“How you doing, Matt?” Dylan unzipped his pack, digging around for his lunch.
“Better,” he huffed, easing himself down onto a drift next to Tony, who was already devouring his sandwich. “Much better.” The morning had passed quickly, and now the sun was so warm that if he closed his eyes and tilted his face up, he would swear he was on a beach somewhere, not surrounded by ice. He tried not to look at Tony’s food; his stomach growled in protest.
“You guys are naturals,” Dylan added. “Good form.”
“This elevation is kicking my butt, though.”
“Yeah. Drink more water.” Dylan handed him a banana, two turkey-and-Swiss sub sandwiches, and a bag of chips. “We’ll take it easy for the rest of the afternoon.” He checked his GPS and squinted. “We’re only about a mile or two from the cabin now.”
“Good.” Matt exhaled, trying not to rip into the bag of chips like a wild dog. In the past year he had given up junk food, but reasoned it was okay if he was on vacation. Plus, he’d gone up and down mountains all morning. Surely one bag of chips wouldn’t send him back into a downward spiral of hoarding food under his bed. He wasn’t twelve anymore. He had some self-control. “Thanks,” he said, forcing the thought away. “I’m starving.”
“No kidding!” Tony added, licking the salt from the inside of his chip bag. “I don’t know the last time I’ve ever been that hungry.” He crumpled the bag, and along with his banana peel, shoved all the garbage into the empty sub wrapper and wadded it into a ball. “At least, not since this morning.”
“All the fresh air, I bet.” Dylan laughed and tromped away. Matt shook his head, undid his bindings, and wiggled his toes around in his boots. He ate the banana first, letting it melt on his tongue, then moved on to the chips. He ate each one slowly, thin wafers dissolving into salt in his mouth. Nothing had ever tasted this good before, and all too soon, the bag was empty.
The sun was hot at this elevation, bright and insistent. Rays of light glittered off the snow pack like a field of diamonds. They were perched on a ridgeline a few hundred yards above the trees, and from this vantage point Matt felt like he was on Mount Olympus, looking down on all the mortals below. The only mortal thing he saw was the dark outline of a bird coming down for a landing in the treetops. Even from this distance it looked large. An eagle.
Despite reminding himself to take his time, he demolished the first sandwich in five bites. Thirsty, he scooped a wad of snow into his mouth, which tasted like copper or some tarnished metal, sweet with minerals. To him it was delicious, and he guessed it was about as clean as water gets.
“Don’t eat the yellow snow,” Tony reminded him. “Or the brown.”
“Thanks, Einstein.”
“Did Einstein say that one?” Tony was serious.
“No, Tony.”
“My head hurts,” Tony continued. “My eyeballs hurt, my legs hurt, my lungs hurt, even my ass hurts. Pretty much everything hurts.”
“Just wait till tomorrow.” Matt chewed his snowball. “It’ll be even worse.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me. After this trip I’m going to really need a vacation.”
Matt pulled out his phone, switched it on, and held it up—the signal was stronger up here. “My dad finally texted me.” He turned it off, tucking it back into his chest pocket. He fought the urge to check it. He didn’t care, he reminded himself, what his dad had written.
“Oh yeah? Nice,” Tony said, somewhat sarcastically. “So what did he say this time?”
“Same old crap,” Matt lied. “Work shit, I don’t know. Trying to apologize and promising to make it up to me.”
“Of course.” Tony snorted. “He’s just trying to jerk you around. As usual.”
Matt didn’t answer.
“You gonna call back?” Tony ate his own snowball, after carefully checking that it was completely pristine. “I wouldn’t do it, dude.”
“I don’t know.” The battery was already half out of juice. “I guess I will later.”
“Let him stew a little longer. Or better yet, take a picture of the two smoking hot babes and send it to him. Let him know how much fun you’re having.” Tony’s grin was evil. “Knowing him, he’ll probably be jealous.” Matt figured Tony had heard the stories before, mainly by eavesdropping on his parents, who found out from other neighbors, how Matt’s dad had left his mom for a twenty-two-year-old college student. Matt’s dad was a professor of psychology (of all things), yet somehow didn’t get the memo that he was just another middle-aged guy with a paunch and the misbelief that having an affair with a young woman would somehow prevent him from getting old and dying. Classic textbook case, Matt thought.
Matt’s dad left six years ago, moving first to an apartment in downtown Des Moines and then to a condo that he shared with the then–twenty-two-year-old Shannon, was now twenty-eight. No one thought that would last, and even though it had been six years, up until last week Matt had still held out hope his parents would reconcile. That his dad would move back in and things would go back to the way they were. He squeezed his second sandwich flat, fingers puncturing right through the bread, remembering his dad’s news, and all that hope suddenly drained out, leaving an empty pit in his stomach no amount of food could fill.
“Look, Matt,” Tony continued. “I know he’s your dad and everything . . .” He sighed. “Just don’t let him off so easy. Don’t let him walk all over you.”
“I know.” Matt stared at his sandwich, wanting to eat it, but decided it would be smarter to wait. “And I don’t let him walk all over me,” he said quietly, not wanting to believe that’s what Tony really thought—that like his name, he was something to wipe your feet on. But what his best friend said made sense, as if the lack of oxygen had increased Tony’s brain cells. He should hang out on mountaintops more often.
Carter trudged over, all loaded up, carrying a long pole and a shovel. “We’ll be heading out in about an hour.”
“Where you going?”
“Gonna check the snowpack on this ridge.” He waved the pole to the higher peak rising up on the left side. “We’ll be heading down that way.”
