Hard pellets pound the top of my head. They pelt my body as I hunch in on myself. The ice balls appear to be growing larger with every second, making sharp tapping noises above the wind. They bounce off the rock in front of my face.

Tucking my neck in further, I wish again that I had my winter coat. I pull up my hood and cup my ear to shield it from the stinging hail. We’re so exposed here. My skin feels raw.

“Up here,” Cooper yells.

I scramble ahead to where he crouches against the side of the rock. He’s backed into the narrowest part of a V formed by two angles of rock wall coming together. It’s a shallow alcove with a low overhang above his head.

“Best we’ve got,” Cooper yells in my ear as I scoot in beside him.

He puts his arms around me when I turn to face the storm. With my back pressed against him, I feel his warmth through my shirt, and the position almost feels natural. I wonder if he can feel my heart pounding.

Cooper has his jacket off and holds it up in front of us, blocking the wind. I grasp the edge of the jacket and stretch it to reach the side of the rock. Cooper pulls it open to press against the other side of the rock, forming a shield against the worst of the hail.

The pellets slam into the backside of the coat with a flurry of noises like popcorn popping. Shrieking wind tries to tear the jacket out of my hand. I stomp on the bottom of the jacket and try to hold it down with my foot. I’m practically in Cooper’s lap. The space is narrow and small, but the rocks at our back offer protection. And with the jacket up, we’re out of the wind.

We sit together in grim silence, dripping, each holding on to our side of the jacket. I wonder if he’s noticing how close we’re sitting and that his arms are around me. Water runs off my hair and down my chin. Soon, steam rises up from us as the little space is warmed. The smell of damp bodies hangs in the air.

My hands begin to shake as the adrenaline subsides. I try to imagine we’re somewhere else, anywhere but in the middle of a cliff in a storm.

“This is like my room at that apartment with Dad in Salt Lake City,” Cooper says. “I had a leak above my bed that would drip on my head every time they took a shower upstairs.”

“That sounds about as useful as a chocolate teapot.”

I feel Cooper laughing behind me, and it warms me. “You are so cra—.” He pauses. “You’re all right, Karma. You’re all right.”

This acceptance makes me feel as if…as if he’s really my friend. I resist an urge to lean my head back against his shoulder. I hadn’t realized the tension around us until it was gone. It’s like we’ve slumped against each other for support.

“This sucks,” Cooper says.

I sigh. “At least Dad and Gavin are in the van,” I say. “But Stark is out there in this storm somewhere.”

“Man, you’re always thinking about her, huh? I knew a girl who was wild about horses, but I’ve never met anyone as wild about birds as you. You’re falcon wild.”

I grin at his words. “I can’t imagine life without raptors. Besides schoolwork, that’s all I do. I’d rather chop off a finger than see any of my birds hurt,” I tell him. “One time, when I was seven, Dad found me camped in the mews at Aunt Amy’s with Dewdrop. He was a sharp-shinned hawk who’d been hit by a car. I’d snuck out of the house with a flashlight. Dad had noticed me missing before he went to bed, and he said he pretty much knew where to find me.”

I pause, remembering. “Aunt Amy says I have a feeling for raptors, like a natural animal sense that can’t be taught. I keep the birds calm. Even when I was young, I knew how to calm them, though I didn’t realize what I was doing. I think they pick up on our own fears. If you keep yourself thinking happy thoughts, this will soothe them.”

“Yeah, you do seem like you’re thinking happy thoughts most of the time,” Cooper says. “Even stranded out here. I’ve never met anyone like you. I can see how you’d be good at it.”

I smile a moment in shocked silence. He quickly adds, “It was cool to see you call that bird down with the thing you swung in the air.”

“I’ve always been pretty good with the lure. Lure training is like a dance with the bird. You let them get just close enough, they pivot and twist and dive, and then you pivot the lure with them. It’s important to get the timing right so you don’t accidentally hit them. You have to feel them moving. The birds love it. You can see it in their expressions. It’s good exercise, and Dad has let me do it for the demos since I got better than him. But once I’m an apprentice, I’ll only use a lure to call a bird down or away from danger. We train our raptors through hunting. I’m hoping to be a good falconer. It’s in my blood.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about Stark being out there,” he says. “She’s a bird. Don’t birds hide from storms all the time?”

