Frost Bite

Chapter 1

Josie

I am the biggest idiot who ever lived, I think as the wind howls around me and snow stings against my eyes as I fight to move forward. Right, left, right, left. Each step is barely two inches in front of the last and I know I'm going to die. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere. In the middle of a goddamn blizzard that came out of nowhere.

Ryan trips and stays down just in front of me. I shake him.

"Ryan!" I scream because the wind steals my voice and carries it far, far away. And I wonder if my voice will be heard miles from here, disembodied and alone in the middle of the snow and ice. "Ryan you have to get up!" I tug him up but I'm so, so cold. My bones ache with it and I can't even remember what warm feels like.

I am so, so stupid.

"Ryan!" I scream, pulling harder and he staggers upward but as he stands I see his face and I know: he's not going to last much longer. Ryan my very best, out-of-the-sandbox friend. Ryan who is all blond hair and blue eyes, Mr. All American.

And I feel the convulsions in my chest and the pain that comes with each step in every muscle in my body and I know I'm not going to last much longer either.

My throat gets thick.

"Come on, it's not that much farther," I tell him even though I know it's a lie. I don't know where we are or if we're even heading in the right direction. All I know is that we have to keep moving.

"You better get an A on this project," Ryan murmurs, his voice weak.

My eyes sting with the cold and tears and snow flying into them and I nod. "You bet your ass I will."

"I think I froze my ass off back somewhere," Ryan informs me.

I sputter out a laugh but it hurts. "Well it was fat and dimpled anyway."

Ryan lurches forward and I have to struggle to keep up so he can lean on me.

"I'm cold, Jo."

"Me too, Ry. We're gonna get some hot chocolate in us after this."

He turns his brown eyes at me and smiles. "How about some shots?"

"That too. The hot chocolate will be our chaser," I promise him when I'm freezing to death myself.

Please let someone find us. Please, dear God, don't let Ryan die. If there is any kind of cosmic justice, my best friend won't die because I made him come out here with me when he warned me not to. There has to be that much justice in the world.

We stagger forward, each step closer to the last and I know that I'm going to collapse. I'm going to collapse and I'll be lost in the snow. A human popsicle.

I wonder how badly it will hurt. It can't hurt worse than the cold. I'm finally going numb and that scares me. Because I know what that means for me and what it means for Ryan.

The next time he collapses, I go with him.

"Ryan!" I shake him but he doesn't wake and my blood is thick, nearly frozen solid and I realize that it's not just my blood, it's my bones and my skin and the very core of me. All of me aches with this cold that has found every ounce of warmth in me and stolen it. And all I can think is we're going to die out here in this blizzard and no one will ever find us.

And it's all my fault.

Fucking Alaska.

My eyes flu t t e r c l o s e d a n d I a m

g o n e

Jack

I don't know why I save her. She's pretty – but there are other pretty girls. And she's with a boy. They wandered too far and were caught in the storm – in my being and creation. They will freeze to death. And that's life.

But I look at her and I don't know why, but the storm in me quiets. The need to destroy, to change the barren landscape into something harsher and colder as I turn harsher and colder, trickles out of me.

Her eyes flutter shut in the cold, as she wraps herself around the boy, trying to protect him, and I know that out here, she will die. Humans are too small in this indifferent wilderness of snow and ice.

I should let her die. That's how life works.

But because I'm an idiot, because I am lowly and lonely and desperate, I don't.