Begin Again(58)

I try to stay calm and pick a direction, reaching for any advice my dad might have given me back when we were outdoors in all kinds of elements. I think of my mom’s old compass, how she’d never use it herself but she’d sometimes hand it over to me, let me see if I could lead us. I wonder where it is now. If it could lead me out of this mess the same way the memory of my mom led me into it.

There’s another flash of lightning, close enough that this time I can’t help letting out a yelp. The boom of thunder is so immediate that at first all I can hear is the rumble of it, followed by a series of cracks and a deep, unsettling rustling—the sound of a tree coming down.

I’ve done some stupid things in my life. Forgotten book reports. Worn jeans to Mrs. Whit’s birthday tea. Gotten myself in the middle of friend fights I had no part in. But this is a different level of stupid, I realize all too soon and way too late. This is the kind of stupid where you end up dead.

The tree falls just a few feet away, and all I can do is stare at it, the branches splintering so intensely that they spray me. A twig flies right at my face. I throw my arms up, but not fast enough—something slices my forehead, and I back up so fast my feet slip on a sheet of ice that’s somehow collected under the snow.

“Andie.” Someone grabs my elbow, steadying me before I can fall.

My arms are still braced, my entire body tense. Somehow the voice I’m hearing is even more implausible than all of Mother Nature ganging up on me at the same time.

“Milo,” I splutter. “What are you . . .”

He grabs me by the shoulders and spins me around to face him. “Shit. Are you okay?”

My forehead is stinging and my body’s shaking and I’m cold enough to chip like ice. “Yes,” I say anyway, because right now not being squished by that tree is okay enough.

Milo frowns just above my field of vision, but his eyes are on mine before I can figure out why.

“My mom has a supply shed close by. Hold on to my arm, okay?”

I’m on autopilot, clutching him like he’s the last solid thing in the world, my mind replaying the fallen tree over and over again. We slowly make our way through the impossible onslaught of snow with Milo leading the way, our bodies pressed against each other and braced against the snow. Something keeps messing with my vision. I blink and I blink, but it only gets worse.

The door slams behind us before I even realize we’ve made it to the storage shed, a dimly lit building that’s half the size of a dorm room and crammed to the gills with shovels and fertilizer and orange cones. Then everything’s quiet and still except for Milo, who whips around and looks at me again, letting out a low hiss.

“What?”

He doesn’t answer as his fingers graze my face, pushing my hair back behind my ear. “Your forehead. You’re bleeding.”

My own hand flies up to my face, bumping straight into his. “Ow,” I exclaim, the pain of it registering the moment I can feel the warmth of blood against my fingertips. “Oh, no. Oh, shoot. Is it bad?”

Milo takes a step closer, lifting his hand again to push back my hat and peer at it. “It’s just bleeding a lot, I think. It’ll be fine.”

My lips form a knot, unwilling to ask the actual question on my mind, which is whether it’s going to need stitches and just how much of my face it’s going to affect. I see Milo watching me and brace myself for a well-deserved teasing, but instead his eyes soften.

“Seriously, Andie. Once it’s fixed up I don’t think anybody will even notice it.”

I still keep my palm pressed on my forehead like the pressure will undo it happening in the first place. “How did you . . . how did you know I was out here?”

Milo finds a giant box full of supplies and sets his foot down on it, testing its weight. When he seems satisfied, he gestures for me to sit on it.

“I knocked on your door, and when you didn’t answer . . .” Milo pulls the hood off his head, rooting through the shelves of the dimly lit shed. “I remembered you talking about how your school app never synced, because of the transfer. There was an alert everyone else on campus got. Telling us about the storm and canceling everything, including the ribbon event for today.”

“So you realized where I was,” I say, very close to blubbering.

Milo sits down next to me and presses a clean piece of cloth to my head. “Hold that there,” he tells me.

My hand grazes his as he pulls away to find something else in the first aid kit he pulled out. “You walked through this circus because of me.”

“Well,” says Milo, with a hint of a smile, “I am the broadcaster who led you out here and the RA who’s responsible for keeping you alive. So if you were killed by thundersnow, your grandmas probably would have killed me next.”

I’m not expecting to laugh, but the image of six-foot Milo cowering at my tiny but vengeful grandmas immediately demands it. The hint of a smile on his face deepens, like he’s pleased with himself, but he turns his attention back to the alcohol wipes in the kit before I can fully see it.

“Do you have a hair tie or anything?” Without waiting for me to answer, Milo turns back to the shelves. “I’m sure my sisters left some in here somewhere . . . this was always more their hideout than ours.”

I can tell by “ours” he means his brothers. Even with my head bleeding and the sky throwing a full-on tantrum outside I am careful of where I verbally step. “Where was your hideout?”