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Winter arrived with a vengeance, dumping over three feet of snow in the Sierra before Christmas. Silas spent most of the school break at Jessica’s house, where they polished their respective college applications, watched movies, and baked cookies, laughing at the way Jessica’s kid brother idolized Silas’s every move.
“I think he likes me more than you do,” Silas joked, at which Jessica straddled him on the couch, planting a kiss on him that said otherwise.
“I think you two could use some fresh air,” Jessica’s mother suggested dryly, entering the room as if on cue.
Silas convinced Jessica that the outdoors did come in at least second to a make-out session, and an hour later the two of them, plus Danny and Meg, were digging around the storage shed at Marble Lake Lodge, looking for the snowshoes he was sure he’d seen after shoveling snow last week.
“What’s the plan?” Danny asked as they all struggled with their bindings a few minutes later. Because of course he had to have one. “Where are we going?”
“Surely not that trek you’ve been obsessing over,” Meg added, digging a granola bar out of her jacket pocket and breaking it into thirds. When she realized her mistake, she offered Jessica her own portion, who declined.
“What trek?” Jessica asked as Silas accepted his share of chocolate-peanut-butter chunk and Meg retreated outdoors, ready to go.
“Your boyfriend is determined to find some abandoned mine shaft that’s supposed to be somewhere near Long Lake,” Danny told her. Silas felt himself stiffen a little at the label, because he and Jessica weren’t really using any, keeping it casual, but she just beamed at Cairns, so he guessed she didn’t mind much.
It was Meg who looked kind of weirded out, actually, chewing her bite of granola bar methodically as she observed the group from the doorway, and Silas felt a little tug of misgiving. He hoped she didn’t resent Jessica being here. It was only fair that Silas didn’t have to feel like the odd man out anymore.
“We’ll get to the mine eventually,” he said, breaking off a chunk of icicle from the eaves of the shed and lobbing it in Meg’s general direction. It missed by a mile, but of course Silas hadn’t been aiming to hit her. He’d just wanted to pull her back into the fray. She fished the spear out of the snow and lobbed it back at him, and he grinned.
“Today, we’ll hike the old logging road to Willow Lake.”
“Isn’t that just a glorified pond?” Danny said.
“Is it far?” Jessica asked.
“Far enough that we should bring some packs,” Danny decided. “Water, layers, you know the drill.”
“That’s why he’s the Boy Scout, folks,” Silas joked, but Jessica still looked concerned.
“What if it gets dark?”
Silas saw Meg shift a bit impatiently in her snowshoes. She glanced up at the sky, which was an endless, Northern California blue, the sunshine bouncing off the snow in a dazzling display of diamond-studded ice. Before she could say anything, though, he assured Jessica, “We’ll be back way before dark.”
Half a mile in, however, he was hoping this trail wouldn’t make a liar out of him. The way proved steeper than Silas had anticipated, the logging road uneven and deeply rutted under the heavy Sierra powder, curving up one slope and then another in a relentless climb that left them all breathless. When they hit the first of several plateaus midway to the lake, Danny—several yards ahead of the others—finally stopped in the shelter of a large tree.
Silas came to rest beside him, panting as he pulled off his stocking cap to wipe the sweat from his brow. Steam rose off the top of his head, and Meg and Jessica laughed as he raked one hand through his hair, feeling it stand up on end. He returned their grins, feeling like the court jester and not caring.
“You guys good?”
“We’re good,” Danny returned, “but I’m done breaking the trail, dude.”
Blazing the path through the fresh snowwasa bitch. “Sierra cement,” Uncle Les always called it, when the inches piled up against the tree wells. Silas replaced his cap on his head and turned with a purposefully casual shrug. “Ladies first, then, I guess.”
He probably took too much pleasure in watching the surprise register on Jessica’s face. Meg stepped right up to the challenge, however, and had already taken five long strides up the trail before he ran to catch up to her, his snowshoes churning up clouds of powder in his wake. He could hear Danny’s annoyed protest, something about snow in his ear, his grumble muffled by the frosted forest.
When he caught up with Meg, Silas reached out an arm to halt her, and she turned, her face flushed with cold and exertion.
“I was kidding, Cass.” He laughed.
Meg didn’t. Her eyes flicked to his sharply, making him instantly aware that his hand was still on her arm, and he removed it swiftly. He hadn’t meant anything by it. Danny came up behind them, Jessica trailing after, and Silas shook off the sudden self-consciousness he felt between him and Meg, because he must have imagined it. Danny invited him again to take the lead with an exaggerated sweep of one arm, and only then did Meg smile, falling back with a promise to keep Jessica company in the rear. Silas began to hike, his feet lifting and sinking through the drifts in a sure, determined march, glad, suddenly, for the burning sensation in his calves and the concentration necessary to keep his steps in line with the path only visible by the swath of trees lined before them.
After a time, the only noise around him was the rhythmic breathing of his companions and the silence of the woods themselves. This seemed to Silas like a sound in its own right, a hum as heavy as the drifts heaped around the circumferences of the tree wells. The air felt charged with an auditory humidity he could breathe into his lungs.
The next time he paused for a break, leaning against a slab of granite that immediately chilled his backside, he called out, “Hear that?”
“No.” Meg’s voice sounded strained as she worked to clear her snowshoes with each step. She hadn’t even paused to listen, but Silas didn’t allow her to deter him.
“Exactly!” he answered cheerfully, glad to put the awkward moment with Meg behind him. “Which means we’re not there yet. We should hear Willow Creek when we get close.”
