Susie gave me one cookie.

Me: You eat mine.

Susie: Why?

Me: I’m rationing.

Susie: I’m the leader of this expedition. I’ll say when we’re rationing.

Me: All great leaders listen to the rank and file.

Susie: I think you think you don’t deserve that cookie.

Me: And you’d be right. You know what’s interesting to me about the digestive process? We know empirically that the food in your stomach can be all colors. Like when you throw up you never know what color it’s going to be. But you know pretty much what color it’s going to be when it comes out the other end. I guess bile does that—makes everything brown. Unless you’re a baby. My mom’s cousin had a baby and his poop was always surprising. Once he had a game piece in there, the Monopoly iron. Another time he had a Lego. Blue.

Susie was staring at the cookie with a disgusted look on her face.

Susie: I’m eating it anyway, but only if you eat yours. We’ll take a bite at the same time.

Slowly we lifted our cookies, staring into each other’s eyes. We bit in at the same time, and then stuffed the rest into our mouths as fast as we could.

*   *   *

Lunchtime had come and gone without any lunch except oatmeal cookies, which Susie handed out like hundred-dollar bills. My legs felt like lead prostheses and still no sight of shore. The wind coming from the south was relentless. It never slowed or took a breath.

Susie was taking deep breaths. All I could think about was food.

Me: Did you know I disagree with both individual and world hunger?

Susie: And war.

Me: And war. I bet if we got all the Mensas and all the big moneymakers and all the big technology brains together, and all the artists and musicians and filmmakers, and put them in a room and said, don’t come out until you’ve solved world hunger and war, I bet they could do it. Right, Susie?

Susie nodded.

Me: You have to answer.

Susie: Yeah. I bet, too.

It sounded like yeahh ah beh too because her mouth was as cold and dry as mine was.

Me: Which raises a philosophical question. If I’m against war, how does this impact the decisions I make on a more personal level? Take Maurice. When he acts like a jerk toward me, like some countries do toward others, do I fight back? Isn’t that how wars are started? It goes against my principles to lower myself to his level of behavior, but I’ve tried reasoning with him, I’ve tried being nice to him, I’ve tried being a good sport, and things just get worse.

Susie: Why didn’t you ever tell me?

Me: You mean why didn’t I call on my allies? Should I have involved them in peace negotiations? Do you think that would work?

Susie: No.

Me: We’d have to impose sanctions. Like you could refuse to talk to him, refuse to let him throw his arm around you as you’re walking down the hall, for example. Not share my sandwich with him.

Susie: That was your sandwich?

Me: It’s always my sandwich. He doesn’t share his own.

Susie: Hmm … You could just punch him in the nose.

Me: Maybe it’s the uneven distribution of resources that causes the problems.

Hobbes: You unevenly distributed your peanut butter.

Me: So stupid how some people have four toilets and some people have none, how NBA players get a new pair of shoes for every other game while some kids go their whole lives without a single pair. Right, Susie?

Susie: Right.

She said right without the t on the end of it.

Me: And what is it about balls anyway? Find a person who can hit a ball really well with a stick or put one through a hoop or knock one into a little hole in the ground, and we pay them bazillions of dollars. Seriously, people, it’s a ball. A toy! Huh, Susie? What if we gave all that money to the poor people, set them up in business or something?

Susie: Toy …

Me: And how idiotic is it that some even pretty ordinary people over here have a single house as big as a whole African village, for only two people and their kid-dog. Really? Really? And these are supposedly sane people, Susie. You know what’s even stupider, Susie—even stupider than all that? That we all sit around and let it happen.

Susie (with a dreamy smile): That’s why I picked you.

Me: That’s a good answer, Susie. More than one word is good. Did you know the last war cost three trillion dollars? What if we got together over pizza and said, here’s three trillion dollars. We can use it to kill people, or we can use it to solve our differences. I bet three trillion dollars could go a long way toward solving a few differences. I bet our best TV-commercial makers could help people understand how moronic war is. What do you say to that, Susie?

Susie: Mmmm …

Me: That’s not a word.

Susie: Moronic.

Me: Okay, okay, because that was three syllables. It’s just that the world is so big, Susie. We think we can’t change anything because if we tried someone would call us crazy, but I can tell you that that is not the worst thing in the world.

I thought about what I’d just said for a minute.

Me: Okay, maybe it’s up there, but not the worst thing—

Hobbes: Look at her. She’s cold, she’s exhausted. Her lips are chapped—

Me: Susie—Susie, you doing okay?

Susie: I really can’t feel my feet. How much longer, Calvin?

I took off my mitten and scooped some snow in my bare hand. I held it until it melted.

Me: Here, Susie.

She lifted my cupped hand to her lips and slurped like a cat.

I did it again.

I did it until my hand was too cold to melt the snow.

Susie: So good.

Me: You’re doing great, Sooz. You’re strong.

Susie: Not strong. Tell me again why we had to do this?

Me: I don’t know.

Susie:

Me: I don’t know anymore.

Susie:

Me: I—I think I was trying to understand, trying to figure out why I am the way I am. I think I felt like if Bill came out and made a comic about me, I’d understand something about myself, just like Scout did when Boo Radley came out. It would make me feel like the broken bits of me were put back together and the cracks might even disappear—

Hobbes: Crack.

Me:

Hobbes: Crack in the ice.

I looked. A crack in the ice.

Me: Just step over it.

Hobbes: You step over it.

I stepped over the crack.

I lived.

The ice felt firm under my feet, but soon I saw another crack, and then another.

Susie: The ice is breaking.

Me: No. Remember what Orvil said. These are old cracks. It’s frozen over again. And the cracks don’t intersect.