Susie was lying beside me, curled on the ice like a baby, like the lake had a baby and just left it there, not even in a basket or on a doorstep, just left its blue baby there sleeping. I saw cracks in the ice, and this time they weren’t going away.

Where were you, Bill? That’s what I kept thinking: Where are you? You would have known we were late, really late. I didn’t remember being mad since I was six years old, but right then I was so mad I stood up and started shouting—at the lake, at the sky, at you, Bill. Especially you.

Me: Why all the secrecy? All the mystery? Why don’t you show yourself? Why don’t you answer fan mail? Would it hurt once in a while? Here’s a news flash: you’re famous! Your creations inspire lifelong loyalty! It’s too late! Why couldn’t you have cared enough to worry about us, to be here?

I sat down on the ice beside her. The sun was almost sitting on the lake, and it was getting cold again, but I couldn’t carry Susie anymore, and I couldn’t leave her.

Then Hobbes sat beside us like a big furry furnace, and I felt warm. I felt warm except for my face where my tears were turning into slush. Sitting there, I realized something important, Bill.

You did care.

I knew you cared because you made Calvin for the world with this amazing brain that he could do amazing stuff with. It was like his imagination could look into the Great Bloodshot Eye of Reality and say, wanna fight? It was like his imagination could walk right up to the Golden Throne of Reality and refuse to bow. You made him that way, and if that didn’t show you cared, I didn’t know what would.

I loved my brain right then, Bill. Even a sick brain was a miracle when you thought about it. Time might be a dimension, but the human brain could chop it up into minute bits, observe it as a phenomenon of existence. Physics and chemistry weren’t much without biology and the human brain to guess endlessly about what it all meant. Space might be infinite and full of an unspeakable number of stars, but it didn’t know how beautiful it was. I knew. Calvin knew. Calvin of the unbegun English project, Calvin of the unfinished science project, Calvin the schizophrenic maladaptive daydreamer.

*   *   *

I made Susie sit up so I could tell her what I had figured out, but her head was slumpy and loose.

Susie (mumbling): I forget.

Me: What? What do you forget?

Susie: Why living is important.

Me: Well, there’s Christmas, Susie.

Susie: Christmas.

Me: And hot chocolate.

Susie:

Me: And comic books.

Susie: And snow.

Me: And summer holidays.

Susie: And kissing.

Me: Best of all.

I kissed her, right on her chapped mouth.

Susie: I can’t feel it.

Me: Me neither. But you know what? My amazing brain invented Susie the Figment, who looks exactly like Susie McLean, to come along with me on this hike. And if my brain can do that, it can invent you feeling strong and walking. You’re going to get up right now and—

Susie: I can hear a helicopter.

Me: Or it can invent a helicopter—but there is no helicopter. It’s the ice groaning …

But then there was a helicopter.

*   *   *

It just kept flying toward us from the south. It kept being real, real and big and loud, and it had lights, and it was a helicopter. I stood up and waved my arms and the flashlight and screamed.

Finally it hovered over me like a gigantic monster dragonfly, and I saw them heave a basket out of the opening.

And just then the ice to my right cracked open like a broken skull.