“What’s that?” With Carter’s coat unzipped, Matt saw what appeared to be a large stopwatch strapped to his chest.
“My AV beacon,” Carter answered. “I always have a shovel, snow probe, and my beacon.” He blinked at Tony and Matt as if they were idiots. “Didn’t Dylan give you one?”
Tony pulled his out. “Sid gave me one.”
“I don’t have one,” Matt said, a bit squeaky with the sudden fear that everyone else knew way more than he did.
Carter sighed, stabbing his pole down. “Dylan can be a bit of a stoner.” He shook his head. “And not in a good way. Hang on, Matt.” He stomped over to where Julie and Dylan were sunning themselves near a large granite rock, sunglasses on.
They watched Carter gesture accusingly to Dylan, and though they didn’t hear everything being said, the words dumbass, hell, snow, ice, transmitter, BC, and what the fuck? were blatantly clear.
“Well, Carter sounds pissed,” Tony whispered. “What’s BC mean?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said, panic swelling in his chest. “Uh, backcountry?”
Carter came back with another transmitter. “Here.” He tossed it to Matt—a small black plastic knob on a corded necklace. Matt turned it over in his hands, reading the word TRACKER2 on the front.
“It’s already set to transmit, so just wear it under your jacket,” Carter explained.
“Thanks.” Matt slipped it over his neck and nestled it against his thermal shirt. “Doesn’t Dylan need one?”
“Yeah, but Dylan doesn’t mind.”
Matt nodded, seeing the nonchalant way Dylan tossed it over to Carter, smiling and laughing and waving him off.
Carter clipped into his skis and adjusted his goggles and gloves. He leaned back and looked up, his eyes searching the empty sky as if the explanation to something would be found up there. “It’s always amazing to me how smart people can be so stupid.” He pushed off toward the ridge with a grunt.
Matt smiled. The more time he spent with Carter, the more he liked him.
“All right, my newbies!” Dylan jumped to his feet, waving his arms like a television preacher. “Time to cruise! We gotta get a few more runs in before we lose this day!”
When Matt stood up, something popped in his back. He groaned and cracked his neck.
“God, you’re old,” Tony said. “You sound like my dad does after shooting hoops.”
The last thing Matt wanted was a reminder that Tony’s dad played basketball with him in the driveway every weekend. He watched Leah bend over and clip into her skis, red curls shining like fire against her green parka. He had wanted to go over and talk to her during lunch, but she sat down next to Julie, heads tilted together in such a way that it seemed to be a private conversation.
“So what’s the deal with Leah?”
“Huh? What deal?” Tony wrinkled his face, then squinted in their direction. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Matt remembered how Sid had said Leah wasn’t his girlfriend, and also how disheartened Sid had seemed by that fact. But maybe he was still trying, Matt thought wryly, wondering if Sid was tenacious. He seriously doubted it. Things had always come easy for Sid. And the only problem with everything being so easy, Matt noted, was that you had no idea what to do when it got hard.
“She’s hot,” Tony admitted. “And I think she likes you.”
“Really? You think?”
“Well, she doesn’t seem repulsed.”
“Thanks.”
“No problemo.” Tony eyed Matt’s sandwich. “You gonna eat that?”
“Later.” Matt folded the bag back around it. “Anyway, she probably has a boyfriend.”
“Probably.” Tony stared at his sub like a dog until Matt shoved it back in his pack. “But I don’t see him anywhere.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whatever you want it to, dude.” Tony leaned back and closed his eyes against the sunlight. “Whatever you want it to.”
• • •
The snow was golden, turning as orange and pink as sherbet in the setting sun.
“This run will take us down through the bowl,” Dylan told Matt, the wide clearing spread out a mile down below them, encircled by thick forest. “The whole run is about three miles total, and then from the bottom we should be able to ski over to the cabin.”
“Great.” Matt was so tired his legs trembled. He glanced back at Carter, who was perched on a large snow slab two hundred yards up. Carter pointed his pole at something, then back at Leah, Tony, and Julie, who were in line behind him.
“What’s he waiting for?” Sid asked, leaning over his poles next to Matt.
Exhausted, Matt shrugged. “No clue.” We have to be close to the cabin, he thought, feeling proud he’d handled the whole day without collapsing or completely embarrassing himself.
“C’mon dude!” Dylan hollered. “Go, already!”
Carter shouted something back, before sliding forward into a slow curve over the drift. He carved one complete S before a huge circle splintered around him, cracking open and dropping like a giant sinkhole—with Carter disappearing right into it.
“What the . . . ,” Matt began.
“No!” Dylan spun around, grabbed Matt’s shoulder, and shoved him forward. “Get out of here!”
“W-w-what?” He stared over Dylan’s shoulder trying to figure out where Carter had gone.
“Snow slide!”
“A snow . . . ?”
“Avalanche!”
The word didn’t register immediately. Like a foreign language with a certain translational lag time, it took Matt a second to process the meaning. Fifty yards above them an enormous white cloud billowed, as if something had just exploded. And the plume increased, growing larger and wider as it raced down the slope. It roared like a jumbo jet.
“Go!” Dylan screamed, startling him forward. “Head for those trees!”
Matt could see Sid, already a hundred yards away, going straight downhill. He followed, keeping his tips pointed and parallel, hoping gravity would work in his favor. How fast am I going? he wondered. Thirty miles an hour? Forty? The wind whipped tears from his eyes—he’d forgotten to put on his goggles.
The trees were approaching fast. He was coming at a dead run.
