Avalanche

by Melinda Braun

  “We don’t have a minute.”

  The sleet hit his nose and cheeks when he removed his gloves. Little ice pellets peppered the ground around him, sounding like crackling static. “What now?”

  “Storm.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Snowstorm coming,” Leah repeated in the same dispassionate tone. “Get up here now. We need to get out of this glacier field.”

  There was no emotion in her voice at all, as if she were making small talk about the weather. Then again, she was talking about the weather, and Matt had to wonder if she was crazy or had some kind of brain damage. Who slid headfirst down a glacier? Who the hell was this girl?

  Then came the answer.

  Someone who just saved your life. Someone you should probably listen to.

  Keeping the rope tight, he started to climb.

  TONY

  Location: Abandoned NFS cabin, Arapaho National Forest

  Elevation: 9,000 feet

  “If we put it out we might not get it going again!” Tony held up the three remaining matches from the box.

  “But there’s too much smoke!” Julie coughed as she wafted the thick plumes out the door with her jacket, but it didn’t improve the interior of the cabin. Soon it would be a total fog of poison. They had already removed the cot—with Sid still lying on it—the footlocker, and the remainder of their supplies and gear. They even took out the chair.

  “It’s the chimney!” Carter rushed back in, almost colliding with Julie. “Totally blocked! God knows what! Maybe a nest, maybe a dead animal.”

  “Can’t we burn through it?” Tony held his breath, hating the idea of smothering the flames. It had been too easy to get the fire started the first time; he knew it had been a lucky break.

  “I shoved a stick up it as hard as I could.” Carter had his ski goggles down and his sweatshirt pulled up over his nose, resembling some sort of postapocalyptic fugitive. “Rock solid. Whatever it is, it’s not coming out.”

  Still, Tony stood there holding the box of matches, wavering. “Maybe the rescuers will see it?”

  “Well, they’ll smell it anyway. But we need to put it out,” Carter said finally, trying not to gag. “The last thing we need is for the whole damn place to burn down.”

  “Yeah,” Julie coughed, trying to breathe through her gloves. “Let’s put it out.”

  “Why don’t you go get some snow,” Carter told her, somewhat gently. He looked like he was going to put a hand on her head, as if to pet her, and Tony hoped that whatever was going on between them would be forgotten now. They had other concerns. “Fill up a bucket.”

  “We don’t have a bucket.”

  “Just improvise.”

  Julie trudged out. Tony had the distinct impression she would have slammed the door shut if it hadn’t already been kicked off its hinges during the evacuation. She was frustrated, obviously—but then, she wasn’t the only one. She was mad at Carter, feeling guilty about Dylan, upset she couldn’t do anything to help Sid, and apparently regretting she hadn’t left with Matt and Leah. Tony knew this because he felt the exact same way. Still, he wanted to let Carter know he was on his side, that he was here to help. “Women,” he said, attempting some type of camaraderie, but Carter didn’t answer.

  Instead he slumped his shoulders. “It was a good try,” Carter said, dejected. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” Then he turned and headed out, leaving Tony to wonder which side to take, if any. He knew Julie blamed Carter for the mess they were in. But the whole plan had been Dylan’s—the weekend, the route, the cabin. And it had been Dylan who insisted they take that last run. If it hadn’t been Carter to start the avalanche, it probably would have been someone else. It could have been Tony, though he refused to dwell on that idea. It just was a freak accident, he decided.

  Only two things concerned him now—his brother and his best friend. But he knew there was nothing he could do for Matt. Matt’s on his own, Tony thought. Sid was his brother. Sid needed him. And as he watched the dying flames flicker and fade out, he knew he would have to start making some decisions. Pragmatic would be the word Matt would use. He would need to be, above all things, pragmatic.

  Tony hurried out of the cabin, took off his coat, and tied the arms together, making a pouch. Improvisation had always been a skill he possessed and now he put it to use, quickly scooping snow inside it until it was full. He carried it back inside and dumped the whole pile on the smoking mess, noting with some satisfaction the sound it made. Hot grease in a pan, crackling and popping. Which made Tony hungry. Soon the sizzle stopped and the coals died, smothered by ice.

