While Colin minds the boys, I sit at the water’s edge, recording events and emotions and mistakes that will forever haunt me. But the truth has become my duty. This is their story; if we survive, this is part of who they will become.
I hope—pray—that this is the most trying chapter of their lives. Their parents are gone, their way of life lost with them. No wonder Tim misconstrued Colin’s survival instincts as love. These little boys need a family, and they’re mine now. Mine, and I’m only nineteen, with no experience in child-rearing. No sense of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what we need to do to give them hope.
My gaze settles on Tim’s Tree and, to its left, the slanting roof of the cabin. I will never know how he even saw it; the woods are endlessly thick, an army of sameness. The cabin itself roosts in shadow.
“Mind if I join you?”
Colin stumbles as he wades through the snow but rights himself before I can intervene.
“Are you crazy? You can’t be out here.”
“A little stir-crazy, yeah.”
“I’m serious.”
He grimaces as he kneels in the snow, holding his right arm close to his chest. The T-shirt bandages and socks have held up well, but nowhere close to well enough.
“I think we should talk about what happened,” he says.
“We can talk inside, where it’s warmer.”
“No.” He adds, “Not around the boys.”
He dips his left hand into the water, and flakes of dried blood turn the lake a filmy red.
“My plan was to swim it,” he says.
I wait for him to go on, to explain. A rush of resentment and shame fogs my thoughts. Unlike me, at least Colin was willing to try.
He would have made it, too. Now he never will. No one will because I simply can’t swim that far in these conditions.
“So what happened?” I ask, though a part of me doesn’t want an answer. The deep gashes in his skin, the trail of blood through the snow—these can only mean an encounter with something awful.
He shifts his weight and skims his wet hand over his head. “I heard a noise,” he says.
“What kind of noise?”
“Sounded angry. Large. I’m a city kid, and I’ve never seen a wild animal in my life unless you count Jimmy Ricks, the nastiest kid on the block back home.” He pauses at the memory. “In any case, it was a bear. Huge, too. Smelled like rotting meat.”
“So you attacked it?”
“Hardly.” He sighs, like he’s ashamed to admit this. “I tried to run it off. Scare it a little. The lean-to was only, what, a couple hundred yards away? I couldn’t just stand there and wait for it to find you.”
It already had, I thought, but waited for him to continue.
“Anyway, it snuck up on me. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge the first hit.”
“And then you . . .” I struggle to form the words without summoning a bizarre image of man versus bear in my mind. “You used your stick to fight him off?”
“I tried. I got a few good blows in, but I dunno. I worry . . .”
I worry, too. I worry about the boys, and creatures tearing us limb from limb, and endless nights in an endless wood. I worry about the trail of blood Colin left for whatever’s out there. I worry about the bodies we buried.
“Avery?” His voice tightens. He knows. He knows because he reads my silences as well as my words, just like he did the day we met.
He waits for me to meet his gaze. When I finally do, he asks, almost desperately, “Was anyone hurt?”
“We’re all fine.” I want to lean into him, but maintaining a certain distance feels more necessary now than ever. “My dad taught me how to deal with bears.”
“How?”
“Talk a lot. Let them know you’re there. Don’t run. If a bear confronts you, show it you’re not afraid.”
“Well, I failed in that regard,” he says.
“So does everyone.”
He rubs the stubble on his jaw until the skin reddens under his fingertips. His beard is coming in sandy blond, a shade lighter than the fuzz on his head. “Maybe I’ll get the chance to redeem myself to you and the boys.”
“Redeem yourself? Colin, you’ve done everything for us.”
“I just . . .” He breathes out—long, slow, anguished. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Are you okay? Because we’re fine.”
“Yes,” he says, which I know is a lie in some ways, the truth in others.
I submerge my hands in the water, a kind of baptism on the shores of nowhere. He must know what I’m thinking: We have to find some other way to survive. Some other twist of nature, or fate, or luck to pin our hopes on.
Instead, we hear a scream.
•
Colin can’t run, so he lets me go on ahead. The twenty paces to the lean-to feel like a million miles.
I nudge open the door, careful not to knock anyone out in the process. “What’s wrong?” I scan the cramped interior. Aayu clutches a pink glove as he cries in the corner. Liam points to Tim.
No.
“I’m sick,” Tim says.
The dirt at his feet is covered in bile. As he starts to apologize, he vomits again, his thin body contorting in pain as he tries to catch his breath between retches. While Colin distracts the other boys, I scoop Tim up and carry him outside.
I hold his hand and wipe his chin, but beyond that, all I can do is watch. His eyes are red and watery, his skin a deathly white. His muscles quiver with the effort it takes to reject whatever it is he ate, or has.
