Anyone?

by Scott, Angela

  “No, I’ve got it.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  I forced myself to stop scratching—knock it off for goodness’ sake—and when I finally removed my hand from my head, a thick clump of brown hair dangled from my fingertips.

  “Tess?”

  I stared at it, unmoving. It had come out so easily. Not a few strands, but a nice-sized chunk.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he called again.

  I could hear his footsteps in the kitchen, coming closer, so I quickly tossed the section of long hair into the loft, and climbed the rest of the way down. “Yeah,” I answered. “I’m fine.”

  I had wanted to leave the cabin and get on our way as soon as possible, but Cole insisted on taking one more day to rest and make sure my limbs thawed before venturing into the cold again. Actually, he’d wanted to take a few days, but after one day of restlessness—the longest day of my life—I said we needed to go.

  Cole had put his ingenuity to work during our stay at the cabin. He managed to make the two of us a set of snowshoes by breaking two kitchen chairs apart, then pulling the fur off the old bear hide and ripping the rug into strips. I doubted they would work or stay together for long, but they held together much better than I had expected, keeping us on top of the surface instead of sinking into the thick layers of snow: an improvement I greatly appreciated.

  Before leaving, we’d ransacked the place, gathering anything useful to take with us on the remainder of our journey. I’d found a pair of decent boots to replace the Doc Martens—I hated parting with those awesome boots. They had carried me a long way. The new boots were a little big, but with two pairs of thick socks, they worked out just fine. We took the bulky winter coats from the bedroom closet and rolled two wool blankets into our bags.

  While we scoured the place, Cole took my hand in his, stopping our pillaging, and attached a knotted bracelet to my wrist. “I thought you might like this.”

  The bracelet wasn’t much really—a stamped out metal plate with the words “Where there is a will there is a way” and two leather straps that tied it together—but I loved the gesture. He had told me nothing was impossible if I wanted it hard enough. All I had to do was look at the bracelet and remember.

  Now, with miles and miles of snow-covered trees, hills, and ridges breaking through the terrain, making our climb steeper and more difficult, I found myself removing one glove, and slipping my fingers under the sleeve of my coat to touch the engraved words, reminding myself I could do this.

  “You’re being a dork, get in here!” I knelt inside the tent, holding the flap open, and watched Cole struggle to find two conducive trees to jerry-rig his hammock. The pine branches hung way too low to the ground, and the other trees in the area were too scattered for the hammock to stretch between any of them. He kept walking from tree to tree, moving farther away from our makeshift campsite and small fire in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to avoid sharing a tiny tent with me.

  What an idiot.

  The whole thing seemed silly. Hadn’t we spent a night together with his mostly naked body wrapped around mine? At this point, he’d already crossed that figurative line in the dirt. If something was going to happen, it could have happened then, but it didn’t. Nothing happened. We were capable of sleeping in close quarters together without fear of things getting out of hand. Besides, he’d made it abundantly clear that this particular relationship was never going to be that kind of a relationship.

  “I’ll find something to make this work,” he called to me. “Go to bed, I’ll be fine.”

  If he wanted to be stubborn about this, then who was I to stop him? I zipped the tent closed and sat back on my sleeping bag to remove my boots, careful not to squish Callie who had curled up inside the bottom.

  My feet ached, but climbing a mountain seemed to get easier with each passing day. Okay, maybe not easier, but my body had become more accustomed to the strenuous walking. I had fewer blisters and didn’t collapse into bed each night completely exhausted. My leg muscles didn’t burn and feel like jelly anymore. I hailed all those things as small victories.

  “Watch out, kitty. Here I come.” I slid my feet into the sleeping bag, and sighed at finding Callie’s body had warmed the bottom for me. So lovely. I rolled onto my side and placed my backpack under my head, trying to find a soft spot to settle into.