Dead run, thought Matt. A dead run. This is a dead run.
He was trying to outrun death. Literally.
His tip caught in a soft patch of slush and he careened wildly to the right, dangerously close to a lodgepole pine. A branch slapped him in the face, knocking his chin up. Smack! Hard as a two-by-four, and the force spun him around. Backward now, the ground rose underneath him, a wave of snow blowing up beneath his feet. Something snapped, plastic cracking—his skis broke free from the boots, his poles struck out blindly. There was no time to scream, only primal reflexes, and he flailed and bicycled his limbs like a swimmer trying to reach the surface. But this water was frozen, solid as cement. It surrounded him, enveloped him, crushed him. A laser beam of pain streaked through his back and neck when the force of it bent him forward, twisting him in a grotesque pose. He reached for the sky, finally screaming the first thing, the only thing, repeating in his panicked mind.
“Help me!”
But snow came down, blotting out the blue sky, and Matt watched as the whiteness fractured into an exploding prism of light. A thousand rainbows burst behind his eyes.
And then . . . darkness.
• • •
His breath was whisper thin, ragged in his mouth. He swallowed. Blood. His tongue immediately probed the line of teeth to find an empty socket. Upper tooth, behind the canine, but it wasn’t in his mouth.
His first thought: Why can’t I see?
Matt reached to wipe his eyes, but his right arm didn’t move. Nothing did. Only his left fist, pressed close to his nose, wiggled. He inhaled again, but it was a half breath, compressed and tight.
Second thought: It’s a horrible dream. A dream of being buried alive, choking on nothing, gasping like a fish on land.
Third thought: I’m not dreaming.
“No!” His scream gurgled, and blood flew out into the small pocket of air around his head. Red flecks splashing onto gray snow.
Fourth thought: Calm down, calm down, calm down. Don’t panic.
But he did panic. Every muscle contracted, jerking, twisting, fighting.
“Help!” Matt punched the space in front of him, but it was pointless. He had no leverage. He tried twisting his arm, wedging it back and forth against the snow but terrified of what might happen if he freed it. Would more snow fall down?
But panic won. Matt heaved back and forth until he gasped, which took all of ten seconds.
Don’t use up your air, he thought, relaxing his fists. Breathe small. Breathe shallow. How long had it been? A minute? Ten? He wondered how far down he was from the surface.
Matt’s fingers curled tightly, touching something hard against his chest.
The beacon.
Matt fumbled against his zipper, and in the few inches of space he had he was able to grab the rope and tug the receiver up to his chin. He didn’t even know if it was working, or how to turn it on, but in the darkness a cherry-red light pulsed. On, he thought. It must be on. Carter told me so. Bending his head down farther, he watched the screen flash.
SE—SE—SE—SE—SE . . .
He didn’t know what it meant—he hadn’t been told. But he also hadn’t asked. His right arm was still wedged above his head, and his shoulder muscles burned. He squeezed his biceps and triceps, trying to get the blood flowing and the circulation going. He curled his fingers, twisted his wrist. It hurt, but it didn’t hurt so much that he suspected anything was broken. He remembered reaching up and wondered if that meant he was facing up. Or am I upside down? The thought was too awful to bear; bile rose in his throat.
“Don’t puke, don’t puke,” he mumbled. There was no room to be sick in here. He believed if he was upside down his head would be throbbing. But it wasn’t. Not really. He became convinced the light was above him, possibly because the alternative was too awful to contemplate. Maybe there was only a foot of snow above him. Maybe I can dig my way out.
He knew he didn’t have much time. A glance down showed the beacon still blinking, and he hoped that meant they could find him. He slowed down his pulse, his breath. In the intense silence, a sharp needle of doubt poked his brain.
What if everyone was buried? What if no one’s left? What if they were all trapped?
He had to dig. He had to try something. He couldn’t wait for help that might never arrive. Patience was not a virtue right now. It was a death sentence.
With his left hand shaking Matt began to dig. One scoop, another, and a scrape. He gasped. Just keep going, he thought. Don’t think.
He retried his locked right arm, commanding himself to bend his elbow. Bend his wrist. Wiggle fingers. “Dammit,” he swore. “Shit. Hell. Fuck. Piss.” He went through every filthy word he knew, even making up some new ones, then started all over from the beginning. The SE light was still flashing, then made a chirping tweet. He didn’t know what that meant and hoped it didn’t mean the transmitter had stopped. Another cold slither snaked through his guts—sweat pooled under his chin. Despite all the snow he was hot, sweltering. It’s like trying to dig out of my own grave.
Flickering spots appeared, fuzzy needles of black on the outside edges of his vision. He pushed his chest against the wall of ice, fighting down a gagging sensation, and rocked back and forth, trying to make a bigger hole, trying to gain a little more space to breathe. He flexed his toes, clenched every muscle, then released, pushing and pulling. Push, he thought. Pull. Push. Pull. His entire back, from neck to knees, was drenched in sweat. He gained an inch, possibly two. He leaned his head forward and chewed away a chunk of snow and swallowed, still tasting blood.
Another chirp. Same as the last one, but this time he felt it.
It was his phone—nestled down in his pocket. How did it turn back on? He recognized the chirpy birdcall. His mom. She had just left a message.
A sudden sad calm came over him—he wondered what dying would feel like. Would it hurt? Or would he just fade out, lose consciousness, and fall into a permanent sleep? He stopped moving; his breath rattled wetly in his throat. He couldn’t think of what more to do. He was too tired; too tired to push, too tired to make a sound. He pressed his cheek against the snow, relief against his sweaty skin. It was so nice and cold. And he was so tired. . . .
