Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Her voice is stronger as she says, “I’ll come with you.”
I wrap an arm around her to support her as she walks, only limping a little. Her boots are fucking ridiculous—probably some designer shit.
Can’t say I’m surprised. Dalton told me she works in the cosmetics industry. I’ll do whatever I have to do to get us both through this and then I’ll have a good party story, too. The time I survived a plane crash with Wilderness Barbie.
CHAPTER FIVE
Trinity
This was a bad idea. We’re just going to freeze to death faster out here in the open, where the wind blows snow directly into our faces.
I’ve thought about how awful it would be to die by drowning or fire. Ironically, I’ve also considered how horrible going down in a plane crash would be, knowing you were plunging to your death for however long it took to hit the ground. Even with my propensity for worrying about things that probably won’t happen, I’ve never wondered what it would be like to freeze to death.
Until now.
We set out from the wooded area many hours ago and we haven’t seen any sign of shelter. Sometimes we pass through groupings of trees where we get a break from the wind, but mostly we’ve just been walking through snow. It’s about a foot deep in some places and up to my knees in others, thanks to drifting.
“Whose turn is it?” Lincoln turns around and looks at me. “Am I up?”
“Yeah, it’s you. Fourth grade.”
He told me when we set out from the forest that we needed to keep our minds occupied every minute because it would help us keep moving forward. We talked about our jobs and homes and I told him everything there is to know about my cat, Karma. Then I thought of this little exercise, where we each tell the other person everything we can remember about every year we went to school. We’ve already been through kindergarten (when I peed my pants and had to miss the class holiday party to go home and change clothes), first grade (when Lincoln broke his arm falling out of a tree), second grade (fairly uneventful for both of us), and third grade (Lincoln kissed his first girl and I won the spelling bee).
Everything hurts. It’s not just my ankle but my entire body. And cold isn’t enough of a word for what it’s like to be out here. It’s a bone-deep pain that almost burns. The only way I’m able to keep putting one foot in front of the other is that I know I’ll die if I stop.
“I had Mr. McGill for a teacher,” Lincoln says, yelling so I can hear him over the wind. “He brought his golden retriever to school with him every day; her name was Cookie.”
I want to stop walking. Scream. Cry. Quit. I’m exhausted. My chest hurts when I breathe. It’s only thoughts of my mom and Dalton that keep me moving forward. My mom loves her two children with her whole heart, and it would devastate her to lose one of us, especially like this.
And Dalton will never forgive himself if we die. He put us on that plane, and even though the crash is in no way his fault, I know him and he won’t feel that way. He’ll spend the rest of his life eaten up by guilt over it.
“Tell me about Cookie,” I yell at Lincoln’s back.
I’m trying to step where he steps, even though my feet are soaked and half-numb. It takes less energy to step in an existing footprint than it does to make my own. Lincoln has a big stride, though.
“Cookie was the best girl. She played ball with us at recess. She usually chilled in a dog bed next to Mr. McGill’s desk, but sometimes she’d walk up and down the rows of desks and we’d all pet her.”
“Did you work on your kissing technique in fourth grade?”
“Yeah, but not with Cookie.”
My lips crack painfully when I smile. I don’t know how either of us can still make lighthearted comments when we’re probably marching to our final resting places, but Lincoln keeps saying we have to keep our minds from wandering to the worst-case scenario. I’m trying.
“We took a field trip to the children’s museum in Cincinnati and that was my first time holding hands with a girl.”
“Who initiated the hand-holding?”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “Me, of course.”
“Right. Back when you were just a caveboy? Not yet a full caveman?”
He laughs. “All women like men to make the first move.”
“Gay ones don’t.”
Another laugh. “True. But Amy Ackerman liked it when I held her hand. She wrote in my yearbook that I was the cutest boy in the whole school.”
“Do you know what became of her?”
“Amy? Let’s see...I think we went to school together until seventh grade and then her parents put her in a Catholic school.”