CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AFTER, WE LIE THERE curled up under the blanket, watching the fire. I’m trying not to think about when it will die, and that’s easy to be distracted from when Jonah’s fingers are running up and down my back like that, giving me goosebumps. It’s easy not to think about being trapped without any food when his strong legs are pressed against mine and he’s smiling against my neck.
He bites my shoulder and I yelp.
“Ass,” I say, but I’m smiling. He can’t see it, but I bet he can hear it.
“You like it,” he says.
“Your ass?”
“Sure.”
“Ugh,” I say. “Conceded.”
Jonah laughs and pulls me closer into him. His hands feels absolutely massive against my torso. I can’t help the most private little smile. They make me feel utterly, completely small.
I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve felt this way in the last few days. But it’s the first time I’ve really allowed myself to acknowledge it: I am not just glad to be here with another human. I am glad that the person I am here with is Jonah Ramirez.
He is not scary.
He is not a threat.
He is not this rebellious, edgy figure my parents have been wrestling me away from my whole life.
He is a boy. Just a boy. Just the boy who has forced me to rest while he built a fire, the boy who has kept me safe from wolves in a treehouse, the boy who lies to me about the stars when I’m scared, the boy who helped me survive a freaking moose attack.
He is the boy who is keeping me alive on this mountain.
I’m not foolish enough to think I’m in love with him. I’ve only known him, like really known him, for a few days.
But I know that I do love him. In a way.
Jonah Ramirez is my friend.
Like, really, truly my friend. In a way that almost no one I’ve ever known has been.
And he’s absolutely stellar in the sack, which doesn’t hurt as far as things to build on.
We will make it off this mountain or we will stay, but we will do it together.
As real, honest-to-goodness friends.
We are in this as a unit, and that matters.
I physically feel it—warmth spreading through my limbs, letting me relax into him.
Giving me five full seconds not to worry, not to be afraid.
Jonah says into my hair, “You gonna fall asleep?”
I say, “No. Aren’t you? Isn’t that kind of a dude thing?”
He says, “My rib hurts like a bitch.”
“Sucks,” I say.
He’s quiet for a beat, then he says, “Wanna get high?”
I’m so surprised by that that I actually spit out a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Weed survived the fall into the river, didn’t it?”
“I mean, yeah—”
“So it would be a crime to waste it.”
My instinct is to say, It would be an actual crime to smoke it, but 1) it’s Colorado so it’s only illegal because we’re under 21, and 2) we’re dying on a mountain so like . . . how illegal is it? Really.
“Not if it’s, like . . . against your religion or something?”
I laugh. “Once again, not exactly how that works. Nothing in the Torah about smoking weed anyway.”
I shut my eyes and pull myself away from everything else—away from the past or the future or any time other than this moment, any place other than right here.
“You know what?” I say.
“Hmm?” he hums into my back, and I get goose bumps.
“My parents were right about you. Four days and you’ve got me fucking around and accepting illicit drugs.”
Jonah doesn’t laugh so much as he cackles. “Did I hear the word accept?”
“Get out your weed, degenerate.”
He says, “Your wish, my command.” Then crawls out, still butt ass naked, from under the blanket. “FUCK, it’s cold,” he says.
I grin, because he’s no longer in real danger, he’s just, well. Naked in a snowstorm.
He grabs the baggie and rolls a joint and lights it on the fire.
Then he practically dives back under the blanket with me and throws an arm around me, pulling me into him. I laugh and shriek when he doesn’t close the blanket right away, like we’re kids fooling around and the air conditioner’s just turned too high.
I suck the smoke into my mouth, then breathe. It doesn’t hit at first, which I’m pretty sure is normal. It’s been normal for me, at least. I’m high off the feeling of Jonah pressing into me and doing this illegal thing and doing it in the dark.
How the hell is doing something forbidden while alone in the dark still legitimately a thrill? After everything that’s happened, after everything that’s probably going to happen tomorrow, when we have to face a trip into the cold mountains without food?
I pass it to Jonah, and it goes like that for ten minutes, neither of us saying much, until the slow high really starts to kick in.
It’s warm, from him, from us, from the weed. And it’s quiet. I feel legitimately relaxed. For the first time since all of this happened.
Thank you, cannabis.
I stare at the fire and I’m totally mesmerized by the way it leaps, the way the little sparks jump from the flames onto the rocks without hitting either of us or igniting on the rock. But well. It’s cold. It’s Colorado. They’re rocks— Colorado’s most, as I heard, prevalent flora.
I start laughing, and Jonah says, “You good?” and that just makes me laugh harder.
Jonah peers at me, and I’m starting to look at his eyes the way I looked at the fire.
He says, “You don’t smoke much, do you?”
I roll my eyes and shove him. “Yes I do. I smoke plenty.”
“When?” He says it like a challenge.
“The fire! Just a few days ago! And the eleventh grade.”
“That all?”
“And the ninth. Once.”
His face splits into a grin and he says, “Look at you, Little Miss Rebel.”
I wrinkle my nose and take the joint back from him. Now that it’s really soaked into my system, I just want to keep it going. I want it to stay like this—smooth and relaxed and buzzing, kind of. Like we’re the only things that are real.
“Jesus, Jonah, look at the fire.”
“I know, man.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“It’s like a painting. But you know. Hot. Burns shit up.”
I sputter out a laugh. “It’s like a painting but hot and burns shit up.”
He gestures at the fire, all defensive. “What! It is! It’s hot! It burns shit up!”
He starts laughing, too, and it’s this soft, gentle thing that’s so at odds with Jonah Ramirez.
Or it should be.
But somehow, it makes absolute sense to me. I feel like I know him. Better than I do, probably. But it’s like I know him better than anyone. Better than I know anyone, better than anyone knows him. It’s like we’re suspended out here. In our own little world outside of everything, and nothing can touch it. We’ll just exist like this forever.
“It’s like you’re my friend,” I say.
Jonah says, “I am your friend.”