“When was the first time you saw another person naked in a sexual context? Just curious.”
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“Where are we going?”
“Are you sure this is a road?”
“Are we lost? And is it my fault?”
“Wow, this is a pretty steep downhill!”
“Wow, we’re going pretty fast!”
“Tree! Fuck. TREE!”
Except I say that last one out loud, because: TREE. We slide to an abrupt halt about half an inch in front of a huge oak tree, all the stuff in the back of the truck sliding and slamming around with some ugly metal-on-metal screeches.
Then there’s a long moment of complete, utter silence, the only movement the snow falling outside and a tree-shaped air freshener swinging from the rear-view mirror. I reach out and stop it.
“Sorry,” Gideon says after a long, tense silence. We’re so close to the tree that only the sides are lit by the headlights, the center of the tree darker, then nothing else but the glow of the snow beyond. “You okay?”
“Yep,” I tell him. My voice is about an octave too high, and I’m probably going to have a seatbelt bruise tomorrow, but I’ll live. At least I’ve stopped shaking with cold, thanks to the heat and the sleeping bag and my several layers. “I’m buckled in. You okay?”
“Fine,” he says, and lets out a long, shaky breath. His face doesn’t change as he shifts into reverse, drapes his hand over the back of my seat, looks through the rear window, and revs the engine.
We don’t move.
Actually, that’s not accurate. The truck rocks back and forth a little, like it’s trying very hard. Gideon frowns. The engine gets louder. Nothing happens, but I’m sure it’ll just take another second, any second now the tires will find some traction and we’ll start moving and get around this tree and then we’ll be on our way.
Nope.
Gideon is perfectly silent, face blank, as he checks the gearshift, putting the truck into neutral and then back into reverse, then looks at his feet on the pedals as though they might somehow be the problem.
He tries it again. It doesn’t work again, and now I’m starting to full-blown panic, sweating a little, my hands in fists in my lap because we’re stuck in a vehicle in a blizzard and this is very much all my fault for chaining myself to a tree. Who even does that? What is this, 1972? I couldn’t make a viral video or something?
“Here, I can get out,” I offer, hand on my seatbelt. “And.”
And what? Push? Gideon just grunts, easing off the gas, letting the truck rock back, and then hitting it pretty hard.
“Maybe it’ll be easier if the truck’s lighter,” I say, and Gideon says nothing, fully focused on reversing this truck. The next time it rocks forward, it bumps into the tree and we both jump a little.
“Fuck,” he mutters, then heaves a deep breath and jerks the gearshift into park so hard I think I hear something crunch. “Stay there,” he says, and gets out of the truck.
CHAPTER THREE
GIDEON
“I can’t believe you don’t have snow chains,” Andi says, and I swear all the hairs on the back of my neck rise at the sentence. “You have bolt cutters but no snow chains?”
She doesn’t even say it like it’s an accusation, just a conversation. As though we are having a regular conversation here, in the dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, next to a truck that shows no sign of moving any time soon.
“There are supposed to be snow chains,” I explain, crouching down again. Of course, Andi didn’t stay in the truck like I told her to. Of course, she’s been flitting around, hiking boots crunching the snow, for the last forty-five minutes. She has, at last count, offered twenty-two suggestions and offered her help no fewer than thirty-one times, and I swear all I want in the world is sixty seconds of silence to think and also contemplate the many mistakes that led me to this point.
I get about three seconds. I use it to be glad she’s got appropriate cold-weather gear on, at least, and that she’s stomping around and keeping her body temperature up.
“You should have an inventory checklist,” Andi says, on her tiptoes, peering over the side of the truck as though maybe snow chains have magically appeared in the back. Her strawberry blonde hair is in a braid that slithers over one shoulder. For half a second I think of how it felt on my fingertips, back in the truck. “So that when you—”
“Andi,” I snap, and it comes out more forcefully than I mean for it to. She stops mid-sentence, and then we stare at each other for a moment, her blue eyes wide in her round face, cheeks mottled pink from the cold. Fuck.
“Right, you probably thought of that already,” she says without a hiccup in her cheerfulness.
I clear my throat into the deep silence of snowfall in a winter forest. “Yes,” I say.
She’s silent for another moment before turning back to the truck like nothing happened, and now I’m annoyed and guilty.
“You’ve got some tie-down straps in here,” she says, telling me something else I already know. “Maybe we could wrap one around that tree back there and somehow use it to help pull the truck out?”
I don’t answer right away. Instead, I take a few moments to shove at the branches we’ve wedged beneath the tire—which are not doing shit for traction—and keep my mouth shut so I don’t say something I don’t mean. Even though it’s her fault that I’m here, in a blizzard, fruitlessly trying to get my truck moving again. Even though she’s the one who chained herself to a tree without checking the weather. Even though a little bit of simple forethought or common sense would have prevented all this and I could be comfortable in the cabin right now, reading The Murderbot Diaries and drinking chamomile in front of the fire, which is what I fucking deserve.
It’s been an hour and a half at most, and we’re somehow back into our childhood patterns: Andi sets out on an adventure, and I follow her. As a kid, I must have followed Andi through half the forested land in Burnley County just because she said it would be fun. She was almost always right. I can’t think about this now.
“That won’t work,” I finally tell her without looking up.
I doubt anything short of an act of God will work; I went into a skid that got worse when I hit the brakes to avoid the tree, and now the truck is facing slightly downhill, its front bumper gently resting against a huge oak tree. Turns out all-wheel drive doesn’t mean shit when you’re on a barely-maintained fire road in the middle of a blizzard and you hit a patch of iced-over mud.
“They’ve got those ratchets with the teeth that catch when you pull them the right way,” she says, as if this is something new and exciting and not a fact I’ve known for almost my entire life. “So, if you can get the truck to move a little maybe we could get the straps to tighten and—”
“It’s not going to work,” I say, standing.
“It might.”
“No,” I tell her, very calmly brushing snow from my gloves. “It won’t.”
She exhales hard, breath fogging in the cone of light her headlamp casts. “It’s worth a try,” she says. “Do you have a better idea? Otherwise, we’re just—stuck.”