Girl from Nowhere

by Tiffany Rosenhan

  Stepping off the board, he glances down the canyon toward Waterford before bringing his eyes back to mine.

  My impulse to be afraid is overshadowed by the peculiar sensation occurring in my stomach when his eyes roam over me. I try to avoid his gaze, but with nowhere else to look, my eyes return to his brooding face.

  “What are you doing up here?” Aksel asks.

  “Running.”

  His eyes smolder with agitation and accusation. “Running—in the steepest canyon in Waterford—in the middle of a snowstorm?”

  I gesture at the dusting of flakes. “This is hardly a snowstorm.”

  “It will be,” Aksel corrects me. “No one can see you running in the daylight, let alone when it’s snowing.” His eyes narrow. “You do know where you are, right?”

  “Eagle Pass,” I say.

  Aksel closes the distance between us. He is so close I can see flecks of turquoise in his otherwise green eyes. He looks both dismayed and bewildered.

  “What are you doing here?” he repeats in a quiet, determined voice.

  “Running,” I restate slowly, as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “I mean, in Waterford.”

  “I live here now. And you won’t have to keep trying so hard to avoid me because I doubt I’ll be here long!”

  Is it that obvious I don’t belong in Waterford? Don’t fit in?

  Flustered, I bend down to tighten the frozen laces on my shoes, which have hardened into icy straws. When I stand, Aksel hasn’t moved; his eyes remain trained on me.

  His stony gaze is unreadable, yet that same familiarity ripples through me again.

  I’m certain of it now. Aksel is hiding something.

  Although I was warm while running, my jacket is damp from snow and sweat. Standing still, the cold creeps into my limbs.

  Averting my eyes from his face, I look down the steep canyon. Thick snowfall has decreased visibility; I can barely see the shimmering lights of Waterford sparkling in the V between the mountains.

  Aksel doesn’t relax his stiff posture. If anything, he seems more tense, watching me uneasily, as if I somehow make him nervous.

  My stomach remains knotted in a confused mess. Why did I run up Eagle Pass?

  What exactly did I intend to do? See his house? See him?

  Trying to stop the blush rising to my cheeks, I turn away from Aksel’s antagonistic stare. “I should get home.”

  Wind gusts sweep through the canyon, chilling my bare legs.

  “I’ll drive you,” he says abruptly, nodding toward the Defender. “It’s cold and getting dark. This road becomes a sheet of ice in these storms.”

  The urgency in his voice unsettles me. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, Aksel resembles a bronze statue, towering above me.

  Before I can respond, the quiet snowfall becomes a soft rumbling.

  Aksel swivels his head toward the steep rock wall of granite, watching it quizzically. Then his face darkens.

  The faint rumbling swells, echoing through the canyon in cracked groans.

  I step closer to him. “What is—”

  Suddenly, Aksel’s hand fastens around mine. Shocked, I look at him.

  “IN—NOW!” he commands.

  Instinctively, I obey.

  I run to the Defender. Apparently, I’m not fast enough because Aksel slips his arm around my waist and nearly throws me into the passenger seat.

  “Cover your head,” Aksel warns.

  I wrap my forearms across my head. The rumble magnifies.

  Aksel flips the ignition and shifts the Defender into first.

  The jagged canyon wall hurls toward us as Aksel juts his arm before me like a protective steel pipe and rams the Defender into the mountainside.

  CHAPTER 15

  Stars erupt across my vision. My forehead pounds.

  I can smell pine and leather. Someone is shaking me gently.

  Disoriented, I open my eyes. I remember a thud … a deafening rumble … his arm across my chest … I lay my head back. Aksel is shaking me. “Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” I murmur. “You?”

  “Yeah,” he answers, sounding relieved.

  I blink, adjusting my eyes. It is dark except for the piercing beam of a flashlight in Aksel’s hand. In the artificial light, I observe the Defender’s interior: leather seats and a grooved rubber floor are scattered with skis, boots, and miscellaneous alpine wilderness equipment.

  To my right, the window is intact, but a hairline fracture bisects the glass; centimeters away is granite. To my left, snow is packed against Aksel’s window. The windshield, the rear window—white.

