by Joanne Rock
“You know the nickname for this mountain, right?” I wasn’t going to make excuses for being prepared. Nine times out of ten you don’t need this kind of traction, but I’d rather be ready on the tenth. Only Nordic skiers would bring a pack like mine, but I made my own rules.
“Iceface.” She made a funny yelp that was half-laugh, half-sob. She seemed plenty freaked out, but for all I knew, she was only worried about her own skin.
“Exactly. I like to be safe.” I couldn’t get the straps as tight as I wanted around my awkward ski boots.
“Do you go off-trail a lot?”
“A couple times a year. I’ve skied about half the Forty-Six Peaks.” Most of which weren’t all that skiable. “But I normally go with people who are more experienced than me. Not less.”
She grabbed the end of the rope by the tree. “And do…do you have any first-aid stuff in that backpack?”
“Only some basics.” Getting to my feet, I tested the traction of the crampons. They were awkward on ski boots and would have worked better attached to hiking shoes, but they were better than nothing. “We’ll have to call ski patrol to come get Andre if he has any serious injuries.”
“Has he moved yet?” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.
I hadn’t truly considered worst-case scenarios until I saw Hannah’s expression. She really was scared, and it wasn’t just for her own sake.
“I can’t tell. Visibility is getting worse.” Carefully, I chose the best path down into the gorge and flattened myself to the ground to start the descent.
“Be careful.” Hannah knelt down at the edge, close to me. The ends of her red hair pooled bright on the snow near my arms as I dangled over the lip of the embankment.
Rich brown eyes locked on mine, her goggles pulled up so I could really see her face. Her hand fell lightly to my arm and squeezed. She might as well have held my freaking heart in her hand. I was lying every time I told myself I was over this girl, damn it.
“Always.” I backed away from her slowly, hoping I didn’t do anything stupid like pledge eternal devotion.
And yes, I played way too many video games. But I couldn’t see that red hair and the snowflakes catching on her thick eyelashes without imagining her as some kind of winter elf princess. She was hot like that.
“Will you keep talking to me?” she called when I was only a few feet away.
I hadn’t seen the sun all day, but the white brightness overhead made it feel like it was in my eyes when I looked up at her.
“I’m pretty sure it was you who didn’t want to be on speaking terms.” A chunk of ice fell away from my boot and I checked my grip on the wall. Took a couple deep breaths.
“No!” she snapped. “I mean, like, talk to me on your way down there so I know you’re okay.”
“Yeah. Fine down here. Neck not broken yet.” Although if I didn’t watch my step, it was only a matter of time.
“I’m going to kill Andre for getting us into this mess,” she called down.
“There’s the Hannah I know,” I grumbled.
“What?” she shouted.
I kept feeling around for the next toehold with no luck and wondered if I was close enough to leap to the bottom.
“I’m jumping.” I warned her right before I threw myself backward.
Her scream echoed down into the gorge, the sound bouncing off the walls and filling the narrow space.
“Oof.” Andre grunted beneath me.
I’d fallen on one of his legs. His boot was lodged under my hip.
“Julian!” Hannah’s voice sounded farther away.
“It’s cool,” I called up, wishing we’d set up a signal with the rope. One tug for yes and two for no or something. We were going to lose our voices and we probably ought to conserve our cellphone batteries until we could find a spot that got coverage again.
“You hurt?” I asked Andre, scrambling off him and trying to assess the situation.
“I don’t know, man,” he croaked, rubbing one hand along his forehead. “It was lights out for a minute.”
He was talking, at least. That was good.
As he lifted his neck to look at me, I could see he had a gash on his temple. Blood trickled down his cheek.
“You have a head injury.” Crap. “Don’t move.”
“No. I’m good. It’s my leg that’s screwed up.”
For the first time, I noticed the weird way he was lying. His knee was kicked out at an awkward angle from the rest of him.
