feel like crap.” I can see memory returning to him, and with it, panic. “We have to get out of here. We have to—”

  “I know.” I hold both of his hands, try to hold his eyes with my own. “I think she’ll let you go now. Let’s just see if you can walk.”

  Walking is a tall order. Jack can hardly stay awake. But he can crawl— just—so that’s what we do. I stand up to open the door, and then I crawl beside him, trying to make sure he doesn’t suddenly land on his face.

  The Match Girl—Klara—is not in her usual spot. I scan quickly and spot her across the street. She’s walking slowly toward an alley, an alley swirling with mist that no longer looks sooty and sinister. It’s shot with pearly light and hints of rose and gold, and I find myself wishing, just a bit, that I could go with her.

  “Klara!” I call. Jack looks at me like I’m crazy, but… she’s my sister.

  She glances over her shoulder, a little impatient.

  “I hope you find her,” I say. “You deserve to be happy.”

  She nods, a solemn acknowledgment, and gives me a little wave that makes her seem like a child again. And she steps into the mist.

  “Okay, off we go, Jack. Just a little farther, love.”

  Jack toils down the street, stopping every few feet to rest. If we aren’t home by the time we reach the end, I don’t think we’ll get home at all.

  Home. Oh geez. “Jack, you’re not at home!”

  “Wha’?” He’s barely able to speak, maybe not able to comprehend. It’s taking everything he’s got just to keep moving.

  “You’re at the hospital. It might be important to know that.” Who knows how it works? What if his…whatever we are now goes back to his living room and his body’s not there?

  And then everything goes black, and I’m sitting cross-legged in Jack’s bedroom in front of a burned-out candle, stiff and chilly but definitely back on Earth.

  JACK

  I heard the voices first.

  “C’mon, Bente, it’s only been a few minutes since the last test.”

  “I know, but Guy, why isn’t it coming down? They’re pouring insulin right into his veins, and it’s not budging.”

  “I know. I don’t know.”

  They sounded beyond worried, really scared, and even though I wanted to just rest for a while and wallow in the relief that I wasn’t dead, I had to let them know I was okay. I pried my eyes open and squinted against the glare of hospital fluorescents. Obnoxious modern lighting had never looked so good. I tried out my voice.

  “Hey…”

  You’d think I was the ghost, the way they stared at me. Then my mother burst into tears and threw herself on me; my dad, with a sound like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, grabbed my hand in both of his and then actually kissed it.

  “Guy, get the nurse!” My mom was fumbling with my meter, fitting in a new strip and extracting my hand from Dad’s paw.

  “Let me,” I said. “You suck at it.” Her laugh was halfway to a sob, but I could tell she felt a bit reassured. I was still shaky, and in the end she had to steady my hand as I applied the strip. She gasped when she saw the result.

  “Twenty-two? You were still off the scale ten minutes ago!”

  Five minutes later, Dad returned with a nurse in tow. She pulled out her industrial-grade meter—the kind with lancets that feel like paper punches—and drilled a hole in my finger.

  “18.3.” We stared at each other as the new worry surfaced.

  “He’s dropping too fast. He needs—”

  “Glucose.” The nurse cut my mom off briskly. “The doctor left standing orders.” She was fiddling with my IV leads as she spoke, taking away one bag, replacing it with another. “No more insulin for you, young man. And welcome to the land of the living.”

  After she left, a hush descended, like we didn’t know where to begin. Finally, my mom couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Jack, what hap—”

  “Shh, Bente.” My dad walked over and put his arm around her. “Let the boy get back on his feet first.” He reached over and grabbed my hand again. “But you scared the very piss out of us, Jack, and that’s the truth.”

  “I know. Me too.” Soon I would have to decide what to tell them, but for now I had a reprieve. I didn’t want to even think about the inquisition that would follow with my new doctor. God, I could picture it now: the lecture on taking responsibility, the social worker asking earnestly if I had made a “cry for help.” I lay back and closed my eyes—and as memory sharpened, anxiety clenched my gut.

  “Where’s Lucy?” I bolted up in the bed. What if she didn’t make it? “Did she get home?”

  Mom looked guilty. “We left her at the house. I should have checked in with her.” Her hand shot up to her mouth. “And Noah! Is he still at the team party? What time is it?”

  “I’ll call him.” Dad was dialing when a new nurse showed up at the door. She frowned at me.

  “There a young woman at the desk who wants to see you. She says her name is—”

  “Lucy.” Lucy looked worn out but hadn’t lost any of her attitude. She ducked around the nurse and launched herself at me. More tears. Finally we let go, and she took a good look at me. “Not awesome, but a lot better than last time I saw you.”