  I stare up through the sunroof, relieved to see it isn’t covered in snow too.

  Fuzzy noise fills the car. Aksel checks the stations on a small CB radio cradled in his palm. Nothing but static.

  The right side of my forehead is tender. It stings when I touch it. Wincing under my breath, I look down at my wet fingertips. Seriously?

  “You’re bleeding,” Aksel says sharply, looking over at me. “Let me see.”

  “It’s a scrape,” I object, wiping my fingertips on my shorts.

  Aksel sets aside the radio, extends his forearm across my lap, and opens the glove compartment. With his right sleeve pushed up, I can see his arm, hard and strong. It hovers above my leg, inches from my bare thigh.

  He takes out a metal case with a red cross on it and puts it in his lap. Leaning forward he snaps the glove compartment shut; his forearm brushes against my skin, and I suck in sharply.

  “If you’ll turn toward me, I can check it out.” His voice is composed, courteous. Reluctantly, I face him. Up close, I can see every detail of his face: his chiseled bone structure, his clear skin, flushing in the cold.

  Readjusting the flashlight, Aksel touches his finger gingerly to my forehead. His eyelashes flicker over his crystalline eyes as he inspects the cut.

  “A nice gash to replace your bruise.” He glances at my thigh where only a faded mustard residue remains. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches,” he assures me in a deep voice.

  “You can tell?”

  “I can guess”—he pauses—“I watched my dad stitch up half my friends on our kitchen counter.”

  “What kind of doctor is he?”

  “Neurosurgeon,” he says softly.

  I try to take normal breaths. However, with Aksel’s hand on my skin, every nerve in my face is kindled.

  My father has always taught me to control my heart rate—lower my beats per minute, breathe in slowly, hold, exhale—but lowering my heart rate while sitting alone in a car with Aksel Fredricksen is like trying to snorkel in a typhoon.

  Aksel digs into the first aid kit and removes a cloth, bandage, alcohol swabs, and disinfectant cream. When he looks back at me, I blush all over again.

  “If you keep still, I’ll clean it. It might sting.” His voice is sultry in the confined space.

  Now, Aksel’s hand is on my face again, checking the wound; the other is reaching onto the floor of the passenger seat to grab a water bottle. His arm brushes my leg again. My heart skips a beat. Was that intentional? No, of course not. Aksel is like a military medic in the field—all business.

  “Will I have a scar?” I ask.

  “Do you want a scar?”

  “Undecided.”

  He eyes my blond braid draping over my shoulder. “If you end up with one, you’ll resemble a Viking warrior.”

  “Shieldmaiden,” I say.

  “Next Halloween,” he says with a slight smile. His teeth are even and straight; when the corners of his flawless lips turn upward, my stomach does a little flip. “But no,” he murmurs, looking closely, “I don’t think you’ll have a scar.”

  He unscrews the lid to the water bottle and pours a few drops onto the cloth.

  “So … how exactly are we wedged underneath Eagle Peak?” I ask, attempting to distract myself from the feeling of Aksel’s fingers on my face.

  He brushes hair off my t
emple, sending tingles down the side of my cheek.

  “Avalanches are unpredictable,” he says in a steady, restrained voice, as if he doesn’t want to frighten me. He opens the cellophane around the bandage with a PenBlade.

  “We didn’t have time to drive away, because you can never tell how wide they are, and those woods descend into a sheer ravine two hundred feet down. I figured the best option was to get the Defender under Eagle Peak”—he points upward, toward a tapered shaft of grayish light—“and hope the avalanche would pass over us.”

  Wetting the cloth, he presses it against my face. His motion is smooth and gentle and only takes a second, then he wipes my skin with the alcohol swab.

  I eye the avalanche surrounding us like we’re a tiny village in a massive fjord.

  “And this snowpack is stable?” I continue, keeping my breath steady.

  “Precarious,” he surmises, “but stable. Yes.”

  Tossing the swab into a small plastic bag, he takes the cream and squeezes a dollop onto his finger, spreading it on my temple. I find myself watching his lips more than his eyes.