Pictures reeled through his head, blobs of light taking shape. A backyard swing set, his red tennis shoes and striped socks. He watched himself swing back and forth, making a thin squeal as the chains pulled. He felt the wind through his hair, the sway and tug on his arms and legs, pressure ebbing and flowing as he tried to defy gravity. Up and down. Back and forth. Squeak, squeak. The sound shifted, fell lower, turned into a drone, a jabbering hum, muffled but growing. The white noise broke apart, becoming words. A voice. He understood it. “Here!” It yelled. “Here! I found him!” He opened his eyes; someone was shouting his name. He wanted to yell back, but his tongue was as heavy as a sack of sand in his mouth. He couldn’t seem to get the words out.
“Matt! Matt! Hang on!”
When he blinked again everything was brighter. Louder. Light brought noise, more shouting and grunting and scraping sounds.
“This way! Like this! Careful with that shovel!”
A spiderweb of sunshine cracked through, and with it came air, inflating his lungs.
“He’s alive!” Shadows moved over him. “He’s conscious!”
Another voice bleated, “But where’s Dylan?”
“Keep shoveling! Don’t stop!” Matt recognized Carter’s voice as the snow moved away, revealing his face, then shoulders and torso. His arm was free.
“Matt! Hang on! We’ll get you out!” Carter dug like a terrier, like a person possessed. “Is anything broken?”
“I . . .” Matt’s voice cracked. “I don’t think so.” His legs were still stuck fast, so he pushed his arms against the pile, moving the snow away, feeling like one of those giant sea turtles flailing their flippers as they dug a hole in the sand. When he got down to his thighs he was able to finally break free, one knee, then the second popping up like he was bursting through rubble. His skis were nowhere to be found, but he still had both poles looped around his wrists.
“Oh man, are you lucky!” Carter exhaled and rolled back on his butt with a thud. He held up his beacon. “Looks like these things work.”
“Where’s Tony?” Matt asked, panting. “Where’s Sid?”
“Tony’s fine.” Carter tucked his beacon back into his coat. “He was above me when the snow pack broke.” He examined the small shovel in his hands, then stabbed it down next to him. “I knew that slab looked wrong.”
Matt tried to stand but his legs felt like water. He was too shaky to trust them yet. “Where’s Sid?”
“Leah’s looking.” Carter wiped his eyes with the back of his glove, looked over at Julie, who stared blindly at the wide expanse of field, now littered with chunks of ice so big they resembled boulders. She was crying.
“He was a good hundred yards ahead of me,” Matt said, remembering how he’d been trying to catch him. “Dylan was to my left. I ended up veering right into the trees.”
“Leah saw you go down,” Carter said. “But we still have no idea about Dylan.” He dropped his voice. “We can’t find him without a beacon.”
The beacon. The one Dylan gave him—the one he handed over with a nod and a smile and without a second thought. The one that just saved Matt’s life. “Oh.” Vomit built suddenly in his throat and he had to roll over onto his stomach to swallow it down.
“It’s not your fault, Matt.” Carter grabbed his shoulder, but Matt didn’t answer. He knew from Carter’s voice that he didn’t blame him. Carter blamed himself. He was the one on the slab when it broke. “Dylan was in the middle and he got hit by the full slide. Hard.” Carter swallowed loudly. “I don’t think a beacon would have made a difference.”
Matt nodded, unable to disagree. He wanted to believe Carter, but they would never know.
“You were on the edge of it,” Carter continued. “It clipped you and you were buried under two feet. That was a huge slide. Probably fifteen feet in the middle.”
When Matt turned to look at him, Carter’s eyes were huge and wet, bright grass green. Matt didn’t really understand what he meant. He shook his head, staring at Carter’s eyes, realizing that they weren’t deep dark brown like Leah’s.
“It would be like having a building fall on you,” Carter said finally, blinking away tears. “She knows that too.” He glanced at Julie, who was holding tight to a tree trunk, head bent, still crying. Her shoulders shuddered up and down with her sobs, the only movement in an otherwise stationary landscape.
Matt struggled to his feet, amazed nothing really hurt when he moved, only a few sharp twinges of heat in his neck and lower back. Carter gaped at him, disbelieving. “I guess you’re tougher than you look.”
“I don’t feel very tough.” He watched Julie, unsure of what to do, what to say. He thought they should look for Dylan, but when he examined the aftermath of the avalanche, he realized trying to find him would be almost exactly like looking for a needle in a haystack. “If you hadn’t found me when you did . . .” He turned away. He couldn’t think about Dylan right now. He had to believe Carter—that there was no hope, there was nothing they could do about it now. He had to believe it or he really would be sick. “We need to find Sid.” Matt propped himself up, and using his poles for support, forced himself into a forward lurch down the hill.
• • •
Sid’s beacon worked—Leah and Tony found him within minutes, made easier by the fact that he wasn’t completely buried in snow as Matt had been. Sid’s head and shoulders were free, but from what Matt could tell it looked like the force of the slide had knocked him directly into a huge timber, pinning him against it like a bug.
He was unconscious when they found him—moaning by the time Carter, Julie, and Matt finally arrived at the base of the run.
“Carter!” Leah barked, ignoring the rest of them. “I need you!”
Like brother, like sister, Matt thought as he watched Leah shoveling snow as if it was the tryouts for the shoveling Olympics and there was only one spot left on the team.
“We need a doctor!” she yelled at him.