After a while, the retching stops. He sags into my arms, but now he’s shivering and his skin feels hot. He tries to smile.
“I feel better.”
I want to cry, but my father would have forbidden it. When you see people at their worst, you need to be at your best—or at least better than them.
“Tim, what happened?” I tuck his bare hands in a pair of gloves. “Did you eat something from the woods? It’s okay if you did—”
“No.” He frowns. “I think it’s ’cause I don’t have my needles.”
Needles? “What needles?”
He shrugs helplessly. “My mom knows.”
But she’s not here.
I pull him close, close enough to discern the scent of something sweet on his clothes.
Sweet as sugar.
•
The boys are all back inside, including Tim, who felt better after four cups of melted snow. We had no choice but to remove one of the side panels to cycle the air, but I’m not convinced it will do much. With five people cramped in such a small space, the air was bound to go bad, and it has. It’s only a matter of time before someone else gets sick.
“How long can a diabetic go without insulin?” Colin asks.
“Depends,” I say. “Maybe a week, if you do everything right.”
“And if you don’t?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” And it’s true, I don’t. I’ve seen these kids in my dad’s ER, and they turn right around with IV fluids and insulin. Unfortunately, we don’t have either.
“What happens now?” he asks.
“We hydrate him as best we can. That’s all we can do.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Of course it’s not enough. He needs a hospital, just like you.”
Colin steels his features into tight, controlled lines, smothering a pent-up frustration that has nowhere to go. He stares at the snowy haze for a long time.
“He’ll be fine,” he finally says.
“Colin—”
“He will, Avery.” The hard intensity in his eyes is enough to silence me, but not quite enough to convince me. I wish it were. I wish I had his conviction, even though it should have wavered by now; it should have failed him.
I follow him into the lean-to. The boys look like snowmen, every surface of their bodies covered except the whites of their eyes. Aayu looks snug. Liam’s cheeks are red, and Tim’s hair is beaded with sweat. The little ones run into Colin’s arms.
“Here,” I say, reaching for Tim’s coat. “Take this off for now.” I pull his arms through the oversized holes, inhaling the sugary sweetness that clings to him like a disease. It is a disease, of course. A dangerous one. I lay the coat at his feet.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Okay.”
“Drinking water?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good.”
“I have to go to the bathroom a lot.”
“I know. That’s okay. Don’t try to hold it.”
He dips his chin to his chest, shamed by this small theft of dignity.
“I’m sorry I lost my needles,” he says. “My mom told me never to do that.”
“It’s okay, sweetie.”
Sweetie. My own mother used to call me that; then I grew up. I want you to grow up, Tim. I want you to have it all. I rub his hands until the skin goes pink again. His skin is on fire—wet, slick, feverish. I wish it were me instead of him.
As Colin distracts the other boys, I slip a hand under their hats, feeling their foreheads to get a sense of body temperature. It’s an imprecise test, one my father loathes, but the only thermometer we found was snapped in half.
Colin manipulates the holes in the ski mask so it’s one big hole instead of three. He slips it over his head so his eyes, nose, and mouth are still visible. Liam laughs. “You look funny,” he says.
Colin makes a face. Aayu and Liam giggle.
“Okay, time for dinner,” I say. As before, Colin and I distribute snacks and cups of melted snow.
Liam frowns. “Do you have milk?” he asks.
“No, Liam. I’m sorry.”
He nods, seems to accept this. Colin makes sure Aayu gets enough food, while Liam eats like a champ. Tim gives his pile away.
“I’m not hungry,” he says, so I pour him more water instead.
As the other boys devour their meager meals, Colin reaches over their heads and touches my shoulder. He doesn’t say anything but instead just leaves his hand there, a steady, calming presence. A gesture of solidarity, an acknowledgment of all we’ve been through. We’ve lost so much: the plane, those people. So many people. And yet here we are, fighting for another day, another hour.
Unconsciously, I find myself leaning into Colin’s touch. Liam and Aayu crawl into Colin’s lap, and Tim nestles into mine, and with a repositioning that feels insignificant and huge all at once, our bodies are touching like they were right before we crashed.
Colin is so warm. Even through all the layers of shirts and coats, a furious heat rolls off him in waves. It isn’t malignant or worrisome—not like the fever Tim has. No, it’s simpler than that. It’s life. Raw, resilient. Pulsing in his blood like a flame.
“I’m not strong like you,” I whisper.
His thumb traces the curve of my jaw, his touch softening with each pass. “You’re stronger,” he says.
I try to look away, but the intensity of his gaze holds me there.
“I’m terrified.”
His fingers linger on the span of my neck. “Why do you think I held your hand when we went down?”
“Because I was on the verge of a breakdown.”
