by Tracy Wolff
Fuck. Shit. Goddamnit.
I don’t even bother pulling a trick this time, just aim for the fucking ground. When I hit, I’m tucked low for speed and push it, using every ounce of strength I’ve got to go faster than I ever have before.
I don’t look back—I don’t dare—but I hear it coming up behind me, a fucking freight train tumbling off the mountain as the cornice crumbles straight into a fucking avalanche.
Goddamnit.
I swerve, try to get off the path, but it’s impossible. I’m more than halfway down the mountain at this point and it’s all wide open chute heading straight down. A fucking perfect roadmap for the avalanche. Shit.
Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but fucking ride this bitch and hope I’m going as fast as I think I am.
I bring my arms in, tuck low to the ground, do everything I can to increase my speed. If I can get close to the bottom it’ll be okay. The slope’ll even off, slowing down the snow until I can get clear of it.
But the base of the mountain’s still quite a ways away, and there’s another cornice in my very imminent future, one that the avalanche is sure to trigger even if I don’t. Fuck.
I pull up a little, try to hit it just right, and then I’m going off. Seconds later—fuck, it’s getting close—I hear it break under the weight of the pouring snow, and then the freight train is right behind me, nipping at the fucking edge of my board.
I can see the base of the mountain now, the chute widening hugely into a valley lined with gigantic boulders arranged in a haphazard line. Thank God.
I aim for the rock farthest to the left, angling my board straight at it. The ground is rockier here, though, the snow looser, and it slows me down, trips me up. I pray my board can handle the rough terrain—if it can’t I’m dead and I know it—and I just throw myself into it.
The boulders are coming up fast and any other time I’d be stopping, pulling back, trying not to careen straight into them. But if I stop now, the avalanche fucking wins and I’m not doing that. I’m not fucking leaving Logan alone, not after everything that kid has fucking been through.
Not going to happen.
Thirty seconds before I hit the boulders, I pull out of the tuck. I keep my muscles loose, my knees bent, and just before I’m there—just before I become a fucking hood ornament to a rock the size of a Mack truck—I jump.
Thank God for Luc and his obsessive love of street style.
Thank God for all the hours he dragged me to practice jumping rails and Dumpsters with him.
Thank God seven months isn’t long enough for my body to forget fifteen years of training.
I clear the top of the boulder, scrape against it on the backside. But that doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better, because it brings me down. I hit the snow left shoulder first, feel the jarring impact of it through my whole body before I start to roll.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m kicking out of my board even as I’m spinning ass over teakettle. The second I’m clear, I reach out, hands like claws, and try to dig into the snow. Try to stop. But I’m going too fast. Goddamnit.
The freight train is closer and I know this is it.
Like I don’t have enough problems, another row of boulders looms fifty feet ahead of me—huge, imposing, immovable. I’ve got the fucking avalanche behind me, nipping at my ass, and the boulders in front of me just waiting to pancake me. Neither is a particularly pleasant image, so I shove them both out of my mind and try not to panic.
Every survival video I’ve ever watched is running through my head at the same time, a bunch of white noise that makes no fucking sense to me at all. But instincts I didn’t even know I had kick in and I stop clawing at the snow and start trying to control my random tumbling. I aim between two of the biggest—and closest—rocks and pray I’m not so dizzy from the spinning that I’m seeing an opening that isn’t fucking there.
The rocks are getting closer and I know this is it, the last chance I’ve got. The fucking avalanche snow is too close—it’s right behind me—and there’s nowhere for me to go. Nothing left for me to try.
Somehow—I don’t know how—I manage to squeak between the two boulders. I throw my hands out, claw at one of them, feel my gloves rip against its rough surface. At the same time, I dig in with my feet, punching them straight down into the snow beneath me.
It works. Somehow it fucking works and I careen to a stop. The world is spinning around me, but I’ve got no fucking time for that. No fucking time to catch a breath or think or do anything but scramble to my knees and try to make it behind the boulder before all hell breaks loose.
