Chapter 8
We moved through the woods in a crooked line, each step heavier than the last. The snow clung and resisted, grabbing at our boots like it didn’t want to let go of us yet. It had weight now, and it turned every forward step into a small argument with gravity—one we were losing.
Jake walked ahead of me, then slowed, then lurched forward again. He kept lifting his hands to his head, pressing his palms hard against his ears like he was trying to hold something in or keep something out. Every few minutes, he groaned or shouted, the sound breaking the quiet open.
“Dude,” Ricky said after the third time. “What is wrong with you?”
Jake shook his head without slowing. “Nothing. I’m fucking freezing.”
We were all freezing. But this wasn’t that.
His shoulders hunched, and his jaw clenched so tightly it looked painful. His eyes kept darting to the trees, then down at the ground, then back again. I told myself not to read into it. Panic looks different on everyone. Still, I watched him.
We should never have driven the SUV up there. The thought kept looping in my head, useless and loud. Now we were stranded with no car, which meant no easy way out. All we had was this long walk back and the knowledge that we’d only made things worse.
Ricky tried to sound upbeat, clapping his hands together once. “Don’t worry, guys. Once this storm eases up, Bill will help us get the SUV unstuck. This’ll be a stupid memory we all laugh about one day.”
Jake laughed. “Yeah. If he doesn’t kill us first.”
“Knock it off,” Noah snapped. He’d been quiet most of the walk, moving like he was conserving energy. “Maddie’s missing. Stop joking. She could be—”
He stopped. The word hung there anyway, unspoken but definite in its absence.
Ricky reached out, resting a hand against Noah’s back, letting him lean as they walked. Noah didn’t protest. His breath hitched, and the sound of it made my chest ache.
Jake groaned again, louder this time, fingers digging into his hair.
I picked up my pace to walk beside him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He shot me an intense look filled with more than one emotion, but I couldn’t pick them out. “What do you care?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t give a shit about me,” he said. “You’ve made that pretty clear.”
“Just because we broke up doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”
“Right,” he said.
There was something in his tone that felt less hurt and more rehearsed, like he’d been waiting for the line. I opened my mouth to respond, to say something that might cut through whatever this was, but Ricky pointed ahead.
“There’s the cabin!”
At first, I saw only the outline, a darker shape against the white. Relief surged, and that’s when my foot caught.
I went down hard, the impact knocking the air from my lungs. Pain flared up my side. The ground felt wrong beneath me, uneven, resistant in a way snow shouldn’t be.
Ricky and Noah turned back. “You okay?” they asked in unison.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just . . . tripped over something.”
I pushed myself up, brushing at the snow with numb, frantic fingers. I didn’t know why I was digging so hard. I just knew I had to see what had taken me down.
And then I wished I hadn’t. Maddie lay there, mostly buried in the snow. Her body was twisted to one side, like she’d been thrown hard, unable to get back up. Her eyes were closed, and her skin had gone pale and waxy. Dark, dried blood streaked her temple, stark against the white.
For a split second, my brain refused it. It tried to tell me it was a trick of the light, a mannequin, a rare forest creature that mimicked the look of humans, anything but this.
Then the scream tore out of me, raw and uncontrolled. Noah collapsed beside her, sobbing, his hands hovering in the air like he was afraid to touch her, afraid she’d shatter.
My thoughts slipped over themselves, unable to land anywhere solid.
We had been out here before. We had searched—calling her name, scanning the ground until everything blurred together.
If she’d fallen, if she’d been here the whole time, then how had we missed her?
How had none of us seen the shape beneath the snow?
I didn’t know which answer terrified me more. That she hadn’t been here before. Or that she had been, and we just hadn’t seen her.