Whenever I'm With You

by Lydia Sharp

  “Dad said it’s a little more than a day’s walk down the mountain from his place, so it could be less than that from here, depending on where it is—but I’m not sure where it is exactly. And it’s too small to be on any of my maps. If Diesel left right away to get help, Dad would have only been stuck for a day or so. We don’t know when he left, though.”

  He’s not done with his story yet, so I let him go on. We can spare a few minutes before looking for the town, if it’ll help him clear his head.

  “In the end it didn’t matter,” he says. “They couldn’t find Dad. The rescue crew dug as much as they could until it became too unstable and too dangerous to keep digging, and too much time had passed for him to have survived anyway. If Diesel hadn’t signaled anyone, it would have been a lot longer before we knew anything happened. But we still don’t know what happened. Maybe he got out. Maybe he wasn’t inside—Diesel wasn’t, and he’s always right with him, so maybe they just got separated, and Diesel lost his scent and assumed he was stuck in the rubble, I don’t know. Dad could have been knocked down the mountain, and by the time he got back, everything and everyone was gone, even his dog.”

  That’s a stretch, but not impossible. Even so: “How do you plan on finding out what really happened? If the cabin is gone, and your family hasn’t heard from him in a year …”

  Kai meets my gaze. “I have a theory on that. I don’t think he’d abandon our family on purpose. That’s just not the kind of person he is, and he and Mom were happy. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, though; he can be really stubborn. But the only time he and Mom ever argued was when he knew he was wrong about something and still refused to back down.”

  I raise a brow. Definitely a genetic trait.

  He goes on, oblivious to my analysis. “He wouldn’t have just left his cabin in ruins. He worked too hard on it; it meant too much to him. I think, assuming he survived, that he made his way back and rebuilt it. It would have taken a long time, even in ideal conditions, so …”

  “And there’s no way for him to get word to your family while he’s here? What about the town?”

  “Probably too small to have a post office …” His expression shifts and he looks to the side, like he’s thinking.

  “But they have to have phones,” I say. “Something.” My mind has shifted again from Kai’s dad in the past to us, here and now. “We need to find the town. I can use my GPS.”

  “What?” He looks right at me, confusion tensing his brow. “Why? You think he’s there?”

  “No. Sorry. Not for your dad. For us. A doctor for Hunter. A ride home for Jack and Vicki. And you and I will need to restock supplies before we head out again, won’t we?”

  His eyes have sharpened in a way that unsettles me. “Someone there can take us back home. Or at least give us a ride to the airport in Fairbanks—”

  “Home?” He obviously stopped listening after I said “ride home”—but I meant that for someone else, not us. “Why turn around when we’re this close?”

  “Because my brother almost died, Gabi.”

  “Hunter won’t be coming with us. We’ll find someone to take care of him, then we’ll go.”

  “That’s not the point. This isn’t worth risking anyone’s life again, not yours or mine. I’ll find another way to figure this out, another time …”

  He doesn’t have an answer, though. Deep down he still wants to do this; I know he does. He’s just scared, and he has reason to be. And I’m scared, too, but: “If what happened to your dad happened to someone in my family—or to anyone I cared about—finding the truth would make it worth the risk to me.”

  His expression softens and twists, changes from determined to conflicted.

  There’s a hard knock on the door right before it opens. Vicki is holding Kai’s rifle, and a stern glint has replaced the usual cheery glimmer in her eye. “Hunter seems okay for now,” she says. “We need to eat, and I have some serious steam to blow off. Let’s go kill something.”

  As Kai and Vicki leave for their hunt, I realize I’m starving. Not hungry—that feeling came and went hours ago, when we were in the plane and skipped lunch. This is a wretched kind of hunger, the kind where your stomach feels like it’s cannibalizing itself. In the past twenty-four hours I’ve eaten nothing but a little bit of rabbit meat and a protein bar. I would even eat akutaq right now, a whole bucket of it.