Because the fucking avalanche is on me and I’m about to get buried.
Eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes.
The words are a fucking mantra in my head. That’s how long I’ve got. Eighteen fucking minutes to get myself out or for them to find me. Eighteen fucking minutes before my chances of survival go way the fuck down.
Goddamnit.
I duck behind the boulder, just as the fucking avalanche hits. It crashes over me, around me, filling my fucking senses with snow, snow, snow. It’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can hear.
All I can breathe.
It goes on forever. Or at least it feels like it, as I huddle against the rock, clinging to the back of it like it’s my only shot at salvation. Maybe it is—it sure as fuck feels like that.
Seconds pass, minutes, as the freight train roars over me. I tell myself to close my eyes, that I don’t want to see, but it’s a lie. Because even here, in the middle of what might very well kill me, this avalanche is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
Wild. Free. Unstoppable. An immovable force of nature that has my heart stuck in my throat and my stomach turned inside out.
The snow surrounds me, buries my legs, my waist, my chest as the avalanche roars past. Then somehow it’s gone, moving on, the sound fading just enough that I can think. And I’m still alive.
I’m buried up to the middle of my chest, but the boulder broke the impact of the snow, kept me from going under completely.
For long seconds, I can barely comprehend it. I can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything but sit here and try to prove to myself that I really am alive.
When it sinks in, when it really hits me that somehow I managed to make it through, I throw my head back and I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh.
Chapter 12
Tansy
“Oh, fuck.” Z says it grimly and I don’t get it. At least not at first.
We’ve spent the last couple of minutes standing at the top of this mountain, looking down at Ash as he tears up the snow in his bright yellow and blue snowboarding gear. He was doing really good, too, and I was enjoying watching him, despite all the crap between us, right up until he went around a curve in the mountain about ninety seconds ago and disappeared.
I thought that was normal—that he was just following the terrain—but judging from the anxious way Z, Luc, and Cam just started peering over the edge of the cliff, something’s gone wrong. Even Logan looks freaked out, wheeling his chair way too close to the edge to get a better look.
I grab on to the handles, pull him back. He tells me to stop, but I force myself to ignore him. He’s freaking out and if he rolls any closer to the edge, he’s going to end up going straight over it.
“What’s going—”
I break off in the middle of the question when I finally feel it, a shakiness to the ground that wasn’t there a minute ago. It feels strange, powerful, and my knees turn to Jell-O beneath me, like they just won’t support me anymore. I reach out, grab on to Logan’s chair to steady myself, but it’s shaking, too.
Everything is.
At the same time, there’s a rumbling in the distance, low and steady and almost indistinguishable. It’s far enough away that I can’t put my finger on what it sounds like, but I don’t even need to see the looks on the others’ faces to know it isn’t good.
Anything that sounds like that can’t be. It just can’t be.
“What’s going on?” I finally force the words out.
“Z!” Logan’s voice is high-pitched and terrified. “What is that?”
I can tell he already knows, can see it in the way his pupils dilate, in the way his face goes as pale as the snow beneath our feet and his hands clench on the arms of his chair, like they’re the only things keeping him from spinning out of control.
Z doesn’t answer. Instead, he’s digging in his backpack, pulling out some weird-looking gadget with a screen and a bunch of round buttons. He’s cursing low and long and vile as he turns it on, his hands shaking so badly he can barely work the switch.
At the same time, Luc is screaming and running for our guide who has hiked one peak over, checking out the conditions. He doesn’t have to run very far, though, because Tomas is all but flying across the mountaintop toward us.
“Avalanche!” he yells when he gets close enough for us to hear. “There’s an avalanche!”
“No shit!” Z answers, pointing down the mountain to where Ash just disappeared. “I’m pretty sure he’s in the fucking middle of it.”
“Ash?” Timmy cries out. “Is he okay?”
His parents gather around him, murmuring something but I don’t hear it. I can’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my ears and the echo of that word over and over and over again.
Avalanche.
