by R. T. Martin
“Turn around, Alex!” Katrina shouted from the back seat.
Alex just kept driving.
“Alex, what are you doing?” CJ asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“I can make it,” he replied quietly. “I’ll get us there.”
CJ turned to Leo and gave him her ‘help me out here’ face.
“No one’s saying you can’t make it,” Leo said. “It’s more about not having to make it. We can stay in the motel, and once the storm’s cleared up, the drive will be easy. This,” he gestured out the windshield, “is the worst. Do you really want to go to the cabin right now . . . in this?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said as quietly as before.
“We agreed to go to the motel!” Katrina shouted. “Turn around!”
“No!” Alex shouted suddenly. “How many times do I have to tell you I can get us there?”
“Alex.” CJ put a hand on his shoulder and hoped that it would calm him down. “It’s okay. This drive has got to be incredibly stressful, and we’ve been backseat driving the whole time. We’re not doubting your ability to get us up the mountain, but like Leo said, tomorrow the drive will be super easy. Just turn around, and we can all relax in the motel until things have cleared up. It’s just a better way to go about doing this.”
“I can get us to the cabin,” Alex replied firmly. “If you want to make it easier on me, stop telling me what to do and let me get us there.”
Katrina leaned forward, clearly about to shout at Alex to turn around again, but CJ put a hand on her shoulder. Katrina looked at her, and CJ shook her head. Going up the mountain in these conditions was a terrible idea, but having a shouting match at the same time was a recipe for disaster. Katrina gritted her teeth and sat back in her seat.
“Okay, Alex,” CJ said. “Just promise you’ll be careful, okay?”
“I’ll be careful,” Alex said, a lot calmer now.
“Again,” Leo said carefully, “not questioning your ability, but do you actually know where you’re going without the GPS?”
“Katrina and I have been to the cabin a bunch of times,” Alex said flatly. “I know how to get there, and we should be able to see the mailbox from the road even in this blizzard.” While the others went quiet, CJ tried to convince herself that they’d make it to the cabin in one piece. Alex said he’d be careful, and he was doing exactly that. His speed was slow and reasonable. He kept his eyes on the road, and his attention didn’t seem to be wavering from the drive. If anything, he was more focused than ever.
Still, she could picture the drop-offs and cliffs from the drive last year. CJ wasn’t afraid of heights. In fact, she loved heights. Part of what she loved most about snowboarding was looking down from the top of the hill. What scared her was falling. If Alex made even one wrong move on the mountain roads, that’s what would happen—a free fall.
CJ tried to think of the positives. There was ice on the road, but there weren’t many cars driving. That meant they wouldn’t have to worry about passing other vehicles on the road. The roads were extremely narrow, and last year, they’d had to slow down to a crawl a few times just to make sure they didn’t side-swipe another car going the opposite direction.
Before long, the van started up an incline. CJ couldn’t even see the mountain through the blizzard.
The van started spinning out, moving at only a few miles per hour even though CJ could hear Alex giving it more gas. It seemed like they might get stuck right there at the bottom of the mountain, but after a moment, the van lurched forward and began moving at its normal pace.
CJ leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Watching out the window was just stressing her out. Maybe keeping her eyes shut would help.
She nearly fell asleep after a half hour, but her eyes shot open when she had an edge-of-sleep vision of the van tumbling down the side of a cliff.
When CJ looked around, at first she questioned whether or not they were truly headed up the mountain. Everything looked mostly the same as when they were on the relatively flat highway. She stared out the window trying to see the road, a signpost—anything that would help her get her bearings.
The wind whipped up, and for one terrible moment, CJ clearly saw the one thing she hoped she wouldn’t—a cliff. A few feet away, across one narrow lane of traffic, the land dropped off dramatically into a valley filled with trees and boulders.
She jerked away from the window when she realized what she was looking at. More snow fell, and the valley vanished in the haze of the snow. She looked out Katrina’s window. Alex was hugging the right side of the road as best he could. The only thing between the van and the steep mountain wall on the right was a snowbank, a giant drift created by all the blowing snow.
“You okay?” Katrina asked her. Leo turned in his seat to see what was going on.
“Yeah,” CJ replied. “I almost fell asleep, and I was just startled when I looked out the window.”
“These roads get really high really quickly,” Leo said. CJ didn’t need that explained to her, and she was a little annoyed Leo had bothered to say anything. She remembered the roads from last year just as well as he did.
“How much farther do we have to go?” she asked, desperately trying to avoid looking to the left.
“Not far,” Alex said from the driver’s seat. “But it’s slow going.”
CJ couldn’t help but notice that Alex hadn’t even bothered to guess at how long the drive would actually take, and she wondered if he knew.
The road turned one way, then the other. Even in good weather, she’d hated this part last year. The path up the mountain to the cabin was rarely straight. It swerved all over the place, doubled back on itself, narrowed and got wider in places, all at a constant upward angle.
Last year, CJ had distracted herself with games and conversation with her friends. And she hadn’t worried as much about the idea of the van slipping off the road, since she’d been able to see the drop-offs.
