Lovely, Dark, and Deep

  “It’s midnight,” Josh says. His voice is husky. “You really got to pumpkin?”

  “I really got to pumpkin,” I say, laughing.

  Immediately, I regret my answer when he pulls away from me and jumps down to the snow-covered ground. He slips a little. “Careful. Weird, it wasn’t supposed to snow.”

  “You checked the weather?”

  “Of course.”

  I sigh, already missing his warmth, his arms, his chest. He holds out his hand, my knight in the snow. I take it and scoot off the hood. He catches me in his arms. One stolen kiss becomes two. Three. Four.

  I shiver.

  “You’re freezing. Come on,” he says in a distinctly take-charge way as he walks me back to the passenger side.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ve got to pumpkin.”

  By the time we are both inside the truck, the air has become insistent with snowflakes, heavy, thick, and fast. Inside our snow globe, Josh cranks on the windshield wipers to full speed. Mother Nature scoffs. These flimsy blades are nothing against the force of her snow.

  “You buckled?” Josh asks, glancing over at me.

  Even though I nod, he does a visual check, eyes dropping from my shoulder to my hip. I wait for his quip. I get none.

  Kissed to near oblivion, I hadn’t even noticed that a gray Tesla has joined us in the parking lot. It lurches forward, then skids. Josh pulls up to the driver’s side, rolls down my window, and leans over me.

  “You need any help?” he asks.

  The gray-haired driver, with a golden retriever lying in the back seat, shakes his head. “No, I got it. Freak snow though, huh? I’m going to wait it out. You kids might want to, too.”

  That’s not possible when I’ve got to be home before dawn. The early bird patrol awakes around five, and there will be a perimeter check at seven when I should be rousing for my heart-healthy breakfast.

  As soon as my window is rolled up, Josh asks me (again), “You buckled?”

  “Still buckled,” I confirm.

  Yet (again), his eyes sweep me, triple-checking.

  “It wasn’t supposed to snow,” he tells me (again). “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

  “You can’t control the weather.”

  He doesn’t answer. We turn out of the parking lot without a problem, but as we slow at the stop sign, the truck skids. I yelp.

  “I’ve got four-wheel drive,” Josh says, but whether he’s reassuring me or himself is unclear. “This is the last thing my parents agreed on after the accident. They wanted me in something indestructible.”

  “Hey, we can wait it out.”

  “You’ve got to get home. Or can you call your parents? Let them know you’ll be late?”

  I could, but the problem is they don’t know I’m out. I don’t tell Josh that. Before he can detect my lie, he checks his cell phone instead and swears.

  “No service. How about you?” he asks.

  Thankfully, I don’t have cell service either. The truth is safe in the dark with us.

  “Okay. Home then?”

  “Home.” I can feel his impending question and answer preemptively, “Still buckled.”

  “Good,” he says, gripping the steering wheel. “Home.”

  Easier said than done because the traffic is at a dead standstill at the on-ramp to the highway. We can’t even get on I-90, stuck with the rest of these late-night travelers.

  “Let me find out what’s going on,” I tell him, and jump out of the truck before he can insist on doing that himself. A Toyota sedan is ahead of us. I tap on the snow-speckled window. “Hey, excuse me. Do you have any idea what’s happening?”

  “They’ve closed the pass,” the tiny woman with three passed-out toddlers in the back seat tells me.

  “Entirely?”

  “Yup. Nobody was expecting the snow. None of the snowplows are ready, and all the motels up around here are sold out for the night.”

  “When’s it going to reopen?”

  “Who knows?” She shakes her head, a mass of brown curls. “An hour? Two? In the morning?”

  Shivering, I hurry back to the truck and report to Josh: We aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Forget Cinderella and her pumpkin; I’m going to be Rapunzel locked in my room forever when my parents discover this. My windows will be welded shut, padlocks bolted on my bedroom door. What colossal stupidity to slip out tonight, to prove to them that I was capable of a normal life.

