Chapter Eight

It was bloody fucking cold outside. So cold. I could for sure see my breath. Also, everything—everything—was white. I stood on Orion's front porch, which was covered, and it took a while for me to even work out where everything was. I could see the eaves of the detached garage, but without the eaves it would have been hard to see the walls, which were white behind white snow. The big lump of white in front of it had to have been my car, but there was hardly any sense of depth in Orion's front yard, where the trees had been cleared.

I could see where the driveway was because at least there were obvious tree trunks and snow on branches, but in the yard it was just ... white. White and fluffy and freezing-ass cold.

Part of me genuinely wanted to run down and play in it. It looked that light and airy. Like cotton candy. I didn't know what time it was now (and I wasn't about to unsheathe my hands from my pockets to find out), but it was a lot brighter than it had been when I woke up, and in the diffuse light of morning, everything looked kind of magnificent. Like on a movie, where they're obviously blowing in fake snow. Except this was real. The universe had just ... done it. All on its own.

And it wasn't still snowing, which seemed to be a good sign. A great sign even. So I could probably get out of here in the next few hours, once the sun hit the ground. I imagined all the snow melting away, and it almost felt ... "sad" wasn't quite the word. Almost a sense of melancholy? Like this magical world would melt away, never to occur again.

Except then I could drive home, back to civilization, where there was cell reception. And coffee.

Leaning up against the wall was an implement I recognized from television: a snow shovel. It looked just how it did on TV. And, even better, hanging on a nail beside it were thick gloves, like, real gloves, not the kind you get at a Ross Dress for Less for three bucks on clearance ("one size fits most"), but beefy with fleece on the inside and some kind of waterproof fabric on the outside.

Orion wouldn't mind if I borrowed his gloves. Especially if that got me out of his hair faster.

I donned the gloves and picked up the snow shovel and marched down the stairs. Well, more like took one confident step, sunk lower than I thought, held on to the railing for dear life, and sorta rappelled down the rest of the steps to the ground, one glove still wrapped around the rail.

There. Safe. On the ground. Or rather on the snow. The night before, I'd still been mostly in contact with the ground, even when it had snowed hard. But now, given the quantity of snow and the temperature overnight, it was all crunchy and much higher than it had been. When I looked up at the roof from below, I could see the thick pad of snow on top. Was that a foot? It looked like more than a foot. What was that in rain? Were rain inches and snow inches equivalent?

Didn't matter. What mattered was that I had a snow shovel, and I wasn't afraid to use it.

I trudged over to my car, feeling empowered and energized, and began to take bites out of the snowbank around it. I unearthed the driver's side door. So that was more than a foot of snow. It was up almost to the handle. Yikes.

Whatever, I was a man who could handle this. I tried to open the door, but it didn't budge. Fine. Didn't need it to. Worry about that later.

I excavated a path around to the front of the car and began really going at it. Yeah, I was panting like a dude who didn't have a gym membership (I had a gym membership ... I just didn't often use my gym membership). And sure, I started by just tossing the snow wherever until I realized that in order to drive my car out, I'd need a path where there wasn't a ton of snow, so I'd have to move all that stuff again, but it didn't freaking matter. I was working. I was making progress.

I hit ice.

Thick ice. A lot of ice. Ice from where I'd been spinning my tires the day before. The muddy, gravelly slush had frozen over like concrete, and there was no coaxing with the shovel that could pry it up.

Fine. It was fine. The sun could melt that part. What I needed were tracks . Tire tracks. Like getting off the beach in a car: you just needed two reliable tracks, and you could get back to the street. With the beach, if you could just catch one front tire on rocks, you could usually baby the rest of your car until you had purchase.

I leaned on the shovel, panting, throat killing me from all the heavy breathing of icy air, and looked down the long driveway. If I got the car moving, wouldn't it be heavy enough to get through the places under the trees where the snow was less thick? Maybe?

I was sweating through Orion's T-shirt and my wet hoodie. My hands inside the gloves were swampy. My ears and nose were cold, but the rest of my body was a furnace.

