Demanding Ransom

by Megan Squires

  “Okay, if you’re ready, here we go.” Ran drops his front hand and keeps the back at my left hip as he cautiously guides me forward. “Very good, Maggie,” he encourages as we pick up speed slightly, the packed snow sliding under the smooth bottom of our boards. “Now pull up on your front toe and we’re going to dig back into the hill with our heels, okay?” He brings his right hand to the small of my back as I do what he says, and he steadies me so I don’t fall completely over onto him. “Nice.”

  My body angles forward again, prompted by his slight pressure. “Now let’s point the toe toward the fall line and try again.” I do as he says, but I think I must overcorrect because my weight propels me over the toe edge of my board and Ran has to hook his arm around my waist to pull me upright, his hand landing a little higher than he probably means for it to, though I don’t know that he notices. There is nothing remotely feminine about my attire right now and I’m sure I’m nothing more than a figureless blob of androgynous jackets and padding in his eyes, anyway.

  “Whoa,” he breathes against my neck as he catches me. “Too far.” I reclaim my balance and we start to slide down the hill again. “It’s all about little shifts in balance. You don’t need to dive over the front of your board.”

  “I like to take things fast,” I say, not entirely limiting my answer to just snowboarding. I wonder if he picks up on it. I don’t know why I’m being so bold; this really isn’t like me. Maybe because I won’t be alive past this afternoon, having frozen to death and all.

  “Some things need to be taken slowly, Maggie,” he states, and it’s glaringly evident he’s knows what I mean. My cheeks heat a thousand different shades of red. “Let’s try this again.”

  This time Ran doesn’t let go of me and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s worried I’ll go end over end with my board still bound to my feet, or if he just doesn’t want to let go. I’m hoping it’s the latter as I feel him closer at my back, our boards only about six inches apart now, cutting the same grooved pattern into the snow. We stay like this, slipping down the shallow mountain until we’re at the base where the snow flattens out completely and stretches toward the lodge.

  Ran swivels around to face me and looks up the vast, white hill at our work. “Nice job, Maggie!” he shouts, tossing me a high five that totally rocks any balance I had. I plummet to the hard ground with a thud. I’m pretty sure the entire mountainside rattles underneath me. “Sorry!” he laughs, stretching out a hand to me. Instead of letting him aid in helping me, I tug his arm with one forceful jerk and he crashes down on top of me. His breath rushes out from him, suspended in a frozen cloud between us.

  Ran pushes his goggles up onto his forehead and then slips his fingers under mine to do the same. “Maggie,” he says softly, “it’s not nice try to injure your teacher.”

  “It’s not nice to hang back when I’m ready for more,” I retaliate. “Plus, I feel kinda bad that you have to spend all this time on the bunny slopes with me when it’s clear that you’re very experienced and should be carving up that mountainside.”

  Ran pushes up on the snow and does what looks like a scissor kick to flip his board over so he can sit next to me. “I like teaching you,” he says, tucking a loose lock of his dark hair up under his gray beanie. He stares straight ahead and the muscle at the back of his jaw tightens. “And I like taking things slow with you, believe it or not.”

  In a strange way, it feels like he’s rejecting me again. That is, until he turns toward me and leans in, bringing his mouth just to the edge of mine so his breath flutters against it. “I like it this way, Maggie.” His eyes are still open when he presses his lips onto mine, and though my mouth had been frozen solid from the bite of the air before, the moment the heat of our lips meshes with one another, they’re not just instantly thawed, but they radiate a warmth that courses throughout my veins. Even my toes don’t feel as cold as they once did.

  Ran brings a hand behind him on the snow to push further toward me, his lips increasing in pressure against mine, and the moment my eyes start to close and my breath leaves me, he pulls back. “You ready to try again?”

  I nod, wishing he was talking about the kiss, but knowing he’s referring to the hill that sits behind us. He looks over his shoulder toward the chair lift.

