Racing Storm Mountain, page 10
“Fireball.” Mike stepped up close to him. He was a big snowmobile and ski man. “You good? Not too many drinks?”
Fireball looked at him like he was crazy. “Not even one sip. I just got here.”
Mike patted his shoulder. “Get some reliable men, guys you can trust, who know their way around snowmobiles and the area. No tourists or amateurs. We need a solid search party out on checkpoint one of the snowmobile racecourse. We got three missing kids. Sheriff Hamlin’s setting up the search.”
“In the dark?” Fireball asked. “All this snow?”
Mike shrugged. “It’s bad. I know. That’s why we need to hurry. This storm’s got aircraft grounded, so we can’t get a helo up with infrared to scan for their heat signatures.”
Fireball was on his feet. “Yeah, I’ll round up the guys, but you didn’t have to come here. Coulda called me.”
Mike looked over to a table on the other side of the restaurant where Josie Abbott was taking an order. “Josie’s boy is one of the missing.”
Fireball’s usual excited look dropped. “Oh. You came here to tell her.”
“Those new actors who come to town? Their daughter, Swann, is missing too. And my nephew Hunter.”
“Aw, man. Sorry. Figure they’re together?”
Don’t know. Mike clenched his fists, keeping himself together. “Hope so. Now I better go tell the kid’s mom.”
Fireball slapped Mike on the arm, threw a couple of bills on the bar, and left his drink behind untouched, already making calls to get more search help.
Mike headed across the place, his boots thumping heavy on the wood floor. Josie laughed with the customers at the table she’d just been helping and turned around to head back toward the kitchen, stopping just short of running into Mike.
“Iron Mike,” she said, surprised. “Sorry about that. Excuse me. Have a seat anywhere. You know the drill.”
“Hey, Josie,” he said. Her smile faded at the sound of the cold serious tone in Mike’s voice. “I got some bad news. You might want to sit down.”
Josie Abbott was another who’d graduated a few years after Mike. He didn’t know her too well, but word got around in small towns like McCall, and he knew she’d had a challenging time in life. Apparently her difficulties had toughened her, because she did not sit down and didn’t crumble.
“Is he dead?” she asked seriously.
A loud man who’d been drinking too much whistled. “Hey, honey, I been waiting for another round for—”
“Shut your mouth or get out!” she yelled at him.
“Kelton’s missing,” Mike explained. “So’s my nephew Hunter and the daughter of that actor, girl named Swann Siddiq.”
Josie shook her head. “What? That doesn’t make sense. Kelton doesn’t hang around with—”
“They were in the snowmobile race. All three of them cleared the first checkpoint, but didn’t show up for the next one.”
She let out a tired, frustrated sigh. “That stupid snowmobile. All that boy’s cared about lately. I can’t believe he’s done this.”
“You didn’t know he was in the race?” Mike asked.
Josie held her hands out. “Been kind of busy.” But she wasn’t busy anymore. She took off her apron and marched over to the owner, Jason, behind the bar, saying something Mike couldn’t hear over the music and conversation.
“Come on, Josie,” Jason said. “Look at this place. I’m swamped here.”
“Jason, my son is missing! I’ve been working here five years, never missed a shift, covered for everybody else! Now you will let me go find my boy or I’m done here!”
Jason held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Yes, of course, go find Kelton. We’ll be praying.”
Josie nodded, then spun to face Mike. “Let’s go get my boy.”
“YOU CAN’T KEEP A SECRET THIS LONG,” YUMI EXPLAINED to Annette. The two of them had set up an awesome sleepover out at the lodge with a roaring fire in the woodstove, cheesy old movies on TV, and a ridiculous amount of delicious but unhealthy snacks. “It’s against the friendship code.”
Annette laughed. “Oh, sorry! I’ve heard of The Da Vinci Code, but not the friendship code. Is it any good?”
Yumi threw a cheese puff at Annette. Annette rescued the treat from her hair and chomped down on it. “Anyway, I don’t even know if I like him as much anymore. There might . . . kind of . . . be someone else.”
“You would cheat on the Mysterious Secret Crush?” Yumi faked outrage.