“I’m not a doctor!” Carter ran over anyway.
“You’re premed, right?” Leah quickly but carefully moved the snow away from Sid, alternating between using her shovel and her hands. Tony cleared snow from the other side.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Carter argued.
“We need a stretcher.” Matt leaned heavily against a tree. The hike down the hill had just caught up to him—he was sweating again, and the pack he wore felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Sid’s face was the color of ash. Not good. Even if nothing was broken, Matt doubted Sid would be able to walk.
No one spoke. Only the sound of digging and heavy breathing and Julie’s crying. A part of Matt wanted to shake her, slap her into silence.
Immediately, his face burned. He knew she just lost someone, someone important, someone she might have loved. Matt had never been in love. He didn’t know what it felt like, what it looked like, and if it looked like anything, the image Matt had in his head was the way Carter’s face looked at Julie’s when he had drunkenly interrupted them in the hallway last night. Naked was the word that had popped into Matt’s mind. Carter’s face had looked purely naked, blazing with passion. And if Matt was being honest with himself, he knew he’d never had that feeling before. He certainly had never seen his parents look at each other like that, and then wondered if they ever had. Maybe once, a long time ago. Had Julie been in love with Dylan? With Carter? With them both? Matt dropped his head, turned, and leaned against an aspen trunk and closed his eyes. Who the hell was he to tell Julie how to feel, how to be?
Still, he couldn’t stand the sound of her whimpers, as if she was in physical pain. “Here . . .” He came up behind her, hands opened up. “Julie? Can you help me find some big branches?”
She blinked at him, shaking her head as if not understanding his meaning. Her face and eyelids were swollen, cheeks stained where mascara left inky streaks. Snot glistened on her upper lip.
“C’mon,” he tried again, touching her shoulder. “Sid needs our help now.”
The look she returned—pure hatred. Or was it pain? Matt couldn’t tell. She looked as if she just got her hand slammed in a door and it was all his fault. “What did you say?” Her eyes were enormous, black pupils swallowing up violet irises.
Is she in shock? Matt had heard that people can just lose it, or they disappear into themselves without a sound, becoming vacant. But he’d never seen it. And he didn’t know what to do to stop it. She wasn’t freaking out, not yet, but he could see in her face how it would go if he said the wrong thing.
“We need to make a stretcher,” he repeated, slower this time. It was important to stay calm, stay logical. “Or something Sid can lie on so we can carry him.”
“Stretcher,” she said dully, wiping her face with her glove.
“Yes.” Matt saw that Tony and Leah’s digging had Sid almost free, and Carter was asking him questions.
“Can you move your arms? Your legs? Your head? Your neck?”
“My left leg,” Sid gasped, his face bleached of color. He inhaled deeply and started coughing. “My chest,” he said after his hacking fit subsided. “It really hurts to breathe.”
Carter unzipped Sid’s coat, lifted his shirt, and from Matt’s position he could only see Carter’s and Leah’s faces as they examined him. Their expressions didn’t look reassuring.
“Do we have a first aid kit?” Matt asked Julie, but she didn’t answer. Her eyes had the flat effect of a blind person. She stared straight ahead without seeing him.
“First aid kit won’t help,” Carter said. “It’s internal, I think.”
“What do you mean?” Matt forced himself to walk over and look, prepared for something ghastly—blood, guts, bone fragments protruding. Something gory and irreparable.
In the middle of Sid’s chest a dark splotch, like a giant purple island, extended from the right shoulder down to underneath his rib cage. If anything, it looked like a really big, really painful bruise.
“Definitely a hematoma,” Carter told Leah.
“Hema what?” Tony asked. He held his brother’s wrist in his hand, monitoring his pulse. Tony was breathing fast himself, without a rhythm, and Matt knew Tony only ever did that when he got really upset. The last time Matt had seen Tony look like that was when he got a C- on a physics exam—a combination of sheer bewilderment and sudden terror.
“Bruise,” Leah said.
“Probably cracked ribs. Pneumothorax. I can’t really tell.”
Leah didn’t answer. She looked away as if she already knew the answer.
“What’s a pneumo . . . ?” Tony looked like he was going to scream. He inhaled sharply. “English please!”
“It means a collapsed lung,” Leah told him, and Matt wondered how she knew that.
“Okay,” Tony held a hand to his face, covering his eyes, “so what do we do?”
“We need to get him out of here. He needs a hospital.”
“How much time?” Leah asked Carter.
“Time?” Tony jumped up. “Time for what?” Frantic, he pulled out his phone. “We need to call nine-one-one!” He spun around, moving in circles, a nonsensical dance between the trees. “I can’t get a signal!”
Matt had the sudden urge to knock him down, a need to restrain him somehow. Tony twirled around like a top, trying to get his phone to work. He looked like he was swatting away an imaginary swarm of flies, and the more Matt watched, the more he felt the panic swim inside him. His vision blurred. His knees quivered. Did he have injuries of his own—something not immediately apparent? He took a breath and checked his own phone, surprised to find it wasn’t broken, but the battery was on its last bar. Here, down at the base of the run in the heavy cover of trees, the signal was nonexistent. “I can’t get one either.”
“All right,” Carter said, checking his own with the same result. “Does anyone have a working phone?”
Leah bit her lip. “I didn’t bring mine.”
“What?”
“It was already low so I left it in Dylan’s car, in the charger.”
“Shit.” Carter exhaled. His eyes landed on Julie. “What about you, Jules?”
“Dylan had my phone and some of my stuff in his waterproof sack,” she answered, then convulsed into a fresh round of tears at the mention of his name.
