Free Algoma by Dani Couture Page B

school. Somehow he knew it was not what Ms. Prevost had intended and did not tell her about his plans.
    For years, parents had complained to the school administration that the ditch was dangerous. They’d argued about its depth, the culvert’s ragged edge. Someone, maybe their child, could fall in and split their head open; however, nothing was ever done about it, and Ferd was glad for it. After school, as students left the building, he pretended he was waiting for someone. When the father of one of his friends asked if he was okay, Ferd said that he was waiting for his mom. “She’s just going to be another minute. I swear.”
    Once the schoolyard was clear, he walked over to the ditch. He lay down on his stomach and punched a hole through the thin skin of ice. With a bare hand, he stuffed his letter into the cold water below. Ferd had no doubt the message would reach Leo. He imagined the submerged blades of grass standing upright like soldiers escorting his message along. A top priority mission. He left the ditch feeling calmer than he had in months.
    The first major spring melt would reveal a dozen notes plastered to the yellow grass that lined the ditch. The messages pulped, unreadable, undelivered.
    Newly inspired, Ferd filled the back of the wedding invitation with his hurried scrawl, the same electric red wire that linked each of his letters, like houses in the same village. He flipped the card open and made stick figures out of the letters, something he did to his textbooks to pass the time during class. He transformed the letters of the word “announcement” into eight boys and four girls. The pair of Ns now fingerless twins holding hands. Beside his alphabet people he drew a crude interpretation of the school, the surrounding woods, the creek where he sat, and beyond that, the closest major cities, so that Leo would know where to find him when he was ready or able to come back.
    Ferd walked out of the woods in time to hear the final bell and see a rush of students making a frenzied exodus from the front doors. He stood by and waited until the stream became a trickle of stragglers before he joined the slow procession home. Even then, he stopped at every interesting stone or malformed stick. He kicked at leftover clumps of snow, garbage, puddles. He wasn’t ready to go home.
    The sky was filled with ominous-looking clouds, peaked tufts of black and white meringue. Snow clouds. He wondered what the sky looked like from beneath water, if it distorted the images above, if the sun made it through at all. The last thing he wanted was for Leo to be cold. Ferd pictured his brother sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the river, his hair slick with algae and spiked with twigs. He saw his last note, the wedding invitation, floating closer and closer to his brother until, in slow motion, Leo plucked it from the current, like a chocolate bar wrapper caught in the wind.
    But there was no current to buoy Ferd. He did not know how long he could live with his side of the conversation alone. The yards of the houses he passed were the colour of old teeth. Each step he took felt heavy and laboured, his body weighted down by his brother’s decision to chase the bear. He was tired and he had math homework he already knew he wouldn’t do. But it didn’t matter. The teachers at school still looked at him with sad eyes. Ms. Prevost excused his poor assignments and forgotten homework. She didn’t question him about the things that went missing from her desk.
    A red-tailed hawk fell out of the sky like a meteor. Startled, Ferd stumbled backward, almost falling. With agile claws, the bird picked up something that had been hiding behind an overturned tricycle. The hawk swooped back and up and perched on the lowest bow of the tree closest to Ferd, who watched as it ripped apart a mouse with its sharp beak. The long, sinewy strips of the rodent snapped like rubber bands. Ferd rooted through his bag. He had to tell Leo about