Chapter 2

He put on the hands-free and tried her number again. His cold hands suddenly turned sweaty. Surely, she wouldn’t turn him away, not in as dire a situation as this. Replaying their last conversation made him doubt his welcome, but she was his mother, after all. The call went through, and he held his breath as he waited. He reached the point where he should hang up, but he waited a bit longer.

With a sigh, he took off the headset and threw it on the passenger seat, not daring to take his eyes off the road, or what should’ve been a road. When his vision started to blur, he cursed his own stupidity. What grown man cried because his mother didn’t pick up the phone?

In a swift movement he wiped his cheeks, tried to blink away any new tears threatening to spill. The car slid a little to the side, Aiden tried to compensate by turning the steering wheel. The car lost traction, and without thinking he hit the brakes.

The car spun.

The dark of the night, the snowflakes, and the dull light from the lamppost melted together. Aiden didn’t know where he was going or where he’d come from. It all happened so fast, and before he knew it, he crashed into something solid. The seat belt locked, cutting into his shoulder before it threw him back against the headrest.

Panting, he looked at the white in front of him. His hands shook, and new tears flowed down his cheeks as he tried to start the car again. The engine crackled and hissed before dying completely. Aiden stared in disbelief. Hitting the steering wheel didn’t help; neither did screaming. Out of breath, he leaned forward and rested his head against the cold plastic of the wheel.

He reached for his phone—no signal. This can’t be happening.Nausea rolled over him. All he could see was darkness and snow-covered pine trees. He put his phone in his pocket and zipped his jacket all the way up. Somewhat hesitantly, he reached for the door handle, pushed the door against the whipping wind, and stepped out into the swirling flakes. His new sneakers disappeared into the snow, and cold immediately surrounded his ankles.

The tracks of his car were already filling as one snowflake after another heaped up in them. Aiden reached for his backpack, closed the door, and started trudging through the cold white mass, away from the rapidly disappearing tracks and his sun-yellow car. He hoped no one crashed into it while he was away. He also hoped there would be a town just around the next turn, not that there were any turns. The lampposts stood in a straight line as far as he could see.

* * * *

Aiden couldn’t feel his feet; they’d gone from hurting to numb. His fingers burned from the cold, and the snow kept coming down at the same pace it had all evening. He had no idea where he was. Trees, trees, and more trees. But what there was even more of was snow. He looked up into the sky and went dizzy from watching the flakes fall down. They seemed to fall so fast, and yet some of them looked as if they weren’t moving at all.

His phone had beeped its battery warning twice, which meant the next one would be a double beep, and then it would die. It didn’t matter. He didn’t have a signal anyway, but maybe they could use it to track him when he’d been buried in the snow.

He feared that was where he was heading—towards a slow, cold death. If he didndrsquo;t find somewhere he could ask for help, soon it would be over. Who would have thought therehrsquo;d be so many trees between Whiteport and Courtland, or that the distance between the small villages scattered between the two cities was so great?

Aiden didn’t know how long he had been walking, or rather plodding through the snow. An eternity. He was becoming unsteady, his muscles ached, and he shivered heavily. He couldn’t decide if he was nauseated or hungry, maybe both. What he did know, though, was that he needed to sit down, if only for a little while.

He stopped. His breathing was coming in rapid pants, and they didn’t slow even though he was standing still. His fingers were shockingly red. The snowflakes landing on his hands took longer to melt now than they had at the beginning of his march, or maybe it just looked that way

The muted light from the lampposts blurred together, but Aiden believed there was a turn ahead. He would rest there.

Slowly, he continued forward, putting one foot in front of the other. It was hard to know where to place his feet since he couldn’t feel them, and he sunk down to his knees in the deep snow with each step, but he kept his gaze locked on the turn. He didn’t know if he was on the road or if he was walking next to it. Snowflakes caught in his eyelashes; no matter how many times he blinked them away, new ones kept on coming.