“Sid? Sid?” Tony squeezed his brother’s shoulders, patted his cheek, but Sid had passed out. His breathing was wet and thick. Tony fumbled in Sid’s pack, finally retrieving the shattered phone, cradling it in his palms as if it was a dead baby bird. “Oh no.”
“So we have three phones,” Leah said. “All low on juice.”
“Mine’s fine,” argued Carter.
“Yeah, but it’s useless if we can’t get a signal,” Leah told him. “We need to get out of here.”
“I know.” Carter grimaced. “But I don’t want to move him.”
“We have to.”
“Maybe we can get him to the cabin.” Matt suddenly remembered their destination point. He turned to the left, wondering if that was north or east. “Dylan said we were less than a mile away. Maybe there’ll be something there. Maybe there’ll be a first aid kit or a radio or . . . something.”
“You think?” Tony was hopeful.
“There could be some emergency supplies. Blankets. Something we can use. Maybe the phones will work there. We can’t stay here.” The sunlight had faded—afternoon was gone and the shadows grew longer on the snow. “And we need to go if we want to find it before dark.”
“I have a two-person tent,” Carter said, and Matt realized how much Carter really didn’t want to move Sid.
“Cabin’s better,” Matt said quickly, giving an anxious glance at Julie. “Better shelter. We should at least try to find it.”
“Okay. You’re right.” Carter popped off his skis and handed them over to Matt, whose skis remained buried somewhere up on the ridge. “You, Julie, and Leah try to tamp down a track for us,” he explained. “Tony and I will wear the snowshoes. That should help.”
“What?” Julie wiped her face. “You mean we’re just going to leave? Without Dylan?” Her voice was thin and high, dangerously close to breaking. “We have to keep looking!”
“Julie, I know.” Carter threw up his hands. “I did look. We all looked. We could be out there all night looking. It’s too late. . . .”
“It’s not!” Julie screamed. “It’s not too late!”
“Julie,” Leah tried, “it’s been over an hour. It’s a miracle that we found Matt, and he had the beacon.”
Matt’s face went so hot at that fact, he had to look away. He couldn’t meet Julie’s eyes. He couldn’t even swallow his spit.
“It’s also a miracle that Sid’s still alive,” Carter said. “And he won’t stay that way unless we get help.”
Tony’s face went as pale as his brother’s, and for a moment Matt thought his best friend was going to faint. Tony wobbled back, considering Carter’s diagnosis, and then sat down with a plop.
Julie kicked the snow with her boot, punched the side of the tree, then grabbed her skis and started off between the trees without another word. Her face was a mask of nothing, but her eyes said otherwise.
“Good,” Leah said quietly, more to herself. “All right, let’s go.”
• • •
“Do you know where you’re going?” Leah asked Matt. Matt was skiing somewhat haphazardly. Right then left, then stopping and starting, turning around to check on Tony and Carter’s progress with Sid, which was slow and plodding but steady.
“No. Not really.” He tried not to show his exhaustion, but his head was pounding again. He needed to find the cabin. After all, it had been his idea. He was certain they were headed in the right direction, but then again, the landscape had a uniformity to it that was disconcerting. Every tree and ridgeline looked exactly like the next. The sun had set—his clue they were going west, but soon he would have no light to guide them.
“Did he say it was west?” Leah asked, not ready to say Dylan’s name. For now, Julie was quiet, skiing calmly behind them.
“Yeah.” Matt looked back. Carter and Tony were about twenty yards back, Sid lolling between them in a basket carry, keeping up thanks to the snowshoes. The snow was not as deep here, but in some places the drifts went over Matt’s knees. “Maybe I should help carry.”
“No.” Leah watched the darkening sky. “We need to keep moving. There’s only about a half hour of light left.” She glided forward, peering between the trees. “He better have been right about this place,” she added under her breath.
Like a spell being cast with her last word, the cabin finally came into view. At first it looked like another boulder or a fallen tree—dark, squat, and small—with a stacked stone chimney on the far side. The roof, mostly covered in fresh snow, sloped deeply like a Swiss chalet, reminding Matt of something from a fairy tale. The place where a witch lives.
“That has to be it!” Tony exclaimed as they staggered up behind them. “Thank God!”
“There’s a chimney,” Carter gasped, somewhat happily. “That means we can build a fire and maybe send up a signal!”
Matt puffed a breath of relief, knowing he did something right. He pushed forward on his poles, skiing so fast he almost ran right into the front door. He jabbed it with his pole, but the wood slab was swollen with dampness. It didn’t budge. He clicked out of his skis as Leah arrived. “Open?”
“If not, I’m going to make it.” He jammed his shoulder against the door and it popped open, swinging into gray darkness. Against the far wall he saw a chair sitting underneath the one small paned window. He clopped in, floor squeaking and shuddering under his weight. It smelled of dry rot, pine, and something musty. Probably rodent. Matt unfolded a metal cot with squeaky protest. It was an old army cot—a double—with a sleeping bag rolled on top. “This will make a decent bed for Sid,” he mumbled, sitting down to see if it would hold.
“Are there any matches?” Leah held up an old lantern. “I think this has an unused oil canister in it.”
“I hope so.” The fireplace was an empty black mouth, devoid of wood. “Then at least we can build a fire.” It wasn’t cold in the cabin, but it was damp. Matt knew the temperature would drop fast during the night.
Julie walked in, stared at the floor, the ceiling, then a large metal chest behind the chair. Like the cot, it appeared to be military supply, an old army-issue footlocker. “What’s in there?”