“That’s broken.” I was no doctor. But yeah…his leg was seriously messed up. “Between the leg injury and possible head trauma, we need to wait for backup. Too risky to move you.”
“Bullshit.” Andre sat up and—curse his dumb hide—shook his cranium around like his neck was a piece of spaghetti. “The dome’s fine. I need to get back to the group.”
“So you can get us more lost?” I usually didn’t let stuff like that fly, but damn.
“I can find my way back.” He edged to a sitting position, wincing when the bad leg moved. “I just need to use my own eyes. I’m not some GPS techno-dweeb who can reel off exact coordinates, you know?”
I wondered if he’d consider Magellan and Columbus techno-dweebs for using an astrolabe, but I let that one go.
“It’s going to hurt like hell even if I can find a way to haul you out of here.” Any damage to his head or neck wasn’t going to get worse than what the guy was already doing to himself.
“Let’s do this,” he gritted out between clenched teeth, his face already sweating from pain despite the cold.
“Fine.” I wasn’t arguing.
Instead, I pulled on the rope still tied around my waist. I hoped Hannah would know what it meant.
Chapter Six
Hannah
I yanked down my slipping ski mask against the snarling wind then continued texting my mom a message that would never send given the conditions.
We R lost. Chaperone hurt. My friends suck. Merry Freaking X-mas.
My fingers flew despite the numbing chill, my list of complaints growing easily since I’d only delete them all later. I griped about my dad ditching me for the new fiancée. Mom ditching me for her latest boyfriend. But during a rant about my crap lip gloss and the wind chill factor, I thought I felt a tug on the rope.
“Julian.” I shoved the phone in my pocket and moved closer to the ledge. “Julian?” I shouted down into the gorge. Listening, I hoped I’d hear something in response, but sound did not carry upward very well in this weather. The snow muffled everything. And maybe it had just been the wind moving the rope around. I listened very hard until I heard something.
“Hannah!” another voice called behind me. A girl’s voice, and she sounded frightened.
“I’m here.” Jumping to my feet, I squinted through the snow. “Bella?”
Missy emerged first, her bright pink ski jacket and coal-dark hair easy to spot against the pillows of snow.
“We’re here!” she wailed and waved, poles tucked in the crook of her arm. “Are you okay?”
She hugged me hard.
At times like this, it was tough to remember Missy’s Queen of Mean title. Because underneath all that, she was still my friend. Behind them, I could hear the rest of our group moving through the trees.
“I’m good.” I squeezed Missy back while the skateboarders skied into sight with Bella and the rest. “Thanks for coming.”
I pointed the guys toward the gorge. “Julian just went down to help Andre. Will you be able to help pull him up?”
They wasted no time scrambling over to the edge and peering down. I squeezed Bella’s shoulders as she reached us, her face streaked with mascara from the wind and crying.
Missy pulled a tissue out of her pocket and swiped it around Bella’s cheeks.
“You did a great job finding everyone.” I’d been so worried about Julian when she left, I hadn’t stopped to think about how scary it must have been for her to head out on the mountain by herself.
“We found her, actually,” Missy murmured as she patted Bella’s shoulder. “We just followed the sound of crying.”
I tried not to do a double take and failed. “What is wrong with you?” Our dangerous situation put a spotlight on her pettiness.
Missy shrugged and stared over at the guys shouting down into the gorge. “It was a bad joke. Excuse me for being stressed about the possibility of a scandal with a guy who’s being investigated by the Feds.”
Ah, crap. Of course the scandal factor would be all the more real for a state senator’s daughter. As much as I wanted to go oversee the progress the guys were making with Julian and Andre, I needed to tell Missy the truth.
My mean streak was coming back to bite me in the butt.
Too bad Julian wasn’t here to see it.
“You guys, what can we do to help them?” Bella asked, swiping the back of her hand along her cheek. “I feel terrible about this.”
“It’s not your fault, Bells.” I hooked an arm through hers because she looked lost. “Let’s go see if we can do anything to help.”