  When soot-stained water puddled onto the floor in front of him, Tony had decided. All that mattered now was keeping Sid alive. And if Carter and Julie got in his way he would do whatever it took. Whatever that meant. He picked up a log from the unused pile, the exact shape and size of a cudgel, one end gnarled into a thick knot. Whatever needs to be done, he thought. That’s what I’ll do.

  MATT

  Location: Byers Peak

  Elevation: 11,000 feet

  By the time Leah and Matt got off the north face of the mountain an hour later, it was snowing heavily. The sky around them was white and swirling, like the inside of the storm clouds themselves. Leah led them behind a wall of granite rock the size and shape of a semitruck. Finally out of the wind, Matt collapsed into a heap, grateful just to stop moving. Leah removed a small red square from her pack, unfolded it into a tarp, and by using the weight of some smaller rocks near their feet, pinned it down. With the edge secured she flipped the rest of the sheet over them, making a crude tent. Instantly, Matt felt warmer. The red nylon was thin but effective, and Matt helped drape it over their heads and shoulders. They flattened their backs against the boulder to keep it from shifting.

  “We’ll have to sit tight for a while,” Leah said. “Until the storm passes.”

  Matt wasn’t about to argue; he felt he might fall asleep just sitting there. “How long do you think that will be?”

  “Maybe an hour. Clouds are moving pretty fast.”

  He wondered how she knew that. He wanted to sleep, but everything hurt, especially his head and stomach. He hadn’t eaten anything since late afternoon, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever missed a meal. A huge goose egg had sprouted on the back of his skull and he fingered it gingerly, hoping he hadn’t given himself a mild concussion. Concussed people were not supposed to go to sleep, he’d read somewhere. The lump throbbed under his thumb, keeping time with his pulse.

  “We’ll have to go around,” Leah continued. “We’re on the wrong side of the mountain now.”

  Matt also couldn’t understand how she knew this, since the visibility in the storm was nil, but he nodded anyway. Underneath his hand, the lump seemed to have swollen to the size of a tennis ball. “Thanks.” He dropped his head.

  “For what?”

  “For back there.” He didn’t want to say it—he was too embarrassed. He hadn’t listened to her, and because of that he’d almost killed them both.

  “Oh,” Leah said distractedly. “Sure.” It sounded like she went around saving people every day, the way other people hold open doors or let someone else ahead of them in the checkout line. No big deal.

  “It’s so weird,” Matt blurted.

  “What’s weird?”

  “I mean, what I’m trying to say . . .” He exhaled hard. “I don’t know. I’m just really sorry, that’s all. I shouldn’t have come with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You would have been better off without me along.”

  “No way.” Leah shook her head and Matt felt the plastic slide over his. “Why would you say that?”

  “But I don’t know what I’m doing. I should have gotten the call through.”

  “You did get the call through.”

  Matt squeezed his fists, an instinctive inward cringe he always did when he failed at something. “I got cut off.”

 
; “That’s not your fault.”

  “But . . .”

  “Believe me, Matt. You’ll know when you really mess up.” Leah got serious. She spoke slowly, evenly, putting equal weight on each word. To make sure he listened to her. To make sure he really understood. “Because that will be the last thing you do. Carter was right. No one should go out here alone. This place doesn’t give you second chances.”

  Matt thought he’d already been given a second chance—actually a third. “How did you know what to do?”

  “I didn’t.” In the darkness he saw her outline bend forward, as if she was trying to put her head into her lap. She cradled it in her hands—elbows on her knees. The ground was cold and solid beneath them, and it made Matt’s lower back ache in a distinctly painful way. Leah didn’t speak for a minute and Matt wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” she murmured. “Lucky like you.” She sat up then, lifted the corner of the tarp, checking outside. The wind wasn’t as loud now, more like a whine instead of a howl. “Carter put the rope in my pack. I told him I wouldn’t need it, but he insisted.”

