Chapter Five

A shadow fell over me. At least, if not a shadow, a form blocking some of the light coming in from outside. I looked up. Then, because I really couldn't see through the gathered condensation, rolled my window down.

Orion did not look thrilled. His expression was somewhere in between Get out of my house and We can try pushing : dire and about 93 percent hopeless. "No dice. The phones are down. Happens a lot when it snows."

I just stared at him. "What the hell do you mean, it ‘happens a lot'? Why doesn't someone stop it from happening a lot?"

"You're probably the first person to ever think about that. Maybe you can put a comment in a box somewhere." He gestured around. "Why do you think? No one from the cities gives a fuck what happens up here until it personally inconveniences them. The rest of the time, we're just getting by with limited resources and spotty services. Welcome to rural America, Desmond ."

"It's Des," I muttered.

"You're gonna have to come inside, I guess," he said after a long pause.

I shook my head. "You told me to get out of your house."

He grimaced. "I detest you, yes, but that's not the same as wanting you to freeze to death in my front yard. But whatever, suit yourself."

He trudged away again.

I rolled up the window.

And sat there.

The snow kept falling. April. April! In California! It had been in the midsixties all week and was supposed to hit seventy-two over the weekend! How could I currently be stuck in the freaking snow? I stole a peek at the cabin. Since rolling the window down had knocked the snow off—some of it inside the car—I could see a little better.

If only he hadn't known who I was. How cozy could this be right now? Would we even have tried getting the car out that hard? Or would we have just surrendered to a little bit of Oh no, looks like you're not going anywhere tonight, cowboy ?

I slumped and imagined taking aim at past-me's balls again. See how badly you screwed this up for us?

Orion detested me. I couldn't remember anyone ever telling me that before. You think "hate" is strong, but you could hate the guy who cut you off in traffic, or the politician who said racist stuff at a rally somewhere. You could hate plenty of people. Being "detested" felt more intensely personal for some reason. Rarity leading to lack of linguistic inoculation, maybe?

Or maybe it was just the way he'd said it. Almost casually. Like all the time Orion Broderick thought to himself, I DETEST that asshole Desmond Cleary . It was just a fact of his life, as unassailable as the color of the sky.

Which was now a dull gray, bleeding snowflakes. Or was it weeping?

No. No, that was me. Only a little. I got myself together and took stock. So I wasn't strong. I could walk, couldn't I? People walked for way longer in the snow than ten miles. (Or fifteen, or twenty ... funny how those numbers hadn't seemed that important when I was driving them in a car.) Say it was twenty miles. Like. That was still less than a marathon, right? Sure, they didn't run marathons in the snow, but it wasn't going to kill me. Plus, I'd be able to get medical care on the other side.

I briefly imagined snowmanning the last stretch of Route 4 and stopping in at the gas station to ask where the nearest emergency room was. Had I seen a hospital? Did Bakers Mine even have a hospital? They'd have search and rescue, probably, with first aid training. Firefighters had first aid training, right? They must have a fire station, surely.

Whatever, all that would come later. The point was: people survived walking around in the snow all the time. People had been surviving in snow for hundreds, thousands of years, without a well-lit ER on the other side. And literally losing a couple of toes might be better than facing Orion and asking for his help. After I'd crashed my car into his garage. And blocked in his truck. And, oh yeah, destroyed his entire life.

Not an option. On any level. Dear Reality, please accept my pinky toes as sacrifices. That ought to be enough. Plus, did it even hurt? Like, by the time your toes really like froze, weren't they numb? I wasn't sure of the mechanics, but that sounded right. It was probably only fifteen miles back to town. That was way less than a marathon. I could do this. I was fit enough. Maybe not weight lifter strong, but I could rock some cardio.

Like a mountain man. A modern mountain man. Well, okay, an aspiring mountain man. In the snow. In rainbow Converse. Focus on the facts, Cleary: If you stick to the road, you're not gonna end up a cautionary tale on one of those podcasts that covers natural disasters and disappearances. By this time tomorrow, you'll be sitting in your apartment watching Schitt's Creek and getting really fucking stoned.

It was a lovely picture. And the only thing standing between me and it was fifteenish miles of snowstorm, potentially some emergency frostbite treatment, and a few hundred miles of highway. I'd have to rent a car for it. No big deal. I could figure out how to get my own car home later.

I finally killed the engine, shoved the keys in my pockets, and gathered up my bag, which I layered under my hoodie, and the scarf I'd brought because it was cute, not because I thought I'd need it. I rummaged in the back seat a little, and ow, again, my neck was starting to ache. An extra pair of dirty gym socks, a beanie I'd bought when I thought I was going to take up running last fall, which had been used once and then tossed in the back of the car into the graveyard of things I never think about, and oh, hey, a cheese-and-crackers packet.

It was a lot like when you start a survival video game and you grab every random thing you can. I drew the line at a plastic straw (what would I possibly use a plastic straw for?) and a crumpled Taco Bell napkin. Those just turn to mush anyway.

How could there be so much crap in my car, and none of it looked all that useful? Then again, it's not like I planned to ever be in the snow. I did find half a pair of flip-flops, but that'd be even worse than my Converse.

At the last second I also found—ta-da!—a towel. A thin on sale at the end of summer towel, but something was better than nothing. I wrapped it around my upper body like a blanket and opened the car door.

"Here we go," I mumbled aloud. The noise the door made as it closed behind me was like a textbook falling out of a second-story window onto cement: thud . I started walking.