The guys were debating which tree to wrap the rope around to form a pulley or something. Before I could move, Bella yanked my arm.
“But it is my fault,” she confided, her head whipping around to make sure no one overheard us.
Missy raised her eyebrows, moving closer. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she hissed and then covered her face with her hands. “I was teasing him a little, but he was smiling and edging backwards like he was having fun teasing me, too. Then he fell—”
“Do not repeat that story to another soul.” Missy glared at her. “I mean it.”
“Seriously?” Bella’s already pale face went ten shades whiter.
I squeezed her arm tight. “Don’t worry about it. Andre’s fine and you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But talk to a lawyer, just in case,” Missy added, draping an arm around Bella’s shoulders on her other side. “We’ll find you someone really good.”
“What is wrong with you?” I was tempted to pound my head against the nearest pine tree as I let go of Bella. “She doesn’t need a lawyer. Will you quit scaring her?”
Missy stepped away from Bella, who had started crying in earnest. To me, Missy whispered, “Think about it, Hannah. She’s not tough like us. She’s going to blubber like a baby about this all through school and people are going to know she was flirting with our lacrosse coach. An adult known for messing with underage girls on the brink of getting arrested. If Andre is hurt—or worse—questions are going to come up about what happened—”
“He’s not known for messing with underage girls, okay?” I looked over my shoulder, needing to help the guys get Julian and Andre back up to level ground. They seemed to have their pulley system ready. “I just made that up to scare you because I was being a bitch.” The truth was out.
Missy went still, her face unmoving as if she didn’t quite comprehend. But I could tell when my words sank in. Her mouth twisted into a tight frown.
“I guess it was easy for me to believe your mom dated a Fed. God knows she’s screwed guys from all walks of life since your dad left.” She hit me where it hurt and crossed a big-time line.
“Hey. Leave Mom out of it. I lied and I’m sorry.” I didn’t say that often. But for everything I’d been through with Missy…yeah, I felt bad about messing with her. I didn’t like who I’d become.
“Not yet.” Her lips stretched in a tight smile. “But you will be.”
She moved to comfort Bella. The Ponytails watched the drama from a respectable distance, but I glared at them to chase them farther away. I hurried over to the ledge of the gorge and peered down. The tennis player and one of the skateboarder guys were lying on their stomachs, arms extended over the side to steady ropes while the other skateboarder anchored the pulley thing that lifted Andre to the surface.
Great for Andre. Not so good for Julian, who was climbing up the gorge behind him with nothing to catch him if he fell.
“What are you doing?” I barked at the boys on the ground. “Where’s Julian’s rope?”
“We didn’t have enough to harness him, too,” one of them told me, his knuckles white as he guided the nylon cord to keep Andre’s weight centered.
My forehead felt all hot as I watched Julian take some of Andre’s weight on his shoulder while he scaled up the icy cliff side. What did he think he was doing risking his neck to help Andre up? I felt like screaming at him. Andre deserved to stay down in the pit for trying to get a high school girl alone to flirt with her—even if the girl was into it. But my throat was too dry to shout.
“Can I help?” I asked the guys steering the ropes.
“Seriously?” one of them said while the other snorted.
“Yeah.” I didn’t know why my offer should be so amusing. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.”
I lay down on my stomach between them, icy snow crunching under my nylon ski pants.
“Beats me why the girls crush on Andre,” another guy muttered.
“Me, too.” I would have said something more cutting, but I was too busy wondering if those spikes Julian had added to his boots could really keep him safe on the ice. “Can’t we haul Andre up first and then send the rope down for Julian?”
They gaped at me, their mouths working like fish on land. “The last thing we need is another body to drag back, right?” I tried to put it in terms they’d understand. “Wouldn’t it be better if he doesn’t break any legs?”
The boys returned to their work, their snow-crusted gloves slipping along the taut nylon cord.
“Julian said this was better,” one of the skateboarders explained.