Avalanche.
Avalanche.
How is that even possible? We checked for them on the way up, stopped three separate times to check snow conditions. “You said it was fine!” I turn on Tomas, screaming like a crazy woman. “You said the snow was solid, tightly packed. You said—”
Ophelia puts an arm around me, pulls me into her side and holds me tight. I struggle against her for a second, but she doesn’t let me go. Just holds me against her as she reaches out for Logan with her other hand and holds him, too.
Behind me, I can hear Z, Luc, Cam, and Tomas talking low and urgent.
“We need to go!” Z says forcefully. “Now. Before it’s too late.”
“He hasn’t turned his beacon on,” Tomas argues. “We’ll be looking blind.”
“Maybe he can’t turn his beacon on!” Cam says, her voice going higher with each word. “Did you think of that? We have to go get him!”
“Give the avalanche a chance to settle!” Tomas insists. “If we go down there before it’s done—”
“Fuck that!” Luc says and I turn just in time to see him and Z running for the two snowmobiles that we hauled up here behind the snowcat. “We’re following the avalanche down the mountain—the damage is already done. We can’t make it any worse.”
“Eighteen minutes!” Cam yells as she swings herself onto the snowmobile behind Luc. I watch, spellbound in horror, as the snowmobiles explode forward, disappearing off the side of the mountain in a spray of snow.
“Eighteen minutes for what?” I demand, shocked at how shaky my voice sounds.
“I don’t know,” Ophelia tells me and she doesn’t sound any better.
“Eighteen minutes to find him before the chances of him staying alive go way down,” Logan says, his voice flatter than I’ve ever heard it.
Oh my God. Oh. My. God. Ohmygod. This time when my knees threaten to give out, it has nothing to do with the rumbling in the ground and everything to do with the reality Ash is facing.
“What do we do?” I demand. “How can we help?”
“Can I start hiking down?” Timmy’s dad asks.
“No,” Tomas tells him. “Get in the snowcat. It’s the best way.”
“But it’s too slow!” Logan tells him. “It’ll take forever to get to him.” For the first time, I realize his phone is in his hand. He’s got it on speaker and it’s ringing over and over and over again. The second it goes to voicemail—Ash’s voicemail—he hangs up and dials again.
“Z, Luc and Cam will find him,” Ophelia tells him. “You know they won’t let anything happen to him. You know they’ll bring him back.”
“Yeah. That’s what the firemen told me when they pulled me out of the car. That they’d bring my parents to me.” His voice slaps at us like the fiercest winter wind.
Ophelia doesn’t answer him and neither do I. How can we, when there’s nothing to say. His parents are dead, his brother is in the middle of an avalanche … I wrap an arm around his shoulder, squeeze tightly.
He doesn’t say anything, but he shifts until he’s resting against me, his head resting against my ribs. In his lap, his phone continues to ring uselessly. Again and again and again.
“There are more supplies in the snowcat,” Tomas says as he starts ushering us toward the red behemoth that brought us up here. “Z has the beacon locator, and I’m sure he’ll let us know as soon as he finds Ash. But we’ve got most of the first aid stuff. We should start down the mountain now.”
His words make sense to me, especially since small first aid kits are all Z and the others have on board the snowmobiles. I grab on to Logan’s chair, start shoving him toward the snowcat as hard and fast as I can. We need to get moving. Now.
It’s only a matter of minutes before we’re all buckled into the snowcat and heading down the mountain. Logan is right—this thing is slow. Like insanely, ridiculously, super slow. I didn’t really notice it on the way up, but now, when every second counts, it feels like it’s taking forever.
All I can think about is that I got Ash into this mess. He told me he didn’t want to snowboard again, told me he’d given it up. Told me, even, that it was too dangerous for him to think about when he was in charge of Logan.
I hadn’t listened to him. Hadn’t believed him. I’d been so caught up in worrying about Timmy, in trying to make sure that I made his wish come true, that it never occurred to me that doing so might end up hurting—or worse, killing—Ash.
