Who could fall asleep half-naked in a blizzard?
“Do some math!” she said. “What’s 56×67?”
“3685,” he said in milliseconds. “I don’t think that’s going to keep me awake.”
“Wow, you really like math.”
“It’s just what my brain does.”
She navigated them around a tree, and he realized he shouldn’t walk near trees. They were like little snow sinks.
“Okay, what’s 1527×2547?” she asked.
That took an extra second. “3,889,269.”
“Whoa.”
“Added is 4074, subtracted is -1020, and divided is, um, .59 something. What’s your favorite book?” he asked because it seemed insanely unfair that he didn’t know.
“Oh, I could never choose!”
He stepped wrong and wrenched his knee, and she cried out.
“Top ten,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Frankenstein,” she said impulsively.
He blinked; he was expecting some Jane Austin shit. “Isn’t that the one with a monster?”
“He’s not a monster! Well, kind of. But Mary Shelley was completely brilliant. At that time, most villains were just evil, and most good people were just good, and she got into the psychology of a guy who wasn’t either.”
“Interesting,” he said, and it was, which was more than he could say for any English literature class he’d ever taken. Was he going to have to readFrankenstein?
He slogged through unexpectedly soft snow and kept going.
“What else?” she asked, panting. They were climbing now, and she didn’t have the breath for more. He desperately wanted to know the other nine books she would pick, but the wind stole his voice, and she didn’t give him any more math problems.
She got ahead of him again, until all he could see was her silhouette in the light of her flashlight.
He blinked in confusion. Wasn’t he supposed to not go toward the light?
That’s only when you’re dying, idiot.
It seemed to him very much like he was dying. Was this not what dying felt like?
He heard tinkling chimes.
Oh god, I’m hallucinating.
They came again, high, bright musical notes on the wind, though it wasn’t music. Just a cacophony.
He staggered to one knee, and she dove for him, blinding him with the light.
“You have to go on!”
“Do you hear bells?”
“Oh no, he’s delirious,” she said.
