I feel myself falling, but then Cooper’s hand snakes out and snatches my wrist. It’s my bad arm, and the pain of it nearly makes me pass out. I hang freely over the chasm. My vision is jerky and narrow, like looking through a camera lens. I see the rough rock in front of me, the open sky, and Cooper’s wild eyes, which are green with flecks of light gold. There is impossible darkness below me. And Cooper’s fingers dig into the red marks on my arm. He’s on his stomach with his arms stretched out, clutching me. His face is strained.

“Don’t let me go!”

“Climb,” he grunts.

“Cooper, don’t drop me. Don’t.”

He tries to pull me up, but he slips farther toward the edge. My right arm finally connects with the rock, and I grip it like a tree frog. The unbearable pressure on my injured arm lessens as my weight is transferred.

Our eyes meet. “Climb,” Cooper says.

With Cooper pulling on my wrist, I claw with my other hand, kicking my feet. The sharp edge of the rock rips the knees of my jeans as I teeter on the edge. The next moment, I’m scrambling over the rim.

Cooper and I lie on our backs, panting. We both take a moment to just breathe. But we have to keep moving or we’re going to die up here.

When I try to stand, the ground spins around me. I stumble forward.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“You can hardly walk. Let me help you.”

The last thing I want is to accept help from him, but we have to get off this mountain. I lean on Cooper’s shoulder as he puts an arm around me.

“God, you’re burning up,” he says softly.

I know the direction I have to take. The image of the road and our van lying on its side is burned into my mind now. We lurch toward the forest. The only sounds I hear are the shuffling footsteps we make and my own heartbeat. Even the wind has stilled.

I search for Stark in the sky, knowing she’ll love the coming snow. The first snow was always so exciting at home. It was a time for hunting. You can see tracks more easily. What I wouldn’t give to be home now, getting ready for a hunt with Tank and Aunt Amy and Gavin. The fever is muddling my thinking. I can almost imagine that all of this was a dream and I’m going to wake up in my tree house and go clean the mews.

I stumble and come back to my actual circumstances. I’m not hunting with Tank, I’m racing a clock. I’m racing toward our van that I left three days ago thinking I would be back in a few hours. With my head up, I keep marching, weaving in and out of balance. I need to stay upright. It’s the only reason I allow Cooper to touch me.

“Karma, listen. These last few days—”

“Don’t talk to me,” I interrupt. My muscles ache with cold and stiffness.

Cooper remains quiet during the rest of our trek and keeps shooting me worried looks. His lips press together with fear. All his squawking and feather ruffling are absent now. There’s no mask of indifference. I can read him plainly, but I don’t care.

Finally I see things I recognize. The trees, those shrub bushes, and the shape of the boulders as we pass. We’re on the road next, and I break from Cooper and wobble past the spot where I collapsed and called out for help a thousand years ago. Was it really just a few days ago? I feel as if I’ve aged a lifetime since then.

I fall down the steep embankment, sliding on my butt, holding my arm against me. “Gavin! Dad!”

And then I see him. Gavin in a woolen hat, his little white face shining like a moon peeking out of the van. The sight of him sends a jolt through me that travels straight to my heart.

I watch his expression shift from relief to dismay as he takes in my condition and the fact that there are no police cars or ambulances or doctors or firefighters behind me. There is only Cooper.

I give Gavin the short version of the last few days as we climb through the back doors of the van. Dad is under a blanket and still in the same place I left him.

“Dad, I’m here,” I say. But he doesn’t respond. He’s so white, I can see little veins under his skin. I can’t stand to see him helpless like this. This can’t be Dad, my dad who always walks tall, always has a ready smile, and always crinkles up the corners of his eyes. Now he’s small and pale and his beard is all messy and growing in. I don’t know how Gavin has dealt with it all these days. “Dad, can you hear me?”

“He’s been like that all day,” Gavin says beside me. “He won’t even drink anymore.”

Gavin’s face shows all the worry and fear he’s had to live with by himself. It makes me want to scream and pound something. He’s been stuck in this van, dealing with something no kid his age should have to deal with. The love I feel for my family overpowers me. I finally made it back to them. It almost doesn’t feel real that Gavin is sitting in front of me alive and whole. Relieved, tears spill over and down my face. Gavin hugs me, then pats my shoulder as if I’m the younger one. I pull out the fortune game, dried hard and brittle.

Gavin takes it and stares at the paper glumly. “I didn’t mean to give you a bad fortune. I don’t want you to die.”

“I know, Gav. I didn’t, and we won’t. We’re all going to be fine. I’m making a new fortune. I’ll be safe with my whole family at home very soon.”

“I’m only making good fortunes from now on,” he says.

I hear something and turn my attention to Dad.

“Dad! Are you awake? Please talk to me.” I smooth his hair off his gaunt face and bend closer. My heart leaps as his head rolls away from me. His eyes open and he mumbles something, but he’s not looking at me. I can see he isn’t focused on anything.

He needs to get out of here, right now. All of us do.

Cooper. I can’t believe I forgot about him. Where is he?

I lurch through the back doors and spy Cooper sitting on the ground next to the tipped-over van. His shoulders are shaking. My fever forgotten, I charge over to him but pull up when I see his face.

“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me,” he says, over and over. Cooper looks up at me, tears streaming down his face. He points to the perfectly whole right back tire that is in the air. The one that isn’t shredded.

“That’s the one I sliced.”

When I first left the van in my desperate state, I hadn’t even noticed which tire had blown out.

We lock eyes. The only things moving are the wet snowflakes beginning to fall around us.

“I have a do-over,” Cooper says, his eyes pleading, searching my face for something I’m not quite ready to give.

I break our gaze and drop beside him, staring at the tires. “I guess we all get new futures. It’s up to us to decide what to do with them.”