As soon as the thought comes to me, I try to ignore it. To push it back down deep inside of myself. But it’s hard, especially with Logan on one side of me, dialing Ash’s satellite phone again and again and again—with no luck—and with Ophelia on the other side of me, doing the same thing with Z’s phone, with exactly the same result.
I keep glancing at my watch, counting down the seconds. The minutes. It’s been fifteen minutes since the others took off on the snowmobiles and—thanks to Cam and Logan—I am now desperately aware of what that means.
“They’ll find him,” Ophelia says again, reaching across me to squeeze Logan’s shoulder. He nods, but I’m not sure he even hears her. He’s staring out the window with blank eyes and an even blanker face. He’s miles away and I don’t know how to reach him. Don’t know if I should even try.
But at the same time, my heart hurts to see him like this. So scared, so miserable, so lost. He’s young, too young for all the bad things that have happened to him, and I just want to pull him into my arms and promise him that everything is going to be all right.
But I know better than anyone how untrue those words can be. How precarious and indifferent fate so often is. After all, I’m alive when the doctors were certain, so many times, that I would die, while others are dead—friends of mine who should have gone into remission, who’d been expected to live—their bodies and spirits giving out somewhere along the way.
Even Timmy, who is wasting away right in front of us. Who will be dead soon. He’s walking proof that things often don’t turn out the way we want them to.
But that isn’t going to happen to Ash, I tell myself fiercely, even as I continue to count the seconds down. He’s strong, he’s talented and he’s got so much to live for. No way is he going to just disappear in an avalanche. It’s not going to happen.
I repeat the words over and over again as we traverse the rough terrain. Tell myself again and again that everything is going to be okay. Even as the second hand ticks past the magic eighteen minute mark—and the cab around me grows unbearably tense—I refuse to believe that this isn’t going to work out o
kay. Refuse to believe that Ash is going to be anything other than perfectly fine.
At twenty-seven minutes, nine minutes—nine minutes—past Cam’s shouted timeline, Logan’s phone rings. It’s Z, telling him that they’ve found Ash. That he’s banged up and half-buried, but that he’s alive. Better than alive. He’s fine.
Z asks to talk to Tomas, and I carry the phone to our guide so that he can get the exact coordinates of where they are. Then I head back to my seat. I’m only there a second when Logan throws his arms around me and bursts into loud, ragged sobs.
My arms go around him in an instant and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to freak out a little, too. Ash is okay. For now, that’s all that matters.
It’s been hours and I still can’t get near him. Which is fine. I mean, that’s how it should be. He has Logan and Z, Cam and Luc and Ophelia. They all know him way better than I do. They all love him and need some time with him. Need a piece of him, some reassurance that he really did survive what turned out to be a pretty major avalanche.
Tomas and some of the other guides at the resort, along with the local ski patrol, had gone back up to Alto de Arpa to check out the snowpack and try to figure out what had gone wrong. They’d come back with grim news—the snowpack on that whole side of the peak had gone in the avalanche. It was a miracle, they’d told us, that Ash hadn’t been buried alive.
The thought makes me shudder even now, sitting across from him in the restaurant. Ash seems to be taking the whole thing pretty well—he’s laughing, joking around, talking about maybe doing the half-pipe tomorrow, giving the mountain a rest.
And everyone seems to be buying it. Z, Luc, Ophelia, Cam, even Logan. They all seem to be taking the avalanche—and the fact that it nearly killed him—in stride.
Because it didn’t.
Because he’s fine.
I should probably chill out, too. After all, he’s sitting here across from me, and he’s fine. Which is all that matters. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. Maybe this is what it’s like being an adrenaline junkie. You face death, you deal with it and then you move on like it’s nothing. After all, the stories they’re swapping tonight—about Patagonia, Alaska, Wyoming, and, yes, even the last time they were all in Chile together—stack up easily against my numerous near-death experiences. They are somehow more horrific, even, because no one saw them coming.