“Well, it’s not locked,” Leah said, snapping up the brass latches. It opened with a tinny creak. “Blanket. Matches. Candles. Soda.” She named each item as she removed it and set it carefully on the floor. “Tarp. National Geographic magazine. Flashlight. Batteries . . .”
“Batteries?” Tony asked from the doorway. He leaned heavily against it, catching his breath. “What kind?”
“Double D,” Leah answered. “Just for the flashlight.”
“Oh.” Tony shrugged, obviously hoping for a different kind. “Matt? Can you help us?”
“Of course.” Matt stood up, embarrassed to be caught resting, and the pounding in his head restarted its angry beat. “I think this cot will work for Sid.”
“Good. He needs to lie down.” Tony wiped his forehead. “So do I.”
Between the three of them it was easy to lift and move Sid. He let out a small groan as they shifted him onto the cot. His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. “Water,” he whispered.
“Okay brother,” Tony said softly. “Hang on. I’ll get you water.” He put his hand gently on Sid’s forehead as if he were a small, helpless creature. It reminded Matt why Tony was his best friend, though he knew he wasn’t Tony’s. Tony’s admiration for his older brother was obvious, even if he never said so, and Matt thought again how nice it would have been to have had a brother growing up, or just another sibling—someone else who was on his team. Small, hot needles prickled in his throat. He’d always wanted that, wished for it, prayed for it. How did that line go? Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. He wasn’t sure who had said that one—it hadn’t been in his quote book. Shaking his head, Matt pulled his sweatshirt out of his backpack and rolled it into a pillow. Carefully, he lifted Sid’s head, slipped it under him, and gingerly lay him back.
“More upright,” Carter insisted. “I think he should be elevated more.”
Tony balled up the matching pair of sweatpants. Then he emptied Sid’s pack to use as many pieces of clothing required to get the angle right, before going outside to fill his brother’s water bottle with fresh snow.
“Is that comfortable?” Carter asked Sid.
Sid nodded, eyelids fluttering. “Better.”
“Good.”
“Should we build a fire?” Matt wondered aloud. “Maybe the smoke will send up a signal.”
“Can’t hurt, I guess,” Carter replied. “But it’s almost dark now, so no one will see it.”
“Oh.”
“Won’t matter if they do see it,” Leah said, putting everything back in the footlocker. “No one’s looking for us.”
“Won’t they come looking?” Matt asked her, confused. “At least by tomorrow?”
“Doubt it.”
“Won’t they notice we didn’t sign out? Plus, the cars are still in the lot.”
Leah slammed the footlocker lid shut. She took a deep breath. “Dylan didn’t sign us in.”
“What?” Carter asked, stunned. “What did you say?”
“I heard him tell Julie,” Leah said slowly, watching Julie, who was sitting cross-legged in front of the small stone fireplace, staring blankly at the hearth. “Said he didn’t want anyone to know about this place, so he didn’t write down where we were going.”
“Oh. My. God.” Carter sank to his knees like someone had just punched him. “Julie! What the hell? Is this true?”
“Is what true?” Tony reappeared with the water bottle.
Julie didn’t answer. Instead she rocked back and forth like a stubborn toddler who refused to listen. She even put her hands over her ears.
“What the fu . . .” Carter didn’t finish. His head collapsed into his hands as if he couldn’t bear to have anyone see his face.
An icy churn stirred Matt’s stomach, and the floor seemed to shift under his feet. “But the cars,” he insisted. “Someone will see the cars and call it in, right?”
Carter looked up and nodded. “Yeah, I hope so. But it could be days before they’ll find us out here.” He glanced at his sister, then Sid. Matt suddenly understood Carter’s real distress.
Sid wouldn’t live that long.
“We’ll just go back to get help,” Matt said.
Carter shook his head. “Someone needs to stay here.”
“I’ll stay with him.” Tony shook the water bottle until the snow resembled wet slush.
“I need to stay too,” Carter said. “If I’m the only one with first aid training.”
“Then I’ll go back myself,” Matt volunteered without thinking. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t even something to think about, it was just something that needed to be done.
“Matt . . .”
“Someone has to go. I can do ten miles.”
“Not right now you can’t,” Carter said. “You’re exhausted. You’re practically falling down. Plus, it’s dark out. You’ll get lost.”
“I’ll go with him,” Leah drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around herself. “I know how to get back.”
“I know you know,” Carter said, frustrated. “But I don’t want you going out there now.”
“I can handle it.”
“I know that too.” Carter raked his hands through his hair, as if there were another option he hadn’t thought of.
“Do you have a map or something?” Tony wanted to know. He gave Sid small sips from the water bottle.
“Don’t need one,” Leah replied. “I know how to get back.” Her words had a calm intensity, coupled with a hardness that made Matt believe her.
“Wait, wait.” Carter waved his hands. “Let’s just slow down here. Let’s think about this.”
“There’s not much to think about,” Leah answered. “The phones don’t work here and there is no radio.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Carter,” Julie sat up and stopped rocking back and forth. “Leah’s right. We need to go back.”
“Julie.” Carter sighed her name. “Someone has to stay with Sid.”
“Tony will,” Julie replied, nodding at Tony. “Of course he’ll stay.”
“I’m not leaving them on their own,” Carter argued. “Plus, you’re in no condition to leave either.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Okay.” Julie put her head back down on her knees. “I’m not fine. But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“I know,” Carter sighed. He crossed his arms and turned back to the dark cave of the fireplace. “Okay, I’ll stay here with Sid and Tony. I want you to stay with me, Julie.” He turned around and dropped his arms. “That’s what I want,” he repeated. To Matt it almost sounded like he was begging.