  Callie shifted and crawled up the inside of the bag to curl against my stomach—her favorite place to sleep. I scratched between her ears and her soft purr vibrated against me. Oh, to be a cat! She was carried everywhere we went, fed when put down, petted and loved, oblivious to the state of the world. Many times, throughout the course of the day, I envied her.

  The tent zipper slid open in one quick swoop and Cole tossed his backpack to the side of me. He poked his head inside. “Fine, you win.”

  I wiggled over, making room for him. “I wasn’t trying to win anything. We have a tent made for two, and since I’m one and you’re two, it makes sense for the both of us to use it. Aren’t you tired of waking up with a frozen beard every morning?”

  He stroked his furry face several times. “It is starting to fill out nicely, isn’t it?”

  I smiled. “If you think that’s impressive, you should check out the hair on my legs.”

  “Thanks, Tess.” He spread out his sleeping bag next to mine and groaned. “Just the image I want to take with me to bed.”

  I chuckled. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  He kicked off his boots, crawled into his bag, and rolled onto his side to face me. “Tomorrow’s the big day. If everything goes well, we should reach Rockport Lodge sometime before night fall. You ready for this?”

  I had been trying not to think about it: strange, but true. Tomorrow would mean the end of my journey, and it excited and terrified me all at once. Either I’d see my Dad and Toby again. Or I wouldn’t. Those were the only two options.

  “Tess? You okay?”

  I’d never answered him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine to me.” He tucked a bent arm under his head. “What’s going on? I thought you’d be overjoyed to have come this far.”

  I petted Callie, taking comfort from her before giving voice to my biggest fear. “What if all of this has been nothing but a waste of time? What if no one’s there?”

  He shrugged. “Then no one’s there. At least you’ll know. That doesn’t make it a waste of time. It only means we keep going until we figure out where your dad and everyone else went. It will be a setback, that’s all.”

  Maybe he was right. I had to know—good or bad. “You’ll help me keep looking?”

  He nodded. “I told you we’d find your dad, and I have every intention of sticking this out to the bitter end.”

  “Cole?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you still planning to go back after you hand me off to my dad?”

  He was quiet for a moment, but kept his eyes on mine. He took a deep breath and released it. “I know you want me to say no, I’ll stay, but Tess, I can’t do that. You need people. Me, well, I do a lot better without them.”

  He’d told me from the very beginning he planned to go back, but I’d hoped after all this time he would’ve changed his mind. Knowing he hadn’t, that he still wanted to leave once this was over, almost brought me to tears. I blinked several times to keep from crying. I didn’t like him at first, but now, I couldn’t imagine life without him. “What if I begged you to stay, would you?”

  He reached across the small space separating us and cupped my face.

  I turned into it.

  “Tess, if I stayed, you’d never be truly happy. Maybe at first you’d feel like you were, but after a while, you’d come to realize how wrong I am for you. We’re from two different worlds—you’re a kid with your whole life ahead of you. Me? Not so much.” He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “We’re only together now because circumstances forced us to be. Had none of this happened, you would ha
ve walked right past me on the street without looking my way. I’d just be some old dude you’d never glance twice at.”

  Blinking no longer helped. The tears fell, and I couldn’t stop them. He was right. Had none of this happened, I would be hanging out with my friends, doing stupid teenage things: things seeming so important at the time—planning for prom, posting selfies to my social networks, and trying to figure out how to stay out past curfew without getting caught. Homework, dating, makeup, boys—that was my life.

  I would have never thought to say hi to someone like Cole. It embarrassed me to think how shallow my life before all of this had been—how shallow I had been. I prayed I was a better person now. I really wanted to believe I had changed.

  “Worse yet,” he continued. “You’d always wonder if I was happy being with you and living like everyone else lives. I’d say yes, I was very happy, but that nagging voice in the back of your head would never let you fully believe I told the truth.”

  “So you really think you’d be better off without me and without other people?”

