“Have you tried to contact him?” she asks.
“Oh god no. Can you imagine? Hi, it’s Charlotte! The super awkward girl in the sweater dress, remember me? Yeah, I’ll pass,” I say.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph…” she mutters.
“I know, I know. It’s bad,” I say as I pack my things back into my bag for now.
“No, I mean, look! It’s started to snow,” Josie says nervously.
“Eh… it’s just flurries, and the weather app says it’ll be fine,” I say in an attempt to calm her down. But let’s face it. I’ve never been a glass half full kind of girl, and I should have known better than to start now. Because within less time than it took for the Broncos luck to change last season, the weather shifts from harmless icy swirls to a full-blown snow squall.
“This is bad, Charlotte,” she says as we snake our way up the winding road that is too skinny for two lanes. With the snow building up in the banks, it’s almost too small for one car. We are more or less just riding in the middle, hoping a semi-truck doesn’t whip around the corner and take us out.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I can drive if you want to pull over.”
As much as I don’t love driving in snow, I was born and raised in Leadville. I know how to do it when necessary.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere to pull over,” she answers, turning the windshield wipers on high, but the snowflakes are coming at us in sheets so it’s not doing much. The only way to tell where we are on the road is by the dimly lit taillights in front of us. “I’m worried if I stop, we’ll slide back down the mountain.”
A couple minutes later, the road finally opens up, at least enough that we don’t feel like we are going to fall off a cliff. It’s flatteningout a bit, which means that if we were driving in normal weather, we’d be about ten minutes from our turnoff into Pineville. Of course, in this weather, it’s going to be another thirty, easy.
“I really can drive if you want,” I tell her. “There’s a sidebar you can pull off into.”
“I’m okay,” Josie insists. But just as she says it, a truck zooms past us, kicking so much snow and slush on our windshield that we are literally blind.
“Crap!” I shout. Instinctively, Josie hits the brakes, but we don’t stop. It’s too slick and our wheels go spinning, veering us off into a shallow embankment.
Josie opens the window, blasting the inside of the car with snow and wind. “Dickwad!” she yells. Even though he’s long gone. I always find it funny that Josie is this sweet, put together girl who looks like a kindergarten teacher, but she uses words like dickwad and cock-blower.
She rolls the window back up and turns to me with a small smile and snowflakes stuck in her hair. “Alright. You can drive if you really want to,” she says, and we both laugh nervously.
“Good lord,” I sigh. We switch spots. Both of us are now shivering and frosted in snowflakes, I put the car in drive and tap the gas. But we go nowhere.
“Come on,” I mutter, and Josie’s ice-blue eyes widen.
“Uh oh. Are we stuck?”
“No,” I shake my head. I refuse to be stuck. I have too much to do to be stuck. It isnoton my itinerary to be stuck.
I try every trick in the book: turning the steering wheel to straighten the tires, shifting between drive and reverse to rock the car loose, accelerating slowly, and it’s doing nothing.
“We’re stuck, aren’t we?” she asks.
“We’re not stuck…” I insist, but it’s more like I’m trying to will it into being true. But as the wheels squeal, I sit back in the seat with a heavy sigh. “We’re stuck.”
“Fuck,” she says. “Now what?”
We freeze to death,my inner pessimist says.No. No, we aren’t going to talk like that. We have too much to do to be stuck. Too much money to make. Money, we need.
I spoon-feed positivity to my inner voice of doubt. This job is a dream come true, and I refuse to let a freak storm change my luck.
Oy. Listen to me, believing in luck right now. Considering my current life circumstances, I’d believe in aliens if you told me they’d get us out of this bind.
“I suppose we could wave someone down,” she says when I don’t answer. “Who knows? Maybe a snowplow will pass us at some point.”
A snowplow. A spaceship. Anything would be good. Unfortunately, there’s almost no one on the road. Five grueling minutes go by without a single car passing us. I check my phone for service, but of course, we have none. I am on the verge of a little mental breakdown, but suddenly, headlights shine in the rearview. Big ones. Bright ones. Truck ones.
Thank God.
