Trapped (16 page)

Nothing moved except the drifting smoke and the falling snow. The kart was motionless, a little silver lump capsized on top of eighteen feet of snow. Even though it was maybe two hundred yards away, it seemed impossibly remote, as if we were watching it on television. I stared at it through the glass.

He was under there, in the snow and the smoke: Pete, my friend since forever. We had to get him out, but it seemed impossible. How could we close that distance? Pete hadn’t made it even one foot without the help of the kart.

There was shouting and swearing all around me. Then, in a little gap in the noise, I heard someone say, “The roof.” It was like hitting the mute button. In the sudden silence, I remembered something. I had my own project, something that might help, my Occam’s racers. But they were down in the shop and not even finished.

“I have to go,” I said. No one paid much attention.

Jason was wrestling the window open as I turned to head out of the room. The last thing I heard before I closed the door behind me was the howling of the wind and Jason yelling, “Pete! Pete!”

I thought maybe that was OK, since he was leaning out of the building to yell. There was no chance Pete would hear him, though. We would have to get closer, and we had no way to do
that, so right now it was up to him. He would have to crawl out from under there. I could picture it, him climbing out from under there like a bug, tipping the thing back over, and climbing back on.

Maybe he could get that thing going again. It still had half a propeller. That wouldn’t be enough to get him to town, but it might be enough to get him back to us. Or maybe he could just sit tight and bundled up long enough for me to get to him.

First, I had to get to the shop. I ran to the end of the hallway and took the turn down the stairs fast, but then I descended into that familiar, frustrating darkness. The nail of my middle finger had turned purple underneath, almost black with dried blood. It felt loose. It would fall off soon.

But, I mean, what was one fingernail? Or ten? What was a finger, for that matter? Pete was wedged upside down in the snow, and if he didn’t freeze to death, that black smoke could turn into flame at any moment. Maybe it already had. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, right?

So, what I’m saying is, I went as fast as I could. And, yes, I’d made the trip a bunch of times now, but the trip is different at different speeds. Five steps before the turn becomes three or four if you’re running. The middle of the hall becomes your face smashed into a locker. I took my lumps but I got there fast.

The shop was really dark now. I went over and slammed the windows open and closed to get more light in. That trick wouldn’t work much longer. Even at the edge of the slope, the snow was climbing the building now. I slammed the windows
hard. I think I heard a pane break somewhere, but I got enough light to work by.

Snowshoes, how hard could they be, right? I had the frames and the bottoms pretty well attached. I was using canvas. All the ones I could remember from books and movies and stuff were made of webbing, like oversized tennis rackets. But the idea was to spread out your weight over as much area as possible, right? So I figured something solid and light made just as much sense. Plus, webbing would’ve taken longer, and there was a roll of tan canvas right in the corner.

I still had to figure out some way to keep my feet in the things. I’d been leaving that for last because, well, why not? I was just making these things to stay busy, to have a reason to hang out with Jason. But now I needed them, and fast.

My first thought was duct tape, the first answer to every quick fix, but that was a bad idea. It would come off in the snow and I’d be stuck halfway across the Great Lawn with two big useless donkey paddles. I snagged the straps that Jason had been planning to use for a seat belt, and I got to work.

It was taking too long: the trip here, the windows, the scrounging, the cutting, everything. How long could a person survive upside down in the snow: minutes, hours? I didn’t know. It didn’t feel like I had a choice. These things needed to stay on my feet, or I’d be stuck out there too. I cut and fit the straps, drilled some holes in the metal frames, and connected it all up. The whole thing took maybe an hour.

I put them on and took a half dozen steps across the room. I was walking like a duck, making
FWOP-FWOP-FWOP
sounds as
I went, but it seemed to work. I took them off, put them under my arm, and banged and bumped my way back upstairs.

Smoke stung my eyes as I opened the door to the main room. They’d brought the fire bucket in from across the hall. The room was hazy and stunk of burning textbook. I heard a few coughs, but I couldn’t tell if they were from the smoke or the cold bug that almost everyone had now.

“Just for a while,” said Krista. “It was so cold in here.”

I didn’t care about the smoke. I was about to have all the fresh air I could stand, maybe more.

“Anything?” I said.

“No,” said Jason. “It sort of shifted a little a few minutes ago, but I think that was the wind.”

The window was closed again. Out on the snow, the kart was still upside down but it was tilted a little more to the side now. I still couldn’t see anything underneath.

