by Steven James
Daniel walked forward, dramatically pulling one foot through the snow in a slithery pattern for about fifteen feet. Then he swept the snow aside at the end to make the head a little wider than the rest of the snake.
“That’s it?”
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“Really.”
“Yup. There’s an art to it.”
“An art to dragging your foot across the ground?”
“Takes years of practice.”
“Is that so?”
“Maybe I can teach you—if you’re willing to work with me, put in the long hours of practice.”
“Hmm.” She joined him near the snow anaconda’s head. “And I would have to spend all that time under your tutelage?”
“Sounds like a Kyle word.”
“Busted.”
“So?”
“I might be able to force myself to do it.”
“Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Stillness nestled in between them.
Comfortable.
Sparks flying.
There was just enough light from the porch and the moonlight glistening off the snow for him to be able to peer into her eyes.
Gently, he brushed off some snow that had stuck to her hair when she was making the snow angel. “That’s better.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just taking in the view.”
“You’re not even looking at the sky.”
“No. I’m not.”
She didn’t look away. Instead, closing her eyes, she nestled in closer for a kiss, but just as she did, the front door popped open and Kyle called, “Hey, kids.” Nicole backed up slightly as Kyle and Mia appeared around the side of the house. “I hope we’re not interrupting anything.”
Actually—
“What’s up?” Daniel said.
“Gina’s having a party,” Mia told them. “She invited us over. You know: a pre-Christmas, post-win sort of thing. We don’t have to stay long. We’ll just swing by, say hi to everyone and then we can bail. Come on.”
Daniel and Nicole, who were both more interested in hanging out here alone beneath the stars, took a little convincing, but finally they agreed and the four of them hopped into Kyle’s vintage Mustang and left for Gina Schroeder’s house.
PART II
TRACKS IN THE SNOW
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Nine cars were parked along the road when they arrived. Gina lived near the national forest, between Beldon and the Derthick State Penitentiary, without any neighbors nearby.
Multicolored Christmas tree lights were strung up in the living room. Near the fireplace, a tree was burdened with way too many ornaments, but not quite enough candy canes. A jumble of presents sat beneath it.
A few kids were dancing to the EDM tracks Gina had put on, but most were just hanging around. Some had beers in their hands.
There was a time when the people in Daniel’s class had been nervous about the sheriff’s son showing up at parties and then turning them in for using or drinking, but that wasn’t his thing and tonight his classmates didn’t bother to hide their beers when they saw him.
Brad Talbot and Stephanie Mills, who seemed like the most unlikely couple in the school, were on their way hand in hand down the hall toward one of the bedrooms.
It was clear by the atmosphere that Gina’s parents were not around.
Though Daniel had sometimes been tempted to drink, with sports and college athletic scholarships on the line, there was just too much at stake if he would’ve gotten caught. Besides, it wouldn’t have gone down that well with the local sheriff.
Gina greeted them near the kitchen. Preppy, a little too chirpy and a little bit tipsy, she gave Mia and then Nicole a friendly half-hug. “It’s awesome to see you, girl,” she said to Nicole.
“You too.”
“What’s up, Mia?”
“Life. Love. Terror. Joy. The enigma of existence. The usual.”
“Um. Right . . . Good game, Daniel.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Kyle.”
“Gina. Thanks for the invite.”
“No prob.”
At the kitchen table, a few guys were mixing liquid nicotine from e-cigarettes with energy drinks and chugging them.
When they asked Daniel and Kyle if they wanted to get in on some, Kyle reminded them of how this one girl had died from doing that in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago. “Not that that’d ever happen to anyone here, though,” he added.
The kids who’d been downing the drinks looked at Kyle, then back at the liquid nicotine. In the end they opted for the energy drinks plain, followed by a beer, instead.
While their girlfriends caught up with Gina, Daniel and Kyle migrated to the basement.
The lights were low and the music not quite as loud as it was upstairs, but it seemed to be throbbing with a deeper, darker beat.
There were more couples here than there’d been up in the living room, apparently searching out the dimmer corners of the house for more privacy to make out.
At the far end of the room, Ty Bell and the three guys who usually tagged along with him had gathered around the couch.
“What are they doing here?” Kyle muttered to Daniel. “I can’t imagine Gina would have invited ’em.”
“Probably just crashing.”
Daniel guessed that if Ty and his three buddies showed up at the door it would be a little intimidating for most people to turn them away, especially for someone like Gina who tried so hard to make everyone happy.
To a certain degree, there are guys like Ty at every school. But in his case, he wasn’t just a bully. He had a cold, sadistic streak that intimidated most of the other students, and from what Daniel could tell, even the teachers and administrators.
Ty was a senior and had messed with Daniel a few times over the years, but seemed to have learned his lesson after he pulled a knife and Daniel disarmed him using a move his dad had taught him.
