by Jeff Ross
“Where?” I demanded. Hope had slid off the snowmobile and unhooked her snowboard. Sam looked up and down the drop again. Then he pointed.
“You can’t do this. You could both be killed,” Sam said.
“We can’t just sit here and wait for someone to find us either,” I said. “And anyway, Bryce could be in serious trouble. Don’t you want to help him?”
Sam shook his head. He was looking at the drop as though it might reach out and grab him.
“Someone needs to stay at the cabin in case Bryce comes back,” he said. He looked sad. As though he wished he was capable of more than he was. Finally he just pointed. “Right there,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Hope asked. She had her backpack over her shoulders, her fluffy pink sleeping bag tied to the top. It made her look a foot taller than she was.
“Yeah. Right there. It’s probably no more than five feet down. Maybe ten. I think.”
“You’re not positive?” She had her board on now. I pulled my snowboard off the back of the snowmobile and put my feet in the bindings.
“As far as I can remember. But it’s been a long time since I went over there.” He looked sad again as he stared at the drop. I had my snowboard strapped on and was beating my hands together trying to get blood pumping through my body.
“Right there?” Hope said again, staring at Sam.
“Like I said, it’s been awhile. But, yeah, I think so.” The spot they were pointing at was about fifteen feet down the hill. It looked like any other spot.
“All right,” Hope said. Then she clapped her pink gloves together, tightened her goggles and leaned forward to get moving. She did one quick turn just past the snowmobiles and then shot straight past the place Sam had pointed out. She did a quick turn, carved along the edge of the drop, cut out and back in, and then disappeared into the wash of white.
It was entirely silent after she disappeared. Then the moaning started up again. It seemed like the mountain had swallowed her. Sam was just staring at the drop—at the empty space Hope had left behind her.
“Do something, Sam!” I said. “She missed the spot.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Sam yelled back.
I climbed up the hill to where Hope had started her run. “We have to go get her.”
Sam shook his head. “She made a choice. I told both of you that you were on your own if you decided to go over that drop.”
“You mean all three of us,” I said. “Right, Dave?”
Dave looked away from me when I spoke to him. He stared at the drop, then up at the sky.
“Dave?” I said.
“I’m not going,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m not going over there. I don’t even like Bryce. I could get killed.”
“You mean you’re intimidated by him, Dave. That’s the word you’re looking for. Intimidated.”
“No, I’m not. He’s a stuck-up rich kid. That’s all.”
I shook my head and clamped my goggles over my eyes.
“Why should I risk my life for him?” Dave continued.
“Well, I’m going after Hope.”
Sam grabbed my arm. “Where she just went off, Alex, it could be a hundred-foot drop. Four hundred feet. You have no idea.”
I shrugged his hand off.
“What did you tell us before, Sam? Don’t think, just do it and everything will work out fine.” I hopped twice to get the snow off my board, then leaned forward. The sun came out and shone on the snow. It felt good to be here. Good to be alive. I turned and aimed myself at the edge of the drop, hoping the feeling would last.
chapter twelve
I considered what my parents would think if they knew what I was doing. I thought about how they would feel if the drop was four hundred feet and they never saw me again. I thought about how much I loved snowboarding and how much it meant to me and how it was all I ever wanted to do. If I were to fall forever, at least I would fall strapped to my board. But I didn’t have time to think of anything else, because the drop wasn’t any more than five or six feet.
The snow swirled around me as I was in the air, but once I’d landed, it was as clear a day as it had been on the other side.
But different.
The snow was still deep powder, but it seemed lighter. I turned hard back uphill and came to a stop. Looking back at the drop, I could see where the wave of snow came from. There was a long gash in the mountain. In some places, it could have been, as Sam had said, two or three hundred feet down. The gap was never more than ten feet across. In most spots, it was an easy jump. But in others, it really could have been deadly. The wind cut through the drop and pushed straight back up out of it. It was like the wind was riding a half-pipe and just shooting off the lip everywhere it could.
I looked around for Hope but couldn’t see her anywhere. It would be easy enough to find out where she was though. Her trail cut deeply through the snow. I took one last look at the drop and turned back down the hill to follow her trail.
It was more wooded on this side. Hope’s trail moved in and out of the trees. I wondered why she hadn’t waited for me. I hadn’t taken that long to get over the drop. Then I came around the side of a tree and noticed that the single trail had suddenly doubled. The trails weaved in and out of each other, making giant figure eights in the snow. Two snowboard trails. It didn’t make sense. I slowed down and stopped beside a tree. Without the noise of my heavy breathing and the swoosh of snow beneath my board, I was able to hear voices in the distance. It sounded like one person yelling and another responding from farther away. I looked downhill around the edge of the tree. I hefted my backpack tightly onto my back and, going as low as possible, made my way down through the trees.
The two trails split at the edge of the woods. I looked closely at them. One was long and lean—the other more jumpy. The long, clean turns went to the left. The jumpy trail went straight down into the trees. I guessed that Hope had heard the same voices I had and decided to go into the woods to hide. I ducked down as low as I could and followed the jumpy trail into the woods.