“I’m more worried about my dad and brother,” I admit.

Cooper sniffs and rubs his nose on my shoulder, since his hand is busy holding up the jacket.

“Hey! Keep your snot to yourself.” I turn and grin at him, and he grins back.

“Your family’s safe in the van,” he says. “They’ve got more protection than we do.”

I listen to the hail. Hope shoots through me, something I haven’t felt for days. “At least they can melt this hail, and then they’ll have something to drink,” I say.

Three days. They have three days to live without water.

But this thought leads me to notice the shadows in our little fort. They’re growing, and it’s not just because the storm has made everything darker. Nighttime is approaching. How have we spent another whole day out here?

“Cooper! It’s late.” We’re going to have to spend the night. Suddenly my breath is squeezed from me as if something heavy landed on my chest. “That makes three nights. I’ve been gone for three nights, Cooper! I told Dad I’d get help!” I feel flayed to the bone.

Cooper collects me in a stronger grip around my shoulders. I push at him, but he holds on. “Shhh,” he says in my ear. “You can’t go anywhere right now.”

“And…oh, no!” I squirm, fumble behind me, and reach into my back pocket. The fortune teller is a sopping gob of paper, thanks to my journey down the river. “It’s ruined! Gavin made this!” I feel myself starting to flap around like a bating hawk. My vision narrows and focuses on the space between the rock and Cooper’s jacket. Sheets of hail rush into our cave and fling sideways like my thoughts.

“I abandoned them!” I scream, struggling to get up.

“No, you didn’t, Karma. You went for help. We’re going to get help.”

But I hardly hear him. I lash out, kicking and flailing, needing to get up, to do something. My injured arm connects with Cooper’s jaw, and the instant pain is like a white bolt of lightning shooting through the center of me. It knocks me back, breathless.

Cooper holds me while our dimming rock cave spins around my head. The pain engulfs me. I welcome it. I’m wrapped up as it pushes out every other thought in my head. Finally it subsides to a pounding pulse reaching to my elbow. By the time I can sit up, I feel more like myself and look around the tiny space we’re in.

“Shhh, be calm. Be calm.” Cooper’s words register deep inside me. I wipe my face, shaky and ashamed.

Cooper loosens his grip. “You good?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Can you move off my foot a little? It’s asleep.”

“Oh.” I shift and we find our spots, with me leaning my back into him. We brace the jacket again. My heart still pounds from my panic. I swallow and close my eyes. I need to think about something else.

“If my friends could see me now.” Cooper snorts. “I’m a long way from Salt Lake City,” he says, as if he knows I need a distraction. “I miss the city. My dad still lives there.”

Another fury of hail gusts against the jacket, and Cooper braces again.

“And my mom, well, she’s in jail,” he barely whispers.

“Why is your mom…?” It’s beyond my comprehension that his mom would be in jail. “What did she do? I thought you said she was a doctor.”

“Yup, ’til she hit someone while driving when she was wasted. Or was she stoned? Stoned and wasted? The details are murky.”

I turn my head toward Cooper. I can see him in the dim light as he stares ahead. His bottom lip quivers, but his expression is hard.

“Cooper.” It’s all I can manage to say.

Cooper makes an impatient gesture with his hand. The jacket flicks up at the motion. “The stupid thing was, she’s not in for the accident, but for stealing stuff.”

“You mean, like stealing phones and dirt bikes? That sort of thing?”

Cooper goes very still. The silence stretches for a long time, but I don’t give in to fill it.

Finally he says, so softly I can barely hear, “Yeah.”

The storm continues to rage outside our little crevice. Cooper and I take turns holding up the jacket against the wind. We huddle together on the cold rock and count the minutes until it ends.

There are many minutes in a hailstorm.