Suddenly, something seemed wrong. Alex cranked the wheel from left to right. There was a sort of grinding noise coming from below the van, but without being able to make out anything clearly through the snow, CJ had no idea what the problem was. As Alex jerked on the wheel, the other passengers were pulled back and forth. CJ’s stomach churned as she got swept up in the movement.
The van came to a very sudden halt. CJ got her hands up just in time to avoid smacking her head on Alex’s seat in front of her.
“What happened?” Leo asked.
“Nothing,” Alex said firmly. “We just spun out a little and hit the snowbank.”
“Are we stuck?” Katrina asked loudly. CJ couldn’t tell if she was angry or worried.
“No,” Alex snapped. “We’re not stuck. I just need to maneuver us out.”
It looked like Katrina was about to yell at Alex again, but CJ cut her off before she could. “Okay, just be careful about it.”
Alex muttered something under his breath and shifted the van into reverse. Looking over his shoulder, he gave it a little gas. The engine revved, but it didn’t move. He muttered again, turned the wheel and tried a little more gas.
“You’re going to drive us off the road!” Katrina said.
“No, I’m not!”
Alex tried spinning the wheel the other way. More gas, but once again, nothing happened. He tried three more times before he shifted it into park.
“I think we’re stuck, dude,” Leo said.
“Great,” Katrina said sarcastically. “That’s perfect, Alex.”
“It’s not like I was trying to—”
“Let’s just get out and take a look,” CJ said, pulling on her jacket, hat, and gloves. “It’s probably an easy fix.” She opened the door, and the wind cut off anything anyone was about to say.
As bad as the wind had been at the gas station, it was much worse this far up the mountain. It was stronger and colder than CJ thought possible. Her outer layers made little to no difference in the brutal conditions. The snow was almo
st to her knees, going up past her winter boots. She looked behind her and could see there was a very obvious path where the van had come from, spinout and all.
CJ was amazed they had made it as far as they had. Getting the van out of the snowbank was going to be next to impossible.
“We’re never going to get out of this!” Katrina shouted over the wind.
“Maybe with some digging,” Leo said. “We can—”
“I can get us out,” Alex cut him off. “Just give me a little more time, and—”
“You’re not going to get us out, Alex!” Katrina said. “You’re the one that got us in this mess in the first place! All you had to do was stop at the motel!”
There was no stopping this latest explosion. CJ was tired of playing the peacemaker. This time she just folded her arms and watched her two friends.
“Everything’s always my fault, isn’t it?” raged Alex. “Maybe if we hadn’t lost time on the side of the highway because you were screaming in my ear, we would have beaten the storm!”
“I wouldn’t have been shouting in your ear if you weren’t being such a jerk about college!”
“We had agreed to go to UCLA!”
“You decided to go to UCLA and that I would go there too. I never agreed, and if this is how you’re going to act for the next four years, I’m not even going to think about going there!”
“Well, right now, I don’t want you to come with me anyway!” Alex shouted.
“Perfect!” Katrina fired back. “And while we’re at it, let’s just break up!”
“Fine!” Alex whipped around and got back into the van.
Chapter
6
As Alex slammed the door shut behind him, Katrina shuffled her way through the snow, across the street and down the road. She stared into the valley with her arms crossed against her chest.
Leo and CJ watched her from where they were still standing in the road. CJ didn’t know what to do now. “This trip is going great,” Leo said. “Maybe we should all just take a gap year and live together in the wilderness now that we’re out here.”
“Jokes? Really, Leo?”
He gave her a goofy grin. “Sometimes that’s all I’ve got.”
CJ couldn’t help herself from smiling at him. “You talk to Alex. I’ll talk to Katrina.”
“You sure?” he replied. “Whoever talks to Alex gets to sit in the warm van.”
She shrugged. Even though her fingers and face were freezing, she shuffled over to where Katrina was standing.
When she got close enough, she could see that Katrina had been crying. One of her tears was frozen just under her eye. Her lashes were covered in ice, and they seemed to be sticking together every time she blinked.
“Are you okay?” CJ asked.
Katrina tried to wipe some of the ice out of her eyes. “Yeah, I’m just mad. We shouldn’t have taken this trip.”
You shouldn’t have taken this trip, CJ thought. It could have been fun, but you two have made a real mess of things. She felt bad for thinking it. Maybe it was selfish, but it was true.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re all a little on edge because of the drive and the storm. This will all blow over once we’re—”
“No, it won’t,” Katrina interrupted. “He’s been a jerk for months. Going to a cabin isn’t going to make a difference.” She wiped another frozen tear from her cheek.
CJ looked back at the van. She couldn’t see either Alex or Leo because the snow was coming down so quickly that even in the short time the van had been still, it had covered the windows completely. It was a deadly serious reminder that even with what had just happened, they needed to get the van out of the snowbank and get out of there before they were trapped beyond the point of escape.
“Well,” CJ said. “We’re almost to the cabin already. Turning back now would be . . .” She looked down the road in the direction the van had come from. The tire tracks were still there, but the snow was already rapidly filling them. “It would be worse than continuing. Like it or not, we’re going on this trip.”
Katrina looked back at the van, but CJ couldn’t read her expression.
