Page 54 of Avalanche
“Yeah.” My throat is tight, my heart hammering behind constricted lungs. I give a curt nod. “Let’s go find him.”
At first we plan to split at the road, for Matty to go right and me to go left. But when we get there, it’s pretty clear which way Seth has gone since there’s only one set of footprints in the fresh dusting of snow coating the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” I ask with alarm when Matty starts jogging in the direction of Seth’s footprints.
Matty doesn’t answer, just tosses me an incredulous look over his shoulder, a silent demand that I follow, then picks up his pace. I give a huff of annoyance, my breath clouding in the cold air.
Ahead of us, the sun is starting to rise, not quite cresting the looming mountain peaks, but casting the clouded sky in golds and pinks. I rub my hands together to ward off the chill, then force my booted feet into a reluctant jog.
After ten minutes of Matty’s relentless pace, I feel like my lungs might burst. But I don’t dare ask him to slow down. Not now that the sun is painting the snowcaps red as blood and the town itself seems to be waking up, with lights glowing from the windows of the shops and apartments that line the mountain’s base on the other side of the road.
This side of the road is completely desolate though, with a wintery dormant park and naked trees and piled up snow drifts from the snowplows clearing the road. A few decaying snowmen decorate the otherwise empty field, their misshapen bodies gleaming gold in the rising sun.
A rising sun, but still no sign of Seth.
“Are you sure these are his footprints?” I call out to Matty’s back. The words are strained, exhaled on tight breaths. “Maybe we should call him again.”
Matty slows his pace to dig in his coat pocket for his phone. I nearly sob in relief at the momentary reprieve, but it’s short-lived, because Matty breaks into a run again the moment he puts his phone to his ear.
“It’s ringing,” Matty tells me, not sounding the least bit out of breath.
“Yeah, I know,” I huff. “I can hear it.”
And I can. Matty must have it on speaker or something, because I can hear the sound from ten paces behind him.
Matty skids to a stop, his arm going limp at his side, the phone nearly slipping from his fingers. The ringing continues, incessant and unmistakable, but it’s not coming from Matty’s phone like I thought.
It’s coming from beside us. Beside me. From a snowdrift that’s piled to nearly knee high along the curb.
“Fuck.” The word punches out of me on a sharp exhale. “Oh, fuck.”
Matty’s pushing past me, dropping to his knees in the snow. No hesitation, not a breath, not a heartbeat.
My feet are rooted to the spot, as if the ice has crusted itself to the soles of my feet.
“Seth. Seth, can you hear me?” Matty’s voice is thick with emotion, but steady. Not at all like the sound of my heart, the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, pounding in my ears.
Seth is sprawled along the curb, half hidden by the snowdrift. Grey snow is tainted dark in patches, a dark red that seems to mock the gentler pinks cast from the rising sun. One of his legs is twisted at a strange angle inside joggers and, though his face is half hidden, pressed into the dark snow, I can tell his eyes are shut.
“He’s still breathing.” Matty’s words echo, distant in the fog tangling in my mind. “He’s still alive.”
Still alive. Those words echo through my skull, tasting like blood and snow and pain. For a flash of a second, I’m back there, at the base of that kicker, the sound of my coach’s voice screaming in my ears, that feeling of wrongness in my spine, in my legs.
You’re still alive, they had said, when they told me I’d never ride again. You’re still alive. As if I should have been grateful, laying in that hospital bed.
“I’ve got you. Shh, that’s it. It’s me, Matty. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Matty is lifting Seth up, hauling all six feet of him into his arms, cradling Seth’s head against his own broad chest. But even he isn’t strong enough to carry him, not when Seth is all dead weight and loose limbs.
“I can’t carry him,” Matty rasps, shooting me a panicked look over Seth’s head. “Not all the way back to the condo.”
I blink, and the world comes rushing in around me, crystallizing with icy clarity.
I’m here, at the side of the road in Park City, with Matty’s blue eyes pleading with me and Seth scarcely breathing in his arms. Matty, who looked at me with so much blind trust only days ago, when our bodies were pressed together with only Lily between us. Matty who trembled like a new-born foal when he brushed his lips against Antoine’s.
Something sharp and solid presses behind my ribs, making my shoulders straighten, my heartbeat calm. I pull my phone from my pocket, ignoring the trembling in my hands.
“We’re not taking him back to the condo,” I tell Matty decisively. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