  Fortunately, it doesn’t take them terribly long to find food—longer than I’d have to wait at a restaurant on a Saturday night, though. Then waiting for it to be prepped is agonizing. Hunter isn’t delirious anymore, but he’s not up for conversation. I have nothing to distract me from the clawing need in my gut, and later, the smell of the cooking makes it even worse.

  I survive, though. I’m beginning to understand just how far my body can be pushed.

  By the time we’ve finished eating, there isn’t enough daylight left to venture anywhere safely, so we all agree to make a plan now about finding a town that we’ll put into place tomorrow. Hunter should be okay for the night; he looks closer to normal. He isn’t talking much, though, or eating, but he was able to get up on his own. He’s been sitting in front of the fire in the bedroom, huddled in a blanket, for hours, moving only when another log needs to be added.

  Jack gathered a lot of wood, but with three fires going, one in each room, we’re running low already. We can’t stay here more than one or two nights; we don’t have enough supplies for five people. Jack, Kai, Vicki, and I are sitting at the table in the main room, somber faces all around, like we’re at a council meeting that will decide whether someone will hang. I pull up the GPS on my phone—still no cell signal, because that would be asking for too much—and punch in Fairbanks, then wait for the satellite to lock onto our location and show me a map.

  If I knew the name of the town that was close, it would be much more helpful. But no one ever told Kai or Hunter what it was. At the time, it didn’t seem important. There were more urgent things to take care of, like a funeral with no body.

  Using the GPS will drain my phone’s battery, so I pull it up just long enough to see how far we are from Fairbanks and what kind of path it suggests we take to get there. When it pops up on the screen, I set my phone in the center of the table so everyone can see, then I zoom in … and in … and in … until a tiny dot labeled Ukiuk appears. I tap it and mark it as our destination, then zoom out again. Ukiuk is about the same distance from Fairbanks as it is from the red dot marking our starting location. It’s the closest thing to us resembling civilization, but who knows what it can actually offer.

  “That has to be the town my dad mentioned,” Kai says. “Looks like it’s a bit of a hike from here. We’ll need to make sure we have enough food packed before we go.”

  I sit up straighter. “You mean before we go to your dad’s cabin.”

  “No,” Kai says. “I mean that once we’re all able to, we’re all going to the town so we can find a ride home. Jack and Vicki go first, find a doctor, pick up more supplies, bring them here, then we all go home. We’re done. This is where it ends.”

  “But we’re so much closer now than we were this time yesterday. If Hunter is okay later and we have the means, I think we should stick to our original plan and keep going.”

  “And risk getting stuck out there, even farther away from anyone who can help if we need it?”

  “Other people live out here,” Jack interjects.

  “But we don’t know where,” Vicki counters. “I’m with Kai on this one. I wouldn’t want to see any more near-death tragedies for a while, either. Can’t y’all finish this trip another time? Give yourselves some recovery time first?”

  I open my mouth to protest, but a voice from behind beats me to it. “No.”

  Kai and I turn in our seats while Jack and Vicki look past us. Hunter stands in the doorway to the other room, still wrapped in a blanket. His hair is more scraggly than wavy now, and his color is still unnaturally pale for him.

  “We’r
e not turning around,” he says. “We did not come all the way out here just to turn around.”

  “You almost died—” Kai starts, but Hunter cuts him off.

  “But I didn’t die. We’re survivalists, Kai. Dad didn’t teach us to quit just because things get hard. I’m going to keep going whether you come along or not. Gabi’s right—we’re too close to give up. If this were reversed, Dad wouldn’t have given up on us. You know it’s true. Your decision, though. I’m going to Dad’s cabin, with or without you, and I’m going to find out what happened to him, with or without you. You started this, but I’ll end it by myself if I have to.” He turns and shuffles back into the other room, leaving Kai staring at the space he was just standing in.

  “He knows I won’t let him go alone.” Kai clenches a fist as he turns back around to face the table. I uncurl his fingers and hold his hand, hoping it’ll help him relax. “Stubborn,” he says. “Just like Dad.”

  He isn’t the only one.

  “So we’re going,” I say, and Kai doesn’t argue. “Vicki? You’re going to town with Jack tomorrow, then?”