I'd just start working on tracks. If I could get them clear enough, the sun would do the rest. That's what I could rely on: the sun. The sun was consistent. It would burn you, it would cook you, ergo, it would melt snow. Night follows day, et cetera.

And so I went back to shoveling. My car was still heaped with snow (the sun would melt it), my door was frozen shut (the sun would thaw it), and I couldn't make any progress on the slush-turned-ice in front of my tires, but I had faith those things would work themselves out. I was focused. I was determined. I'd shovel all the way to the damn highway, if that's what it took.

My shoulders ached, my back was really starting to twinge uncomfortably, but dammit, I was in the prime of my life, and I wasn't that out of shape. So what if it took all day? I could recover in a hot bath in my own apartment with a cup of coffee. I'd take tomorrow off. It'd be fine.

The cabin door opened and shut, but I ignored it. Maybe Orion would be impressed with my physical fitness level and willpower. More likely he'd make fun of me. I didn't care. (I really didn't.) I had my own plans. I had goals. And my main goal was to get the hell out of this irritating little town.

And to get the hell away from Orion Broderick.

He cleared his throat. I ignored him more intensely, even though my arms were really starting to hurt. I had started with all this energy, tossing the snow off to the side with gusto. Now I was more kind of pushing it more or less over onto the pile I'd been making, but without it getting air as it had before.

Just had to keep going. Didn't matter how.

"What are you trying to do?" His voice was not as mocking as I'd expected. Nor as snide. It was ... neutral.

"Dig my way out," I said, as if it wasn't obvious. Well, more croaked. Wow, my throat hurt. I kept going.

"Dig to where?"

"The highway if I have to."

"The highway," he repeated. "And then what?"

I tossed a glare at him, which took more effort than it should have, and then refocused on digging. Shovel into snow, brace, tighten core, lift shovel, toss load to the side, repeat. It was getting a lot harder. "And then," I grated out, resisting the urge to groan with a bigger shovelful of snow, "I can drive out of here."

"Couple of things." He still sounded horribly, painfully blasé. "They won't be plowing the highway, so even if you made it that far, which you won't, you'd have to shovel all the way to town."

"They don't plow the highway ? What is the point of a highway? Isn't it to get places? How are you supposed to get anywhere in this bullshit snow if they don't plow?" Fuck him, how did he know? They must plow. They had to plow.

"And the main reason they won't be plowing the highway today is that it's snowing again. We're supposed to get eighteen inches in the next twenty-four hours."

The shovel suddenly seemed to weigh at least fifty pounds. I couldn't lift it. I leaned on it instead, staring down at the small area I'd managed to sort of clear. My arm muscles were trembling. "Eighteen ... inches?"

He coughed. Almost awkwardly. Like the great Orion Broderick felt bad about the weather forecast. "Yeah. Sometimes we get this kind of spring storm in April or May, right after everyone takes off their snow tires."

"Oh." My word was almost lost in the loudness of the snow-covered world, which wasn't exactly loud so much as it was dampened. Sound was different.

Also I was crying a little.

"I'm making oatmeal," Orion said, then waited for a beat before he turned and crunched back inside.

Now that I'd stopped moving, my sweat was chilling my skin. I didn't feel cold yet, not exactly, but I didn't feel good either. I swiped tears away with my wet, snow-flecked sleeve and looked up.

Sure enough, almost too small and slow to see unless you were looking, the brightening sky was dropping gray flakes, each one distinct, its own little planet of fractals and ice.

I dragged the shovel back to the porch, scaled the steps again, leaned the shovel carefully where I'd found it, took off the gloves, and stepped inside. At least now it felt warmer.

Still leaking a little from my eyes, I gathered my own clothes, which were at least drier than the ones I was wearing, and changed back into them. I hung Orion's carefully. And all through these chores I felt this sort of roaring in my ears, this strange mechanical whir that seemed to be building.

Almost as if I couldn't remember how to stand, I tumbled back onto the couch, pulled the quilts up over my head, and lay there until the tears stopped falling. Or at least I must have, because I fell asleep.