I stood there on the path, looking at the broken shards of the small toy boats. Ruined. Fragmented and shattered and crushed in the scuffle.
Oliver stood with me, his fingers threaded through mine, as if to stop me from leaving his side.
He watched the life leave Landon’s body, watched Dray pin his head down in the water—until the adults were running by us for the pond.
Landon was dead.
I remember the grunts of his father desperately performing CPR on his lifeless body.
As he did, Dray trampled over the broken boats as he made his way back to us, to me and Oliver still standing on the path.
Oliver’s hand tightened on mine.
I’ll always remember that.
And now, I understand—I am a toy boat.
And only Dray is allowed to break me.
I run my gloved hands down my face.
The raw tingle of my cheeks is itchy, so I wipe at them a few times, and let my mind shift to promises of a scalding bath and a bucket load of moisturiser.
Another thing about the alps.
If I don’t moisturise a lot, and I meana lot, my skin will dry up. It’s worst around the nose, where the skin gets all red and flaky.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Dray’s nose got all flaky and dried out, then fell off his face, then he died?
The hike ends where the gondolas poke through the clouds, floating between snow drifts and mist.
I heave a sigh at the queue.
It isn’t long, but it’s at least fifteen minutes out in the cold, and I’d rather not be here at all.
But Oliver doesn’t stop.
Without looking at me, his gloved hand reaches for my wrist, then he’s tugging me up the side of the line.
Silent glowers follow us all the way to the peak of the queue—and Oliver only hesitates when a plain black leather glove flitters through the mist.
It lands on the slushy path.
I think Oliver is about to trample it and bypass the three students turning to frown at us—but he doesn’t.
He spares a fleeting glance at the glove before looking at the girl who dropped it.
That’s when he halts.
Oliver’s profile is turned to me as he considers the girl with big doe eyes. A black beanie is tugged over her dull brown hair, braided over her shoulder.
The crisp cold blushes her high cheekbones.
She would be striking if it wasn’t for her eyes, so soft, so naive, so pretty.
Oliver thinks so, too.
I know it when he crouches down and plucks the glove from his path.