  She nods, and when Jack grins at that, she adds, “So I’d better spend the little time I have left here with my boyfriend.” Then she gets up from the table and joins Hunter in the other room. Jack’s smile drops away. “Guess I’ll go out and get some more wood. Gonna be a long night.”

  Kai and I sit in silence after Jack leaves, watching the fire crackle and pop. Vicki is talking to Hunter in the other room, but I can’t make out what she’s saying, and he doesn’t reply to any of it. Within a few minutes, Mother Nature forces me up, and I’m thankful for an excuse to do something, get our minds off this, even if just for a moment. “Will you come with me to the outhouse? I don’t want to walk out there alone.”

  Outside, the wind blows constantly, creating soft snowdrifts and whipping my hair over my face. I tuck it under my hood and follow Kai into the brush and trees. The outhouse isn’t far, but being in the woods, it feels like we’re secluded. I don’t see Jack out here, but every few seconds I hear the faint echo of wood chopping.

  I finish my business as quickly as I can, which isn’t nearly fast enough, trying not to think about the fact that I just peed in a hole in the ground. I’ve become an animal out here. The farther north I go, the further I recede on the evolutionary timeline. I’ll be dragging my knuckles by the end of the week.

  “Done?” Kai shouts.

  “Yeah.” I exit the outhouse. “Let’s get inside before my eyeballs freeze.”

  On the way back, though, we spot a couple of caribou. There’s enough distance between us that I think we can scoot past without them noticing, but still, my heart starts pounding. They’re huge. Wild. Animals. Kai holds my hand firmly, plants his feet, and whispers, “Don’t move.” Then he starts creeping toward one of them.

  “Kai,” I say as loudly as I can without going above a whisper. We’re supposed to keep on walking past a little fox, but it’s okay to walk right up to a giant caribou? “What are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer, just keeps moving. Slowly. Steadily. The caribou finally notices him and freezes in place, eyeing him cautiously. Kai stops an arm’s length from the beast and reaches a hand toward it. Amazingly, it hasn’t moved, but its breaths quicken, nostrils flaring, releasing little puffs of white mist. I’m still at a distance, but I’ve never been so close to a wild animal before, not even the bear we saw this morning—Was that only this morning?

  Kai sinks his fingers into the fur on the caribou’s thick neck. “Oh my God,” I whisper, awestruck. He’s touching it. Like a pet. That thing is as tall as he is and twice as broad. But it doesn’t move.

  I reach into my pocket and, as quietly as I can, pull out my cell phone. Line up the shot. Wait for it to focus, and … click. The tiny shutter click echoes like a rifle shot in the silence, and the caribou flinches, turns tail, and runs, its companion not far behind.

  Kai stands in place unmoving for a moment, then turns, his jaw slightly dropped. Is he mad I scared it away?

  “That,” he says, “was freaking amazing. Did you see that? Did you see that!”

  Laughter rushes out of me. “I saw it. See.” I turn the face of my phone toward him.

  “Yes!” He raises his fists to the air and lets out a whoop.

  “How did you know it would let you touch it?”

  “I didn’t. But I had to try.” He takes my hand and leads us back toward the cabin. “I get why Hunter doesn’t want to kill animals. They’re magical—that was magic.”

  “Total magic,” I agree. “It was so magical it was practically a unicorn.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d even shoot a unicorn if I had to.”

  I fake a shocked face and gasp.

  “Stop it,” he says, laughing. “It’s about survival. Food to live, fur to stay warm, fat burns like fuel, the list goes on. But Hunter doesn’t see it that way.”

  “I know. I don’t think either of you is wrong in what you believe, though. Just different.”

  “I wish he could have seen what we just saw. Make sure you save that picture. I want to show it to him. You know, he tried to get up close to a moose like that once, but then he was afraid it might charge him, so he chickened out.”

  “Hunter was afraid of a moose? He is a moose!”