  Josh’s hand upon mine stops my spiraling. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Your parents would rather have you safe.”

  Which is true. If they knew where I was in the first place. The snow continues its relentless fall from the sky, muffling all sight and sound outside.

  “We can’t suffocate in here, can we?” I ask. “I mean, like, if it dumps six feet by tomorrow morning?”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t Donner Party you.”

  “And here I thought I was tasty.”

  “I better double-check that.”

  “I’m not buckled anymore.”

  With that invitation, Josh leans in to kiss me. I meet him halfway, slipping my arms around him. Time, parents, suffocation shrug off me, skin that I no longer want to wear. Our kiss deepens, then deepens more. I need to feel him, want him to feel me, but I am wearing a sleeping bag (rated to be weatherproof down to negative ten degrees). I pull away.

  “Not yet,” he whispers.

  “I’ll be back.” I shrug out of the heavy parka, and Josh throws it into the back seat. And there is only my low-cut shirt and the steaming windows and Josh and me pressing into each other.

  What feels like hours later, he drags himself away with one last touch, tracing the lines of the lariat I wear around my neck. “Wait a second.”

  “Now?” I say dubiously.

  “It stopped snowing.”

  “Clearly, I need to step up my kissing game if you noticed that.”

  “Not a chance, but hang on.” Josh rummages in the glove compartment and holds up an ice scraper like it’s some he-man’s trophy. When he opens the driver door, the cold slips inside. So does reality. Thoughts of Mom and Dad blast me. How much trouble was I going to be in this time?

  Above me, Josh scrapes the snow off the sunroof. A patch of clear sky hangs above us, a second miraculous opening in the clouds.

  “Your own personal theater,” Josh says when he returns to me, shivering and breathing on his cupped hands. I take them into my own.

  “Ice cubes!” I say, recoiling from him. “New rules: no touching, not until there’s no possibility of secondhand frostbite.”

  “Huh.” Josh pulls his hands from mine, rubs them together rapidly, breathing on his fingers hard.

  I laugh. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously wondering about going outside now.”

  “Are you kidding me? Watching a meteor shower from the comfort of my own private theater?” I lower my seat all the way back so I can look straight up through the clean sunroof into the sky. “My hero. Persephone would approve.”

  “Would she?”

  “Yes, even in her teeny, weeny, tiny bikini that would give her frostbite in two seconds flat.”

  “You have a point.”

  “Say it again.”

  “You have a—”

  Before I can kiss him, a meteor rockets above us. I gasp. He whirls around to stare out the sunroof in time to see the second one skimming the sky. For an instant, the twinned meteors streak together before they burn out. There are no words, or even kisses, after that. Josh’s hand finds mine, and we both hold on tight.

  Searing white. My skin is fire. A lava field of magma pours over me. I am a vampire, burning to death in the sun. I cannot open my eyes. They are dry kindling, combustible. There is a buzzing in my ears. Is that my skin sizzling? Broiling? I almost moan, afraid, but can’t make a sound.

  “Viola!” I hear from both far, far away and much, much too close.

  I cringe.
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  “Viola.” My name, three notes of panic.

  A hand presses into my forehead. I frown from the pain, shrink from the touch. A moan escapes me, no light, come-hither sound. Even I’m alarmed by what I hear: injured animal trapped in biting metal.

  A billion layers of heaviness are cast over me. Another moan. No skin contact, no contact, no. But I can’t speak, and the cool fabric buries me. And I remember where I am: inside Josh’s truck, watching the meteors, kissing each other. We must have fallen asleep. Sunlight presses against my eyelids. How long have we been here, out in the open? I am sinking through the leather seat, the metal frame of the truck, the dirty snow, the pitted asphalt below.

  Josh, I can hear him struggling with the broken sunroof, trying, trying, trying to slide it closed inside. He grunts, but even his Thor muscles cannot fix this brokenness. The driver’s side door opens and then slams shut. My parents are here. But no, I’m alone in Josh’s truck, light surrounding me like I’m standing at the doorsteps of heaven. Or before the inferno of hell.