  “Yeah, let’s do that again,” I say, pushing off the ground. Ran takes my gloved hand and steadies me. I shoot him that smirk he’s so good at and add, “All of it.”

  “You’re really doing great. And I’m not just saying that.” Our chair continues its steady incline and I’ve gotten used to the nauseous sensation that accompanies riding it because I just don’t think it’s going to go away. This has to be close to our twelfth time heading up the hill, and each run I pray that they won’t have to shut it down for me again. Luckily, the past ten trips have been a success.

  “Thanks,” I reply, trying to hold his hand, but our gloves are so thick that our fingers don’t fit together well. “I hate to admit it, but it’s actually a little fun.”

  “I think it’s funny that you hate to admit that.” Ran adjusts his goggles and straightens out his beanie. There’s a clump of snow tucked into the fold of it and it’s gradually melting, leaving a darker ring of damp gray in its place.

  “Why?”

  “You don’t like admitting your wrong, Maggie. And it’s kinda cute when you do.” He brushes the tip of his index finger across my nose, which I’m sure resembles Rudolph’s bright red bulb. The temperature’s dropped over the past two hours and the higher up the mountain we go, the windier and more frigid the air.

  “Well then, if you find it cute, I’ll have to admit to being wrong more often.” It’s fun to flirt with him like this, like we’re playing some game. It’s fun to do anything with Ran, actually. Even snowboarding.

  “Tell me three things you can admit you were wrong about.” He leans toward me and quirks up his lips. “Preferably about me. That would be cuteness overload.”

  “Hmm.” I feign thinking long and hard, because the reality of it is that I was completely wrong about him; I was wrong about almost everything when it came to Ran. “What if I admit to more than just three things?” I tilt my head as I ask the question, and I glimpse the people that ski and board down the hill under us. They look like a child’s action figures, they’re so small.

  “Then you would be drop dead gorgeous, but honestly that is already true, so it’s not really like any of this changes much.”

  “Well,” I begin, trying not to peer down at the snow below because it’s throwing off my equilibrium, “for what it’s worth, I was wrong about everything with you, Ran. You’re not at all who I thought you were.”

  “Good or bad?” I have no idea where he’s taking me, because this lift is still climbing and I can’t see the end of it through the clouds of mist that hover over the mountaintop.

  “Good. All good.”

  I drop my head onto his shoulder and breathe in his scent. Though it’s freezing out, we’ve given ourselves quite the workout this afternoon and Ran smells faintly of sweat as a result. But he also has the clean smell that just seems to be him, and I can’t get enough of it.

  “What if there was one more thing you didn’t know about me that might change that?”

  Oh no. Where did this come from? I thought we’d already done this whole ‘I have secrets in my past that might change the way you feel about me’ thing. I honestly don’t know how many more skeletons I want to meet—between the two of us we could fashion quite the impressive haunted house come Halloween.

  “What now, Ran?” I try not to sound exasperated by it because I do want him to be open with me and if he catches my hint of frustration, that might not continue being the case.

  “Tell me you’ll forgive me first,” he smiles.

  Not again. “Seriously? You do realize that making me do that is not at all fair, right? Because you could say something terrible like you’re an ax murder or drug embezzler or something.”

&nb
sp; “If I were either of those things, would you not forgive me?” Ran stares at me straight through his goggles. I think he’s actually a little bit serious.

  I shake my head. “Really?” He nods. “I don’t know—I guess if you were truly sorry then I would forgive you. I guess.” I waver. “I don’t know. That’s just crazy.”

  Ran shifts his weight and the whole chair swings back and forth with his sudden movement. I instantly feel like I’m on some rickety ride at the state fair that creaks and groans like it’s one screw from coming completely unhinged.

  “Say you forgive me,” he says again. “Please, Maggie.”

  I try to marshal the quiver in my voice and once I’m convinced he won’t detect it, I say, “I forgive you, Ran.”