They’d been sitting up on the island countertop in the kitchen. If Grandpa had caught them like that, he probably would have had them both stuffed like Reagan, his prized taxidermized bear. As if reading Yumi’s thoughts, Annette slid off the counter down to the floor, pacing the room. “I can’t cheat on someone if I’ve barely talked to him.”
Yumi rolled her eyes. “Fine, if you won’t tell me who the Mysterious Secret Crush is, then tell me who the other guy is.”
Annette spun to face her. “Not a chance in—” The lights flickered. Then everything shut off, submerging the girls in deep darkness.
“Oh crap,” Yumi said. “All that snow. Tree must have fallen on the lines.”
“What do we do?” Annette said. She sounded worried.
Yumi’s eyes had adapted to the faint glow coming from the stove. “We put some more wood in the furnace and get some blankets over there. We’ll be plenty warm. Don’t worry. There’ll be just enough light to play cards or Monopoly or something.”
“No Monopoly, thanks,” Annette said. “You play too seriously.”
Yumi shrugged and took the old-fashioned corded telephone handset off its claw hook thing on the wall, holding it to her ear for a moment. “Yep. Dead. And forget cell service out here, especially in a storm. We’ll just have to hang out and talk about your secret crush.”
“Yeah.” Annette flew in out of nowhere and whapped Yumi hard with a pillow. “Or I get my revenge for your spying with the pillow of death!”
The girls exchanged a few pillow strikes before collapsing in laughter, secure in the warm cabin, apart from the world.
“YOU GUYS OUGHT TO SEE THIS PLACE!” HUNTER SAID, returning to the entrance chamber with an armload of boards. “I went a little deeper into the mine, found more wood. The tunnel goes on forever. Do you think there’s any gold left? That would be awesome.”
“Y-yeah, Higgins,” Kelton said. “They abandoned the mine because there w-was tons of gold to be found.” The warmth from the fire pushed through his body in waves, like a living thing.
It was hard to see with Swann turning toward Hunter, hiding her face in shadows, but he had the sense she wasn’t happy. Was she still mad about him laughing at her? Idiot thing to do. He was always doing idiot things.
“Are you serious right now?” Swann said. “Gold? Hunter, we’re in big trouble here.”
Kelton bit his lip. It wasn’t often he saw a Popular like Hunter Higgins looking so embarrassed. For a long time they all were quiet. The wind moaned through the mine. The fire crackled.
Finally, Hunter brought the wood over by the fire, huddling close on the other side. “I want to let this get burning stronger before I put on any more wood.” He shivered. “Man, it’s cold. And I wasn’t even buried in the snow.”
“Thanks for digging me out, you two,” Kelton said. How had he not thanked them until now? They’d saved his life. For real. “I would have . . . I mean . . .”
“We couldn’t just leave you down there,” Swann said. “What do you think we are?”
They were Populars. He didn’t just think that. He knew it. Well, in Swann’s case a SuperPop. They weren’t generally people who cared about guys like him. But they weren’t monsters. “Well, I didn’t think you’d intentionally let me die down there, even if I am a Grit.”
“A what?” Swann pulled her legs up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, sitting near him by the fire.
“A Grit—” Kelton started to explain.
“It’s the word he uses for people he thinks get picked on,” Hunter said.
“No,” Kelton shot back. The fire was warming him now, but he felt even hotter due to the way Hunter sounded like he was making fun of what he’d said. Like how a couple of Mom’s old boyfriends had sounded when Kelton had tried to talk to them about something that had happened at school, and they didn’t care because they thought it was just dumb kids’ stuff. “See, I’m a Grit, one of those people who doesn’t have anything. And you two are Populars, or Pops, people whose parents just give them everything they want, people who run the whole school because everybody, including the teachers, thinks you’re so awesome.”
Hunter shook his head. Swann looked at him wide-eyed. “Is that how you see me?”
Kelton was careful not to laugh. “You’re something more. You’re a SuperPopular, SuperPop. All famous and stuff. Not even on the same scale.”
“My parents don’t just hand me everything I want,” Hunter said.