  “How long will we be here?” I ask. “Can we call someone—a tow truck? Your parents? My parents?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Aksel pulls out an iPhone. “You can try, but there’s no coverage in this section of the canyon.”

  I glance at it. Zero bars. Of course.

  “The snowpack should hold as long as the wind doesn’t shift,” Aksel explains casually. “Our best option is to ride it out until the plow comes through in a few hours.”

  “Hours?” I exclaim. “Won’t anyone else drive up here beforehand?”

  Aksel averts his eyes, focusing on the medical kit.

  “Unlikely,” he says under his breath.

  “Don’t you live up here? It can’t be more than a few kilometers. Can’t we walk—”

  “In a blizzard?” He looks at me incredulously.

  I didn’t leave a note—my parents have no idea where I am.

  I reach my arms to the sunroof and slide it open; loose snow falls onto the console.

  “What are you doing?” Aksel’s emerald eyes spark.

  “Leaving before the storm gets worse,” I answer. “I can hear it coming. I have twenty minutes. I’ll sprint—”

  He pushes the sunroof closed with one hand. “You can’t just leave.”

  “My parents don’t know where I am!” I protest. “I have to get home!”

  I can’t do this to them …

  They’ll think …

  Rising to my knees, I move to open the sunroof a second time; however, two strong hands grip my waist, pull me down, and swiftly maneuver me into my seat. Aksel’s hand trails up my waist around my back—his touch sends an electric current up my spine.

  He is leaning over the console with his arm in front of my stomach, blocking me.

  Not threateningly—protectively.

  “It’s a blizzard, Sophia,” he implores. “Frostbite. Disorientation—”

  “I know!” I exhale angrily. “I know. But I can’t be stuck here all night!”

  My heart thumps wildly in my chest.

  Aksel is smart and skilled—confident—out here in the wilderness. So am I.

  We’re in a precarious shelter, and my panic is concerning him. I have to calm down.

  Aksel eyes me warily. “I know it may not seem like it, but we are safe here. We’ll wait out the storm. Then the plow will arrive and you can go home.”

  Slumping into my seat, I cross my arms, irritated.

  “Sophia, you’re still bleeding,” he says. “Can I finish?”

  Embarrassed, I look over at him and nod.

  Aksel tears off a piece of gauze, opens the bandage, and applies it to the wound. A few minutes later, he gathers the empty packages and soiled cloth and places them behind his seat.

  I touch my forehead, clean and dry around the bandage.

  Covered in snow on three sides, and with a rock wall on the fourth, I’m somehow not too cold. Despite the lack of heat, at least the frigid wind is blocked—igloo physics, my father would call it.

  Aksel doesn’t stop moving. Tucking the radio into his pocket, he now opens the sunroof.

  I sit upright. “I’m coming with you—”

  “I’ll be right back,” Aksel says calmly. “I’m just checking things out.”

  For a moment, his intense green eyes linger on mine, but then he looks away and hoists himself through the sunroof.

  To my astonishment, he begins scaling the rock wall, using the tiny nooks and crevices in the stone to secure himself to the granite.

  Within minutes, he’s free soloed to a triangular declivity halfway up Eagle Peak. Here he looks around, apparently trying to get a read on our predicament.

  If someone drives up Eagle Pass how will they know we are here?

  I step into the back seat. Rummaging around through the outdoor gear—a Pendleton blanket, a duffel bag with some clothes, swim fins—I spot a backcountry mountaineering probe and a hunting vest.

  Reaching to the floor beneath the driver’s seat, I grab the PenBlade from the medical kit. I slice the bottom off the vest, creating one long strip of fluorescent orange. I hook the strip onto the probe and knot it.

  I go up through the sunroof in time to see Aksel descend the wall lithely.

  Soon enough, he is back on the roof.

  Shaking snow from his tousled hair, he pulls the collar of his sweater taut around his neck and blows into his hands. His breath, heavier now, causes his defined chest to heave in and out under his sweater.

  “Are we going to climb out?” I ask.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to. That upper wall is ten meters of ice.”

  “But it’s a climbing wall, right?” I point at the anchors drilled deep into the granite.

  He looks at me, perplexed. “In summer.”

