Avalanche Dance (4 page)

“Daddy!” she shrieked.

She lurched forward. Off to her right, she glimpsed the snowmobile speeding down the mountainside. The snow came closer now, rolling, roaring. It picked her up like a leaf and tossed her down. Her body twisted. She felt pain. The air whooshed out of her chest as the ground lurched up. Snow crushed her. Just before she lost consciousness, she saw her father’s body flung several meters down the slope, then disappear under the roiling fury of snow.

T
wo nights later, I’m walking down the trail to the Torrances’ cabin, the others following behind. I’ve snuck out of the house, warning my sisters, on pain of death, not to tattle. Behind me, Zach is shining a flashlight to light my path, but I don’t need it. The patches of snow – what’s left after two days of rain – are bright. Besides, I’ve walked down this trail so many times my feet know the way.

As we get closer, I feel a pang. It feels wrong to be sneaking behind Bridget and Andrew’s backs to use the cabin. I spent so much time at their house – it was so much more fun to play there than at my house, with my strict parents and annoying twin sisters – that I practically lived there. Bridget and Andrew fed me, patched up my scrapes, even scolded me when I was naughty – as if I was one of their own kids.

I almost hope the cabin will be locked.

But not really. We’re going to have fun. And these guys are counting on me.

I come to the end of the trail where it meets the bluff, then turn right toward the small clearing where the cabin sits. A tall hemlock looms in the dark, blacker than the night. The brush has grown up so much, even in the year or so since I’ve been here, that I have to push through saplings to get to the door.

It’s not locked.

I push it open and step in. It’s cold and smells musty, but everything is just the same. The three stump chairs – for Gwen and me, and Percy when we let him play with us; the table made from a cable spool turned on end; a broken-down chair, one of Andrew’s early carpentry efforts; a shelf with a few mugs and a kerosene lantern; the old woodstove.

I go straight to the spot where Gwen and I carved our initials. It’s dark, so I have to feel with my fingertips, like we did that day. Sure enough, they’re still there. I can feel the shapes of the letters, the angular
G
, the crooked number
4
.

I remember how Gwen and I hung a picture over the carving so her parents wouldn’t know we’d used a knife. One day Andrew came to check on us. “What’s that picture doing way down there?” he asked, pointing. “You should hang it up here, where people can see it.”

He went to pull it off the wall, but Gwen stopped him. “No, Daddy, we want it down low, so … so …”

“So we can look at it when we’re lying on the floor!” I finished.

Giving us an odd look, Andrew left. Gwen and I turned to face each other and laughed out loud.

Now, I shake myself back to reality as my friends crowd into the cabin. Gretchen lights a couple of candles – I’ve told them there’s no electricity – and they look around.

“Wow!” Crystal says. “This is awesome.”

“What a find,” Nikki says. “Way to go, Moll.”

I grin, glad they like it. The hell with memories. “Let’s party!” I say.

Everybody deposits their booty on the table. Zach’s scored a couple mickeys of vodka, Tony’s got the pot, Nikki and Crystal have brought chips and chocolate bars for the munchies, and Gretchen’s dug up a battery-powered ghetto blaster, a huge relic from her parents’ basement, which she sets up on the shelf. She pops in a CD, and the opening bass notes of “U-R Mine” start laying down the beat. Zach and I high-five each other – Rat’s Nest rules! – and soon Annie’s voice, now trilling, now growling, fills the air.

Zach opens one of the bottles and we pass it around for a while. I don’t tell them, but I’ve never drunk vodka before. It burns with a dry, rasping heat and I choke a little – but boy, it hits fast. In moments, I feel a warmth in my belly and that floaty, dizzy buzz in my head. Aah … . Next time, I don’t choke. Or the next.

I start dancing as Rat’s Nest goes into “Black Snow.” Waving my arms overhead, I sing along, “Black snow, color of your soul,
dirty secrets, out of control …” Stomping my feet, I grab the bottle as it comes by again. I wish Zach would dance with me, but Gretchen’s pulled him down onto the floor and is making out with him. Oh well, I think, taking a hit from the joint that Nikki hands me. Zach’s anchored. Bound and gagged. Gretchified. I laugh at my brilliant joke and dance even more wildly.

As I whirl around, I see that Crystal, who this time has stuck cedar fronds in her dreads so she looks like a stoned-out mermaid, has joined me. Only she’s not dancing to Rat’s Nest’s beat, she’s slowly swaying back and forth and rippling her arms like a piece of seaweed floating in the waves, moving to music only she can hear.