“I can’t help it if my parents have been successful,” Swann said sharply. “It doesn’t make me a bad person.”
Kelton held his hands up. “I didn’t say it did. Just that we’re kind of from different worlds, you and me.”
“Seems like we’re both from McCall now,” Swann said.
Hunter snorted, leaning back against the rock wall of the entryway cavern. Kelton had no idea how he could stand to be that far from the warmth of the fire. “Well, right now,” Hunter said, “we’re all from a crappy, freezing-cold abandoned mine in the middle of nowhere.” He added, under his breath, “Thanks to someone’s so-called shortcut.”
“I didn’t invite either of you along with me,” Kelton said. He clenched his fists, grateful he was able, once again, to do so. “I told you to go back! But no. Why listen to me? I’m just a Grit.”
“Oh, would you stop with that?” Swann said. “You’d be dead if not for us.”
Kelton put another shard of the wooden crate on the fire. “If Hunter or some other Pop had thought of my idea, nobody would be saying it was bad.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Hunter said. “All that us-versus-them stuff? Like all your problems are everybody else’s fault? Never your own?”
Kelton had had about as much as he could take from this Popular. “What? It’s my fault I’ve never lived in the same home longer than two years? My fault when business at the restaurant slows down and they cut my mom’s hours so she gets behind on the bills? My fault when her boyfriends waste her money on stupid spoiler-wing-things for their cars instead of on rent?”
“That’s not what I—”
All of these ideas had been boiling in Kelton for so long, and now that he’d almost died and could still die trying to get out of this snowy trap, he felt a tremendous release of energy, like an unwinding of a rubber band that’s been twisted and twisted by all of life’s crap over the years. “I remember. . . . Christmas. Like first grade. We were friends back then, remember?”
Hunter looked away and all was quiet for a moment. Finally he spoke up. “I don’t think we stopped being—”
“Yeah, right, Hunter. We got older, and you realized I was a Grit and then you didn’t want to hang out anymore.” Kelton shrugged. “It’s OK. I get it. This isn’t a you-have-to-be-my-friend pity party. Just stating facts. Christmas. First grade. We’d been hanging out, watching TV. Saw a commercial for an electric racetrack. Remember that? It had all the lights and sound effects? Looked so awesome. And we’d learned enough about numbers and the internet to be able to look it up and find out it cost over a hundred bucks. Which we both asked our parents and they both kind of put us off, saying it was real expensive. Then the idea hit us! It didn’t matter how much the racetrack cost because we could just ask Santa Claus. Wrote my letter to Santa asking for that one thing, that racetrack. As long as you’re good and make the nice list, you’re golden. Right? Oh, I was so good. I did everything the teachers said. I figured out where all the brushes and rags were kept so I could clean stuff at home. Even scrubbed the toilets. I didn’t whine. Didn’t complain. You actually got grounded for a few days after Thanksgiving for something. But Christmas morning, I got socks and a pack of those old-fashioned cheap plastic Army men. You got the racetrack.”
“Oh, so you’re mad because you didn’t get a toy when we were kids? Santa Claus didn’t come through for you, so—”
“No!” Kelton’s shout echoed through the cavern and they all looked around, a little worried. In the movies and on TV, loud noises could cause cave-ins and avalanches. He quieted himself. “It just shows how that your-problems-are-all-your-own-fault idea is crap. They told us be good and get on the nice list and good things would happen. They basically still tell us that. Only I always end up with nothing. And guys like you, Hunter? The Populars? You always get everything. Always have. Like this race. Your dad just gave you that snowmobile to ride. I had to pawn my mom’s ex-boyfriend’s knife to pay for my entry fee and for parts to get my sled running, and now I won’t be able to pay him back. You two don’t have any problems like that at all.”
“You’re so full of crap, Fielding,” Hunter said. “I’m sorry that your mom has money trouble, but that’s not my fault—”
“Never said it was!” Kelton said.
“And you do bring a lot of your own troubles on yourself.” Hunter kept talking. “Like in Ms. Foudy’s class, you always tap my shoulder wanting to talk about whatever. Keep getting us both in trouble.”
