I moved closer and peered up the chimney, then blinked when I saw it. “Water,” I said. “It’s water coming down.”
“Snow,” Cade corrected me, his voice coming out in a rush of realization. “It’s snow, melting in the heat from the chimney.”
“That’s great,” I said with a grin, getting to my feet after all. “We’re keeping the tunnel for our airway clear by melting the snow around it. And if it melts enough, it should be easy for the rescuers to see us!”
“What are you looking for?” Cade asked as I cast around, trying to figure out where everything was in the gloom.
“Some kind of container,” I said. “Water. We need this. We can use it if we run out of bottled water – we just need to be able to boil it.”
“There’s no cooking equipment here,” Cade said. “At least I don’t think so.”
“The first thing we need is a container,” I said, casting around myself. I mentally ran through what I had brought with me. Clothes weren’t much use. What else… “Ah!”
I scrambled over to the dresser on my side of the room and yanked open the drawers, finding the washbag I’d brought with all the bathroom essentials – shampoo and conditioner, razor, and the rest. I dumped the contents out into the drawer and hurried to shove it on top of the little furnace. The bag was waterproof. It wasn’t huge, but it would work for now. A few drops splashed down and then I smelled something bad…
Plastic burning.
I swore and yanked the bag away from the furnace. That was a no-go. “Damnit!” I said out loud.
“Aren’t the taps in the bathroom working?” Cade asked.
I stared at him. I hadn’t even checked. But he was right. Why would the taps not be working? The water tank and pipes were probably underground in the first place. They might not be affected by the avalanche. I ran over, swung myself through the bathroom doorframe, and yanked the tap on.
It worked.
“Ha!” I crowed. “Water! It’s cold. But that’s fine.” I switched the tap off, glancing around. “At least we can flush the toilet now. We should fill up the bottles of water again after using them. And maybe avoid the shower for now, in case the water tank is limited.”
“That’s a good idea,” Cade nodded. He was still sitting on the floor. He was looking at me with a kind of awed expression like he was impressed by my quick thinking. I felt my chest swelling a little with pride. I sat back down beside him and tried not to grin quite so widely. The pattering noise of the falling water had quietened down to only drops here and there. The snow around the top of our cabin must have melted, but it was going to take longer for the heat to permeate further out.
“Why’s that?” Cade asked.
The question was so out of the blue I couldn’t do anything but stare at him in confusion. Had I missed something?
“You said you were glad you were stuck in here with me,” Cade said, a light blush painting his cheeks with the words. I grinned in recognition.
“The others would be way more annoying,” I said. “Harvey and Caleb would be a nightmare to get stuck with because they would eat all the food within three minutes. And they would also be, like. Farting and stinking the place up and doing workouts to pass the time. And they snore.”
“I might snore,” Cade pointed out. He seemed to think about it for a minute. “Or fart.”
“You brought books as your entertainment for a skiing, snowboarding, and winter fun weekend, so I don’t think you’re that type of guy,” I laughed. “Prove me wrong if you want, though.”
Cade squinted his eyes at me. “I’m not just going to perform on demand. I’ll do it when you least expect it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, cocking my head. “Is that just because you can’t actually bring yourself to do it, Red?”
He shook his head vehemently. “Nope. Just you wait and see.”
I watched him as he turned back towards the fire. I wasn’t lying just to cheer him up. Out of all the people I could have been stuck in here with, Cade wasn’t so bad. Okay, we didn’t know each other well. But he just had this cute way about him and he was easy to talk to. Easy to rile up, but not so far that we were actually going to start fighting or something. He blushed easily, too, which tickled me.
No, this wasn’t going to be so bad at all.
But there was one thing that had been bothering me, and knowing how I had a tendency to stick my foot in my mouth, maybe it was a good idea to clear it up quick. That way, I could look after him better while we were waiting to be rescued, too.
“Uh, you don’t have to tell me the full story if it’s too painful,” I said. “But Caleb was telling everyone you had a hard year and we had to go easy on you. I just… like, I’m really good at saying the exact wrong thing at the wrong time. I thought maybe if you tell me, like, what it was that went down, I can avoid doing that. And maybe help a bit if I can.”
Cade looked at me. For a second I thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all.
Then he took a breath.
