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“I’ve seen nothing. Like they just gave up.”
I shake my head. “They don’t give up. How much farther, Razor?”
“Another mile? Don’t worry, I got her tucked away nice and safe.”
“Why’d you leave her?”
He looks at me sharply, dumbstruck for a second. But only for a second. Razor doesn’t stay speechless for long. “To look for you. You told me to meet you by the fire. Sort of generic directions. You could have said, ‘Meet me at the crash site where I put this chopper down. That fire.’”
We walk for a few minutes in silence. Razor is out of breath. I’m not. The arrays will sustain me until I reach her, but I have a feeling that when I crash, I’ll crash hard.
“So what now?” he asks.
“Rest up a few days—or as long as we can.”
“Then?”
“South.”
“South. That’s the plan? South. A little elaborate, isn’t it?”
“We have to get back to Ohio.”
He stops as if he’d run into an invisible wall. I trudge on for a few steps, then turn. Razor is shaking his head at me.
“Ringer, do you have any idea where you are?”
I nod. “About twenty miles north of one of the Great Lakes. I’m guessing Erie.”
“What are you— How are we— You do realize Ohio is over a hundred miles from here,” he sputters.
“Where we’re going, more like two hundred. As the crow flies.”
“‘As the . . .’ Well, too fucking bad, we aren’t crows! What’s in Ohio?”
“My friends.”
I continue walking, following the imprint of his boots in the snow.
“Ringer, I don’t want to burst your bubble, but—”
“You don’t want to burst my bubble butt?”
“That sounded suspiciously like a joke.”
“I know they’re probably dead. And I know I’ll probably die long before I reach them, even if they’re not. But I made a promise, Razor. I didn’t think it was a promise at the time. I told myself it wasn’t. Told him it wasn’t. But there’re the things we tell ourselves about the truth, and there’re the things the truth tells about us.”
“What you just said makes no sense. You know that, right? Must be the head injury. You usually make a lot.”
“Head injuries?”
“Now, that definitely was a joke!” He frowns. “Made a promise to who?”
“A naïve, thick-headed, stereotypical jock who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world when he isn’t thinking the world is God’s gift to him.”
“Oh. Okay.” He doesn’t say anything for a few shuffling steps, then: “So how long has Mr. Naïve Thick-headed Stereotypical Jock been your boyfriend?”
I stop. I turn. I grab his face with both hands and kiss him hard on the mouth. His eyes are wide and filled with something that closely resembles fear.