“Think of it this way,” she continued. “You’re going on a ski trip with your friends, and Alex . . . Alex just happens to be there.”
Katrina turned back to her and sighed, clearly unconvinced.
“Okay,” CJ said. “Then think of it this way: you don’t really have a choice, so try to not to make it harder than it needs to be.”
“Fine. Let’s just get this over with.” She trudged her way toward the van, and CJ followed behind her.
Alex and Leo got out just as the other two were approaching. The trunk popped open, and Alex went over to it and dug around beneath their luggage and equipment. He pulled out a shovel and a windshield scraper.
Standing around the van, CJ wasn’t sure they’d be able to get the vehicle out of the snowbank. The front was completely buried under white powder, and the path behind it was just getting thicker with the stuff.
“The longer we wait,” Leo said, “the harder this is going to be. We should get started.” He took the tools from Alex and handed CJ the scraper, keeping the shovel himself. “I’ll dig out the snow. CJ, use this to break up the ice. Maybe the wheels will get a little traction that way.”
“I’ll keep trying to give it a little gas, see if I can get it loose,” said Alex. He started heading toward the driver’s door when Katrina scoffed. He turned to her and glared. “What?”
“So, you get to sit in the warm van while the rest of us fix your mistake? You should dig us out.”
“Someone has to drive the van. Do you want to do it?” Alex asked angrily.
“I’m not helping to clean up your mess.”
“So, you’d rather be stuck on a mountain than lift a finger to—”
“Stop!” CJ said, holding up a hand. “Both of you just . . . stop. It’s going to take all of us to get this thing loose. Everyone helps. Katrina, if you don’t want to shovel, drive the van. Alex, help us shovel.”
“With what?” he snapped.
“Your hands, unless you’ve got a better idea.”
Alex blinked at her as Katrina got in the driver’s seat.
“Look, we don’t have time for more drama,” CJ said to him. “Let’s do this.”
They got to work digging out the back tires. Once Leo and Alex got the majority of snow out from behind the tires, CJ chipped away at the ice and packed snow. It was bitter cold, and the work was hard. Snow kept making its way down the back of her coat, up her sleeves, and into her boots. And as cold as that was, with all the digging, she was beginning to sweat beneath all her layers.
They worked and worked, but the falling snow was undoing a lot of what they accomplished, filling in what they dug out. Sometimes, CJ thought they weren’t making any progress at all, but they all kept going until they thought they’d cleared enough.
“Okay,” Leo shouted to Katrina over the howl of the wind. “Try it now.”
Katrina gave it some gas, but the van didn’t budge.
“Try it again,” Leo said. “But give it a little more this time.”
Katrina tried again. All three of the others put their hands on the hood and pushed. This time, the van rocked backward slightly but didn’t budge.
Alex threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Give it more than that! See? I should be the one driving!”
“I’m being careful, Alex!” Katrina shouted.
“You’re being too careful! It needs more gas to get out!”
“If I give it too much, it’ll spin out again!”
“Then don’t give it too much!” Alex shouted. “Give it the right amount!”
“Thanks, Alex,” Katrina snapped. “That’s really helpful advice.”
“Not to rush you,” CJ said as calmly as she could, “but if we don’t get this thing unstuck soon, it’s going to be here a long time and so are we.”
“See?” Alex sho
uted. “CJ agrees with me!”
“That’s not what I—” CJ started.
“Give it more gas!” Alex shouted before she had a chance to finish.
CJ could see Katrina getting angrier and angrier. She was glaring at Alex, practically shooting daggers from her eyes.
“What are you waiting for?” he shouted.
“You want me to give it more gas?” Katrina spat as she turned back to the steering wheel. “Fine! Tell me if this is enough!”
The engine roared to life. Katrina must have floored it. CJ saw the tires spinning, and then suddenly they caught. The van jerked backward.
For a split second, CJ was thrilled. The van had come free and they could get on with the trip, maybe even patch things up once they were at the cabin . . . but her excitement turned to terror when the van didn’t stop going backward. It shot across the road and over the drop-off with Katrina still inside.
Chapter
7
The van didn’t fall far. It only dropped about fifteen feet, where it smashed against a tree. It spun when it dropped, so it landed on its right side.
CJ, Leo, and Alex hovered at the edge of the drop-off, surveying the damage. The rear passenger door was caved in where it had hit the tree. It was pure luck that Katrina was still alive. If the tree had been just five feet to the left or right, the van would have rolled all the way down into the valley, taking Katrina with it.
“Katrina!” Alex shouted, his eyes wide.
They could see her shifting in the driver’s seat, trying to get her bearings. Fortunately, she was wearing her seatbelt. “Don’t move!” CJ shouted. “We’re coming!” The van didn’t look like it was in a stable position. The tree it was stuck against was thick, but if the vehicle was even a little off-center, the slightest movement could cause it to shift and fall.
Leo had his hands on his head as if he were trying to pull his hair out. “What do we do?”
“We get her out of there!” CJ shouted. Even as she said it, she saw it was going to be easier said than done.
The drop-off was steep, much too steep for any one of them to walk down, grab Katrina, and walk back up again, especially if Katrina was injured.