  And we both knew where that had been. I pulled her back into another hug and whispered in her ear, “Thank you. Thank you for coming after me.” I was full of questions about how she’d managed it, but they would have to wait.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  JACK

  “So…what’re your plans for the Christmas holidays?”

  It was mid-December, six inches of perfect snow fresh on the ground, Christmas flyers jamming the mailbox every morning. Lucy and I were trudging back to her place; math club was back on the schedule, and we were both in a final push to catch up and be in the clear by Christmas break.

  “Funny you should mention that. My mom was saying we should go to Cuba for Christmas. Courtesy of my grampa.”

  “Oh, sweet. Lucky you.”

  “Yeah, well, it turns out it will have to wait till next year. Someone at work already put in for vacation over Christmas week, and with all the stat holidays, they can’t spare two.”

  “Oh. Boo.”

  “Yeah. So what are you doing?”

  “I was thinking I’d go to Montreal for a few days over New Year’s.”

  Lucy nodded. “Be nice to see your friends.”

  “Yeah. I was hoping you’d come with me.”

  “Oh.” She stopped and looked up at me. It was snowing again, the kind of wet snowflakes that stick to each other on the way down and grow huge. Her red tam had collected a lacy layer of snow. “You dare introduce me to your friends?”

  “I guarantee they will like you. And there will be a New Year’s party for sure. But we don’t have to go to it—if you’d rather, we can go out for dinner and wander around Old Montreal. There’ll be something going on there.”

  “I’ve never been. That sounds great.”

  She threaded her arm into mine, and we kept walking, planning our little trip as we went.

  Neither of us mentioned that between Christmas and New Year’s there would be another full moon. I honestly wasn’t worried.

  The Match Girl was gone. We’d seen her go, but even if we hadn’t, I think I would still have known. Through those weird months, her presence had grown on me, so that I could feel her hovering…not over me, exactly. Behind me? I didn’t even realize I could feel her until I felt her absence.

  It wasn’t even three weeks ago that I’d almost died because of her, but it seemed so distant. Not like a dream—I knew it was real, all right—but like something that happened so long ago it was getting hard to remember. And that was fine with me.

  It was different for Lucy. She had some bond with Klara that I didn’t understand, more than could be explained by the discovery of some distant ancestral connection. Whatever went down between them, I think that memory wi
ll always burn bright for Lucy.

  We still haven’t decided what we’re doing next year. I know the odds are against high-school couples staying together, but I want to try. Lucy and I are good for each other.

  Besides, if there’s one thing the Match Girl taught me, it’s that love is not so easy to find. Some people go their whole lives without it. So of course we want to hang on to love when it comes our way.

  But not so tight that we strangle each other. That’s the other thing I know more about now: the destructive side of love.

  By the way, I burned Little Jack in the kitchen sink. It didn’t hurt a bit.

  AFTERWORD

  Hans Christian Andersen did keep diaries that have been published, but the passage Jack reads in Drawn Away is entirely fictional. I am not aware of any evidence that Andersen’s story “The Little Match Girl” was inspired by a real event or person—though it does seem possible.

  Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong disease that strikes children and youth and destroys the ability of their pancreases to make insulin. Before the discovery and development of injectable insulin in the early 1920s (by Frederick Banting, in Toronto, Canada), type 1 diabetes was a certain death sentence. Today we can treat the disease, but there is still no cure.

  For those curious about Jack’s blood sugar, or blood glucose (BG), readings, the normal range is between 4 and 7 mmol/L (millimoles per liter). When it drops even a bit below 4, things can quickly become serious—that’s why Jack always carries some kind of sugar for treating a low. There’s a much greater range of high blood sugars than low. When the meter just reads HI, like Jack’s did, that indicates an extremely high BG of over 30. Even a very high BG is not an immediate emergency like a low is, but when it is prolonged or untreated, it can lead to coma and eventually death. The higher the BG, the sooner the situation becomes critical.

  Canada, where Jack lives, uses a different system of blood-glucose measurement than the US, where the normal range is 72-126 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter).

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks go out to all the people who make a book like this possible: my agent, Amy Tompkins; my insightful and patient editor, Sarah Harvey; the copyeditors, proofreaders, cover artists and designers whom I haven’t met but who make my book so much better.

  I also want to thank my dear friend Susan Newman for finding the perfect title and sending it my way.

  Above all, I want to send out my appreciation to the kids and young adults who remain eager readers in an age when so many insist that “nobody reads anymore.” Oh yes, we do!

  HOLLY BENNETT is a writer and editor living in Peterborough, Ontario. The author of six young adult novels—most recently Shapeshifter and Redwing—she is inexplicably drawn to the paranormal, the fantastic and the mythic. Drawn Away is her first contemporary novel. For more information, visit www.hollybennett.ca.