After that, rather than confronting him in person, Ty had resorted to posting stuff online to try to embarrass Daniel.
No big deal.
Daniel could deal with that.
Ty’s dad was a game warden so, as it turned out, he and Daniel’s father had been working together on trying to solve the wolf poaching problem and, after Ty ended up being the guy who found one of the wolves, setting up the tip hotline.
Daniel and Kyle crossed the room and it only took a moment for him to catch hold of what was going on.
Lisa Scalf, a girl in their class, had passed out and was slumped on the couch. Ty had a black Sharpie marker and was leaning over her, about to write something on her forehead. His friends stood by snickering, with their phones out to take pictures of her.
None of the other kids in the basement seemed ready to confront Ty or stop him.
Daniel could guess some of the phrases Ty might write on Lisa’s forehead, but writing on her was only the start of what he imagined Ty and his friends might eventually to do to her if they were left down here with her unconscious like that.
Daniel stepped forward. “Ty, leave her alone.”
Ty turned to face him. “Oh. Hello there. Daniel.”
“Put down the marker.”
Ty offered his friends a sly half-grin and said to Daniel, “Did you get the present I left you?”
“The DVD.”
“So you did get it. We all know about your little visits to the shrink.”
In a small town it was entirely possible that someone Ty knew had seen Daniel entering or leaving Dr. Fromke’s office. Either way, it didn’t matter at this point.
“I appreciate the gift,” Daniel said. “It’s nice to know you were thinking of me, but you’re not going to impress me with presents. B
esides, I already have a girlfriend.”
Ty’s eyes became daggers. His hands balled into fists.
Except for Kyle and the guys with Ty, everyone else in the basement eased back, giving them space. More kids pulled out their phones.
“I’m not going to ask you again,” Daniel told him. “Step away from her and put down the marker.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll take it from you.” He gestured toward the group of people with their phones ready. “And they’ll catch it all on video.”
Daniel didn’t want to fight Ty, but he wasn’t about to back down and let him humiliate Lisa.
Ty gazed at the people holding out their phones. For a moment he looked defiant, like he was about to push things further with Daniel, but he must have thought better of it because, instead, he tweaked the marker though the air at Daniel, who caught it just before it would have hit him in the chest.
At last, Ty motioned for his buddies to join him, blew Lisa a mocking kiss, and led his friends up the stairs.
Kyle, who’d been a lifeguard last summer and knew about first aid and CPR, went to wake up Lisa and make sure she wouldn’t somehow throw up and choke while she was passed out.
Once Ty was gone, a few of the people in the basement thanked Daniel. Others didn’t seem to care and just went back to what they’d been doing in the low lights before the confrontation with Ty had distracted them.
Daniel and Kyle hung around for a little while talking with a few guys from their class, then Daniel checked the time. “I told my dad I’d be home by midnight. We should fly.”
On the way back upstairs, Kyle asked Daniel, “What DVD was Ty talking about?”
“Something he left on my hall locker. A copy of an old movie. Somehow he must have found out I’ve been seeing that psychiatrist.”
“What movie was that?”
“Psycho.”
“I’ve heard of it, never saw it.”
“Me neither, but I think the name speaks for itself.”
They found Nicole mingling in the living room and Mia grabbing a smoke outside. After explaining to Gina that they needed to go, they took off for Kyle’s house.
Not far from the party, however, they saw that a car had slid off the road. Its front end was wedged into the snowbank that the plows had pushed up along the shoulder.
The guy at the wheel was trying to back onto the road, but his front tires just spun uselessly in the snow.
After parking, Daniel and Kyle approached the driver’s door. Daniel tapped on the glass to ask the man if he was okay and if he needed a hand.
He lowered his window.
It was the same guy who’d shaken his hand in the hallway after the game.
CHAPTER
NINE
“Hello, Daniel,” he said.
“Hi.” Okay. This was weird. “You alright?”
“I’m fine, except my car doesn’t want to move. Maybe you two could give me a push?”
“Let me have a couple of your floor mats.”
“Floor mats?”
“I’ll put them next to the tires. It’ll give us the traction you need.”
“Oh. Right. Gotcha.”
He handed them over.
Daniel had a medium-sized shovel in his trunk to use in case he ever went off the road into the snow. He thought about getting it out, but figured he’d try the floor mats first and see if they did the trick.
He and Kyle positioned the mats as far under the tires as they could, then tromped into the snowbank and leaned their weight against the front bumper. “Okay,” Daniel called to the man. “Go for it, but don’t overdo it.”
He gave the engine some gas to reverse out of the snow and, with the floor mats there for traction and Daniel and Kyle pushing from the front, he was able to get back onto the road again.
Once the car was free, they gave him back the mats and he reached for his wallet. “How much can I give you?”
