I crossed my arms tight around myself and marched off into the snow, hoping that I wasn’t about to walk off a cliff. And also that my internet-sale jeans were rated for the snow.
“Sunny!” Isaac yelled. “Come on. You can’t be serious. You’re going to freeze.”
“You’regoing to freeze,” I told him as I trudged into the treeline and turned on my phone’s flashlight. The fast falling snow made dizzy patterns in front of its beam. “I’m going to kill a squirrel with my bare hands—not because I want to, and only for the sake of survival, by the way. And then I’m going to eat a squirrel skewer and make a hat out of his skin so that no part of the squirrel goes to waste.” My eyes began to water. Surely, it was because of the wind and not the premature guilt I felt over the dead squirrel. “And then I’m going to carry the weight of his death and the grief of his squirrel family with me until the day I die, which won’t be any time soon, because I don’t need anyone else’s help or snowmobile chariots to survive.”
He was off the snowmobile and following me now. It hadn’t taken long to walk far enough for the car and snowmobile to disappear. The woods were startlingly quiet, and the only sound was the crunch of our feet against snow and the soft hiss of the still falling snow.
“Your feet are going to get wet,” he said. “Just come back up to the car. You can hate me forever, Sunny, but please just let me take you home.”
“My feet are perfectly fine thanks to the finest boots T.J.Maxx has to offer.” I stepped out into a clearing, and stopped for a moment, not sure what my next move should be.
Isaac saddled up beside me and sighed. “Where to next, Jack London?”
“Go back to your snowmobile,” I told him.
“If you’re dying out here tonight, then so am I,” he said. “Besides, we’d both make superb ghosts.”
Walking onward, I tried to hide my chattering teeth and stay at least two steps ahead of Isaac. I hated how much it hurt to be in a moment of need and for him to be the one who showed up to save me. I couldn’t let myself give in to him. I had to get out of this situation and I had to do it on my own.
Except... suddenly there were trees on all sides of the clearing and I couldn’t remember where exactly we’d come from.
I spun around and then held up a finger to test the wind like I was a fucking Girl Scout or something. And then remembered I had gloves on. “Um...”
“Sunny, what kind ofumwas that exactly?” Isaac asked.
“Just admiring the landscape,” I said as a gust of wind nearly blew me over.
“And it wasn’t an I’m-lostum?”
I shook my head. “Probably not.”
“That was more of a yes or no question,” he said.
I just kept walking in a straight line into another cluster of trees. Vermont was a tiny state. Surely, we’d stumble across someone or something or maybe even into a different state altogether. “You can’t actually be lost if you didn’t know where you were to begin with.”
Isaac looked back over his shoulder, like he was trying to remember exactly where we’d come from, but the snow wasfalling so quickly now that our footprints were covered as soon as they were made.
“Isaac,” I said. “Just for fun, do you have any service out here?”
He checked his phone and shook his head. “We should head back the way we came.”
I stepped into another clearing and was immediately greeted with a blood curdling scream and then a blinding light.
“Sunny?” a voice asked.
I held up a hand to shield my eyes from the light. All I could see was that the entity in front of us was wearing a halo. What in the Christmas miracle hell? “That depends,” I replied. “Am I dead? Are you an angel?”
The light shifted, so that the person’s face was illuminated from underneath.
I’d recognize that peppermint-themed eyeshadow anywhere. “Blitzen? Is that you? In a snowsuit and halo?”
Blitzen, one of the dancers at the North Pole (Christmas Notch’s finest establishment, in my humble opinion), dropped the firewood she’d been holding in one arm and tramped through the snow to hug me. She was suited up in a hot pink snowsuit and matching jacket and, sure enough, a halo. I had questions, but mainly, she looked... warm. I was jealous.
“Girly, I haven’t seen you in months. Maybe even since last Christmas? You were my favorite customer! Remember that time you made everyone eggs in the breakroom after we closed?”
I turned to Isaac and shivered. “I am an excellent tipper.”
And then Blitzen seemed to remember that she’d just found two freezing strangers in the middle of a blizzard. “Oh hell! You two need to get inside! How did you end up all the way down here? You’re nowhere near the road, by the way. You were at the edge of the state park.” She picked up her firewood and led usdown a soft slope to a little glowing cabin. “If you hadn’t walked toward my cabin, you might have been lost for days.”
