by Krista Wolf
No. To hell with all that.
I’d been so quick to agree with that particular voice, for so long, it was almost stupid that I’d never once thought to fight back against it. But right here, right now? I decided on the spot I didn’t ever want to hear from that voice again.
These guys liked me. I liked them. Maybe for once I could accept that, without reservations. Without wondering when the other shoe would drop, or how long it would be before I invariably got burned.
Whatever happened once we were rescued would obviously happen. I couldn’t control it now. All I could do was enjoy what I had, and explore the feelings I had for each of these men. And I definitely did have feelings. Feelings that ran much deeper than even I liked to admit, staring up at the ceiling of a frozen hotel in the dead of night… after having been screwed literally senseless by three of the hottest guys on campus.
Morgan, Morgan, Morgan…
It was something my mother used to say, whenever I did something wrong. I chuckled evilly. I wondered what she would say if she could see me now.
You’ll get it working.
I thought of Boone’s words regarding the radio, and how they made me feel. They were meant to be encouraging, obviously. He was trying to be supportive.
I have faith in you.
Still, somehow his words had the opposite effect. I felt like such a failure up until now. Other than clearing the chimney, it had been all them, all the time. Feeding the fire. Providing the food. Fighting off the bear…
Shit, it had taken me three days to realize what was wrong with the radio! And even then I wasn’t sure I could fix it. A missing transistor, right there in the middle of the circuit board! How in the hell could I not have seen that before!
Maybe you just didn’t want to see it before?
The words struck me an almost physical blow. Wait…. What?
I bolted upright, the sleeping bag shrugging from my semi-naked body. Beside me, Boone was snoring like a lumberjack. On the other side, Jeremy stirred just long enough to re-arrange his hands as a pillow.
Maybe you only saw what you wanted to see.
A lump rose up in my throat. It felt like the size of as softball.
Or needed to see.
I tried to swallow, but the lump just wouldn’t go down. It only got worse. It was choking me now, gagging me…
Or made yourself see…
I jumped up, my heart racing a mile a minute. Carefully I stepped over the guys… then I ran for my shredded ski pants.
No.
I reached into the side pocket. Nothing. Relief flooded through me.
It couldn’t be.
Trembling, I forced myself to check the other side, the other pocket. My hand was shaking as it went in. It scrambled, feeling around…
… and came back out with the missing transistor.
“HOLY SHIT!”
Damn, Morgan. Just… Damn.
It was so small, so tiny. So seemingly insignificant. And yet…
And yet I’d taken it. I’d pocketed it! Then I’d forgotten about it… or at least, that’s what I told myself.
Outside, dawn was just breaking. The fire was low and the room was cold and the radio seemed a thousand miles away.
I ran to it anyway, eager for the suffering.
Forty-Four
BOONE
”MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!”
I heard the words loudly and clearly, even from the other side of the room. I jumped up and ran, still groggy, over to where Morgan sat hunched over the radio.
“You got it working!”
She shushed me with a quick gesture and repeated the cry.
”MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! We are AVALANCHE survivors from the CERVIGNO resort. We need HELP! Over!”
A quick glance at the radio showed me the transmit light was green! I clapped her on the shoulder so hard she nearly fell over.
“You did it!”
I expected happiness. Pride. Jubilation! But her expression was all business.
“Help me crank. Give me more juice.”
I took the hand crank from her and spun it so fast it nearly came off! Morgan closed her hand over mine as the lights behind the ham radio’s dials glowed brightly with renewed power. She pressed the button on the microphone again.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!”
“Uhh… you sure it’s Mayday?”
“What?”
“I mean, isn’t Mayday for aviation? Aircraft going down, engine failures and all that?”
“No,” she said, almost annoyed. “Mayday is universal across all emergency radio channels.”
“Yeah?”
Morgan’s brow crossed. She cleared her throat. “Who’s the radio geek? You or me?”
“You,” I admitted sheepishly.
“Exactly.”
She called a few more times, and we eagerly awaited an answer. We got nothing but static. After ten minutes or so, she turned a few dials. Tried a few different channels.
“No one’s responding?”
Morgan shook her head. “I tried the emergency channel, and a few other frequencies. But we’re in Italy, so it might be different. Who the hell knows.”
I yawned, stretching my arms so hard my sternum cracked. “Maybe they’re still sleeping?”
The expression she gave me ended any further comment on my part. For some reason she was on edge. Instead of being thrilled that the transmitter was fixed, she looked… pissed?
A half hour went by. An hour. I walked to the opening and cleared the snow, only to find the same raging storm as always. The only thing that had changed were the accumulations. The snow was so deep now, it was getting scary.
“MAYDAY! MAYDA—”
There was a crash as Morgan’s fist hit the table. She dropped the microphone and plunged her face into her hands.
“Hey, hey,” I said. “Easy…”
Gently I slid my hands over her shoulder and began rubbing her neck. She didn’t protest. Her muscles were stretched tight as guitar strings.
