“I’m no medic,” he said. “But that will at least improve your odds.”
Emily and Aidan sat on the lip of the fuselage, and Emily shuffled up close to the little boy, wrapped her arm around him, held him close. For warmth.
“Will someone find us?” Aidan asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. She squeezed him tight. “I don’t know.”
She was watching the fire: the shifting colors of it; the constant ribboning movement. Vertical liquid, leaping up from the branches but of them too, using them up—their hot ghosts escaping into the air. There was something unnatural and natural about it at the same time. The way the locker room had gone up, back at her school: as if it had wanted to be turned to black powder, had just been waiting for the fire to start, so it could return to its purest state.
She kept watching the flames. Burning through the wood, turning it to ash, doing what it wanted, what it was made for.
She envied it.
She hadn’t danced a single time since they’d moved. Like a protest, only she didn’t know whose benefit it was meant to be for. It wasn’t like her mom noticed.
The fire mesmerized her. Always Emily kept half an eye on Bob, though. He seemed harmless enough—had barely glanced at her, his face impassive. But she was wary. He was a man, after all. And not seeing anything didn’t guarantee safety. There were blank white landscapes, sometimes, in which wolves invisibly moved.
When the fire had burned down a little, Bob took the thin sheet of metal he’d found, and bent it into a rough semblance of a pan. Then he piled snow on it and pushed it—with a branch—into the embers at the side of the fire. The snow melted quickly, and he hooked out the rough cookware and poured the water into empty cans for them to drink.
Emily handed one to Aidan first.
“Where are we?” she asked, when they were done drinking.
The pilot glanced at the mountains all around them. They were near the top of one; some kind of glacier above them, and below them a sloping expanse of forest. “Somewhere in the Wrangell–St. Elias National Park,” he said. “I was heading to Anchorage.”
“I know,” said Emily.
He narrowed his eyes. “You wanted to get to Anchorage?”
“Sure.”
“Running away from home?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Because of the school thing?”
“Sure,” she said again. It wasn’t that. But how could she explain about Aidan? Though, she had to admit, even if she hadn’t had to leave, she’d have wanted to. Not that she could explain that, either. How the town was like Gilmore Girls without the jokes. Like Lost without the mystery. No Jeremy to talk to, except on WhatsApp. The school was tiny compared to her last. And she had to do cheerleading instead of ballet.
Cheerleading.
Brad.
She closed her eyes and saw flames licking up the locker-room wall, heard the cheers, the noise of the crowd, the wolf whistles; felt Brad’s hand on her ass and—
“You OK, kid?” said Bob, standing over her.
She opened her eyes, blinked. “I’m fine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Seems that fire’s got you in a trance.”
“I’m fine,” she said again. She shifted farther into the plane, away from the fire. Aidan shuffled back with her, and she pulled him in close, trying to share her warmth with him.
Bob went and fetched more blankets for them. He watched as Emily silently wrapped one around Aidan. “Quiet, isn’t he?” he said to Emily.
Emily nodded.
“I want Mom and Dad,” said Aidan, looking up at him. “I want Goober. I can’t sleep without him.”
“Goober?” said Bob.
Emily looked at Aidan for a long beat, then back at the pilot. “His stuffed monkey. He fell out of the plane, I think.”
“Goober keeps the monsters away,” said Aidan.
“Is that right?” said Bob, but his face had relaxed a bit. Like this was more the kind of kid talk he expected. “He’s a tough monkey, huh?”
His tone was friendly but a little stiff—like someone who has nieces or nephews but doesn’t see them that much, Emily thought.
“No,” said Aidan. “But he’s always burping, and the monsters think it smells gross.”
“Oh.” A blink. “OK.”
“Don’t worry, though,” said Aidan. “If they come in the night, I’ll burp at them too.” He patted his tummy. “We had Coke.”
“Uh-huh, we did,” said Bob. He smiled at Emily. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Later, when the pilot was snoring, deep in the cabin by the cockpit, Emily snuggled close to Aidan.
“What was that about Goober?” she said.
“Improvisation,” he said.
“Well…OK. But, like, try to warn me next time.”
“How far is it from here to Anchorage?” he asked.
“Far. Hundreds of miles, probably. And I’m not even sure which way.”
Silence.
“We can’t walk it?”
“No,” she said.
Silence again.
“So we’re lost?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Not yet. I’m going to get you home, I promise.”
CHAPTER 5
WHEN EMILY WOKE, the fire had gone out. She breathed in freezing air; breathed it out as mist. The cold was absolute: like all of winter in one day. It hurt her throat and chest; it put blades in the atmosphere.
She wrapped her blanket around Aidan, who was still sleeping, or seeming to. She got up and pulled on her boots.
“Where are you going?”
Small, sleepy voice. Aidan.
“To fetch wood. Stay here, I won’t be long.”
“Can I come?” he said.
“Won’t you get cold?”
“Not if I’m moving.”
Emily smiled and nodded. She liked having him by her side. She always had. She couldn’t explain it: she’d just loved him, right from the start, the same way she’d loved ballet, from the moment she learned the first positions; he was like dance to her, like freedom. And now that dance was gone, there was only him. His hand fitted into hers like a key into a lock.