The last hundred yards weren’t the hardest, but to Matt they felt like the longest. At this elevation the wind was strong, freezing the sweat on the back of his neck as he gingerly picked his way along the narrow track until he reached Leah resting on a wide expanse of granite. She was perched on a section about twenty feet square. On either side the slope fell away into the air and a hundred-foot drop to whatever happened to be below. Matt didn’t know, and he certainly wasn’t about to look. He felt dizzy and lightheaded just imagining it.
“You made it.” Leah sat cross-legged on the rock like a yogi.
“How high are we?” Matt gasped. Every breath he gulped seemed to contain the absolute bare minimum of oxygen to prevent losing consciousness. It felt as though his ribs had turned into steel bands around his chest, slowly compressing so that every breath seemed smaller and more useless than the last.
“Definitely over twelve thousand feet.”
“So where are we?” He sat down as gracefully as he could, managed to unclip his boots, and carefully stacked his skis on the rock. He didn’t want to do something stupid and have them go sailing off into the abyss.
“Byers Peak, I think,” Leah turned her head, orienting herself. “To the south is Bills Peak. North is Morse Mountain.” She squinted into the distance, her diamond stud flashing in the moonlight like a beacon. “Over there is Sheep Mountain—I think that’s what it’s called.”
Great, Matt thought. Everything is mountains.
“Highway 40 is east.” Matt followed her direction, for some reason expecting to see it. But there was nothing but a gauzy whiteness, rolling out into dark sky.
With a mumble on his breath that sounded like a prayer, Matt pulled out his phone and turned it on. Low battery but Leah was right, the signal was strong. Matt grinned, relieved. “It works!” One message was waiting—the message his dad had sent. “Who should I call first?”
“Nine-one-one.”
“Right.” Idiot. He punched in the numbers, the wind whipping and getting stronger. Little flecks of sleet stung his cheek.
He heard a buzz, a click as the signal went through, and after two beats the operator answered.
“Nine-one-one—what is your emergency?”
“Hello!” Matt yelled, embarrassed, nervous, and excited in a way that suggested he was doing something illegal. He’d never called 911 before. His throat felt weird. His neck hair stood up. He couldn’t hear very well; he took off his ski helmet and pressed the receiver tight against his ear. “Hello! My name is Matt! I’m out at Berthoud Pass ski area! There was an avalanche. One missing!” He didn’t say dead. “One injured! Bad! We need someone to fly in! Um . . .” He was babbling—words coming out of his mouth so fast and so loud, wondering if the operator could hear him above the wind.
“Where are you exactly? Please repeat and slow down. One injury?”
“Berthoud Pass,” he repeated, realizing that was incorrect. “I mean, right now I’m on Byers Peak, I think.”
“Berthoud Pass? How many are in your party?”
“Yes. No. I mean, uh seven of us.” Now six. “One severe injury!”
A buzz on the line. Static.
“Matt!” Leah jumped up from the rock, looking like she wanted to punch him. “Give them the coordinates of the cabin!”
“Not Berthoud Pass!” He yelled into the phone, but his yell was ripped away in the wind. A sharp gust pushed him sideways and he had to squat down to keep his balance. “I have coordinates! Thirty-nine! Fifty-one! Forty-four! One hundred and five! Fifty-three! Twenty-nine!” He read the numbers off the scrap of paper Leah shoved in front of him, but the numbers were scribbly, and the moonlight had vanished in the increasing clouds.
“Not Berthoud Pass? Please repeat.”
“No!” He screamed, lurching away from Leah in an angry panic. The numbers. He had to remember the numbers, and he squeezed his eyes shut with the effort. He slowed down as each one returned to his mind, morphing out of the ether like a developing photograph. Those were the right numbers. “Listen to me! Thirty-nine degrees, fifty-one minutes, forty-four seconds north! One hundred and five degrees, fifty-three minutes, and twenty-nine seconds west! Those are coordinates!” he bellowed. “I repeat! Those are coordinates for survivors! One injured badly!”
“Okay. Slow down.”
The crackling fuzz vanished. Matt spun around, aghast, wondering if the phone had just died, but no, the battery was still there. He’d just lost the signal. “I can try again!” he hollered. “I just got cut off!”
“Matt?”
He turned around at the fear in Leah’s voice, holding his phone like it was a bomb. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t!” Leah yelled above the howling wind. “Don’t move.”
“I . . .”
“Matt! Don’t . . .” Leah’s words were interrupted by a weird crunch, like the muffled sound of glass breaking. And as Matt looked around, he saw he was no longer on the rock. In his need to get his message through he had walked out onto the snow pack, which turned out to be a dissolving sheet of ice.
Another crack. Oh shit, he thought weakly. One second later his boots went out from under him as the ice sheet gave way. Pop-pop-pop-pop . . . It sounded like firecrackers going off.
He slid, picking up speed as he headed for the center of the gully—a giant trough of glare ice.
“Dig in!” Leah screamed, but her voice was already starting to fade out of hearing.
Dig into what? He flipped over onto his stomach but skittered so fast that momentum kept him going, landing him back on his shoulders, faceup, the back of his head clunking heavily on the ice. But he didn’t feel it—every part of him was hitting something as he bounced down the field.
His arms flailed in a seizurelike fit and his helmet went flying, bouncing out of his grip. He jammed his boot heels into the ice sheet, but the nylon on his pants and jacket had no friction. He didn’t slow down. His boots scudded and scraped, grit flew up in his face; he was no match for the steep slope. Gravity sucks. Matt tried again, picking up his feet and slamming them back. Golf ball–size chunks of dirty ice splintered off in small explosions. He knew he needed to get in control, find a way to slow down, find a way to stop himself. A second later, his right leg collided with a protruding rock, sending a shockwave of pain up his ankle, kneecap combusting into excruciating spasms. He spun left, using every muscle that remained to raise his head off the ice, knowing that if he’d hit it on that boulder he’d already be a goner.
Still, he didn’t stop. If anything, he was going faster. Using his elbows, he propped himself up almost to sitting, but then what he saw made him want to fall back down.
Nothing.
The edge.
Open air.
And he was headed right for it.