By the time Leah and Matt got off the north face of the mountain an hour later, it was snowing heavily. The sky around them was white and swirling, like the inside of the storm clouds themselves. Leah led them behind a wall of granite rock the size and shape of a semitruck. Finally out of the wind, Matt collapsed into a heap, grateful just to stop moving. Leah removed a small red square from her pack, unfolded it into a tarp, and by using the weight of some smaller rocks near their feet, pinned it down. With the edge secured she flipped the rest of the sheet over them, making a crude tent. Instantly, Matt felt warmer. The red nylon was thin but effective, and Matt helped drape it over their heads and shoulders. They flattened their backs against the boulder to keep it from shifting.
“We’ll have to sit tight for a while,” Leah said. “Until the storm passes.”
Matt wasn’t about to argue; he felt he might fall asleep just sitting there. “How long do you think that will be?”
“Maybe an hour. Clouds are moving pretty fast.”
He wondered how she knew that. He wanted to sleep, but everything hurt, especially his head and stomach. He hadn’t eaten anything since late afternoon, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever missed a meal. A huge goose egg had sprouted on the back of his skull and he fingered it gingerly, hoping he hadn’t given himself a mild concussion. Concussed people were not supposed to go to sleep, he’d read somewhere. The lump throbbed under his thumb, keeping time with his pulse.
“We’ll have to go around,” Leah continued. “We’re on the wrong side of the mountain now.”
Matt also couldn’t understand how she knew this, since the visibility in the storm was nil, but he nodded anyway. Underneath his hand, the lump seemed to have swollen to the size of a tennis ball. “Thanks.” He dropped his head.
“For what?”
“For back there.” He didn’t want to say it—he was too embarrassed. He hadn’t listened to her, and because of that he’d almost killed them both.
“Oh,” Leah said distractedly. “Sure.” It sounded like she went around saving people every day, the way other people hold open doors or let someone else ahead of them in the checkout line. No big deal.
“It’s so weird,” Matt blurted.
“What’s weird?”
“I mean, what I’m trying to say . . .” He exhaled hard. “I don’t know. I’m just really sorry, that’s all. I shouldn’t have come with.”
“What do you mean?”
“You would have been better off without me along.”
“No way.” Leah shook her head and Matt felt the plastic slide over his. “Why would you say that?”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing. I should have gotten the call through.”
“You did get the call through.”
Matt squeezed his fists, an instinctive inward cringe he always did when he failed at something. “I got cut off.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“But . . .”
“Believe me, Matt. You’ll know when you really mess up.” Leah got serious. She spoke slowly, evenly, putting equal weight on each word. To make sure he listened to her. To make sure he really understood. “Because that will be the last thing you do. Carter was right. No one should go out here alone. This place doesn’t give you second chances.”
Matt thought he’d already been given a second chance—actually a third. “How did you know what to do?”
“I didn’t.” In the darkness he saw her outline bend forward, as if she was trying to put her head into her lap. She cradled it in her hands—elbows on her knees. The ground was cold and solid beneath them, and it made Matt’s lower back ache in a distinctly painful way. Leah didn’t speak for a minute and Matt wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
“Just lucky, I guess,” she murmured. “Lucky like you.” She sat up then, lifted the corner of the tarp, checking outside. The wind wasn’t as loud now, more like a whine instead of a howl. “Carter put the rope in my pack. I told him I wouldn’t need it, but he insisted.”
“You guys are close, aren’t you?” A small gust curled in under the tarp. The sharp cold stung his nostrils, and he saw the moonlight was back, shimmering off the sheet of snow like a spotlight.
“Carter’s the only one I trust,” she confessed. “He’s always been on my side. He’s always looked out for me.”
“It must be nice,” Matt said slowly, “to have a brother like that.”
“Yeah.” Leah pulled the tarp back farther, watching the sky. “Some days, it was the only thing . . .” She stopped and dropped the sheet, turning toward him. “I think the storm’s done. Went on to the east.” Her hair brushed his cheek; it smelled like mint leaves. And snow.
Matt wanted her to finish her thought, if only to understand her better. It was the only thing what? “I guess I wouldn’t know.”
“Know what?”
“Having a brother. I’m an only child.”
“Oh yeah?” Leah didn’t comment on this, but promptly changed the subject. “I’m hungry. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Okay, then.” Leah shrugged off her pack. “What’s for dinner?”
“Didn’t you bring anything?” Matt rummaged through down to the bottom of his pack, horrified. His first thought: She doesn’t have anything to eat?
Second thought: How much do I have left?
Third thought: I have to share it?
Fourth: I’m not sharing.