  “You just climbed it,” I counter.

  “The bottom half. And I’ve been climbing Eagle Peak since I was ten.”

  “I climb,” I scoff. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It’s a vicious storm; there isn’t another shelter even if you can climb out. Actually, I’m more worried about the plow driving straight into us.”

  I switch the probe to my right hand and double-check the knot.

  “Me too,” I say. Then I launch the probe as high as I can—up and over the snowpack—like a javelin. I imagine that if it landed properly on the other side, it resembles a gravestone.

  And if it didn’t? At least I tried.

  When I look back at Aksel, his mouth curls upward in a way that makes me feel slightly dizzy.

  “Do you have any spare clothes?” I ask, knowing the answer. “I need to change.”

  Aksel looks startled. “Sorry?”

  Standing on the roof, I am very aware of how cold I am. The snow clinging to my clothes has melted, and although my shorts are still dry, my jacket is not. My feet are numb inside my frozen shoes, and even with my mittens, my fingers resemble purple icicles.

  “Hypothermia,” I explain. “I need dry—”

  “You’re wet?” Aksel looks at my damp jacket, then scans my bare, goose-bump-covered legs from my thighs to my ankles. “Why didn’t you ask earlier?”

  We swing down through the roof and drop onto our seats.

  Without waiting for an answer, Aksel climbs into the back seat and hands me the thick wool blanket. It is a red tartan pattern and smells of cedar and campfire smoke. After rifling through his duffel, he assembles a pile of clothes. Then he pulls off his sweater.

  He is wearing a waffle knit Henley underneath it, and I see a T-shirt underneath that.

  As he hands over the pile, his fingers graze mine, igniting flames across my skin.

  “I’ll wait up top,” he says brusquely, avoiding eye contact.

  Alone in the Defender I unzip my jacket with stiff fingers and shimmy out of it. I pull on the undershirt Aksel gave me, and his sweater. It is warm f
rom his body heat and soothing to my skin. Plus, it smells like him: pine and leather and sandalwood.

  Above me, Aksel paces the roof. I ease my numb feet out of my shoes, peel off my wet socks, and slide my feet into his thick wool ski socks.

  I flip the rearview mirror down. Attempting to fix my hair, I run my fingers through my braid, but it’s so tangled I simply brush it back from my face and readjust my headband over my ears.

  Opening the sunroof, I say, “I’m done.” My voice comes out squeaky and high-pitched. I sit back and wait for Aksel to hop down.

  “Warmer now?” Aksel asks, checking out my new attire.

  My skin burns under his gaze. “Much,” I answer. “Thank you.”

  Aksel drums the steering wheel with his fingers, pausing intermittently to check the old radio. Still nothing but static. Scowling, he throws it back onto the dashboard.

  A gauzy shaft of light filters down on us from above, suffusing a dim glow over this temporary cavern.

  Trying to keep my eyes from darting back to Aksel every few seconds, I unfold my hands from behind my knees and stretch them out, pretending to be interested in the shape of my knuckles.

  “In the forest …,” Aksel says abruptly, propping his knee against the wheel. He leans against the window. “With that grizzly, you seemed to”—he pauses, as if deliberating—“know quite a bit about guns. Why?”

  I tug on the sleeves of the sweater. His sweater.

  “I know a little.” Focusing on his eyes, I shrug. “I have a Belgian FN 5-7. It saved my life.”

  “You’ve been attacked by a grizzly before?” Aksel’s voice catches between caution and concern.

  I drag my forefinger along the seam of my shorts. Allow them to come, I hear my mother’s voice in my head. But I still fight it—If you let one in, you let them all.

  “We were living in Kenya.” I exhale. “On the border, near Sudan. A perk of school in East Africa—you go on game rides for field trips. This one time, we were pretty far into the reserve. I was watching an antelope herd through my binoculars when I saw an army truck rumbling toward us through the savanna. I told our guide, Katu, who looked through his own binoculars. Immediately, he ordered our driver off the road into the dry brush. Our driver skidded into a ditch. Nearly rolling, he drove back up the bank as the truck swerved ahead, blockading our route. We had to stop.