“No,” Daniel said, “you don’t have to give us anything. Just glad we could help.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, thank you. I guess I’ll owe you one.”
He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “We should probably be going.”
“Of course. Well, thanks again.”
“Sure.”
Back in the Mustang, Kyle asked Daniel, “Who was that guy?”
“I have no idea.”
“He knew your name.”
“Yeah, he congratulated me after the game too, but I’ve never seen him before tonight.”
“Okay, but that’s a pretty huge coincidence, though, don’t you think?” Mia exclaimed. “I mean, that he would end up in the ditch right ahead of us here, an hour from where you saw him at the game?”
“Yes. It is.”
In Kyle’s headlights Daniel could see that the car had a Georgia license plate. If the driver was from the south, it might explain why he’d gone into the snowbank on a night when the roads weren’t even icy.
But that doesn’t explain why he would be driving out here right in front of you.
The man took off into the night.
He made them a little uneasy and they thought it might be best to just avoid him, so at the next intersection, even though it was a little longer, Kyle chose an alternate route home.
On the way, Nicole asked what everyone was up to tomorrow and Kyle told them he had to work at Rizzo’s for a couple hours during lunchtime, from eleven to one.
The pizzeria was the best place in northern Wisconsin to get a pepperoni and jalapeño pie, and Rizzo had been teaching Kyle how to toss and spin the dough in the air. It hadn’t gone too well so far and Kyle had landed a ton of dough on the floor over the last couple months.
Good thing Rizzo was a patient man.
Kyle mentioned a movie that was opening that weekend. “It’s this dystopian fantasy about a world where everyone only gets so long to live. Money’s worthless, but you can barter with the time of your life—that’s their currency, time. You can buy anything you want, but it costs you a few minutes or hours or years each time. I heard it was pretty good.”
“Big news: life is time, time is life,” Mia said reflectively. “What you spend on one, you’ve spent on the other. So it is, so it’ll always be.”
“Profound,” Kyle said. “So you interested?”
She shrugged. “Why not.”
Beldon was so small it only had a second-run movie theater, so the four of them decided that driving to Superior or Duluth up on the Lake Superior shore tomorrow night to check out the flick sounded like a plan. It was a little over an hour away, but living out here in the middle of nowhere they were used to the drive.
At Kyle’s house, Daniel asked Nicole if she wanted to get together before the movie.
“Sure.”
“I’ll text you in the morning.”
A quick kiss, a quick goodnight, and they were on their way.
With the trip to Gina’s house, the extra time spent helping that man out of the snowbank, and the longer route back to Kyle’s place, it’d gotten a little later than Daniel had anticipated. He hadn’t been keeping a close eye on the time and only after he left Kyle’s house did he realize it was already a quarter after twelve.
He texted his dad about what’d happened and figured that, since they were “assisting a stranded motorist,” being a few minutes late wouldn’t end up being that big of a deal.
CHAPTER
TEN
His father was sitting at the dining room table scrolling through a news feed on his iPad when Daniel arrived home at 12:35.
“Hello, Dan.”
“Dad.”
“Your text said you were helping someone out of a ditch?”
“Well, the snowbank along t
he shoulder. We were on our way back to Kyle’s house.”
“On your way back?”
“We stopped by Gina’s.”
“Gina’s?”
“Yeah. Gina Schroeder.”
Tell him it was a party or not?
Probably best if you don’t.
“We’d gone over there to hang out for a little while,” he explained somewhat ambiguously.
“And this man who hit the bank, he went off the road on a night like this? It wasn’t even snowing.”
“I guess he must’ve just lost control of the car.”
“Going around a curve, maybe?”
“No. It was on a straightway.”
“Well then, he was perhaps braking to avoid hitting a deer or something.”
Is he questioning your story? Does he not believe you?
“His plates were from Georgia. Maybe he’s not used to driving on snow.”
This conversation pooled off into silence.
But it wasn’t the comfortable kind.
“But you won?” his dad said.
“Yes.”
“And you played well?”
“Yeah. I guess.” Daniel didn’t really want to give a full rundown of what’d happened, especially regarding why he’d been distracted and missed that free throw.
But at least you were able to put the rebound back in.
Even though his dad knew about the blurs from last fall, Daniel wasn’t excited about the idea of letting him know they’d come back. It would’ve just made him worry.
“I’m glad,” his father said, referring to the game.
Daniel thought about asking him if he’d found out anything about the wolves, but decided it might be best to bring things to a close. “So. I should probably be heading to bed.”
“You texted me that you were going to be home by twelve.”
“Yeah.”
“I need you to keep your word, Daniel.”
Since he hadn’t said anything about him getting home late until now, his blunt words and cold, detached tone surprised Daniel. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. “I told you we were helping that guy.”