“You going out there in those?” said Les.

“Yep,” I said.

I thought they might try to stop me: “No, Scotty, you can’t! Don’t be a fool!” But we couldn’t just leave Pete out there, and everyone could understand snowshoes. This wasn’t some crazy shop experiment. So instead of arguing, they just started handing me extra things to wear. There wasn’t much left after Pete, but I ended up with a second hat and a pair of gym shorts over my pants. Jason traded me Pete’s boots for my cruddy, funkified sneakers, and I tied my blanket around my neck like a cape.

I caught my reflection in the window, right before Jason and Les opened it. I looked like some sort of cut-rate superhero. We
opened the window one more time. I climbed up and sat on the windowsill, and Krista handed me the snowshoes, first the right and then the left.

If this was a movie, this is the point where Krista would’ve leaned over and kissed me. “For luck,” she would’ve said, like Princess Leia in
Star Wars.
But she didn’t. I think you’ve figured out by now that this isn’t about boy-gets-girl. It’s about survival. She didn’t even look me in the eyes when she handed me the shoes. I didn’t take it personally. I think she probably just thought enough people had died in the snow.

I leaned out into the open air and fastened the shoes tight, and then there was nothing left to do but go. Anything I said would’ve sounded like last words, and I certainly wasn’t going to turn around and give them all a thumbs-up.

I hopped down onto the snow, concentrating on getting both snowshoes to land at the same time and on the same level. Maximum surface area, that was the key. I counted in my head: 1-2-3. And then I went.

The wind whipped snow into my face. A large flake stuck on one of my eyelashes and I brushed it away with the back of my sleeve. I immediately regretted not taking a pair of safety goggles, like Pete had. Could I go back for them? Just as the thought crossed my mind, I heard the window slam behind me.

Forward, I thought. Move forward. I went to pick up my right foot, and that’s when I discovered my second mistake. The canvas didn’t want to come free from the snow. I’d wanted surface area to stay on top of the soft snow, but I’d gotten too much. The canvas was clinging to the snow and vice versa. So
that’s
why they used webbing for snowshoes. I hadn’t really gotten that before.

I had to reach down and tug my right foot free with my arms. I did the same with my left, but it got easier after that. I’d sunk a few inches in after the little hop from the window, but as long as I stayed on the top of the snow and kept moving, I didn’t need my arms to pull free.

It was slow going, though, leaning forward into the wind and flapping these big canvas paddles under me. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d compare it to walking in deep mud. By the time I made it fifteen yards, my head was sweating underneath my two wool hats, and my face and thighs were
almost numb with cold. I say almost numb because I have to account for the sharp, pricking pain that I felt with each strong gust.

After thirty yards, the cold was creeping inside my ski gloves. I flexed my fingers, balled them up, flexed them again. They wanted to go numb, but I was going to need them when I reached the kart. And I just tried to keep on like that, moving forward and making little adjustments as I went, in a long, head-down slog across the Great Lawn.

Somewhere under all this snow there was a statue. It was a statue of an oak tree: How dumb is that? Why not just plant an oak tree? You couldn’t see it now, but I aimed for where I thought it was and I think I passed right over it. Five or six feet down: a fake frozen tree.

And then I was past it and I picked another target: the spot where some seniors had carved donuts into the grass with their cars a few months back. I know the shortest distance is a straight line, but I wasn’t going very far out of my way. Instead of one straight line, I’d make the trip in two or three. I was just giving myself something to think about, and it helped not to be directly sideways to the wind.

Eighteen feet above the torn-up grass, I finally turned to face the kart. I think I’d been afraid of what I might see as I got closer, but it didn’t really make sense to head anywhere else at that point. I had maybe thirty yards to go, and I just went ahead and did it, one floppy canvas clown foot in front of the other.

It was hard work lifting them. Not only did the canvas bottoms cling to the snow, but the snow kept building up on top of
them. Webbing would’ve let the snow fall right through. Why, after thousands of years of the same basic design, had I thought I could build a better snowshoe? The snow on top of mine added another pound or two to each step, and if that doesn’t sound like a lot, all I can say is you weren’t out there.

My quads and calves ached, and the cold was no relief. It didn’t cool my engines when the wind cut through the denim of my jeans, it just added another ache on top, another burn. Again and again, the cold wind found its way inside of the little cut the kart had made in my jeans.