  So much light, it is hard to tell.

  I want the black of my bedroom. The blinds. The blackout shades.

  My wish is granted. The interior of the truck dims. Blessed, blessed dark.

  The car door opens again, and I welcome the cold to soothe my hot-fire skin. I know I am covered in welts.

  “Mom,” I whisper, wanting her so badly. She’ll know exactly what to do. Then Dad will make it happen.

  “We’re getting you home soon, Ultra,” Josh says confidently, even if he can’t fulfill that promise. “The highway’s going to reopen before long.” He sighs. “I’m going to find a phone. Get help. Just hang tight. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “Me, too,” I whisper to him. I’m sorry for coming up with this idea, sorry for leaving the safety of home, sorry to drag him down with me.

  Pain and guilt, we burn in different ways.

  I huddle in a makeshift tent in Josh’s back seat, my parka thrown over my head and his coat curled over my body. The blanket, draped outside, blots out the sun from the roof and windshield. Even in the cold and dark, I burn. Josh plies me with the bottle of water from his emergency kit, refusing out of some unspoken Boy Scout code to break into mine in my messenger bag. Mostly to calm him, I take halfhearted sips in between slathering my skin with the aloe vera Mom had stashed in his emergency kit. He sits at my feet, lending me his presence and body warmth, but he has retreated soundlessly into his own Necromanteion.

  I need an extraction, but will settle for a distraction, something other than my pain to think about.

  “Talk to me,” I whisper.

  “About what?” Josh asks, a note of desperation.

  I muster a shrug, which takes all my energy.

  He remains silent, and I can feel him scanning and discarding topic after topic.

  “Necromanteion,” I say.

  “Where we are so not going. Not a chance. This is all my fault.”

  First, Auntie Ruth, now Josh. Another swath of travel dreams are razed under the sun. My answering sigh is less winter wind than it is the remembrance of a summer breeze; it already feels like regret.

  He starts rambling. “Okay, so I thought about what Persephone would be doing in the Necromanteion. Of all the places on Earth, what would draw her to that spot? I thought about how you said that the Oracle of the Dead resides there. So what would she want from the Oracle of the Dead? I can’t figure that out.”

  “Answers,” I whisper.

  “Answers.” His laugh is scraped up, a raw sound. “Like: What the hell, God? Literally. Like: Why this and why you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like: Why Caleb and not me?” he continues, anguished. “You know, Caleb was the good twin, the one who got all As, the one everyone loved. Our parents would never have called him a mess-up. He was the quiet, smart kid who never got into trouble. He would never have gotten drunk at a stupid party. He would never have gotten anyone else killed. He would never have risked you like this.”

  Yeah, and Caleb also liked women in skimpy pseudoclothes (sorry, but true). He thought he was a better illustrator (he wasn’t). I sigh.

  “This was my fault,” Josh says quietly. “What if this is about him reaching down from heaven to tell me that?”

  “Josh, he doesn’t blame you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I don’t blame you.”

  He scoffs. I hate that scoff.

  Then he says the damning words, “My parents blame me.”

  “Oh, Josh.”

  For all of my parents’ crisis-controlling ways, I have never, ever once seen them blame each other. Whenever anything goes wrong, they’ll dissect, micromanage, conduct extensive postmortem discussions afterward. But they never point fingers, never say, “It’s your fault.” That’s how love works. I lower the parka to tell him so, but there’s an inopportune thump on the driver’s window. Josh rolls down the back window while I flinch from the sun that brightens the interior, withdrawing into the thick shelter of my coat.

  “Viola?” asks my auntie, the woman I’ve been avoiding, punishing her for my skin condition, even though the doctors won’t ever know for sure what triggered it. It was just easier to blame her deep down than to deal with my own grief and anger and responsibility. I want to tell him all of this, but Auntie Ruth calls again, “Viola!”