“Who died and put him in charge?”
I heard Bella wail louder in the background.
“Ohmigod, is Andre dead?”
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. Patience.
“He’s not dead,” I reminded her, calling over my shoulder.
Suddenly, one of the boys beside me slid forward. His shoulders slipped out over the ledge. I scrambled backward to grab his ankles.
“Hold on!” I shouted. “Help me!” I called to the tennis girl.She was beside me in an instant, holding the skateboarder’s left boot while I held the right.
“It’s fine!” his friend shouted. “I’ve got it.” He shifted his arms and the ropes, his muscles flexing against his jacket sleeves. “We just need to keep the weight even between us.”
My nails broke inside my gloves from the awkward grip I had on this dude’s leg.
“If you go down, they’ll all fall,” I reminded him.
All of them, yes. But it was Julian I worried about. Julian, who’d been first to risk his neck to figure out a way to get Andre free.
“I know.” Skateboarder dude inched back. “You can let go.”
Soon, Andre’s helmet cleared ground level. Bella squealed and rushed to the ledge to kneel beside me. All of us gripped his jacket and his arms, hauling him up over the edge to safety.
“Watch the leg,” Andre warned, his face pale and sweaty from pain. “Thing hurts like a son of a—”
“Nooo!” Bella cried again.
“He’s fine,” Missy soothed her. She scooched closer to Bella’s side as the two of them watched over the lacrosse coach.
The boys loosened the harness to help him breathe, but otherwise made no move to send Julian the rope.
“Isn’t anyone going to help Julian? He’s still down there,” I screeched.
“We’ve got to keep the pressure on Andre’s leg—looks like the bone’s come through.”
I turned away from the nasty sight and peered over the edge. Unbelievably, Julian was almost to the top on his own.
“I can’t believe you.” I crouched near the ledge and hovered over Julian’s head. His gray helmet was covered with snow, but his long-ish hair flared out the bottom in damp wings. His shoulders flexed under his coat, his fingers locked into
crevices in the ice as he inched upward.
“You never knew I was so strong, right?” He stopped climbing long enough to look up at me.
Although I was tempted to yell at him for taking his eye off the wall, I was too scared he’d fall if I startled him.
“I never knew you had a death wish,” I said evenly. I lay on the ground like the skateboarders had before.
I wanted their help now, but they were busy trying to help Andre regain consciousness in case of a concussion.
Julian shook his head. “You voted me most expendable, Hannah. You of all people should approve of the decision to give someone else the rope.”
“Don’t you dare bring that up now,” I warned him, emotions clogging my throat and making my voice scratchy. “I was just having a moment when I said that.”
I held out my hand.
Julian stared at it for a long moment. Something like shame crept over me.
“My God. Julian.” I shook my head. He was so close now, yet he was still in major danger. A fall now would break his leg, too. Or worse. “Do you honestly think I would let you fall? How many trust walks have we taken at Camp Juniper Point?”
Nearby, the other skiers gathered around Andre. But right here, it was just me and Julian, surrounded by snowfall that separated us from everything else. His arms had to be killing him.
“Since when do you take that seriously?” His brown eyes were so steady, while I was totally freaked.
“I do. But even if I didn’t, I would never let anything happen to the boy who got me on stage that night I played Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore.” It was one of my oldest secrets—that geeky Julian had calmed my fears and talked me out of my stage fright during the rehearsals for a fifth-grade play.
Still he stared at me. Had I been that mean? So awful that I couldn’t be trusted to help him over the ledge?
I’d never know if he would have taken my hand because one of the skateboarders ran over just then.
“Yo, dude. Here ya go.” Planting his feet beside me, he extended a glove to Julian just like I had.
Except Julian clasped his without a second thought.
I shifted aside to give them room as the boy half-pulled, half-dragged Julian up and over the edge onto level ground. The skateboarder clapped Julian on the shoulder when he was all the way over.