My eyes were watering with wind and pain and frustration when I saw the kart. It was maybe ten yards away, just close enough to see with my head bent down and my chin tucked into my neck. The image of its bright silver bottom was broken up and refracted by my watering eyes. I sucked down a dose of snot, wiped my eyes, and, best I could, started running.

“Pete!” I shouted. “Hey, Pete!”

I’d had to pace myself to get there. There was no way I could’ve run even a quarter of the distance. Even shouting seemed like too much energy to spend. I’d kept the destination in mind and just slogged it out. But now that I was almost there, I let myself remember why I’d come.

“You dug in under there?” I said. I guess I was sort of hoping he was using the kart for shelter. Maybe he was even under there trying to fix it.

“Pete!” I shouted again.

Now I was kind of mad that he wasn’t acknowledging me. My quads burning, my calves aching, and my eyes watering, I
reached out with both hands. I wanted him to see me, to know that I was there, and so I pushed over his shelter.

Except that it wasn’t his shelter; he was long past that. The kart fell the rest of the way over onto its side with a slow, heavy thud, and I saw him there.

I don’t know what you want me to say here. I think you know what I found. He hadn’t built a shelter. He wasn’t down there working on the engine. He’d knocked himself out in the crash and died in the snow.

For a second, I saw it all: the soft horrible blue that had crept into his face, the way his hands were frozen stiff, like the curled talons of a bird.

I could go on; I remember every detail. But I won’t. That’s all you need to know. It’s not something you ever want to see.

I turned around toward the school. I knew they were all watching through the window. I even saw a few faces, just little circles hovering behind the glass. I tried to fall down into the snow. The bindings at my ankles would only let me fall sideways, so that’s where I went. My shoulder dug in deep and I felt the snow against the side of my face.

I guess I just leave him here, I thought. If he was alive, I could’ve helped him. But he wasn’t, and I sure couldn’t carry him. It was hard enough moving myself in these crappy snowshoes.

Hard enough moving myself … I turned that over in my mind. Man, it would be hard enough just getting back up again. I’d spent all of my energy getting here and making that stupid sprint at the end. I had no idea what came next. A deep shiver
went through me, and I realized just how cold I was. It wasn’t just my hands anymore, not just my feet and arms and legs and face. I was cold inside, in my chest, my back, everywhere.

I knew how it worked: Your body temperature drops, not even that much, like twelve degrees or something. Then you go to sleep. Then you die. It didn’t seem like that bad a deal.

You might think I was delusional or something, but I wasn’t. I was the opposite. Everything seemed really clear to me at that moment. I had three choices: I could turn around and go back to the room. It would be hard, but I thought maybe I could do it. I would sit by the fire bucket and get the feeling back in my fingers and toes. It would be so painful to feel all of those pinpricks again, the same ones I’d had when the feeling left me.

And then I would just sit there and wait for the roof to come down or for someone to come find us, whichever came first. So that was option number one.

Option number two: I could go to sleep and die. It felt like I was already halfway there. I might even be kind of a hero. At least I tried, right? I was just done in by my lame snowshoes. It was a design flaw. I would be like Jason’s dad and Gossell and who knows how many others. Wrong place, wrong time: See you in the spring.

And that brought me to option number three: I could get my lazy butt up and keep going. I couldn’t make it to town, but the power substation was half that distance. I still didn’t think I could make it, but if I was honest with myself, I didn’t know that I couldn’t. And now — lying in the snow and going numb — seemed like a good time to be honest with myself.

It’s funny. You’d think that if I imagined anyone’s voice in my head right then it would’ve been my mom or maybe one of my friends. But it wasn’t. It was my basketball coach, Coach Kielty, the guy with one-and-a-half eyes on me at practice all the time, the guy who’d taken a gangly underclassman and made him into a real athlete. And, more to the point, the guy who’d made me run all those stairs and laps.

“I got us a new StairMaster machine,” he’d say. “It’s at the top of the stairs. Go get it!” Or sometimes: “The point is not to see who can shuffle the fastest; the point is to pick up your feet!” Or just: “Go, go, go!”

I think he thought he was yelling at a wall half the time, but I heard him. I still heard him. I remembered the time after I hit that late three-pointer against Hanging Rock: “You know, Weems, you might amount to something here.”

I wouldn’t amount to anything in the snow. And I didn’t train all off-season to give up now. I pulled my legs up, rolled onto my side, and got up. I got up on my big canvas feet.