  “Yeah,” Josh answers for me, and opens the door. “She’s here.”

  Then a man shouts, “Found them!”

  Auntie Ruth says, “Viola! We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  On any other occasion, those words would be ominous, strike terror in a girl. But right now, they are balm. My parents have put together their own search-and-rescue mission, calling on their vast network of friends, colleagues, and clients—finding anyone and everyone who could get to Snoqualmie. Unbelievably for us, a friend of a friend of a friend has a cabin ten minutes west of the summit: none other than Silver Fox from Souper Bowl Sunday. He and Auntie Ruth deliver me via snowmobile down the still-closed pass and to the Volvo sedan where Dad waits. He’s been on call for Mom, who had been manning Command Central in case I wasn’t at Snoqualmie the way Aminta, my Plan B, told them.

  Trust my parents to figure out a way to rescue me. Trust Auntie Ruth to be part of that rescue mission. I have never, ever been so happy to have parents who are crisis managers, and an auntie who is undaunted by any vehicle and any obstacle.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to Dad and Auntie Ruth after I’m bundled into the back seat. “Josh?”

  “They’re opening the pass in a couple of hours. He’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “It’s your mom you should thank.” Dad smiles, but his forehead is furrowed with tension. “She was relentless.”

  I expect nothing less. “This was my idea.”

  “Save your energy, honey,” says Auntie Ruth. (You’ll need it.)

  “It’s not his fault,” I say.

  That absolution falls on deaf ears. The one who needs to hear these words is still trapped at the top of the pass, unreachable.

  After the rush to get the immediate facts out, reporters are going to clamor for more information. Who found out about the issue? What is the scope of the problem? Keep to the facts. Do not speculate. Do not theorize. Do not overshare. At this moment, silence could be your best friend until you fully size the problem.

  —Lee & Li Communications

  Inside the War Room: The Crisis Management Playbook

  The drive to the Children’s Hospital drains me of every bit of residual energy that hasn’t already been sun-sapped. Once in the darkened room back inside the Emergency Department, I find no relief. Lying on the hospital bed, my lariat is strangling me. I struggle to unloop it, but my skin stings. I refuse to ask for help. My parents are outside in the hall with Auntie Ruth, dissecting my accomplice. Finally, I am free of the necklace’s looping strands and can focus on eavesdropping as they
replay everything they think they know about Josh.

  “That Boy is teaching her to ignore her limits: the coffee shop. The poke place. And now this,” Dad says, ticking off Josh’s so-called transgressions. “Which might be fine if she was totally healthy, but …”

  That but. Its logical conclusions slay me in a million different ways. But I’m not healthy. But I’m not normal. Therefore, I can never hope to have a healthy, normal relationship.

  “Isn’t testing limits a good thing? Yes, she’s got a condition, but she’s got to live, too,” Auntie Ruth argues.

  “Live? Did you see her? She could barely walk,” Mom says. “And her skin …”

  As much as I will myself to get out of the hospital cot, to join their conversation, to minimize whatever consequences are going to fall upon me, my muscles revolt. I stay under the weight of warm sheets and my guilt. However bad I was feeling, Josh was probably feeling ten times worse. How many times did he ask if my seat belt was buckled as if he could protect me from harm? I want to text him, but I have no idea where my phone is. Probably confiscated like my freedom.

  Surprise, surprise, Dr. Anderson walks into my hospital room. My entourage follows behind. He looks insanely pleased, not to see me again, but Auntie Ruth.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” Dr. Anderson enthuses, dimpling at her.

  For the first time in the entire history of matchmaking, Mom isn’t issuing invitations to Souper Bowl Sunday. Instead, she looks annoyed that a man is hitting on Auntie Ruth. She attacks with questions: “What is the highest dosage of antihistamines that you can give her? Does she need steroids? Can you prevent blisters?”