“Hey, Crystal, groovy dance,” I say, grinning at her.

Waving her arms, she mermaid-dances in a circle around me. I laugh and hand her the joint.

I hear a hum of conversation and dance over to see what Nikki and Tony are up to. They’re sitting on the stump chairs at the table. The bag of chips is open. They’re taking chips out of the bag one at a time, holding them up to the candlelight, turning them this way and that, with looks of wonder on their faces as if they’ve never seen a chip before.

“So yellow … like really, really yellow …” Tony says.

“And pebbly,” Nikki adds, running her fingers over the surface of the one in her hand.

“Should we eat one?” Tony says, and Nikki nods. They each stuff a chip into their mouths and chew slowly, eyes wide as
they stare at each other. It seems to take them forever to finish chewing. Finally Tony says, “Crunchy!”

“Salty.”

They reach into the bag for more chips and hold them up to the candlelight again.

I laugh out loud.

Nikki and Tony look at me in surprise. Then they grin and start laughing with me. I twirl around, flinging out my arms to take everyone in. “You guys are the greatest!”

“You too,” Crystal says, still doing her seaweed dance. “Especially for getting us this cabin.”

Zach looks up. “Yeah,” he agrees with a grin.

“You can get it anytime, right?” Tony asks.

I drop my arms. “And if not, am I out of the club?” There’s a bit of edge in my voice.

A second of silence, and then Zach laughs. “Of course not, don’t be stupid.”

I laugh too. “I knew that. I was just kidding.”

“Hey, why don’t we make it a club for real?” Gretchen asks. “The … the Party Club.”

“Lame,” Tony says. “The Pot and Booze Club.”

“And mushrooms,” Crystal puts in. “Don’t forget the mushrooms.”

“The ZNCMGT Club,” Nikki says, mashing our initials together in one guttural sound.

“Gesundheit,” Tony says, and we all shriek with laughter.

Zach opens the second mickey. Even Crystal indulges and weaves around tipsily. Tony changes the CD, putting on the Puff Adders, another screeching metal band with hammering drumbeats.

“You really like that scorching guitar, don’t you?” I shout.

In response, Tony plays air guitar, jumping up and down like a crazed metalhead, nodding his head furiously, his black hair flying up and down. This makes me laugh so hard I nearly pee. I run outside and squat in the snow. I stay outside for a few minutes, looking at the shadow of that tall hemlock and remembering when it was Gwen’s and my tepee.

When I come back inside, things are quieter. Everybody’s reached that point where you feel too dazed and slow to do or say much of anything. Everybody sits or sways or stands for a minute, and then Nikki says, “I’m cold.”

“Me too,” Crystal says. “Let’s start a fire.”

“Yeah, let’s,” Gretchen says.

I’m cold too – the sweat I built up earlier is drying, and it really is chilly in the cabin – and I’m about to join the chorus, but a memory stops me. Gwen and I must have been nine or ten. We’d smuggled a bag of marshmallows out to the cabin – even though I was usually the ringleader, this was
her
idea; marshmallows were a forbidden treat since her mom was such a health-food freak. We’d started a fire in the woodstove, speared marshmallows on long sticks, and managed to roast a couple of them to perfectly charred blobs in the open firebox, when Bridget burst into the cabin.

“What do you girls think you’re doing!” she shrieked.

Gwen blanched, trying to hide her sticky mouth, thinking she was in trouble over the marshmallows. Instead, Bridget poked the flaming chunks of wood apart and slammed the firebox door shut.

“You must never, ever start a fire in here without a grown-up!” she yelled. “It’s not safe. This old woodstove was worn-out when we got it.” She grabbed each of us by the arm. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” we both said, lips trembling.

She hugged us to her, then sat with us until the fire was completely out.

Now, I say, “I don’t know, guys. I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“But I’m really cold,” Nikki says. “Look at me, my teeth are chattering.”

“Me too,” Gretchen says, jumping up. “Is there any paper around?”

My head feels thick. “But the cabin’s really old,” I say. “And dry.”

“Chill, Molly,” Tony says.

Tony snaps a few slats off the broken chair. Meanwhile, Nikki’s found an old magazine and is tearing out pages.

“I really don’t think –” I try again, but before I know it, they’re crumpling up the paper and laying the slats on top, and then there’s a crackle, a smell of dust and creosote, and a little fire starts snapping away in the firebox.