  “I know, right?” Kai’s steps slow as a new thought spreads his smile even wider. “Maybe that’s why he’s so intent on us going now. Maybe just being out here …” He lets out a breathy laugh. “You heard what he said—he remembers everything Dad taught us. The brother I used to have fun with is still in there. Somewhere. Trying to get out. I just have to keep reminding him of what he already knows.”

  “Maybe,” I say, not wanting to ruin his high. But nothing in life is ever that simple, especially when Locklear stubbornness is involved. “So you agree, then? We should keep going?”

  “Look at where we are,” he says, spinning a slow circle to take it all in. The sparkling white mountains. The crisp blue sky. “I don’t know what I was thinking before—I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting … But I got this far, farther than I’ve ever been, and so close to finding the truth. How can I leave now?”

  My chest is on fire. I can smell it smoking, hear it crisping and crackling.

  Fear thrusts me upward, eyes wide, suddenly alert, scanning the darkened room for any sign of the familiar. Walls made of rough logs and stone. This room is big enough to hold maybe three people and a cat. Kai is bundled in a blanket and sitting on a chair next to a glowing wood burner, his head bent to one shoulder, eyes closed, breathing even.

  He’s sleeping. I was sleeping. It’s either the middle of the night or early morning.

  The memories of yesterday come crashing down on me. Hunter almost died. Kai and Jack risked their lives to save him. I only felt like I would die. Vicki and Jack will be leaving today. Right now they’re on the floor in Hunter’s room. I’m lying in a cozy bed that smells like old wool, wearing an extra set of Kai’s thermal underwear, and decidedly not being consumed by raging flames. It must have just been part of the dream.

  The dream … My chest sinks on a heavy exhale. It was only a dream.

  But it felt so real. I was at LAX again, screaming in my mother’s face, lashing out at her with words I can never take back. She grabbed at her throat like she couldn’t breathe; then the whole dream went up in smoke. Literally. Or so I thought. But I must have just been smelling the wood burner.

  I breathe in, just to make sure I still can, and then out. Again, slower and deeper this time.

  I push myself up to sit, unable to relax now. The mattress creaks loudly.

  “Gabi?” Kai stirs and rubs his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just can’t sleep.” Instead of telling him about the dream, though, I go for something less dramatic but no less true. “I’m worried about my dad. I talked to him yesterday, but … He’s going to notice I’m gone soon. Even he’s not that oblivious. And Vicki�
��s mom will notice, too, and so will yours. Do you think they’ll send someone after us?”

  “Maybe. Not much we can do or not do about that.” Kai gets up from the chair slowly, still hugging the blanket around him, and then crosses the room toward me. He leans over me and smothers me with a hug, swallowing me into his fleece-covered embrace. He smells like ashes. Then he sits next to me on the bed, pulls his knees up to his chest, and swaddles the blanket around himself tighter.

  It’s odd to see him reacting to the cold, trying to stay warm. This is the boy who waited until after the temperature dropped to almost freezing to jump in a lake with his friends. This is the boy who walked across Alaska in a snowstorm and burrowed in a bank of snow. Cold is not in his vocabulary.

  “I haven’t been able to sleep very well, either,” he says. “Was that all that was bothering you?”

  I shove my hands under my legs to keep them warm. No getting around this. I’m not going to lie to him or hide anything from him that he wants to know. “I had a bad dream, and it shook me up a little.”

  “Do you wanna talk about it?”

  No, but if I don’t tell him, he’ll worry about it. And then I’ll end up telling him anyway, so he knows that it’s nothing to worry about. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to him; it’s that I don’t want to talk about this. “It was more like a memory,” I say, “but it got twisted. You know how dreams are. They don’t make sense.”

  “Was it a bad memory to start with, or did the dream twist a good one into bad?”

  “Bad to start with.” The worst. “It was from the day I moved to Alaska.”

  Kai gives me a side-eye. “Not including recent events, is living here really that horrible for you?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I was still in LA when this happened; it was right before I got on the plane.” And there are reasons I never told Kai about it. One, I’ve been doing my best to forget it ever happened. It isn’t a memory I want to relive. Two, I’m not sure how he’ll react, not having been there, in my shoes.