The Icarus Project (22 page)

Charlie had been placed on a wheeled metal platform to make it easier to transport him in ice form. Kyle and I wheeled the ice block out of the freezer and turned the heat up really high in the lab. Kyle helped me position the table over a drain in the floor. Once the thawing began,
there would be a lot of water, and we didn’t want it pooling and making a mess.

Even out in the warmth, it was going to take a long time to melt the ice. It took Dad an entire day to thaw out a frozen turkey last Thanksgiving, and Charlie was a lot bigger than a turkey. After a few minutes, the surface of the ice was glassy and slick with moisture, but not dripping yet.

“That was not easy,” Jake said, joining us in the lab. “Do you know how hard it was to get Katsu to go with the rest of the team to the dig site and help pack up the equipment?” He sighed.

“How did you get him to finally go?” Kyle asked.

“I lent him one of my cameras and asked him to document the teardown of the site.” He shrugged. “Everyone likes being a director.”

“I think Katsu just hates manual labor. Helping to pack up isn’t any fun—it’s work,” I added.

“And lots of work. We should have at least five or six hours before they come back, so I hope that’s enough time.” Jake strolled over to the ice block and peered in at Charlie.

“Let’s speed up the process,” Kyle said.

We found some heat lamps in the rec room and set them up over the body. The lamps were like small suns melting away the ice, this time setting the boy inside free.

“This is going to take forever, heat lamps or not,” Kyle said. “What else can we do to thaw the little guy out faster?”

“What about chiseling him out? That way we don’t need to thaw the whole block,” Jake said.

Dad would kill me if he knew what we were doing. This was probably not the best or most scientifically approved method of extracting a frozen person. Probably the exact opposite. But now that we’d started, I was desperate to free Charlie. Being here in the lab with him, I felt connected to him. A shiver went up my spine.

“Smart thinking,” Kyle said.

“But we should do it slowly, just in case,” I said. “We don’t want to hurt him. He could go into shock if we wake him too fast.”

Jake rolled his eyes at us. “I hate to tell you both this, but Charlie—whatever he is—might not be revivable or even alive under all that ice. And we don’t have a lot of time until everyone gets back. So I say we break the cube open. Why wait? If he’s dead, he’s dead. But if he is awake, he’s awake.”

“Way to be blunt,” Kyle said, giving Jake a dirty look.

“What do you mean, dead?” My stomach twisted. There was no way that Charlie was dead. He was
otherworldly.
Maybe it was ridiculous to believe that Charlie was alive inside of the ice, but I know what I had seen in the dreamscape: a living, breathing boy with wings. I couldn’t give up hope. “He can’t be dead.” My voice was quieter than I had expected. I was more than hoping for the impossible. I was betting on it.

Jake and Kyle exchanged a look that meant
she’s in denial,
but I didn’t care. I had looked into Charlie’s eyes when he sat up on the table. I knew that he was inside the ice, desperate to get out.

Kyle ran the nozzle of the wet vacuum around the giant melting block. “This is going to take a long time.”

Jake twirled a chisel around on his finger. I hated to admit that Jake was probably right about breaking the ice. We needed to thaw Charlie out and fast.

“OK, but don’t chip away too much. Go slow.”

Jake smiled and grasped the handle of his chisel like he was about to bash the block to pieces.

“Shouldn’t you be filming this?” I asked, taking the tool out of his hand. I didn’t trust him with that look in his eyes. He would probably take a chunk out of Charlie if he wasn’t careful. Jake scowled at me but grabbed a tripod and began to set up his camera equipment to capture the entire event.

Kyle and I traded off being lookout, just in case. The station was quiet. When it was my turn to chisel, I found that the ice was rough and thick. But slowly, Charlie emerged. It was like watching a body float to the surface of a frozen pond. After chipping away for what felt like hours, there was only a thin crust of ice above Charlie’s body.

I knew that the minute we broke through the ice we would know if he was alive. I also knew that the air would
go to work on him. If he was just a body, he was going to start to decay. The discovery was huge; so much was invested—everyone’s hopes and wishes. My heart raced. My hands were shaking. I put down the tool. The surface of the ice felt slick to my touch.