The trail cut off just inside another cluster of trees. I turned hard as I spotted Hope crouched down behind a tree in her pink jacket, pants and tuque.
“That is pretty much the worst outfit you could wear if you’re trying not to be seen. Unless you’re hiding in cotton candy, I suppose,” I said.
“Shhhh,” she replied. I knelt down with my board wedged into the snow behind me.
“What?” I said. “What are we looking at?” Hope pointed through the trees. A cabin, almost exactly the same as the cabin we had been staying in, was perched on a flat bit of ground. I wondered how these things got up here.
“You think he’s in there?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Hey, whose tracks were those you followed down?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see whoever it was.” Her voice shook a little. With all the bravado she’d recently shown, she was still scared.
But then, so was I.
“That was quite the jump, Hope,” I said, in as sincere a voice as possible.
“Whatever.”
“No, I mean it. What made you go off where you did rather than where Sam said you should?”
“I think Sam is in on this,” she said, not taking her eyes off the cabin.
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. Somehow.”
“What makes you think that?” There was a bit of wind now, pushing through the trees, making the forest whistle.
“Where he said to go off the landing was all rock. We might have been all right, but our boards would have been a mess. Likely broken.”
“Then we’d just be left out there? On the side of the mountain?”
“I guess. I think he’s just trying to buy some time. What for, I don’t know.”
“But how did you know where to go off?” I asked.
“I spotted that area yesterday when we were here. I could
see through the snow there. It looked safe enough.”
“Safe enough, eh?”
She shrugged. “So what do we do now?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d tell me that,” I said.
“Could you see anything of the other person who was coming down the hill?”
“Nope.” I ducked my head into my jacket. It was getting colder. And being in the shade of these trees wasn’t helping.
“I heard someone yelling. Did you hear that?”
“Yeah, two voices.”
“Maybe one of them was inside the cabin.”
“So, two guys then. Could you hear what they were saying?” I leaned forward. My legs were killing me from standing around. Snowboard boots are not the most comfortable footwear. Especially when you’ve got your feet jammed in bindings.
“Something about someone calling,” Hope said.
“Calling?”
“Yeah, like on a phone?” Hope said, glancing at me.
“You think they’re phoning his dad about a ransom?”
“Well, duh, of course they are. Why else would they have taken him?” I let her sarcastic tone go. We were going to have to work together here. Not just to get Bryce back, but to get off this mountain alive. I vaguely wondered what my chances of becoming a Backcountry Patroller were now.
“Hope, do you have any idea where we’re going to stay tonight?” She didn’t look at me. “Hope, it is going to get really, really cold out here soon. Where are we going to stay?” She didn’t say anything. “Hope do you have a plan at all?”
“Stop saying my name, Alex.”
“Okay. But do you have a plan?”
“Do you?”
I shook my head. “You’re the one who went flying over the drop! I followed because I figured you had something worked out. If you don’t, you don’t. But we have to do something before it gets dark.”
She stared at the cabin some more but didn’t seem able to say anything. A thought came to me. The cabin here looked a lot like the one we had been staying in. They were likely all the same. Built in some factory somewhere, then air-lifted up here in pieces.
“The cabin has a woodshed,” I said. “I think this cabin is the same as the one we were staying in.”
“Okay.”
“So we can stay in there.”
“Without a woodstove?” Hope replied. “We’ll freeze.”
“I went into the woodshed at the other cabin, and it was warm. The stove is right on the other side. Not like hot or anything, but warm enough. I guess it’s set up that way to dry the wood out before it comes inside.”
“And you want us to sleep in there?”
“Unless you have a better idea, yeah. This way we can get close to the cabin and— you know—look inside. Back at our cabin, when I was in the woodshed, I could hear people talking on the other side of the wall. Maybe we’ll be able to do the same here.”
Hope looked miserable.
“Listen,” I said. “It’s likely our only choice. Even if we started now, we wouldn’t make it to the bottom of the mountain before it gets dark. And when we did, who knows where we’d be. Sam said there’s nothing around here.”
“Sam said,” Hope repeated. “And you trust him?”
“Not any longer. But we’re in the back-country here. It’s not like we’re going to find a ski village down there. I doubt there would even be any houses.” The wind shifted and started blowing up the mountain at us. I unstrapped my boots and sat down on my board. We were in a good enough spot to watch if anyone came or went from the cabin. We couldn’t go anywhere until it was dark. I opened my bag and pulled out an energy bar. I offered another one to Hope. Then we sat and ate and waited for the sun to go down.
chapter thirteen
By the time it was dark enough to move, I was frozen. It’s okay to be out in those kinds of temperatures when you’re boarding. But just sitting around was brutal. The wind had continued to blow all afternoon, sending stinging pellets into our faces.
“We could probably go now,” Hope said. It hadn’t looked like there was anyone inside the cabin all the time we’d been out there. But when darkness fell, a lantern flicked on inside and we could see people moving past the window.
“We could,” I said.
“How?”
“I say we hop up to the top of the tree line and then cut straight down to the cabin. That way we won’t ever be visible through the window. The woodshed should be around the other side.” I stood up, and my legs complained.
