Page 37 of Protecting the Flame

Chapter 11

Which was not true.

Their golden time window passed,the snow kept on, and Rachel didn’t wake. The next day, Will insisted they all wash and brush their teeth; they had toiletries and plenty of warm water. It was, he said, the little things that would help boost their morale, and they’d feel better. Emma had her doubts, but after dashing out with the excuse of having to pee but really because she needed a few minutes’ peace to puke, brushing her teeth seemed awfully attractive.

While Will shaved, an operation Mattie watched with interest, Emma took care of Rachel. While she was drying Rachel’s face with one of Will’s camp towels, Mattie came up with a small toiletry bag in hand. “She likes to put on a little lipstick,” she said.

“Sure.” Emma backed up. “Why don’t you do it?” She watched as the girl carefully applied the color, a soft muted russet, to her mother’s lips. “That’s a nice color.”

“It’s my mom’s favorite.”

“I bet it would look nice on you, too.”

“Me?” Mattie scrunched up her nose. “It would be weird.”

“It might also be fun.” Reaching for her pack, Emma rooted around and came up with a small travel toiletry case. “Or we could use mine. It’s mauve, which is kind of soft purple.”

“I know what mauve is.” Popping the top, Mattie twisted the stick and inspected the tip for a long time. “It’s pretty.”

“Thanks. I think it’s best for girls like us with dark hair. Go on, give it a whirl,” she said, opening a small compact of powdered blush and turned it so Mattie could see herself in the mirror. “I promise, I only have a couple cooties.”

“Cooties are for kids,” Mattie muttered. She worked the lipstick with all the concentration of a brain surgeon. “There. What do you think?”

Emma cocked her head. “I think mauve is your color. How about a little blush with that?”

“Like our cheeks aren’t going to be red enough?” But Mattie let Emma feather a muted taupe blush along her cheekbones. Peering into a mirror, she said, “Not bad.”

“Are we missing something?” Emma came up with another compact. “Eye shadow?”

“Maybe. Do you really wear all this stuff, like, every day?”

She shook her head. “Only if I’m going to interview someone. The rest of the time, a little lipstick, a little blush, I’m good.”

“Then I think we’re good right now,” Mattie said.

“I think you both look terrific.” Will grinned from the front. “And now if you are done preening, probably time we get to work.”

They worked all day. Emma and Mattie built a lean-to with Visqueen and stout branches then gathered wood for the fire they couldn’t start because of the thick snow while Will stayed by the fuselage and kept shouting so they had a point of reference and couldn’t wander off. They kept the tail and ELT antenna clear—and the second day passed, with no helicopters, no rescue teams, no miracles.

By the third day, the snow was getting deep enough to cover up the shelter’s opening, so they carved a tunnel to the surface the way the Inuit do. The rest of the time, they huddled together, melted snow in the Jetboil and with their body heat, and tried to stay warm. They still washed, and Emma and Mattie put on makeup (Mattie even allowed for shadow), but that day, they ate almost nothing at all. Will had a deck of cards, and they played a lot of gin rummy. Mattie started a journal in a composition book she’d brought along. They read every scrap of the Minot Daily News and The New York Times, even the obits and ads, and pored over the crossword puzzle (thankfully the tougher Saturday offering) and the word scrambles and sudoku and even the bridge hints with the intensity of archaeologists studying hieroglyphs. They took turns reading Mattie’s book on quantum realities. Will and Mattie started The Waste Land, rationing stanzas, trying to make the poem last, though Emma couldn’t bring herself to read it. For starters, she knew the thing better than her own name. For another, a poem about limbo suddenly felt too damn real. In a way, they also were in the same pickle as the cat in Schrödinger’s box: gone and yet not-gone, dead and alive at the same time. To the world beyond their box, they would stay that way, too, until someone—a helicopter, a drone, a rescue team—crawled through that tunnel, looked inside their box, and collapsed probabilities.

They lit a new Hanukkah candle every night. They all said “yehi ’or,” but that was it. She wasn’t feeling it. Like, surviving the crash only to slowly die of starvation or maybe freeze to death if they tried to walk out? Some miracle. On the other hand, when people did find them, she and Mattie would look good.

By the evening of the third day, when still no helicopters had descended and no rescuers braved the mountain and the deadening snow was unrelenting, Emma decided Will, who was right about so much, was wrong about one thing at least.

No news was bad.

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