Fifth: Complete utter burning shame (not really a thought, more like an unpleasant physical reaction).
Sixth: I should be giving her all my food.
“Here’s what I have.” Leah retrieved four cans of Rainier beer and a small packet of beef jerky—the spicy chipotle kind. One king-size Twix candy bar, a small bag of trail mix, and two clementine oranges.
“That’s it?” Matt almost drooled when the golden foil of the Twix wrapper caught the light.
“Afraid so.”
“Interesting diet,” Matt said. “Alcohol. Meat. Sugar. I can’t believe you brought beer.”
“I forgot I packed it. Might as well not waste it.” Leah smiled as if he’d just made a good joke.
“Guess so. I’m getting sick of eating snow anyway.” Matt removed the rest of his stash, a left-over sandwich and a peanut butter granola bar, adding it to the pile.
“Now that’s what I call a picnic.” Leah cracked open an aluminum can and handed him another.
Matt took a long gulp, which was delicious—the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. He drained the entire can in twenty seconds.
“Slow down, sonny. Don’t get tipsy.”
“Sonny?” His throat burned, but in a good way. “You talk like you’re sixty years old or something.”
She laughed. “Carter says that too. I’m the oldest teenager in the world.”
“So how old are you? If you’re Carter’s younger sister . . .”
“Seventeen,” she replied, laughing at the surprise in his voice. “But I’ll be eighteen this summer.”
“But you live with Carter and Sid?” His question was innocent enough, but it implied a hundred more.
“Yeah.” She sipped her beer. “For a while now I have.” She tore open the pack of jerky, pulled out a thick piece, and offered him the rest.
“B-but you’re not legally an adult,” he stammered. “Can you even do that?”
“I guess I can,” she said. “Because I did.”
“But what about your parents? They just let you move out?”
Leah turned the can in her hand as if she was reading the ingredients list. Then, instead of answering, she asked him a question. “Would your parents let you move out?”
“Huh? No. Of course not. No way.” Matt briefly entertained this idea, but it was so odd, so out of his normal way of thinking, it never would have occurred to him. Then again, his own father had done exactly that. Moved out. His face went hot and he felt slightly sick, as though the ground had fallen away. “Why would I?”
She didn’t reply to that either, which left him to answer his own question. Why would he move out? For freedom? To be an adult on his own? To have his own place, be a man, to come and go as he pleased? He would be eighteen in two months, and he knew his mother was planning a big party. She always did stuff like that. Ever since he could remember, and the bigger the better. Balloons. Streamers. Piñatas. A cake with three layers. Invited all the relatives, invited all the neighbors. “Mattie,” his mom was fond of saying, “even the little things are worth celebrating.” That time he’d complained that they didn’t have to invite the whole neighborhood over to celebrate the fact that he’d learned to ride a bike without training wheels. He’d been eight and a little behind the athletic curve. Then she went back to frosting the spokes on the bicycle-shaped cake she’d baked.
Matt chewed his beef jerky thoughtfully, already knowing the only reason to move out at seventeen was that your home was an awful place. That the people in it were awful. That they said and did awful things to one another.
He finished the beef jerky with a hard swallow. “It was bad, huh?”
Leah smiled. It was a thankful smile—a commiserating smile. Because she’d seen him figure out the answer, and that meant she didn’t have to explain. He understood, even if he couldn’t relate. And that was good enough. They finished the bag of jerky in silence, dividing the clementines, the Twix, and the granola bar, saving the trail mix and sandwich for later.
“Yeah, it was bad.” She stood up and crushed her can expertly under her boot heel, then his, and slipped both discs back into her pack. “Time to go. Change into your hiking boots.” She refolded the red nylon into a neat square.
“Already?” He pulled off the rigid ski boots and rolled out his ankles, then put on his pair of worn and infinitely more comfortable Merrells.
Leah zipped the tarp into a side pocket and changed into her own hiking boots. “We need to get off this peak. We have no tent and we’re behind schedule.”
It sounded to Matt like she was referring to some household chore that needed to be finished. “Do we need a tent?”
“Not if we can get back today.” Leah was already climbing over the rocks, picking her way across the boulder field like one of those little marmots Matt had seen poking its head out from between the rocks. “Sun will be up soon.”
He hurried (carefully) to catch up to her, ignoring the hot twists in his stomach. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Down,” Leah said, pointing to a seemingly unending expanse of ice-stained rock. “We’re going down.” Boulders and boulders, many the size of a compact cars. It was dark, it was cold, there was no trail to speak of, and to Matt the scene before him made him remember another expression that had no author: Out of the frying pan and into the fire.