Julie didn’t answer at first. “I’ll stay, then.”
Carter nodded and quickly wiped his eyes. He turned to Matt. “Leah will go with you,” he said. “She’ll lead you out.”
“It’s okay,” Matt said, wondering why Carter thought his little sister could handle the trek if he couldn’t. “I don’t need—”
“Leah goes with!” Carter was firm, on the edge of a shout. “No one’s going out there alone.”
“Okay,” Matt agreed. “When do we leave?” Outside the dirty window it was past dusk, shadows blurring into one another.
“Right now.”
“Now? It’s almost pitch black out there!” Tony exclaimed.
“Then we’ll need this.” Leah clicked on the flashlight, making a moonbeam on the ceiling, and tossed it over to Carter. “Pack us light. We need to go fast. We need a good phone.”
Shockingly, Matt’s phone was deemed the best, with slightly more battery power than Carter’s. Tony’s phone hadn’t even gotten a signal up on the last ridge. Carter took Leah’s backpack, emptying out anything extraneous, before adding a few things from his own pack. Matt wondered how he could decide what was necessary and what wasn’t. Right now it seemed all the bare essentials they had weren’t nearly enough.
Leah struck a match, lit the oil canister in the lantern as easily as if she’d done it a hundred times before, then set it on the footlocker. A wavering golden glow illuminated the cobwebs in the corners.
“So what should we do?” Tony asked.
Leah watched the light move like waves across the ceiling. “Build a signal fire.”
Tony stared at his brother. “And then what?”
“I don’t know.” Leah shrugged her shoulders, then readjusted her hat, tucking her curls underneath as she gave him a sad smile. “Pray, I guess.” She nodded to Matt. “You ready?”
“Yeah, I am,” he said, not having the heart to tell her that Tony was an atheist. “Bunch of bunkum,” he liked to tell Matt whenever the subject came up, and Matt would always agree. He wondered if Tony would pray now. Yes, Matt decided, he would. Tony would pray to God, Jesus, Allah, Loki, Kali, Buddha, Odin, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny if he thought it would help his brother. Tony would pray to Obi-Wan Kenobi and try to use the Force. And Matt knew he would do the same. “I’m ready when you are.”
Ten minutes later they started out, skiing fast in the moonlight, backtracking over the trail with such intensity that Matt felt the now-familiar sensation of building nausea. He couldn’t keep going at this pace, but ahead of him Leah showed no signs of slowing. “Hold up!” he finally shouted, his voice frighteningly loud in the still woods.
“Sorry.” Leah pulled to a stop. “I know. I’m exhausted too, but it’s bad, Matt.”
“You mean Sid, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” She leaned over her poles, taking big breaths. “We need to get a call out before morning. They won’t send out rescue until first light and they need to know where to find them.”
“What’s going to happen to Sid?” Matt knew she had an inkling of how serious it was. He sensed she had been holding back, maybe to prevent Tony from panicking.
“His lung is probably collapsed,” she said quietly. “And who knows what other internal injuries he has from hitting that tree. If he doesn’t get to a hospital, he could suffocate to death.”
“So what is the plan?” Matt tried to keep his voice calm. Immediately he remembered what it felt like to slowly lose air, to have to fight for every breath. And now that was happening to Sid. He squeezed his poles in a vise grip, forcing the memory from his head.
“We get up on a ridge and make the call. And if that doesn’t work we’ll head back to Berthoud Pass and find help.” Leah pointed off into the darkness, although the combination of moonlight and snow made everything quite bright. Even though Matt couldn’t see the mountains, he could feel them looming ahead in the distance. “I remember the coordinates of the cabin, so don’t turn on your phone until we get up there.”
“Got it.”
They continued on, making no sound except for the swish of skis through powder. Matt concentrated on Leah’s back and her smooth stride that he did his best to match. She went on like a machine, never flagging. He was both frustrated and awed by her robotic determination.
“We need to get to the top before midnight,” she said.
“Why?” He did a quick mental calculation, assuming it was past nine. That meant three more hours of skiing, which mostly meant hiking up a mountain, and the way she said it implied they wouldn’t be stopping if they wanted to make it on time. Defeat simmered through his bones like an ache. It sounded impossible.
“Storm might be blowing in early,” she puffed. “We’ll need to be off the summit if it does.”
Matt glanced up at the navy sky, bright with moonlight, completely cloudless. “It’s so nice out.” It was nice. Not too cold and barely a breeze. It was another reminder that despite their desperate situation, things could be a lot worse.
“That was yesterday. Yesterday was clear.”
She didn’t have to elaborate—his brain filled in the rest.
Yesterday was clear and look what happened.
“Just let me know what you need me to do and I’ll do it,” Matt said, suddenly thankful she was with him. He didn’t know too much about survival in the wilderness, nor did he have any practical experience. All his knowledge up until this point had come from books—books his father had given him and told him to read. Like his Ultimate Book of Famous Quotations. “Useful for any situation,” his father had said when Matt unwrapped the present. It was an early twelfth birthday present, and the last thing his father gave him before moving out of their house the following week. True to his father’s word, he thought of a quote from the book. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
“Nice,” Leah replied. “So who said that?”
“Benjamin Franklin.”
“Did Benjamin Franklin ever climb a mountain?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Leah turned away and began the long, slow ascent. Up and up and forever up.