At first it wasn't so bad. It was awful, yes, my toes were cold and I had to keep rewrapping the towel to shield my fingers, but it was also beautiful and majestic and everything sounded different, muffled, but also I could hear clumps of snow falling off branches, and the wind blowing up through the trees, starting noticeably far away, then sweeping toward me like a train gathering speed.

Awful-but-captivating was actually how I usually felt about nature, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. A super-long walk in nonideal weather conditions, but in a few hours, it'd be over. In a few weeks I'd be bragging about it to my—what had Orion called me?—"flatlander" friends. Or, okay, I didn't have any of those, flatlander or otherwise, but I could brag about it to the muscle bears at the gym. So now I lift weights and stuff, you know—it was bad at the time, but in retrospect it really helped me get my life together .

Plus, Vix definitely couldn't fire me if I'd sacrificed a toe or two for my job.

Being on the driveway beneath the canopy of trees was better in some ways, namely that I didn't have to walk through the actual snow, but it was also super slippery. A few times I barely caught myself before falling flat on my butt, my towel-wrap kept coming loose while I flailed, and then I misjudged the edge of the road and went down hard . My left arm collapsed under me, and I genuinely cried out.

It didn't echo. Except inside my head, where the out-loud pain-scream I'd managed to bite off kept going.

And going.

It wasn't bleeding, and no bones were jutting out at awkward angles. Nothing so dramatic. It just hurt like a beast right along my elbow, making me clutch my arm against my body as if I could soothe it better.

Ouch. Fine. Okay. Minor setback. I stuck my arm inside my hoodie and tucked the front of my hoodie into my jeans. Not comfortable, but it did help stabilize my arm somewhat. Rewrap towel. Forge on.

I must have gone, what, at least two miles by now? Two down, thirteen, maybe fewer than that, to go.

Which was when I made the mistake of looking back.

I could still see the roof of the garage. Orion's detached garage, which was set out in front and to the side of the cabin. I could also see my trudge-prints along the only lightly dusted drive. But ... but I'd been walking for ages. My shoes and socks were all the way soaked through. The towel was getting heavy with dampness, even out of the main snowfall.

Speaking of which, against the dark outline of the garage, the snow was getting worse. And it was past 4:00 p.m. now. It would be night soon. Too soon. Way too soon for me to make it all the way to Bakers Mine at this rate.

Just how low did temperatures fall during the night? Maybe the driveway was some sort of optical illusion. Two miles on a straightaway might not look that far, right? Except it wasn't that straight. One mile, then?

I shivered and forced myself to keep going. If I kept walking, I couldn't freeze. Physically. It wasn't possible.

I couldn't feel my feet anymore.

I kept going.

I couldn't feel the fingers on my right hand anymore. That was more of a problem. I could live without a few toes, but I needed my fingers. They were not part of my willing sacrifice.

My steps began to slow.

What's the alternative?

You know what the alternative is.

I can't go back there.

You'd rather freeze?

Maybe. Very possibly.

The headline would read "Dumbass Refuses to Accept Help, Dies of Hubris."

Shut up.

I came to a shambling halt and half turned. Definitely darker now. I shivered. Stay or go? I would not lose any limbs (to frostbite, anyway) if I went back to Orion's cabin. Cold Snap Cabin, how hilarious.

Was I going to cry? No. Not crying.

I closed my eyes really hard and said out loud, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home." I tried to click my Converse together three times, but the solid ice blocks at the ends of my legs weren't capable of that kind of fine motor movement anymore.

Dammit. I was not a mountain man. Or a marathoner. In any weather.

I slumped, turned around, and started back.

The way back took longer. Or maybe it just felt that way, in the parts I could still feel, which were mostly in my conflicted emotions. Was I seriously giving up? Surely I wouldn't literally die if I kept going? Then again, what did I think all those disaster podcast episodes were about, if not people thinking, Surely I won't literally DIE ?

Ugh, I was so weak. Weak willed even more than physically weak. I used to think, in my ignorant youth, that I was decisive, that I was a person of action. Not anymore. Now I realized that being a "person of action" usually meant you were acting in place of thinking.

Like deciding you were going to walk fifteen miles in a snowstorm. Or publishing an article no one asked for about a queer athlete. Except I'd thought about both of those things and had still elected to do them. Maybe that just made me a damn fool.

The cabin grew closer, and I grew colder. By the time I faced the last trudge through the now significantly deeper snow (I had no idea something so fluffy could build up so fast or be so heavy), I was actively shivering and couldn't feel my feet, my right hand, or my face.

I tried to knock on the door, but my frozen-meat fist just made a sort of thunk , thunk , thunk sound instead.

The door opened. Orion stood there, skin pink, cable-knit sweater dry and warm. Eyes wary.

We stared at each other.

He looked me up and down.

I waited for something cutting, a dressing-down, insults, anything.

He shook his head in disgust and stepped back, leaving the door open.

Since I didn't know what else to do, I stepped inside, where the central heat was humming, where I dripped onto wood floors that were probably way older than I was.

"Thank you," I whispered, my voice rasping.

He turned and walked away.

I'm sorry I made you detest me, I wanted to say. Sorry I ruined your life. Instead, I shoved my numb fingers into wet pockets and chose to be thankful that, detesting me or not, at least he'd let me inside.

An-hour-ago-me moaned incoherently in the back of my head, visions of being a hero frozen brittle and smashed into shards. Don't make me kick you, I thought irritably.

In the world beyond my bleary-eyed, hopeless surrender, Orion Broderick puttered around in his kitchen, a place I should never have invaded, a safe place he should have been allowed to keep. But here we were.

Cleary: nil, I thought, and pretended the water in my eyes was melting snow.