“Kyle, bring the lamp over.” I set the heat lamp over Charlie’s face and torso and waited. “We should let it melt. I don’t want to cut him.”

I picked at the ice by hand until my fingertips were numb. The ice crackled and flaked off. Finally, the surface chipped away. I wiped Charlie’s face with a towel, then reached out to touch his cheek. The skin was cold but firm—not hard like I thought it would be. It was fleshy, like a living person’s cheek. He was alive! I knew it.

“Come on already.” Jake pulled at the hammer and chisel and hit the ice around the body like he was trying to remove ice and snow from his car. “Let’s just do this.”

The ice split and fell away from Charlie’s left side, crashing to the floor. I backed away as Jake broke the ice from Charlie’s other side. The only ice that was left was a thick bed beneath him.

I inched closer and wrinkled up my nose. He smelled a little like a wet dog. Underneath his body was a layer of soggy feathers, the tarnished color of old newspapers. There had to be hundreds of them. Kyle touched one, and it fell off in his hand. Charlie’s legs and body were covered in a strange gauzelike fabric. I was glad he was wearing
something, even though it did resemble ancient mummy wrappings. His chest and arms were bare.

“Is he breathing?” Jake asked.

Charlie’s eyes were closed. His lashes were crusted with ice. I was afraid to try to wake him up. I put my head down on his chest, but I didn’t hear anything. I shook my head, and my heart sank.

“Use a mirror,” Jake said. “There’s one over there.” He pointed to the cabinet.

I grabbed the mirror and put it in front of his lips, but nothing happened. “I just want him to breathe. Charlie, breathe,” I said.

Kyle put the heat lamp over his face. “Maybe he just needs to warm up some.”

“He’s a Popsicle,” Jake said.

“Breathe,” I whispered, and blew in his face. Nothing happened. He was not moving. I brushed his face with the towel again and picked the crust of ice from between his lips. I wedged his lips apart. “Breathe.” I blew again on his face, but nothing happened.

“Sorry, kid,” Jake said. “Tough break. He looks good, though. I would swear he was still alive.”

“Get some more towels. I’ll dry him off,” I said. I wasn’t giving up yet, as futile as it seemed.

“I’ll help clean up the water,” Kyle said.

I dried Charlie’s face and body, soaked up the water with towels, and tossed chunks of leftover ice into the big
metal sink. One more time, I thought. The mirror shook in my hands. My fingers were numb. My heart was broken. Wishing didn’t make someone come to life—I knew that. But I made one last plea.

Charlie, it’s me,
I whispered inside my head and held the mirror up to his parted lips.

A tiny cloud of breath formed on the reflective surface.

My heart leaped. “He’s alive! He breathed!” I spun around.

Kyle raced to my side, and Jake almost fell over trying to get his camera focused on Charlie.

“What do we do now?” Kyle asked.

“We warm him up,” I said. “Get the blankets!”

We wrapped Charlie and cleaned up the piles of ice. Jake carted the biggest chunks outside. What water didn’t go down the drain got sucked up by the wet vacuum. I turned up the electric blankets on Charlie. The heat lamps were still going full blast.

We waited. His skin was warm to the touch, like he had been sitting under an electric sun or toasting on a beach. The warmth made him feel more and more alive. He had to wake up. He
had
to.

“Wake up, Charlie!” I whispered. “I know you’re in there. I know you can hear us. We heard you. We heard the messages.”

Jake picked his camera up from the tripod and hovered around Charlie, trying to get a good angle.

After about a half hour, Charlie’s eyes suddenly fluttered open and he sat up. His hair was down to his shoulders and was wavy and dark brown, almost black. His eyes looked like bright blue marbles, but they had a glassy look, like he had just woken up from a centuries-long nap—which is exactly what had happened. He tilted his head to the side and stared at me like I was the weirdest thing he had ever seen. Then he reached out and touched my hair.