Hope had her arms wrapped around her, but she was still shaking.
“It’ll be warm in there. Okay?”
“Okay.” I held a hand out and helped her up.
Going uphill on a snowboard is not the easiest thing in the world. You have a couple of options. Take the board off and walk, which always sucks. Or hop up the hill digging your board in with each motion, which is really tiring. Or kind of grapple your way up on your hands and board edge. We used a combination of hopping and scrambling, and ten minutes later we were high enough to get a straight run at the cabin.
“You ready?” I asked. Hope nodded. I jumped a couple of times and then shot out past the end of the woods. As soon as I was above the cabin, I turned and headed straight at it. I could see the woodshed behind. This was good. I could smell the heavy smoke that was pumping out of the cabin’s chimney. I leaned a little on my heel side to try and slow down. I switched to my toe side and gently turned back uphill as I neared the cabin, never making more than a light swooshing sound. Then I just drifted backward to the door of the woodshed.
Up the hill, I could see Hope making slow turns. She was standing stiff-legged and straight. The moon was up behind her. I could feel the heat from the wood-stove coming through the shed, and my body wanted to simply step inside there and sleep.
Hope began moving down the hill, weaving as she went. The snow was deep enough that she didn’t make that much noise. I had just unbuckled my board and was picking it up to step into the woodshed when Hope caught an edge and went flying off in the wrong direction. I almost yelled at her, but stopped myself just in time. She spun around and then tried to dig in her toe edge, but nothing seemed to be working for her. She shot way out, cut back in and slammed straight into the door of the cabin.
I froze.
“What was that?” someone inside said. There was the sound of scuffling. I looked around the corner of the cabin and saw Hope sprawled out on the ground, struggling under the weight of her backpack. She looked up and saw me. The door to the cabin opened, and she waved at me to hide. I grabbed my board, took two big steps through the snow and opened the door to the woodshed.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice said from the front of the cabin.
“Where is Bryce?” Hope yelled. There was a long pause. I stepped inside the woodshed. It was warm, and light leaked through from the main cabin.
“You’re here to save your little boyfriend, are you?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Hope replied. “What have you done with him?”
There was another pause, then the man’s voice again. “Oh, you’ll see, little girl. Come on, get up.” It sounded like Hope put up a bit of a struggle. The man grunted a couple of times, and Hope screamed. Someone else was called to help, and soon there was silence again.
The woodshed was big enough to move around in, but not much more than that. The wood was piled about two feet from the back wall. I slid my board in behind the pile and sat down beside it. If anyone came, I could get in behind the pile. It smelled damp and heavy. I leaned my head against the wall.
“Yeah, a girl,” I heard someone say. The voice was close. Whoever was speaking must have been putting wood in the stove. “I don’t know. I’ll take the sock out of her mouth and ask her.” There was a muffled response. “Hope. Hahahaha, yeah, her name’s Hope.” I couldn’t hear anyone else speaking, so the man must have been talking on a satellite phone. “I know. I guess we can leave her here.” There was anoth
er long pause. I put my ear to the wall. “Okay. I don’t like it, but I guess we have to do what we have to do.” I heard the door of the woodstove slam shut. Then the man’s voice faded away until I couldn’t hear him at all.
Now what was I supposed to do? If I went crashing into the cabin, I’d be in the same boat as Bryce and Hope. But if I sat out here, who knew what would happen to them. I looked at my watch. It was almost nine o’clock. The sun was down, and the air was crystal clear and thin. I watched my breath form a cloud before me in the flickering light that leaked from the cabin.
Okay, I thought, they can’t possibly be going anywhere until morning. What I need to do is sleep. My job here is to be well rested. Have an active mind. Be able to focus. And in the morning, something will come to me.
I looked at the woodchip-covered ground. Something scurried in the corner. I decided it was worth the risk to get my sleeping bag out. I unrolled it on the floor and was about to climb inside when I had a second thought. Wouldn’t it suck if someone came in here and I was asleep on the floor in plain view? I pushed my pack behind the wood pile and slid my sleeping bag in after it. Then I climbed inside and closed my eyes. This was going to be one of the worst nights of my life.
chapter fourteen
I hardly slept that night, though I guess I must have drifted off eventually. I was awakened by a log falling on my legs. I almost yelled. Then I remembered where I was.
Through the woodpile, I could see a tall man in a North Face jacket bundling logs into his bent arm. A cigarette jutted out from one side of his mouth, and he was squinting against the smoke. He dropped the logs, swore and bent over to pick them up. If he had looked forward rather than down, he likely would have seen me. I didn’t move. I tried not to breathe. I held my head still and stared at the man, willing him to simply walk out the door and into the storm. He got three logs up into his arms, then dropped one of them. He cursed and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. I couldn’t tell how heavy he was, because his jacket and snow pants were large and puffy, but he seemed huge. He puffed on his cigarette a couple of times, looking around the small space as though there might be something of interest there. Then he flicked the spent cigarette out into the snow, bundled the logs up into his arms again and kicked the door open. A terrible wind was blowing. Snow was whipping up into the air and then curling and rolling away. The man leaned into the wind as he kicked the door closed.