She decided it wasn’t that bad.
She forced herself up onto her knees, then her feet. And, using that first fir tree as her goalpost, she walked the next few yards. When she got to the tree, she leaned against it and felt a wave of relief because, no matter how heinous things are, you gotta love a Christmas tree.
Zoe was in the second part of the woods now, with maybe half a mile to go. The trees were massive—they roared up toward the sky—and set far enough apart that what daylight was left trickled down to her. Here, Jonah and the dogs’ tracks were clean and clear. They seemed to be sticking to the path now. She started off again, trying to think of nothing but the rhythm of her steps.
She imagined finding Jonah and marching him home. She imagined wrapping him in blankets till he laughed and shouted, “I! Am! Not! A! Burrito!”
Zoe had been outside for 30 or 40 minutes, and it had to be 25 below. She was shaking like she’d been hit by an electric current. By the time she’d made it halfway through the fir trees, every part of her ached and shivered like a tuning fork. And the storm seemed stronger now. The forest itself was breaking apart all around her. The wind stripped off branches and flung them in every direction. Whole trees had toppled over and lay blocking the path.
She stopped to rest against a tree. She had to. She swung the flashlight around, trying to figure out how far she was from the lake. But her hands were weak and she fumbled and dropped it in the snow.
The light went out.
She sank to her knees to search for the flashlight. It was getting dark so she had to root around in the snow. The shivering had gotten worse—at first it’d felt like she’d touched an electric fence, but now her nerves were so fully on fire that it felt like she was an electric fence—but she didn’t care. And she didn’t care about the bruise or the cut or whatever it was that was pulsing on her forehead. She didn’t care that there were thorns and branches hiding under the snow and that they were tearing at the skin beneath her gloves. She could barely feel anything anyway. After a few minutes on her knees—it could have been two, it could have been ten, she had no idea anymore—her hand found something in the snow. She let out a yelp of happiness, or as much of one as she could manage, and she pulled it out. But it wasn’t the flashlight.
It was one of Jonah’s gloves.
The skull on the back glowed up at her, the empty eye sockets like tunnels.
She pictured Jonah stumbling through the woods, sobbing loudly. She pictured his hand frozen and raw and beating with pain. She pictured him pleading with the dogs to go home. (He must have started pleading by now.) His face came to her for a second. He had their father’s looks, which still made her wince: the messy brown hair, the eyes you assumed would be blue but were actually a cool, weird green. The only difference was that Jonah had slightly chubby cheeks. Thank god for baby fat, Zoe thought. Because, tonight, it might keep Jonah alive.
She found the flashlight, and—miraculously—there was some life left in it. She got to her feet and started out again.
A few feet from the first glove, she found the second one.
Ten feet later, she found Jonah’s coat.
It was a puffy black down jacket, patched with electrical tape—and he’d left it draped over the jagged stump of a tree.
Now Zoe imagined her brother dazed and wandering, his skin itchy and hot, like it was crawling all over him. She imagined him pulling off his clothes and dropping them in the snow.
Zoe was exhausted. And freaked out. And so unbelievably mad at those idiot dogs who didn’t know enough to stay close to the house—who didn’t realize that her beautiful brother would follow them and follow them and follow them through the snow. Until it killed him.
She had to erase that awful image of Jonah. She cast around for a happy thought. She remembered how Jonah used to hide in the exact same place every time they played hide-and-seek with their dad—the old meat freezer in the basement, which hadn’t been used in years. She remembered how they’d act like they had no idea where Jonah was, even though they could see his little fingers propping the lid open for air. And she pictured the ecstatic look on Jonah’s face when she and their dad pretended to give up and Jonah thrust the freezer open and revealed himself, like a magician at the end of a death-defying trick.
“It’s me!” he’d shout happily. “It’s me! It’s me! It’s me!”
For a few seconds that image of Jonah warmed her. Then it disappeared, like a star snuffed out forever.