I know that.
Judaism is a people and a culture and a religion and a thousand different things, and it’s me, either way. But when I’m with them, it’s not something I know. It something that—well, it feels like the people and the practice are mine.
So much of Jewish ritual is kindled in fire. It’s in Havdalah, in Shabbos, in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Black fire on white fire and day after day after holy day; I don’t get to kindle flame for tradition, really, outside Uncle Reuben and Aunt Adah’s, and every time I do, it’s almost painful to acknowledge that I miss it—that I really miss something from when I was five years old.
Fire is so deeply a part of our tradition that looking at it, now, of all times, in the lonely, dangerous dark, feels like wrapping a six-thousand-year-old blanket around me.
I keep these thoughts to myself and curl deeper into them.
This is too deeply private, too deeply mine.
The fire cracks, pops, hisses as it consumes the dead things we fed it, and darkness falls.
In the dark, every noise feels louder.
The fact that we don’t have a tent or a cave or any cover that isn’t trees becomes so much more evident tonight— alone, in the dark.
Somewhere far off, or I hope it’s far off, a howl slices through the quiet, and I shrink against Jonah. He casually slides an arm over my shoulder and pulls me into him, and it’s so solid, so comforting, it doesn’t even feel sexual.
It doesn’t feel like A Move.
It feels necessary. It feels like human connection in the dark.
I can feel the strength in his arms, the solid rise of his chest when he hugs me close to him and rests his chin on my head.
It’s too intimate, but it’s not close enough.
“It’s okay,” he says.
“No, it’s not,” I say.
We might as well be strangers.
But he presses his mouth into my hair.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I AM AWAKE FOR the ninth time.
In the deep, fathomless dark.
Again when the stars have shifted in the sky.
One more time when the black turns to gray.
The sun rises and I lie there tucked against his chest, shuddering. He curls his arms around me and I push back into him because maybe I can get warm. Maybe I can trick my body into thinking this tiny increase in body temperature passes for heat.
Maybe the points of my spine that press into his chest will catch fire.
If I imagine it hard enough, I can pretend well enough that it’s real.
I blow out through my mouth, and the moisture clouds on the gray-dark air.
His breath feathers my hair, warm on the back of my neck, and I can’t even appreciate being this close to this cute a boy, can’t really relish the musculature of his arms around me, the feel of his mouth so close to my skin.
All I can think of is the warmth, the most basic desire for temperature, for something that passes for shelter.
I can’t stop thinking about how the air prickles my skin, how it seeps down through my big, fluffy coat to whisper over each little hair and bleed deep into my veins. And thinking about it makes me colder.
I shiver. Violently.
Jonah jumps and says, “What, what, what is—” Then his voice, rough with sleep, fades. I can feel him slow behind me. Stretching and groaning.
He says, “Sorry. You okay?”
“Mmhmm,” I say.
He leans forward, just the smallest bit, and rests his forehead on the back of my neck. It prickles where his longish kinks and curls brush against me.
“We should get up,” he mutters.
“But this ground is so comfortable.”
I don’t hear the laugh so much as I feel it.
He presses his fingertips, the smallest bits of pressure, into my shoulder, and I roll over to face him. My breath probably sucks. I don’t think either of us cares.
He says, “How’s that heart rate?”
I say, “Okay,” and impossibly, given the situation in the most macrocosmic and microcosmic ways, I’m telling the truth.
“Your head?” He presses his knuckles to my forehead, which is no longer clammy.
“Yeah,” I say. “I feel a lot better. Seriously.”
He searches me for just a minute longer, then decides to be satisfied. “Okay. Okay, you tell me if that changes today.”
“Yeah,” I say.
I snuggle back into him, like I can shut out the day looming ahead if I just use the large boy I barely know to keep me warm and safe.
“Come on,” he says. He stands slowly. “Goddamn, my all of me.”
“Ugh, oh no.”
“Is this what it feels like to be thirty?”
I laugh, even though I know I’m about to be in a world of hurt. I curl up on myself just for a moment, to experience a half a second before reality sinks in, and then I stand.
“Fuck,” I say. I wiggle my limbs and it comes out like this frantic dance. Half-growling, half-crying, trying to rid all my bones and muscles of the aftereffects of sleeping all night on the frozen ground.
“It’s okay. Shake it off.”
“I am shaking it off.”
“Jesus, my back,” he groans.
“Dude, are you thirty?”
He rolls his eyes and stretches up on his tiptoes, lengthening every muscle, reaching his fists to the sky in this wishbone of a position, and silhouetted against the blue-pink dark, he’s fucking gorgeous.
My lips part watching him.
He settles back down on the balls of his feet and glances over at me, and I snap my mouth shut.
“Ready to get this party started?”
“Yeah,” I say. I snag a small pack of Oreos out of his backpack and say, “Breakfast of champions.”
He doesn’t reach for his own bag of Oreos; he picks out of mine, and I know that’s the right call. We need to conserve food. But my stomach twists when he does; I want to snarl and yank it back. The Oreos are the precious.
I don’t. I keep a smile plastered on my face and watch while he consumes my calories.
“Let’s formulate a plan,” I say when the crunching subsides and we have both eaten enough to actually think.
“Well,” he says, “that peak is out.”
“Obviously.”
“I mean . . . I don’t really know if there’s a plan to be had—”
“Downhill then,” I say.
He purses his lips. “Why?”
“We can’t go uphill.”
“So that’s it—that’s the brilliant plot?”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Tell me if you’ve got something better.”
“I don’t. How could I? Your thing isn’t exactly ironclad.”
“But it’s something.”
He growls. “How about west?”
“West?” I say.
He points in the opposite direction of the sun. “Yes. West is back toward New Snowy Ridge.”
I follow his finger and say, “That’s where we were headed all day yesterday anyway. I say we keep an eye on the sun and work on heading downhill. We should find water.”
“Hm,” he says. “Well. You might have a point.”
“I know.”
“If we can find water, we can follow it down, at least to a drainage. Probably to a town or something.”