  The surrounding air hits my skin in small beads of moisture and it’s hard to see past my hand. I’m not sure how much longer we have until we reach the top, but pretty soon I probably won’t even be able to see his face through the veil of white around us.

  “I’m the reason for your accident,” he says in an unnervingly monotone voice.

  “What?” The thickness of the air already made it hard to breathe, but his words feel just as heavy on my chest, like a binding corset. “What?” I say again.

  “The night of your accident. I’m to blame for it, Maggie.”

  “Ran, I don’t know how that’s possible.” I try not to pull away from him, but I can’t help but draw back in question. This makes absolutely no sense.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you,” he starts, and I recall the cryptic times he’d mentioned something about feeling guilty or something weird of that nature, but it never developed from there.

  “I was hit by a drunk driver.”

  He nods and looks in the distance like he’s recalling that night. But all that is in front of him is a bleached stretch of cascading snow. “I know.”

  “So how does that make it your fault?”

  “Because I sorta wished for it.” His voice is still so clear, so steady, like there’s no emotion held in it whatsoever. Or maybe it’s been drained of the emotion it once embodied, having thought it over and over again, to the point where it is just a recitation rather than a testimony.

  “I seriously doubt you wished for me to get plowed into by a drunk driver.” I pull down on the unintentional lift in my voice, hoping not to come across accusatory, because that’s not how I feel, even if my voice indicates otherwise. When will this lift ever get to the top?

  “I wanted to rescue you, Maggie.” Ran yanks his beanie off his head and wrings it angrily through his fingers. “It’s a sick game Trav and I play when it’s slow. You know—we point out girls that we’d like to get in the back of our ambulance.” I look down at his lap and am pretty sure that his hat will never be its original shape again.

  “And I was one of those girls?” I reiterate.

  “Yes.” The twisting continues. “We were stopped at the light just to the right when I caught a glimpse of you through your windshield. God, you were so cute tapping your fingers on your steering wheel nervously. I pointed you out and Trav agreed and I told him I claimed you first and that’s when it happened.” Ran drags his gloved hand down the length of his face. “It was out of nowhere, Maggie. He just barreled into the intersection from the lane next to us.” Ran’s eyes are vacant; his stare is void of any discernable emotion. “Your car flipped and rolled twice. I thought you were dead. There was so much blood.”

  We’ve made it to the top of the hill and Ran slinks off the lift like he’s on autopilot. Thankfully, I don’t slip or fall, but glide with him to the side where he drops down and sits directly in the snow with his arms tightened around his knees and his board dug into the powder. I mimic his movements and position myself the same way, right beside him.

  “There were three other cars involved, but all I could think about was you. I’ve seen a lot—believe me—but I threw up twice on the way to get to you, Maggie. I just had this horrible feeling that you were dead and that somehow, by making a sick joke over wanting you, I’d sealed your fate.” Ran hasn’t looked at me for the past few minutes. He still doesn’t. “When I saw you there—hanging from your seatbelt, drenched in blood, but still breathing—you have no idea what that did to me.”

  “You didn’t rescue me, Ran.” I tug my fingers out of my glove and stretch my hand over to him, looking for a bare patch of skin so he can feel my reassuring touch on him. There’s a small space on his neck above his jacket collar and I brush my fingers along the skin there. “You are rescuing me. The night of the accident was just the beginning.”

  Ran whips his head my direction. He rips off his goggles in one reckless motion. “You don’t blame me?”

  “You can’t be serious.” The snow falls steadily around us, landing in small flakes that dust Ran’s eyelashes. He blinks rapidly to shake them off. “You honestly think that you played a part in the accident?”

  “No,” Ran continues, rotating his head back and forth. “Obviously I know I didn’t. But how it all happened, it just seemed too significant to be coincidental, you know?”