  He shook his head. “Other people? Yes. I’ll be fine. Without you? No, I won’t, but I know you would be better off without me, and that’s why I can’t stay.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I know.” He went to remove his hand from my face, but I covered his hand with my own, keeping it in place.

  “I don’t think I’ll be better off without you,” I said.

  He smiled, his eyes watering. “You will be.”

  “Cole?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me before you go, you’ll say goodbye first. Don’t just disappear like some douchebag vampires in teenage books tend to do, thinking it’s best for everybody. I’d hate it if you did.”

  He leaned toward me and kissed my forehead. ““I promise. I’ll make sure you receive a proper goodbye before I go.”

  Cole stood at my side, our shoulders touching, our chests heaving from the climb, and neither of us moving. “What are you waiting for?”

  A very good question. What was I waiting for?

  The lodge’s peaked roof rose above the flock of pine trees and aspens surrounding the log structure. Glimpses of the wrap-around deck danced between branches that the wind tossed from side to side. Beautiful, just like I remembered it.

  The distance between us and the lodge was less than the size of a football field, but I couldn’t take another step. Not yet.

  “It’s going to be okay.” He took my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You’re going to be okay.”

  I wasn’t so sure.

  I reached up with my free hand and adjusted the knitted cap covering my head, pulling it lower. A few loose strands of hair threatened to fall away, and I tucked them back inside my hat, trying to ignore what was happening to me—a hard thing to do—since every day it seemed to get worse. “I don’t think anyone’s there,” I said.

  “How can you tell?” He glanced from me to the lodge. “We’re too far away to see much of anything.”

  I pointed to the rock chimney. “There’s no smoke. Don’t you think there would be smoke?”

  “Come on, Tess. That doesn’t mean anything, and you know it, so stop making excuses.” He released my hand and started walking. “You can stand there if you want,” he called over his shoulder, “but I’ve hiked an entire mountain to get here, and I’m not stopping now. I would’ve thought you’d be sprinting the last few yards to get to your family.”

  I thought I would have too. “It’s not that easy.”

  He quit walking and turned to face me. “No, what we’ve done to get here wasn’t easy. It was damn hard, but this”—he swung his arm between us and the lodge—”this is the easy part.

  “You’re wrong. This part is really hard.”

  Cole retraced his steps to come stand in front of me. “What’s going on, Tess?”

  “What if...” I shook my head. I couldn’t finish.

  “What if what? We’ve already been over this. If they’re there, we’ll celebrate. If they’re not, we’ll figure out where they went. Standing here isn’t going to change anything.”

  “Maybe not, but for right now, standing here keeps them alive, inside, waiting for me.” I bit my lip to stop it from quivering. Living in the unknown was painful, but facing certainty head-on might kill me. They could be dead in there.

  He came closer and placed his hand on my forearm. “You and I both know whatever happened to your friend—what’s his name, Dylan, was it?—doesn’t mean anything. His sickness was a fluke. I’m fine. You’re fine. You’re dad and brother are probably fine, too. Shouldn’t we go find out?”

  I could’ve pulled off my hat and shown him what was going on. I could’ve told him no, Dylan wasn’t a fluke, but I didn’t. That would mean admitting something was wrong with me, and I wasn’t ready.

  What could he do about it anyway?

  A sunburned arm and frozen limbs were one thing; Dylan’s type of illness couldn’t be mended—not by mortal, angel, or alien, whatever he happened to be. This was beyond fixable.

  “Tess.” He reached out and took my hand, shaking me from my thoughts. “You can’t avoid this. Whatever we find in there is going to be the same today, tomorrow, and the day after that.”

  I weaved my fingers between his and held on tight. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  It seemed surreal to stand in the middle of the floor, looking up at the massive chandelier created from dozens of elk antlers. The first time I saw it, I cried. I had to have been six or seven at the time, and thought someone had hurt a lot of poor animals simply to make a complicated light fixture.