“What’s wrong?”
Her hair hung over her face, like the ghost in one of those Japanese horror movies. Only instead of being dark and corpse-like, her hair was this beautiful, strawberry blonde.
“I have something to tell you.”
“You’re pregnant,” I joked.
Silence, followed by even more silence. Apparently I wasn’t being funny.
“Morgan come on,” I said, kneeling down beside her. “What is it? You know you can tell me.”
She shook her head. Her hair shifted back and forth.
“It can’t be that bad. We’ve only been here—”
“I sabotaged the radio.”
The sentence seemed so strange, so foreign, it took a minute to register. Even when it did, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes!” she cried, finally looking up. Tears were streaming down the side of her face. “I did it, Boone! I pocketed one of the transistors! And I’ve been trying to tell myself I didn’t know it. That I did it by accident, or I did it subconsciously, and that it wasn’t really my fault. Only it is! Because it is my fault, and I know I did it! I did it to Kim Balas and now I did it to us and now—”
“HEY!”
My voice was loud and firm enough to stop her mid-sentence. She looked up at me, her chin trembling.
“I don’t care.” I said.
She blinked, and a fresh set of tears made their way downward. “Y—You what?”
“I don’t care, Morgan. It doesn’t matter.”
She swallowed hard, and I brushed her tears away with the back of my hand. “B—But…”
“You fixed it,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”
“But I kept us here!” she insisted. “I could’ve fixed it days ago! A—And… And maybe we missed our window! Maybe they were looking for us back then, only now they’ve stopped, and now no one’s in range and—”
“Why do you think
you sabotaged it?”
She took a deep shuddering breath. She couldn’t even look at me.
“I—I think it was because I wanted to stay,” she said quietly. “Because I was enjoying you, and Shane, and Jeremy. I’ve never gotten this much attention before, Boone. From any guy. Much less three guys! Much less—”
“So you were having fun?” I chuckled. “Is that it?”
She looked up at me utterly horrified. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because it’s funny,” I said. “Actually, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
I dried her tears again, and this time I swept her face into my hands. I held here there, looking straight at me. Making sure she could see my expression.
“Morgan, this is the kind of shit you see in movies,” I smirked. “Only you actually did it. It’s crazy! It’s nuts! But you know what?” I leaned down and kissed her tenderly, right on her salty wet lips. “It’s also adorable.”
Her eyes shifted back and forth, examining my expression. Trying to read my face, trying to figure out how I could be this… forgiving?
No, forgiving wasn’t even the word. There was nothing to forgive. I couldn’t believe she’d done it, of course… but also, a big part of me was glad she did.
“I was afraid I’d lose you,” she said. “You most of all.”
I cocked my head to one side. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I—I guess I’m being stupid.”
“Morgan, you never asked how I got here.”
She looked at me again, only now her expression had changed. There was intrigue there. She looked stumped.
“I came down after the avalanche,” I said.
At first she looked like she didn’t believe me. But then--
“You what?”
I nodded slowly. “I came up with you, on the gondola. It was the last run of our last stop. My last chance to say something to you, before we went back to school and you just became that girl who visits the library again.”
I could see her searching my soul, trying hard to believe me. Only there was no reason not to. I was telling the truth.
“I watched you and your girlfriend take that obscure trail — really weird choice by the way — and I was just about to follow you.” He jerked a thumb back toward the fireplace. “But then I saw Mario and Luigi go after you guys, so I figured the four of you had already hooked up.”
I took a deep breath before continuing.
“The next part is stupid. The mountain cracked open, and everyone started screaming. It was chaos. Powder everywhere. But the mountain fell on both sides. It went hurtling down the main ski runs, but also, I noticed a second avalanche — your avalanche — slid down the back end.”
“And you came after us?”
I nodded. “The very second everything cleared I went down after you. Everyone else was on the other side — the main side — helping people. It wasn’t as bad there. But the further I came down the back side of the mountain? The more I realized the four of you were in serious trouble. And I kept going down and down, knowing the powder was so thick I probably couldn’t make my way back up.” I stopped for a moment, to rub at my chin. “Stupid, huh?”
“That wasn’t stupid,” said Morgan immediately. “That was brave.”
Somewhere behind us, a log snapped in the fire. A pretty shower of sparks rained down over the hearth, before flaring out.
“It was stupid because I should’ve said something,” I told her. “I should’ve called attention to the fact you guys went down that way. I don’t think anyone even realizes there was a second avalanche. Or if they do, they don’t have any reason to think people were skiing on the back end.”
Morgan swallowed slowly. Her tears were gone.
“So… nobody’s looking for us here, then. Are they?”
“Probably not.”
“But we’re still missing!”
I shrugged. “If anything, they’ll assume we all got caught up on the front side. The big side.” My mouth went grimly tight. “It was a lot of snow. If they think we’re buried, they’re gonna think we’re buried there.”