“Oh, I thought we were still friends,” Kelton said. “Just friends that can never talk? And if that’s what you think is a big problem . . .” He laughed sadly. “I wish I had your problems. Instead of thawing out a frozen pizza or microwaving a frozen burrito, it would be nice to sit down to a family meal. You Richies and Pops have no idea—”
“You’re wrong, though, Kelton,” Swann said quietly. “I’m richer—” She stopped herself, eyes closed. “My parents are richer than both of your families combined.” She shrugged. “Sorry. That’s just the truth. There’s nothing I can do about it. But it’s been forever since I sat down to a meal with my parents. They moved us way out here to—”
“Way out here?” Hunter said. “This is our home.”
“And mine too now,” Swann said. “Sorry. I just meant my parents took me out of my old school, away from everyone I know, so we could get in touch with nature or our true selves and stuff, and I don’t know anyone, and then they’re gone all the time, back to L.A. or some location for shoots or publicity. I spend more time with my babysitter than with them.”
Swann’s words hung in the air for a long moment.
“I thought she was your au pair,” Kelton said.
All three of them laughed. It was a welcome small break in the tension. Kelton slipped three more pieces of wood onto the fire. It was burning very well now, and it was quite hot beside it. He backed up a little to find the sweet spot between the heat of the fire and the freezing cold of the snowy wind blowing into the mine.
“I spend more time with Cynthia than with my parents,” said Swann. “The whole reason I’m stuck here in this mine is . . .” She shook her head and turned away from them, wiping her eyes. “So stupid,” she mumbled.
“I don’t think it’s stupid to enter the race,” Hunter said.
“I thought if I won this race, then maybe . . . You know my father was supposed to award the prize at the finish line.”
“You thought if you won, you’d get your dad’s attention,” Kelton said.
Swann looked up at him, and their eyes met. He wanted to tell her he’d signed up for basically the same reasons, that he’d wanted to prove he wasn’t a total loser, that he could do good in at least one thing. But Hunter would make fun of him. Or he’d tell the guys at school and they’d make fun of him.
He somehow doubted Swann would mock him, but you could never tell with a SuperPop. She was the daughter of people who acted for a living. She was probably acting now. For real.
Swann smiled at him for a moment, just briefly, so that the gesture was almost lost in the flickering light, but in that moment, Kelton felt a tingle very different from the cold shivers he’d experienced all night.
They were quiet for a long time. A howling wind blew snow and ice in at them, as though the storm were a living thing, clawing at the cave to get at them, to freeze them all out.
“Well, we’re going to need more wood,” Hunter finally said. “This is all going to burn up quick.” He started back down the tunnel.
“Hunter, you really shouldn’t be going all around in here,” Kelton said.
“Yeah,” said Hunter. “I watched the same mines-are-dangerous video you saw in class. But we need wood, or it won’t just be you freezing. All the wood outside is going to be soaked, covered in snow, or so green it will hardly burn and will just smoke us out anyway.”
“A rocky old mine doesn’t seem like the best source of firewood either,” Swann said. “What are we going to do?”
Hunter nodded down the tunnel. “I think I saw an old wood ladder way back there. Kind of falling apart. I’ll bring back pieces of that.”
“I’d go with you,” Kelton said. “But I can hardly move.”
“I’ll come with you,” Swann said.
Kelton felt more reluctant for Swann to go than he thought he would, but it was also true that none of them should be going very deep into the mine. “These tunnels can be unstable. You don’t want to go knocking stuff around too much.”
“We don’t want to freeze to death either,” Hunter fired back.
Swann patted Kelton’s shoulder. “Stay here. Warm up. Keep the fire going. We’ll be back soon.”
Kelton felt her hand on his shoulder long after she and Hunter had disappeared into the shadows again. Maybe he should have gone with them. But he was only now getting feeling back in his hands and feet, a process which was actually a little painful, and someone had to tend the fire. Still, it bothered him to see the two of them go off together, to hear their voices, a little laughter, echoing from the dark. The Populars off together, and Kelton, as always, left alone.
