Read Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands for Free Online Page B

Library, which is right on the banks of the Clyde River, flooded: the first floor must have had three feet of water in it. I was maybe five years old and hadn’t lived in Vermont all that long, but I remember well how a lot of the children’s books were ruined because they were on the lowest shelves. That’s what I think of when I first think of the flood: all those picture books. The next day my mom and Lisa’s mom were helping with the cleanup and I was with them. The books were brown and waterlogged and smelled like the bottom of the river. Most of them had to be taken to the transfer station in the back of pickup trucks. Lisa’s mom was working hard to hold back her tears, but as I recall she was still crying a lot. It wasn’t her library, but it didn’t matter. She was devastated. We were all devastated. It was really sad to see all those ruined children’s books. Especially the bunny books, which I had always loved when I was a little kid. The Runaway Bunny. Pat the Bunny. The Velveteen Rabbit . They were all covered in brown crap and smelled horrible. It was awful. When I think of the water that flooded parts of the plant, that’s what I suspect it was like: just muddy and swamplike and annoying, but not dangerous.
    But then I think of the water in the spent fuel pool when it started to boil. And that water is a million times worse than annoying. It’s freaking terrifying. That water is whole pools of grief.
    They tell me, in the end, the pool boiled dry.

    Cameron wouldn’t let me call him Cam. “Cam” sounded too much like “Pam,” which of course is a girl’s name. “Cameron” sounds very regal, but it’s really not. It’s Gaelic and means “crooked nose.” I told him that once after I had looked it up, and he laughed. His nose was tiny and covered with freckles.
    He was—and I promise you, I am not making this up—a kindof amazing duct tape artist. On our first day together he showed me one of his most prized possessions.
    “It’s a robot,” he mumbled when I didn’t say anything right away. I think he was afraid I didn’t like it. I did like it. I thought it was from a museum store in Montreal or Boston and someone had bought it for him or he’d lifted it. It was about the size of a Barbie doll, but bulkier. It was a beautifully sculpted piece of modern art: a creature that was a bit like a Transformer, but even more colorful, if that’s possible, and it was made entirely of cut and wound duct tape. I had no idea that duct tape came in so many colors: we’re talking flower garden crazy, including purple and orange and highlighter yellow. When I asked him where the robot came from, he got very defensive and told me that he made it. I was impressed, in part because I am a total loser when it comes to the visual arts. I mean, I practically failed pottery in tenth grade, and you had to have hooks for hands to fail the pottery class at Reddington. It was the gut of all guts.
    “You made that?” I said. It wasn’t really a question, but I was so awed it came out that way.
    “I’m not lying!”
    “I didn’t say you were lying. I just think it’s awesome.”
    Quickly he put it back in his bag. He had long fingers for a little boy, and his nails were so feverishly gnawed that they were almost nonexistent. Over the next few months, he’d show me more of his duct tape creations. And to pass the time, I’d lift rolls of tape from the hardware store and he’d make new things. There was one night in the igloo when he was killing time by decorating this plastic horse we found in the garbage—it only had three legs—and I loaned him one of the razor blades from my cutting kit. (By then I had one of my very own.) He was a little weirded out that I had a blade like that, and maybe handing one to a nine-year-old wasn’t the most responsible move on my part, but my biggest worry was that he would wonder what the fuck I was doing with that kind of blade. Obviously, I never wanted him to