Elusion(50)

With a thump, Josh lands on the frozen surface beside me, his cheeks flushed.

“Are you okay?” he says, out of breath.

Actually, I’m better than okay.

I’m more alive than I’ve ever felt before.

He falls backward against the snow, as he shuts his eyes with relief. “Hey, what’s your ExSet at?”

I push back the sleeve of my parka and look at my wristband. “Oh, it’s . . . advanced.”

Josh starts laughing. “Okay, change that right now.”

“Why? Are you having trouble keeping up with me?” I joke as I type in the proper adjustments.

He kicks some ice off the blade attached to his boot and grins. “By the way, that was the coolest thing I have seen in my life. Ever.”

“Great, maybe we can do it again sometime.”

Josh’s laughing tapers off and he just lies there, staring at me. We’re so close I could reach out and hold his hand. Or I could roll over a little, lean in, and tilt my head so that our brows are gently pressing together, leaving him to make the last, sweet move.

Do I dare?

“How far do you think we’ve gone?” he says, sitting up and brushing snow off his pants with his hands.

I crane my neck and lift my shoulders, propping my top half up with my elbows. “I don’t know,” I say, studying the structure looming in front of us. “It might be five miles. Maybe we should check out this ice cave. The firewall in the Thai Beach was near a cluster of rocks—kind of like a formation. Maybe this archway is another version of that.”

I look over at Josh and see the rapture that’s sparkling in his eyes. I can’t help but hope that Elusion won’t be the only place I’ll ever see him this way.


The path through the ice cave looks exactly like a tunnel running through a block of iridescent mint-infused limestone. The walls are perfectly carved and rounded, the ground still covered in cherry-blossom snow. Bright rays of blue sunlight stream in through the semitransparent ceiling, and when I run my hand along the smooth tunnel walls, surface particles begin to change hues—from soft yellow to bright pink to ethereal green. It feels like I’m walking through a gigantic crystal prism.

At the end of the winding path, Josh and I stumble upon a huge cavern filled with translucent flamingo-pink stalagmites rising from the ground and glimmering harvest-gold icicles, which dangle from above like frozen caramel rain. But at the center of the cavern, about a few hundred yards away from us, is a monstrous pure-white glacier formation that stretches out like a barricade around a mythical princess’s castle. I crane my neck upward to see how high it goes, but it just continues on and on, above the ceiling and into infinity.

“It’s . . . incredible,” I say. The word is such an insignificant way to describe the absolute splendor that’s before us, but that’s all I can muster.

Josh takes off his gloves and reaches out to touch the smooth surface of a nearby pillar-shaped stalagmite with his bare hands. “You know what? I think that frozen barrier is the firewall.”

“Really? The firewall didn’t look like part of the landscape in the Thai Beach Escape,” I say.

“I know, but maybe the programmers are trying to make it harder to find.”

“Because of what happened to me?”

“Yeah, and whatever’s happening to Nora,” Josh suggests.

“You’re probably right,” I say, unzipping my parka. The refracted blue sunlight from outside the cave is definitely causing some kind of greenhouse effect inside the cavern. There’s a surge of heat that’s starting to surround us, causing some of the golden icicles to drip beads of moisture on the ground.

But other than that, there isn’t any strange current tearing through this Escape; no clues indicate this icy fortress is about to self-destruct.

No visions of my father, either. Lucky for me, I can’t feel one shred of disappointment here. But when we leave, that will be another story altogether.

“Can you sense your dad’s presence?” Josh asks, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

An image pops into my head—my father planting a triangular blue flag at the top of the mountain and renaming it Mount Regan. The memory of him hugging and swinging me around afterward makes me smile.

“I sort of remember being here with him last time, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not exactly.” Josh removes his hands from the ice formation and dries them on the back of his pants. “Do you believe in . . . psychic connections?”

I press my hands against the ice like Josh did, my skin slipping and sliding along the pillar’s rounded edges and rough ridges. “Like do I think it’s possible for you to read my mind or something?”

Because honestly, right now, I think he can.

“No, I mean . . . do you think that it’s possible to feel like someone’s next to you, even though they are hundreds of miles away? Or that two people could understand each other without having to talk?”

I put my hands in my coat pockets and take a step closer to him. I know we’re here to examine the firewall—to see if we can find another connection to Dad or Nora—but the only thing I can think about is how I wish Josh’s arms were wrapped around me.

“Yes, I think it’s possible,” I reply.

Josh grins and moves toward me, his boots creating a crunching sound as he walks over the snow. His footprints blaze behind him like a row of lit candles.