Willie's breath came out in little white clouds that floated in the
air like Chinese lanterns on a string. His eyes were closed, which meant Trixie could stare at him as much as she wanted. She wondered what it was like to grow up here, to have a snowstorm hit like this and to know how to save yourself, instead of needing someone to do it for you. She wondered if her father knew this sort of stuff too, if elemental knowledge about living and dying might be underneath all the other, ordinary things he knew, like how to draw a devil and change a fuse and not burn pancakes.
“Are you awake?” she murmured.
Willie didn't open his eyes, but he nodded the tiniest bit, and a stream of white flowed out of his nostrils.
There was a warm zone connecting them. They were lying two feet apart, with grass heaped in the space between their bodies, but every time Trixie turned his way she could feel heat conducting through the dried straw, pulsing like light from a star. When she thought he might not notice, she inched infinitesimally closer.
“Do you know anyone who ever died out here?” Trixie asked.
“Yeah,” Willie said. “That's why you don't make a cave in a snowbank. If you die, no one can ever find you, and then your spirit won't ever rest.”
Trixie felt her eyes get damp, and that was awful, because almost immediately her lashes sealed shut again. She thought of the ladders she'd cut on her arms, the way she'd wanted to feel real pain instead of the hurt gnawed on her heart. Well, she'd gotten what she wanted, hadn't she? Her toes burned like fire; her fingers had swollen like sausages and ached. The thought of that delicate razor blade being drawn across her skin seemed, by comparison, ridiculous, a drama for someone who didn't really know what tragedy was.
Maybe it took realizing that you could die to keep you from wanting to do it.
Trixie wiped her nose and pressed her fingertips against her eyelashes to dissolve the ice. “I don't want to freeze to death,” she whispered.
Willie swallowed. “Well. . . there is one way to get warmer.”
“How?”
“Take off our clothes.”
“Yeah, right,” Trixie scoffed.
“I'm not bullshitting you.” Willie glanced away. 'We both get.
. . you know . . . and then huddle together.'
Trixie stared at him. She didn't want to be pressed up against him; she kept thinking of what had happened the last time she was this close to a boy.
“It's just what you do,” Willie said. “It's not like it means anything. My dad's stripped down naked with other guys, when they get stuck overnight.”
Trixie pictured her father doing this . . . but stopped abruptly when she got to the part where she had to imagine him without clothes.
“Last time it happened, my dad had to cuddle up to old Ellis Puuqatak the whole night. He swore he'd never leave home again without a sleeping bag.”
Trixie watched Willie's words crystallize in the cold, each as differentiated as a snowflake, and she knew he was telling her the truth. “You have to close your eyes first,” she said, hesitant. She shucked off her jeans, anorak, and sweater. She left on her bra and panties, because she had to.
“Now you,” Trixie said, and she looked away as he pulled off his coat and his shirt. She peeked, though. His back was the color of the outside of an almond, and his shoulder blades flexed like pistons. He took off his jeans, hopping around and making little sounds, like a person at the town pool who makes a big deal when he finally manages to get into the cold water.
Willie spread some grass on the ground, then lay down and motioned for Trixie to do the same. He drew their jackets over them, like a blanket, and then covered these with more grass. Trixie squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel the rustle of the straw as he moved closer and the itch of the grass on her bare skin as it caught between them. Willie's hand touched her back, and she stiffened as he came up behind her, curling his knees into the hollow bowl made by the bend of her own. She took deep breaths. She tried not to remember the last boy she'd touched, the last boy who'd touched her.
The inferno began where his fingers rested on her shoulder and spread to every spot where their skin was touching. Pressed up against Willie, Trixie didn't find herself thinking about Jason, or the night of the rape. She didn't feel threatened or even frightened. She simply felt, for the first time in hours, warm.
“Did you ever know someone who died?” she asked. “Someone our age?”
It took Willie a moment, but he answered. “Yes.” The bitter wind beat against their tarp and made its loose tongue rattle like a gossip's. Trixie unclenched her fists. “Me too,” she said.
* * *
Bethel was technically a city, but not by any normal standards. The population was less than six thousand, although it was the closest hub for fifty-three native villages along the river. Daniel turned to Laura. “We can get a taxi,” he said.
“There are taxis here?”
“Most people don't have cars. If you've got a boat and a snow-go, you're pretty much set.”
The cab driver was a tiny Asian woman with a massive bun perched on her head like an avalanche waiting to happen. She wore fake Gucci sunglasses, although it was still dark outside, and was listening to Patsy Cline on the radio. “Where you go?” Daniel hesitated. “Just drive,” he said. “I'll tell you when to stop.”
The sun had finally broken over the horizon like the yolk of an egg. Daniel stared out the window at the landscape: pancake flat, windswept, opaque with ice. The rutted roads had houses pitted along them, ranging from tiny shacks to modest 1970s split-levels. On the side of one road sat a couch with the cushions missing and its