  “You guys are close, aren’t you?” A small gust curled in under the tarp. The sharp cold stung his nostrils, and he saw the moonlight was back, shimmering off the sheet of snow like a spotlight.

  “Carter’s the only one I trust,” she confessed. “He’s always been on my side. He’s always looked out for me.”

  “It must be nice,” Matt said slowly, “to have a brother like that.”

  “Yeah.” Leah pulled the tarp back farther, watching the sky. “Some days, it was the only thing . . .” She stopped and dropped the sheet, turning toward him. “I think the storm’s done. Went on to the east.” Her hair brushed his cheek; it smelled like mint leaves. And snow.

  Matt wanted her to finish her thought, if only to understand her better. It was the only thing what? “I guess I wouldn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Having a brother. I’m an only child.”

  “Oh yeah?” Leah didn’t comment on this, but promptly changed the subject. “I’m hungry. You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Okay, then.” Leah shrugged off her pack. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Didn’t you bring anything?” Matt rummaged through down to the bottom of his pack, horrified. His first thought: She doesn’t have anything to eat?

  Second thought: How much do I have left?

  Third thought: I have to share it?

  Fourth: I’m not sharing.

  Fifth: Complete utter burning shame (not really a thought, more like an unpleasant physical reaction).

  Sixth: I should be giving her all my food.

  “Here’s what I have.” Leah retrieved four cans of Rainier beer and a small packet of beef jerky—the spicy chipotle kind. One king-size Twix candy bar, a small bag of trail mix, and two clementine oranges.

  “That’s it?” Matt almost drooled when the golden foil of the Twix wrapper caught the light.

  “Afraid so.”

  “Interesting diet,” Matt said. “Alcohol. Meat. Sugar. I can’t believe you brought beer.”

  “I forgot I packed it. Might as well not waste it.” Leah smiled as if he’d just made a good joke.

  “Guess so. I’m getting sick of eating snow anyway.” Matt removed the rest of his stash, a left-over sandwich and a peanut butter granola bar, adding it to the pile.

  “Now that’s what I call a picnic.” Leah cracked open an aluminum can and handed him another.

  Matt took a long gulp, which was delicious—the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. He drained the entire can in twenty seconds.

  “Slow down, sonny. Don’t get tipsy.”

  “Sonny?” His throat burned, but in a good way. “You talk like you’re sixty years old or something.”

  She laughed. “Carter says that too. I’m the oldest teenager in the world.”

  “So how old are you? If you’re Carter’s younger sister . . .”

  “Seventeen,” she replied, laughing at the surprise in his voice. “But I’ll be eighteen this summer.”

  “But you live with Carter and Sid?” His question was innocent enough, but it implied a hundred more.

  “Yeah.” She sipped her beer. “For a while now I have.” She tore open the pack of jerky, pulled out a thick piece, and offered him the rest.

  “B-but you’re not legally an adult,” he stammered. “Can you even do that?”

  “I guess I can,” she said. “Because I did.”

  “But what about your parents? They just let you move out?”

  Leah turned the can in her hand as if she was reading the ingredients list. Then, instead of answering, she asked him a question. “Would your parents let you move out?”

  “Huh? No. Of course not. No way.” Matt briefly entertained this idea, but it was so odd, so out of his normal way of thinking, it never would have occurred to him. Then again, his own father had done exactly that. Moved out. His face went hot and he felt slightly sick, as though the ground had fallen away. “Why would I?”

  She didn’t reply to that either, which left him to answer his own question. Why would he move out? For freedom? To be an adult on his own? To have his own place, be a man, to come and go as he pleased? He would be eighteen in two months, and he knew his mother was planning a big party. She always did stuff like that. Ever since he could remember, and the bigger the better. Balloons. Streamers. Piñatas. A cake with three layers. Invited all the relatives, invited all the neighbors. “Mattie,” his mom was fond of saying, “even the little things are worth celebrating.” That time he’d complained that they didn’t have to invite the whole neighborhood over to celebrate the fact that he’d learned to ride a bike without training wheels. He’d been eight and a little behind the athletic curve. Then she went back to frosting the spokes on the bicycle-shaped cake she’d baked.