  I pull myself closer to him awkwardly, cutting the sharp edge of the board in a horizontal path in the snow as I slide nearer. “That’s because it wasn’t a coincidence, Ran.” I unclip the bindings from my shoes and leave the board where it lays and drag myself to Ran. I grasp either side of his face and draw it up to mine, forcing him to look at me, forcing him to listen to me. There’s a clarity that’s slipping back into his eyes, casting away the shadow of haze that inhabited them moments ago. “I don’t believe for a second that our meeting was a coincidence. But I also don’t believe you’re at all to blame for how it happened. I just don’t think we can wish for something and have it come true like that—bad or good.”

  His half-empty eyes sluggishly lift to mine, like he’s coming out of some stupor or daze. I grip on tighter to his face to shake him out of it completely.

  “Maggie. How is it that everything about you is exactly what I’ve been searching for?” Ran brings his frozen lips to mine.

  “Because I’m perfect,” I mock, pulling out of our quick kiss.

  “Pretty damn near.”

  “Oh, and I forgive you,” I add, slinking out of his grip to fit my boots in the bindings again.

  “I thought you just said it wasn’t my fault.” Ran wipes his eyes with the back of his glove and secures his goggles back onto his face.

  “It’s not,” I confirm. “But I forgive you for being a hypocrite.”

  Ran cocks his head to the side the way puppies do when they’re trying to decipher what you’re saying. “How so?”

  “You keep telling me that I need to let go of my guilt.” I push up on my knees to lift out of the embankment of snow and steady myself with my arms balanced out on either side. “Yet you’ve obviously been carrying that around for a while. So is that one of those, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ things?”

  “I think you should always do as I say, and do as I do.” Ran tosses me an impossibly coy grin that I don’t even know how he’s able to produce because my lips are currently frozen and my tongue is so numb that it feels like a block of ice trapped in my mouth. “And right now, I say we head down this hill, go back to the ‘chalet,’ and search for that hot tub you promised me.”

  “I didn’t promise you anything, Ran.”

  “Who’s the hypocrite now?”

  I teeter on my board and recover my footing. “That wouldn’t make me a hypocrite, that would make me a liar.”

  Ran skates closer and brings his mouth near my ear. “Anything else you’re lying to me about?”

  I tuck my neck further into my jacket, because his breath should warm where it hits, but it just draws up chills that I can’t afford to have right now. I’ve never been so cold in my life. “I sorta just lied about not believing we get our wishes. Because I really hope I’m about to get mine.”

  “And what would that be?” Ran pulls at the Velcro on his gloves to tigh
ten the strap.

  “To finally, really kiss you,” I say confidently, which surprises me. “No more of this teasing me with little pecks here and there. It’s starting to feel more like I’m your sister or something rather than your girlfriend.” Did I seriously just say that? What has gotten into me? I’m not Ran’s girlfriend. We’d never defined anything. Why on earth does it feel like suddenly I’ve smashed my censor button to smithereens?

  “I definitely don’t view you as a sister.” Ran fits his beanie back onto his head. “Let’s see about finding that hot tub so we can make that wish of yours come true,” he smirks, pointing the toe side of his board toward the fall line and slipping out of sight into the white depth of the snow-drenched mountainside, leaving me to chase after him this time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mikey: In the hospital for more tests. Had a killer headache for the past two days.

  Me: That sucks, Mikey.

  Mikey: Yeah. How’s Mom? Giving you a headache yet?

  Me: Not so bad. Haven’t seen her much.

  Mikey: She passed out drunk like always?

  Me: Probably.

  Mikey: You coming home tmrw?

  Me: Yeah. Afternoon.

  Mikey: Stop by and see me. I’ll want company.

  Me: K. Love u.

  Mikey: You too, Sis.

  “Knock-knock,” Ran says through the door without actually knocking at all. I power off my phone because there’s just a sliver of battery left, and I think we should have a working cell phone on hand for the trip down the hill tomorrow. The conditions have gotten worse—almost whiteout—and Dad’s always getting on me about having a fully-charged phone while driving. Unfortunately, the cord that would charge the stupid thing is still plugged into my bedroom wall at home, doing me absolutely no good here.