We finish up in silence, but it’s a pleasant, friendly silence, so I like it. I grab her plate and take it to the sink when my phone buzzes on the table, then buzzes about six times in a row.
“That better be important,” I say, submerging the plates in the sink.
“It’s from… uh, ‘wizard emoji, ninja emoji, Wildwood Society BFFs, crystal ball emoji, candle emoji, toilet paper emoji?’”
“Motherfucker,” I mutter, wiping my hands on a towel and crossing the kitchen to grab my phone, because I’d forgotten that Wyatt got ahold of it last week. “Those assholes.”
“Are you a freemason?” she asks, chin on one hand. “I have so many questions, like what’s the deal with the eye in the pyramid on money?”
“I’m not a freemason,” I tell her. “It’s just—it’s a joke.”
“That’s what you’d say if you were a freemason,” she points out.
“No, it’s not,” I say, swiping my notifications open, because no one can leave me alone. “Being a freemason isn’t a secret. My great-uncle was a freemason. He was always complaining about the meetings.”
“Can he explain the weird stuff on money?”
“He’s dead,” I say as my phone buzzes again.
“Because he spilled the secrets?”
“Because he was ninety-three,” I say.
Silas: We can use my place. Levi’s mom gave me leftover pie.
Silas: And I have way too much hot sauce from my dad.
Javier: So, you’re suggesting hot sauce on pie?
Silas: No
Wyatt: I’d try it
Javier: Weirder things have been good.
Wyatt: Pepper jelly is a thing, sweet and hot totally go together
Silas: If you come over you can’t talk about sweet and hot
Wyatt: You know you’re my favorite sweet and hot thing, don’t be jealous
Javier: Excuse me
Silas: ANYWAY
Silas: Maybe around four, depending on Gideon?
“Everything okay?” Andi asks, her chin still in her hand, looking worried. I shake my head.
“Fine,” I tell her, and stick my phone into my pocket. “You ready to head out?”
“Yep!” she says, stands, and heads into the other room.
I inhale for what feels like the first time all morning. I know I should give my friends an answer—and I should go hang out with them—but deep down, I don’t want to spend the night at home. I want to drop Andi off and come straight back here, because if I go home Reid will have a thousand questions about me rescuing Andi from a tree, and if I see my friends they’ll have questions about the same thing, and then they’ll all want to know who Andi is and why I’ve never mentioned a childhood best friend if we were that close, and I’m not ready for all that. Reid knows the general sketch of what happened, but he was a baby when it all went down, and I think Silas and Wyatt might remember the kerfuffle, but I’m not sure they know it was my fault.
And—last night. I need to be alone with it for a little while, at least until I feel better about it. I’d wonder what I was thinking, but I wasn’t. I shouldn’t have picked her up off the couch, first of all, and I shouldn’t have put her on a bed and I shouldn’t have let her pull me onto the bed and I absolutely shouldn’t have pinned her arm behind her back like that, and I need a couple of days to work through everything I did wrong.
Gideon, she whispers, and my rational mind still isn’t fully back online.
“You could get your ankle checked out while you’re in town to drop me off,” Andi says, glancing down at my feet as the truck jolts over the uneven dirt road back to civilization. There’s still snow all over the ground, but this road is much more serviceable than the barely-there dirt track I had to take to rescue her. I think the Forest Service comes and puts more gravel on it at least twice a decade, so it’s basically luxury travel.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “Barely hurts at all any more.”
“You could even stay down for a few days instead of going back to a cabin in the middle of the woods where no one will hear you scream if you hurt it again,” she goes on, ignoring me.
“I’m fine,” I remind her. “I’ll be careful.”
“You were being careful when you sprained it the first time,” she says, which I don’t have a good response for.
“I’ve got the satellite phone,” I say. “You want me to check in with you every few hours?”
I’m being sarcastic, but as soon as I say it aloud, it’s… appealing. I wouldn’t mind if Andi texted me sometimes while I’m up here. Just to check in.
“Would you?” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Have you answered your friends yet or did you just frown at your phone and assume that would be enough of an answer?”
I sigh, carefully navigating around a dip in the snow-covered road the size of a large pig, and don’t respond because she’s technically correct and I’m not going to dignify her technical-correctness with an answer.
“Is that no?” she finally asks, staring straight ahead. “To me texting you?”
“What? No,” I say quickly, glancing over as much as I dare. “I mean, yes. Text me, it’s fine.”
“Well, as long as it’s fine,” she says.
“I’d like it,” I say, and from the corner of my eye I can see the skeptical look she shoots me. “Really. I would.”
“When are you coming back?” she asks. “Maybe we could—”
She cuts off mid-sentence because I brake hard, both of us leaning into our seatbelts, the pine tree air freshener swinging wildly from the rearview mirror. The truck slips a little, but this road isn’t nearly as bad as the one to the mining site, so disaster doesn’t strike this time.
Well. Not that kind of disaster, at least, but the road in front of us is… no longer a road.
“Uh,” Andi says. “Shit.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANDI
“Well,” Gideon says, and lets the word hang in cold, snowy silence for a while.
“Is this an avalanche?” I ask, after a bit, because I’m honestly not sure. I thought avalanches happened in, like, the Sierra Nevada or the Himalayas or something. The Blue Ridge mountains just don’t seem dire enough to have them.
“Yup,” he says. “Don’t go any closer, I don’t know if—”
“Gideon,” I say with exaggerated patience.
“I just don’t want you getting hurt,” he grumbles, after a minute, and of course I feel like an asshole.
The road’s gone, for a good fifty feet where it snakes through a hollow in the mountains, then picks up again on the other side. Where there should be road there’s a flat slope of snow, downed trees, rocks, and dirt, a big blank space on the side of the mountain, suddenly open to the sky. It’s short enough that I could easily walk over it, except walking on a recent avalanche is a terrible idea.
There’s no way the truck’s getting over it, and we’re still a bunch of miles from the Parkway.