“We can’t leave the truck.”
“I doubt anyone’s gonna steal it,” I say, opening the driver’s side door. The dome light comes on, and I blink hard. “And if they do, they’ve earned it.”
“No, that’s like—the first thing you learn from every single outdoors guide, website, and ranger talk,” Andi says, her voice pitching a little higher. “If you get lost, you stay with your vehicle and don’t wander off into the woods at night in the middle of a blizzard!”
“We’re not lost,” I tell her, leaning over the driver’s seat.
“We’re way deep in the woods atnightin thesnowin the middle of nowhere and that’s how people die of exposure!”
I do not point out where I found her earlier.
“It’s a mile,” I call back. “Maybe a mile and a half. One hour, tops, even in the snow.”
“To the road? No, it’s not.”
“To the cabin.”
“What cabin?”
I pull my GPS unit and my backup GPS unit from where they were plugged into the center console, then dig through the glovebox for the paper map.
“The cabin where we’re staying in,” I tell her, snapping the glovebox shut.
When I turn around, her face is very pale, her eyes are very wide, and she’s standing very still.
“Oh,” she says. She’s watching me like she needs to be ready for me to do something, then speaks with a forced calm. “I see. I had thought we were going to the Parkway.”
“That’s the opposite direction,” I say, baffled. “We’ve been heading away from the Parkway for miles.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“How did you not—” I stop myself. I know the answer, which is that most people don’t know which direction is which when they’re in the middle of the woods. They don’t even know it in their own neighborhoods. “Here’s the plan: we hike the mile back to the cabin, which has shelter, heat, and food. Tomorrow or the day after, once the roads are clear, I take you down the mountain and into town. There’s no way the Parkway’s been cleared, and there’s no way we’d make it the twenty miles into town.”
Andi chews on her lip for a few moments, glancing away, breath fogging in front of her.
“Okay,” she says. “I still think we should stay with the truck. Every survival guide is very clear—”
“What do they say about chaining yourself to a tree in the winter?” I snap. I’m louder than I should be, again. “Isthatmore advisable than hiking to safety or is it—”
“That was also stupid and I was also scared!” she shouts.
Everything goes silent, her words swallowed by the snow. Now her face is blotchy and red, even in the weird light from her headlamp, her jaw clenching, and—
Fuck.
I’m being an asshole.
I’ve got good cause for being an asshole, but suddenly I’m paying attention to Andi instead of looping the thoughtthis is her fault how do I get us out of thisover and over again and Jesus, fuck, she’s not just scared, she’s scared ofme. Andi’s never beenscaredof me before.
Fucking… shitfuck. I feel like dirt scraped off the bottom of a shoe. I feel like the ground should be swallowing me whole.
“Andi,” I say, and I try to sound as warm and fuzzy as I can, which isn’t very warm and fuzzy at all but at least I’m trying. “First, we’re not lost. Here.”
I turn on the GPS, wait for it to boot, and show her the screen. She glances at it, then glances up at the sky, as if that’ll help orient her. I swallow and try to channel every bit of helping-a-wounded-animal-calm I can get a hold of.
“Okay,” I say, and pull a glove off with my teeth so I can mess with the screen. “This dot is us, right now, and this little cabin-shaped symbol is the cabin.”
Andi looks at it for a moment, biting her lips together, then glances north. Then she glances northeast, toward the cabin.