  Matt chewed his beef jerky thoughtfully, already knowing the only reason to move out at seventeen was that your home was an awful place. That the people in it were awful. That they said and did awful things to one another.

  He finished the beef jerky with a hard swallow. “It was bad, huh?”

  Leah smiled. It was a thankful smile—a commiserating smile. Because she’d seen him figure out the answer, and that meant she didn’t have to explain. He understood, even if he couldn’t relate. And that was good enough. They finished the bag of jerky in silence, dividing the clementines, the Twix, and the granola bar, saving the trail mix and sandwich for later.

  “Yeah, it was bad.” She stood up and crushed her can expertly under her boot heel, then his, and slipped both discs back into her pack. “Time to go. Change into your hiking boots.” She refolded the red nylon into a neat square.

  “Already?” He pulled off the rigid ski boots and rolled out his ankles, then put on his pair of worn and infinitely more comfortable Merrells.

  Leah zipped the tarp into a side pocket and changed into her own hiking boots. “We need to get off this peak. We have no tent and we’re behind schedule.”

  It sounded to Matt like she was referring to some household chore that needed to be finished. “Do we need a tent?”

  “Not if we can get back today.” Leah was already climbing over the rocks, picking her way across the boulder field like one of those little marmots Matt had seen poking its head out from between the rocks. “Sun will be up soon.”

  He hurried (carefully) to catch up to her, ignoring the hot twists in his stomach. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Down,” Leah said, pointing to a seemingly unending expanse of ice-stained rock. “We’re going down.” Boulders and boulders, many the size of a compact cars. It was dark, it was cold, there was no trail to speak of, and to Matt the scene before him made him remember another expression that had no author: Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  TONY

  Location: Tent at abandoned NFS cabin, Arapaho National Forest

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nbsp; Elevation: 9,000 feet

  Carter’s tent was only a two-person, and after they finished the assembly and positioned Sid inside, it became a one-person. One person and a cot, to be exact.

  “What time is it?” Tony sank down into a snowdrift. His eyes burned, both from smoke and exhaustion. In the past hour the wind had picked up, and beside the shelter of the tent, the three of them had managed to construct a crude, three-sided wall of snow, not quite an igloo but better than nothing.

  “A little past two, I think,” Carter replied softly. For now, Sid was sleeping, but his wheezy gasps set Tony’s teeth on edge. They could hear it through the thin nylon, a rattling noise, thick and guttural, and Tony both wished he’d stop making that sound and became terrified he actually might. All three of them had been awake for hours, sitting mutely in the dark, then getting up and walking a trail around the cabin, trying to stay warm, trying to think of what else they could do. Tony had guessed it was slightly above freezing, and since there wasn’t enough room in the tent for everyone, they took turns going inside to warm up.

  Once again, Tony was thankful Carter had brought a tent, though Julie said Dylan had brought one too, in case they couldn’t find the cabin, and that left Tony to wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t found it before dark. In any case, it was too polluted with carbon monoxide to be of any use to them now.

  “I’m hungry,” Tony said to his feet. “Can we eat yet?”

  “Julie? What do we have left?”

  “Hot dogs. Buns. Graham crackers. Marshmallows. Chocolate bars.” She unzipped the soft-sided cooler. “And beer.”

  “I need one of each,” Tony said. “Actually, make that two.”

  They parceled out the food three ways, and Tony took his share into the tent. “Sid? You sleeping?”

  No answer. Tony almost dropped the hot dogs when he realized how quiet it was inside the tent. No rattle. “Sid!”

  “W-what?” Sid gurgled, awakening, then shook the cot with his hacking cough, and this time Tony did drop the hot dogs. They landed with a plop on top of the sleeping bag. “Carter!” he yelled.