“Right, you probably thought of that already,” she says without a hiccup in her cheerfulness.
I clear my throat into the deep silence of snowfall in a winter forest. “Yes,” I say.
She’s silent for another moment before turning back to the truck like nothing happened, and now I’m annoyedandguilty.
“You’ve got some tie-down straps in here,” she says, telling me something else I already know. “Maybe we could wrap one around that tree back there and somehow use it to help pull the truck out?”
I don’t answer right away. Instead, I take a few moments to shove at the branches we’ve wedged beneath the tire—which are not doing shit for traction—and keep my mouth shut so I don’t say something I don’t mean. Even though it’s her fault that I’m here, in a blizzard, fruitlessly trying to get my truck moving again. Even though she’s the one whochained herself to a treewithout checking the weather. Even though a little bit of simple forethought or common sense would have prevented all this and I could be comfortable in the cabin right now, readingThe Murderbot Diariesand drinking chamomile in front of the fire, which is what I fucking deserve.
It’s been an hour and a half at most, and we’re somehow back into our childhood patterns: Andi sets out on an adventure, and I follow her. As a kid, I must have followed Andi through half the forested land in Burnley County just because she said it would be fun. She was almost always right. I can’t think about this now.
“That won’t work,” I finally tell her without looking up.
I doubt anything short of an act of God will work; I went into a skid that got worse when I hit the brakes to avoid the tree, and now the truck is facing slightly downhill, its front bumper gently resting against a huge oak tree. Turns out all-wheel drive doesn’t mean shit when you’re on a barely-maintained fire road in the middle of a blizzard and you hit a patch of iced-over mud.
“They’ve got those ratchets with the teeth that catch when you pull them the right way,” she says, as if this is something new and exciting and not a fact I’ve known for almost my entire life. “So, if you can get the truck to move alittlemaybe we could get the straps to tighten and—”
“It’s not going to work,” I say, standing.
“It might.”
“No,” I tell her, very calmly brushing snow from my gloves. “It won’t.”
She exhales hard, breath fogging in the cone of light her headlamp casts. “It’s worth a try,” she says. “Do you have a better idea? Otherwise, we’re just—stuck.”
Truth is, I want to try. I know it won’t work but it turns out old habits die harder than I expected and she’s here, now, suggesting something, and despite all evidence to the contrary I can’t help but think:could be fun.
Which is stupid of me.
“No, it’s notworth a try,” I tell her, folding my arms over my chest. “These straps can’t hold afive-ton truckand in the course of trying to get it to work, one of us will probably injure ourselves attempting the impossible andthenwe’ll be well and truly fucked because it’ll also be darker, colder, and the snow will be deeper. Any other genius ideas while you’re at it?”
I’m not shouting but I say the last sentence way, way louder than was necessary and Andi’s eyes go wide, her face pale in the bright light and oddly angled shadows of her headlamp. How dare she? Howdareshe get us into this stupid, dangerous situation and then have the nerve to look like a cornered animal when I tell her that?
I’m tempted to say all that out loud. It would probably feel pretty good right now. I don’t, because I’m an adult and this is already strained enough.
“No,” she says at last, voice steady, chin up. I take another deep breath in a seemingly endless succession of deep breaths and look around, the beam from my headlamp sweeping over snow and trees and… that’s pretty much it. I turned the truck’s headlights off—if the battery ran out we’d be even more fucked than we already are—and the paleness of tree trunks against the blackness beyond makes the forest feel shallow, like it’s all set dressing with no depth. I breathe again and manage to engage the part of my brain that wants to do something besides shout.
“In the past year I’ve had to rescue three cars from a ditch,” I tell her, now at a normal volume. Andi stares right back at me without moving.
“You drove into three ditches?”
“No,” I huff, my breath catching the light for half a second. “Three of my idiot siblings drove into ditches. I pulled three of my idiot siblingsoutof three ditches. I’ve never driven into one ditch, let alone three.”
“Oh,” she says, and she sounds way too skeptical. “Right.”
“I got this truck all the way to you and almost all the way back,” I point out. “That was a fucking miracle. No. Not a miracle. That was a feat of skill.”
“I wasn’t saying—” My face must do something, because she holds both her gloved hands up and takes a small step back. “Sorry. Your driving is perfect.”
“Point being, I understand the forces involved in moving a stuck vehicle and a tie-down strap or even ten tie-down straps aren’t gonna do it right now,” I say, adjusting my hat a little because it’s making my forehead itch. “And some Chucklefuck McFucknuts didn’t put the snow chains back in last winter, so this isn’t going anywhere.”
Andi takes a shaky breath and glances sideways at the truck. “Shit,” she breathes. “So, we’re stuck here.”
“Can you hike?”
“What?”
“Can. You—”