“No. Because I was on the verge of a breakdown.”
Without the penlight, it’s impossible to see if his eyes reflect the same desperate vulnerability that colors his voice. It makes me ache, for some reason. Makes me want to know him better, to know all of him—who he is, who he wants to be. A thousand thoughts pinwheel through my mind, but one in particular overshadows them all: I’m glad it was you.
He lets his hand fall, but my skin still smolders with his touch.
“You built us a strong shelter,” I tell him.
“Well, it’s not pretty, but it’ll do.”
“Build a lot of teepees as a kid?”
He smiles. “My dad used to take me to all kinds of construction sites.”
“Oh. Right. Your dad’s a roofer.” It wasn’t meant to sound patronizing, but despite the best of intentions, it does. “I mean, I’ve always admired people who build things.”
“He loves his work. On clear days, he says it’s like being on top of the world.” He seems to ponder something. “What do your folks do?”
“My dad’s a doctor, and my mom’s a tax attorney—or something like that. I once asked her to explain it to me and literally dozed off as she was talking.”
He laughs at this. For a moment, I think he might volunteer something about his own mother, but he doesn’t.
“They’re good parents,” I say. “I’m lucky.”
“I’m sure they feel the same.”
My belly warms with the compliment. I am lucky. I was lucky. My dad never treated me like his dainty daughter; he raised me to be strong and capable. My mom balanced his no-nonsense mentality with gentle words and constant reassurances. They established a path for me, but it was always mine to take. And it brought me here, to a mountainside in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but my wits and Colin Shea to sustain me.
“Do you ever cry?” I ask him.
He shifts his weight but keeps his left arm wrapped around my shoulders. I hope he keeps it there, even though he’s probably losing circulation to his fingers. “Sometimes,” he says.
“I only ask because . . . I dunno, this feels like the perfect time.”
He looks at the boys as they scramble for real estate in his arms. Aayu wears multiple layers of T-shirts, undershirts, onesies, sweatshirts, and on top a pink parka. Liam was reluctant to give it up at first, but he’s developed an unlikely little friendship with Aayu. He looks like a little grape in his purple coat, purple hood, purple pants. Even his boots are purple. And Tim . . . Tim looks just like Colin. Same colors, same black pants and green jacket—even a hat with a single, mangled hole, which he poked his face through.
When Colin speaks again, it’s barely a whisper. “I cried when my mom got her diagnosis.”
Diagnosis? That word has always carried a certain weight in my father’s house, evoking clarity, and answers, and truth. In many cases, a diagnosis means treatment. But for others, it means the end.
I can tell by the wet, spiraling blue of Colin’s eyes which of these it was for him. “I’d been back at school less than a week,” he says. “We all knew something was wrong last summer—she’d get these awful headaches, and she’d never had those before. She fell a few times, just kind of lost her balance.”
He takes a breath, conceding some deep, internal battle. “She’s only forty-two, you know? Always been healthy. Never did anything to deserve what she got.” He steels himself before going on. “I try not to think about life that way, but it’s hard. Some people get cancer. Some don’t. We all die—I know that. And she’s accepted that. I just wish I could.”
Colin never mentioned any of this to anyone on the team. I would have known, too, because this is the kind of information that gets people’s attention. When Kai Landon’s dad had skin cancer last year, she told the whole world. We all signed Get Well cards and sent them out en masse, even though he wasn’t really that sick. He had a straightforward procedure and was cured the same day. Meanwhile, Colin has been suffering in silence, bearing his burden alone.
“The night before the Fall Qualifiers, my sister called me.” He puts his free hand on Aayu’s back, tempering the rhythm of his shallow breaths. “She said Mom had wandered off that afternoon. When the police found her, she was way over in Quincy, completely lost and confused, asking, ‘Where is Colin?’” His voice falters. “‘Where is my son?’”
“Colin . . .”
“I booked a flight that night,” he says. “I know it was bad for the team. I know it was selfish. But I wouldn’t even be in college without her. I love my mom. I just wanted her to feel that, right up to the end.” He stumbles on that last word. “Whenever that may be.”
“I misjudged you,” I say. “Everyone did. If people knew . . .”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.” He puts his head in his hand, his elbow on his knee. For the briefest of moments, it looks like he might cry.
I put my hand on his shoulder. Despite all that muscle, he feels fragile under my palm, a formidable structure on the verge of collapse.
“I hope she knows I didn’t abandon her.”
And then I understand why he took my hand and willed me to survive, why I believed him when he said we’d be rescued. The false promises of survival have plagued him for months, the certainty of death right on the horizon. This he can control. This he can face.
“She knows, Colin.” I put my hands on his face, my thumbs tracing the trail of his tears. “She knows.”