  Dad had knelt next to me, wiped my tears, and explained how each antler had been collected through elk shedding. He promised no animals were hurt; he pinky-swore. From that point on, every time we visited the lodge, I’d stand below it and stare. It fascinated me, because I couldn’t understand how an animal could grow something so magnificent only to have it fall off later. It didn’t seem right.

  When lit, the chandelier bounced light across the walls in scattered patterns, but now, in the darkened dirty foyer, the hanging relic only gathered dust. There was nothing special about it anymore.

  The river-rock fireplace had the same feel. With a fire roaring in its monstrous cavern, the entire hall glowed in oranges and yellows, its warmth like a comforter. Without the dancing flames, it became hollow and depressing. An inch of undisturbed dirt lay across the cushions of the leather couches, with their gold decorative studs along the edges. The smell of mildew and faded smoke rimmed my nostrils.

  Outside the A-framed windows, the ski-lift remained still. Only a few chairs, clinging to the cables above, rocked when the wind moved them—eerie and ghostlike. Leaves and pine needles gathered in the corners and along edges of the once majestic room.

  For the most part, I kept my eyes on the dead chandelier. I couldn’t look anywhere else.

  Cole’s footsteps resounded along the second-story balcony as he ran from one room to another, flinging open the guest bedroom doors. I’d flinch when each door smacked the wall—the boom painful to my ears—and Callie meowed in response from her tethered place at the bar.

  He searched the lodge because I couldn’t.

  Knowing we were all alone grounded me to that one spot in the middle of the foyer, numbing me to everything else. I had expected to find the lodge empty, but I wasn’t prepared for it.

  “They’re not here.” Cole, panting, stood at the top of the winding stairs and looked down at me. “There’re no bodies.”

  I didn’t answer. Of course, I was grateful to hear their bodies weren’t lying on beds upstairs, but they may as well have been.

  Alone was still alone.

  Dad had left; he’d never come back, and worse than either of those things: he hadn’t waited for me either. He’d written me off, cut his ties, and left me behind.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” He leaned against the
railing. “And you need to stop it.”

  He couldn’t possibly imagine what I was thinking. I turned in a slow circle, still staring at the chandelier that used to bring me so much joy.

  “Your dad loves you, Tess. Don’t doubt it. Whatever reason he has for not being here must have been a good one.”

  I’m sure it was.

  “We’ll find him and we’ll find your brother.”

  No, we wouldn’t. I continued to turn around and around.

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, remember?”

  I stopped moving, undid the leather strap from my wrist, and flung it above me. The bracelet snagged on the sharp point of an antler and dangled from the tip, too high to reach.

  Stupid bracelet. Stupid memories. Stupid expectations.

  My will was broken. I was broken.

  Cole crossed the room and came to my side, staring up at the discarded bracelet. “Remind me never to give you a gift again.”

  The moment it had left my fingers, I regretted it. He didn’t deserve that, especially since he wasn’t the target of my anger, but I couldn’t do anything about it now. “We should go.” I didn’t know where to exactly, back to the hanger maybe, but I knew we needed to leave. I couldn’t stay any longer. No point.

  I started toward Callie, but Cole grabbed my hand and drew me back. “What’s that?” He pointed above us. “Right there. Do you see it?”

  He wasn’t pointing at the bracelet hanging from the outside edge, but to the middle of the tangled antlers. He grabbed my shoulders and twisted me so I could see what he was seeing.

  A dingy white sock.

  It blended in with the whiteness and drooped over several sharp points. Unless we stood directly below it, like we were now, we would never have seen it.

  “Just a second.” He left me standing there and took off across the room then threw open the glass doors to the pool hall and disappeared from view. A few seconds later he returned carrying three pool cues. “There’s a roll of duct tape in the front pocket of my bag. Go grab it for me, will you?”

  I did as he asked, bringing the silver roll of tape back to him where he’d stretched out the pool sticks on the floor in a long line. “It’s a sock, Cole.”