“Boom!” said Zoe. “Woot!”
“I need you guys to be my … my wing-people or -persons, or whatever,” said Dallas. “Val, I know you’re gonna want to make fun of me, but please don’t. Okay, dude?”
“I won’t, dude-dawg,” said Val. “I like Mingyu. She’s weird and not that pleasant.”
“Right?” said Dallas. “I love that about her.”
“I mean, that band she’s in is—is horrible,” said Val. “I’m kind of obsessed with them. When everybody ran out of that dance screaming last year, me and Gloria stayed.”
“Look, she could tell me no,” said Dallas. He lifted the bag of junk food. “If she does, I’m eating all this myself.”
“She’s gonna say yes,” said Zoe. “We’ve been calling her The Girl Who’s Gonna Say Yes for months.”
“Yeah, please never, ever tell her I called her that,” said Dallas.
“I’m proud of you,” said Zoe. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever do this.”
“I was positive you wouldn’t,” said Val.
“It’s just that Val has Gloria—who I’m bummed isn’t here, by the way,” said Dallas.
“Thank you,” said Val. “Me, too.”
“And, Zoe, you’ve got this hell guy,” said Dallas. “I know you don’t want me waiting around. And I told myself I wasn’t waiting around, but now I think maybe I was.” He paused. “I really like Mingyu. And if she’s not, like, put off by my being kind of a stud—which honestly isn’t even under my control—I think she might like me.”
“She will,” said Zoe.
“She definitely will,” said Val.
Val even reached back to high-five him, though since she was facing the wrong direction, it took her awhile to find his hand.
Zoe waved to Mingyu when they spotted her at the bottom of the lift. It was a weird thing to do because they weren’t really friends with her, but Zoe was excited and couldn’t help herself. Confused, Mingyu frowned, and looked behind her to see who Zoe was waving at.
Dallas was jittery. He wanted to ride the lift awhile so he could figure out exactly what he was going to say to The Girl Who Was Hopefully, Probably Gonna Say Yes.
The three of them trudged up to the lift, and a volley of “hey”s pinged all around. Mingyu was dressed in black, except for a screamingly pink beanie. Her bass, which she apparently played unplugged when there was no one in line, stood propped against the control shed. She looked neither happy nor unhappy to see them, which made Zoe nervous on Dallas’s behalf.
“We love your band,” said Zoe.
Val gave her a look: WTF? You don’t love her band! I love her band!
“Thanks?” said Mingyu, looking skeptical. “Chairlift or gondola? It’s gonna take a minute for a gondola.”
“Gondola,” Dallas said, too quickly. He turned to Zoe. “Slim Reaper doesn’t care if people like them—they’d actually prefer it if people didn’t.” He turned back to Mingyu: “Right?”
Mingyu was impressed.
“Did you look at our website or something?” she said.
“Heck yeah, I looked at your website,” said Dallas. His charm seemed to be functioning again, but then his nerves overtook him and he added, “I like … websites.”
A gondola floated like a bubble down the slope. Mingyu saw the bag of junk food hanging from Dallas’s hand.
“Please don’t make a mess,” she said. “Because then I have to clean it up.”
“We won’t,” they promised, nearly in unison.
“Do you want a Pop-Tart?” said Dallas.
“Okay, yeah,” said Mingyu. It sounded to Zoe like she wasn’t going to say anything else, but then she said: “They should make black Pop-Tarts—and call them Goth-Tarts. They could be licorice-flavored.”
“That sounds disgusting,” said Dallas.
Mingyu smiled for the first time.
“So disgusting,” she said.
“Dude, I would totally eat one,” said Dallas.
“I would eat a whole box,” said Mingyu.
Soon Zoe, Val, and Dallas were up in a gondola, the mountainside unscrolling beneath them.
“That went pretty good, right?” said Dallas.
Zoe and Val agreed that it had.
“I think she’s gonna say yes when I ask her,” said Dallas.
“When exactly are you going to ask her?” said Val.
“Soonish,” said Dallas.
Zoe gazed out of their big bubble as they rose up the darkening mountain. It reminded her of the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Charlie and Willy float over the city in a glass elevator. Dallas was so worried about making a mess in the gondola that every time a piece of litter hit the floor, he lunged for it and stuffed it in a pocket.
Zoe felt the tiniest twinge of jealousy about Dallas and Mingyu. It wasn’t because she was worried about losing Dallas as a friend—she knew she wouldn’t—but because she missed X. She felt like she was part of something that had been torn in half, like one side of her body was just a long, ragged tear.
She looked at Dallas and Val, and tried to focus on the conversation. Dallas was asking how exactly he should ask Mingyu out.
“I think you should say, really loudly, ‘Mingyu, I ship us—and I don’t care who knows it!’ ” said Val.
“Really?” said Dallas.
“Oh my god, no—do not say that,” said Zoe. “Val’s messing with you.” She made a face at Val. “Stop being evil.”
“But I’m evil,” said Val.
Zoe faded from the conversation. She couldn’t stop wondering where X was right that second.
Some lord was probably telling him that he was nothing and no one. X had believed that once. Zoe was afraid he’d believe it again. He’d told her about one of the lords. Dervish. That was his name. Gray skin. Pointy face like a rat’s. He was the psycho who’d wrecked their house—the one who tried to kill Jonah. Now X was back in that hole, and at Dervish’s mercy, probably. Should she have begged him not to go back?
Val and Dallas were staring because she hadn’t spoken in so long.
“Where are you right now?” said Val.
“Who knows,” said Zoe.
The gondola slowed as it reached the platform at the top of the mountain. Zoe opened the door and got out.
“I need to walk a little,” she said. “Sorry.”
She pushed the door shut before they could object. The gondola swung around the turnstile. As it descended the slope, Val knocked from inside and mouthed, Are you okay?
Zoe gestured back: I’m fine! I’m fine!
She wasn’t.
She tramped away from the lift. Her boots were too thin for this much snow. The leather had started to darken. But she wanted to be alone, to be somewhere no one could see her. She peered into the deserted lodge: The chairs were upside down on the tables. A cue ball sat on the pool table, lonely as the moon.
She tried the door. Locked, of course.
A handwritten sign said, We Ain’t Open. Find Something Else to Do with Your Life!
There was a small plateau so skiers could get to the northern slopes. It was abandoned now. Zoe trudged across, and gazed out. The sun was down, but night was still forming over the valley. The darkness was bleeding into everything, eating away at light and color like a science experiment.
She started down the slope. The snow gave way. Zoe plunged down until it was up to her knees. Instead of struggling, she looked out over the valley and screamed wordlessly. It felt freeing—like she was sending the black cloud in her chest out to join the rest of the darkness.
A hundred yards down on the slope, a flashlight clicked on.
The beam swung toward her.
Shit.
Zoe couldn’t see a face. No shoulders, no shape. The glare grew stronger as whoever it was came closer. She didn’t like having the thing aimed at her. She scrambled back up the slope, falling through the snow, climbing some more, then falling again. She could actually feel the beam growing hot on her back. Which was impossible. Or should have been.
She heard someone behind her.
It couldn’t be X—he’d know that this would piss her off.
Screw it, she thought.
She turned and looked.