We were both silent after that. I only stared at the symmetry of her face, made porcelain-perfect by the spectral glow of the radio lights.
“What I’m saying,” I said softly, “is that we all have secrets. We all have things we kept to ourselves.”
She glanced down for a moment. “Yeah, but—”
“No yeah buts,” I smiled. “Seriously. The others don’t even have to know about this. All they need to know is you fixed the radio.”
Her expression changed again, and I saw gratitude there. Maybe even something else. Something more substantial. Something that could outlast our time here, and be carried back to campus.
I took her hand and put it back on the crank. “Keep going. Don’t give up.” She nodded, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I’ll be downstairs, cooking up the rest of that rice. It’s time to get rescued, and I don’t wanna do it on an empty stomach. Think positive.”
“Okay.”
She was actually smiling now, and the last of her tears were gone. Right before I left she squeezed my hand.
“So… you really wanted to ask me out?” she asked shyly.
I paused for a moment, pretending to consider. “Nah. Your friend was cuter.”
Morgan’s eyes went wide as the sun as I backed away laughing.
“Asshole!” she shouted, laughing despite herself. She cursed and threw something at me that felt like a length of wire as it bounced off my back.
I felt lighter than ever as I took the staircase.
Forty-Five
MORGAN
“She’s been at it all day. Still nothing.”
I could hear them from the other end of the room, trying to keep their voices down. I was tired, exhausted even. My arm was killing me from cranking the radio all day.
But I didn’t care.
“You heard what she said,” Jeremy muttered. “We’re too low. Too far down the mountain to get the signal out.”
“Or there aren’t any rescuers in range,” added Shane. “If we could get closer maybe. Or—”
“No,” Jeremy interrupted. “Higher ground. I’ll climb if you guys don’t want to. I don’t care if I have to climb all the way back up to the peak and ride the gondola home. I’ll do it. I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll never make it,” I heard Boone say. “So much snow came down that side of the mountain you’ll be swimming in it for weeks. They’ll find you in the summer, after everything thaws. Arms and legs out spread out like an idiot. Still swimming.”
Their voices dropped low again, and I sent out another Mayday. They were right though. We needed a different position. The radio was definitely transmitting — we we getting our signal out there. It just wasn’t far enough. There were whole mountains in the way.
“If we’re gonna do this,” Boone went on, “it has to be tomorrow. While we’re still strong. While we’re not starving and exhausted.”
That part scared me — that they were willing to go out again. The storm still hadn’t let up. Locals talked about storms that lasted half the winter here in the Alps. Snowfalls that went on for weeks and months…
“I don’t know about you guys but I feel strong,” said Shane.
“Strong now, sure,” Boone countered. “But we just finished the last of the food. No more rice. No more lentils. No more peaches, or canned anything, or—”
“Wait… there were peaches?”
They mumbled amongst themselves some more, their voices growing louder. I could hear Shane getting insistent. I could hear Boone getting frustrated.
I cranked the radio even harder and started again.
“What do you mean there were peaches?” Jeremy was asking.
“Ever see one of those reality shows,” asked Boone, “where they drop people off naked in the middle of nowhere?”
“We’re
not naked,” Shane countered.
“Not usually,” Jeremy pointed out. “But I have to say, a good amount of the time we’ve been—”
“Shut up.”
“Okay…”
Boone cleared his throat before continuing. “The point is, whenever you watch these shows? These people are exhausted by day three without food. By days five and six, they’re just lying around sleeping all day. After a week, they’re comatose.”
“So?”
“So if we’re going to chance it,” Boone said, “we need to do it now, while we’re still strong. We just finished off the last of the food. We should expend that energy, while we still have a shot.”
They stopped for a moment, maybe letting the gravity of his statement sink in. Jeremy eventually broke the silence.
“When the hell were there peaches?”
I wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t funny. Reaching someone on the radio probably wasn’t going to happen from here. Not at the base of the mountain. All the way tucked in the back.
“How close do you think we got,” asked Shane, “the first time we went out?”
“Dunno,” said Jeremy. “We were trying to walk around, remember? Not up.”
“Yeah but…”
“If only we’d climbed that tower, we could’ve gotten an idea of how far away we were. But the visibility was already gone, and—”
“Tower?” I asked abruptly. “What tower?”
They all turned at once as I came over. They had no clue I was even listening.
“You didn’t say anything about finding a tower.”
“That’s because we didn’t stay long,” said Shane. “It was some old cellphone tower we stumbled across, right before we turned around. Jeremy wanted to climb it but I stopped him.”
“Would’ve been nice if any of us had saved some battery life,” added Jeremy. “Instead of using our phones as flashlights, we could’ve—”
“Are you sure it was a cellphone tower?”
They looked back at me strangely. Like I was making a big deal about nothing.
“There weren’t any power lines,” said Shane. “If that’s what you were thinking.”
“Was it smooth and round?” I asked. “Like an aluminum mast? A bunch of little things sticking out on top and—”