“See? Isn’t that nice?” Crystal asks, warming her hands.

“Mmm, that’s better,” Nikki says, drawing near.

Tony pulls off another slat and feeds it to the flames, which are burning vigorously now. Even I am drawn to the stove, grateful for the warmth on my face, feeling the iron surface turn from cold to warm to hot.

Tony yanks off the last slat. The fire’s roaring now, eating the old, dry wood. He breaks off one of the chair legs. “We’re going to have to find some more furniture,” he jokes just as I hear a roar, like a plane taking off, inside the metal chimney that rises from the back of the woodstove. I notice that a portion of the pipe is glowing red. And then I notice that there’s a small gap between that section and the adjoining one, where the metal’s rusted away. Suddenly a spark flies out from the gap and lands on the floor.

“Guys! Look out!” I yell, stamping out the spark.

Tony, who’s bent over putting the chair leg into the firebox, twists. “Oh no,” he says as another, and then another spark flies out.

Crystal, the cedar fronds drooping in her hair, is frozen in place. Nikki, too, seems spellbound as she watches the stream of sparks.

“Guys, help!” I yell, jumping like a crazed insect from one spark here to another there, and there.

Everybody springs into action. Tony is trying to break apart the fire in the firebox. Nikki and Zach are helping me kill
sparks. Crystal opens the cabin door. Gretchen starts screaming.

But the sparks are coming faster than we can catch them. One lands on my sleeve and I hear a sizzle as it burns a small hole in the fabric.

“Ow!” Nikki yelps as one falls on her bare arm.

One spark catches on the floor, and the old floorboard smolders for a moment before the smoke dies out. Then a larger one lands near the first and actually burns, flame darting up from the tinder-dry floor as if touched into life by a fairy wand – until Zach stamps it out.

We’re running around, getting in each other’s way, stumbling as we lurch from burning spot to burning spot, coughing as the smoke thickens, rubbing our eyes.

“Ow!” screams Crystal as she’s burned on the cheek.

Tony is unable to quench the fire in the firebox.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” sobs Gretchen, who’s crying now. “Zach, come on!”

There’s a crackling sound, and a chunk of the metal pipe that was glowing red-hot actually breaks off and falls to the floor. We all stand there, stunned, staring at this piece of metal, not quite able to believe that the chimney is falling apart. Then, hearing a louder roar, we turn and watch the gap as the flames roar up from the bottom part of the chimney pipe. It’s like we have a sneak peek at a vertical orange inferno. As we watch, a burning clump of creosote shoots out of the gap and lands on the floor. Instantly it catches, and in a moment, flames are rolling along
the length of the floorboard and licking up the wall. There’s an explosion as the fire reaches the vodka bottle and the remaining booze bursts into flame, shooting from the bottle.

“Help!” Gretchen screams.

“We’ve got to get out of here before we’re caught,” Nikki says. I whip off my hoodie and start batting at the flames. “Come on, guys, help me!” My eyes are stinging and I’m coughing. Instead, they all edge toward the door.

“We can’t just let it burn down!” I yell, flailing at the flames with my scorched hoodie. The fire is now creeping halfway up the wall, and it’s three floorboards wide. I’m hopping to stay out of its path.

“I’m out of here,” Tony says, bolting out the door, followed by Crystal and Nikki.

“Molly, don’t be stupid,” Zach says, grabbing a now-hysterical Gretchen.

“I can’t – I’ve got to –” I hack, choking.

They’re gone. I turn back. The fire now covers the width of the wall. One arm over my face, I run around, beating at the floor, the walls. I smell my hair singe. The soles of my sneakers smell like burning rubber. I know it’s a losing battle, but I can’t just give up. I can’t do this to Andrew and Bridget.

Finally my hoodie is burned to a useless shred. My eyes are streaming, my arms ache, I’m gasping painful breaths. The fire has spread to a second wall and nearly the entire floor is burning.

I know I’m beaten. The only thing I can do is run – and hope the Torrances never find out I was here.

I dash across the burning floor, outside into the cool, damp air. I bend over, hands on knees, and cough and gasp, and black tears and snot and ash fly out of me and fall on a mound of snow.

I hear a loud crackle behind me. I don’t turn. I don’t have the strength to run. Instead, I stumble down the trail, wheezing, staggering, slipping on patches of snow. I hear a louder roar, an explosion of shattering glass, a crash and thud. I keep moving.