“Snow ghost,” he said.

We all laughed at once. Charlie was alive! He was real and he could talk—he could even speak English! But underneath that, I shivered. How had he known about the snow ghost? I hadn’t called it that to anyone.

“No, I’m Maya. I’m a girl, not a ghost.”

Charlie’s lips parted. “Girl.” He moved his legs, pulling them free from the ice bed. His wings stretched out and lifted up off the wet, slushy table. He ruffled them and shook bits of clinging ice and water free. They were magnificent, better than I had hoped. He shook them like a dog would shake after a bath, and we all got a little wet. The gauzelike cloth was still covering his legs and middle.

“Your wings,” I said. “Are they real?”

Charlie just stared at me. I didn’t know if he fully understood what I was saying.

I looked at his back. “Are you hurt?” I asked.

“Do you think he understands us?” Kyle asked.

“Who knows? Plus, he just woke up from a deep sleep. Who knows where his mind went?” Jake said.

“We still don’t know anything about him,” I said.

After his first few words, Charlie wasn’t doing much talking. His eyes were wide, and he seemed to be taking us all in. I think we fascinated him as much as he fascinated us.

“Let me get a shot.” Jake nosed his annoying camera closer to Charlie. The lens focused in and made a clicking sound that Charlie clearly didn’t like, because he swatted at the camera and made a weird noise and the camera shorted out.

“Hey, what did you do to my stuff?” Jake looked at the broken camera. “Man, this equipment is sensitive. It’s not a joke.”

Kyle and I smiled at each other. I wanted to high-five Charlie.

“Maybe you should go and get another one. You don’t want to miss out on getting some good shots,” I said.

“You’re right. I need to get as much footage as possible.”

“We can’t stay in here. What if someone comes in and catches us?” Kyle asked.

“You guys take him to one of your rooms and keep him hidden. I don’t want anything to happen until I can get more footage,” Jake said on his way out the door.

“We should get him some clothes. He can’t walk around in a toga. He’ll freeze,” Kyle said.

“He looks like your size, Kyle,” I said. “Can we borrow some of your clothes?”

Charlie pointed at Kyle. “Clothes.”

“Sure. I don’t mind.” Kyle motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”

One thing I tried
not
to think about was what I was going to tell Dad. I could worry about that later. Charlie was awake, and even more important, he was moving around. He was able to walk and though he wasn’t exactly the chatty type, it was clear that he could speak, even if he just repeated the words we said to him.

This meant that I was right. He wasn’t an old decaying fossil—he was something new. A surge of excitement filled me. I had acted on my instincts and taken a huge risk, and it had paid off. It would have been easier to play it safe and doubt myself, but I hadn’t. I hoped Dad would be proud of me, because I was practically bursting. I felt light as a feather.

Charlie followed Kyle and me as we raced down the hall. I volunteered to keep him in my room. I had seen Dad and Kyle’s room, and believe me, unless we wanted to hide Charlie under a pile of dirty laundry, the room I shared with Karen was the better option.

But getting Charlie into my room was a challenge. Everything caught his attention. He was like a little kid and a puppy rolled into one. He had to inspect everything,
and I mean everything: the floors, the walls, the equipment, the windows. The fluorescent light fixtures that hung overhead were the most interesting thing Charlie had ever seen—or so I assumed. He reached up and tried to touch the glowing light until Kyle grabbed his arm. Charlie wouldn’t move until Kyle told him what it was. “Lightbulb,” Kyle said. “Hot. Don’t touch it. You’ll burn your hand.”

“Lightbulb. Hot. Burn,” Charlie repeated. Satisfied with this exchange, Charlie walked on, only to be distracted by a fly that was going the other way. Charlie darted back down the hall, chasing the insect. “Stop!” I yelled. “This is going to take forever.”

“Forever!” Charlie yelled back.

Kyle pulled a comic book out of his pocket, rolled it up, and swatted the fly. He picked up the squished body and held it in his palm out for Charlie to see.

“Dead,” he said. “Gone. No fly.”