Bonechiller Read Free Page A

watch them grow smaller and smaller as I hunch over.
    That girl’s got lungs. And legs. She can squat two hundred pounds, she keeps telling me. I guess that’s a lot. I can’t squat
squat
.
    At least I’m not cold. I’m dying here, but not from frostbite.
    Ash’s shoes shrink to white smudges, on the brink of vanishing in the black. Then they stop moving. As I suck in the frigid air, those smudges grow bigger. I hear the snow-dusted gravel crunching under them as she jogs back.
    “Giving up?” She’s not even panting.
    “I surrender. What are your terms?”
    “It’s gotta be unconditional. Your butt is mine.”
    “Be gentle,” I wheeze.
    “Man, you are such a pussy. But I’ll let you live.”
    We just walk the rest of the way.
    As we get closer to the lake, more cottages start to appear down the roads that branch off. These back roads don’t have names, only numbers. We just passed Tenth Line. As we get nearer the water, the Lines tick down to First. The little houses we go by are flickers of light in the winter gloom. Like arctic fireflies. We lean into the wind, speeding the pace.
    “Think there’s gonna be anything left of Fat Bill’s?” I ask.
    “Nothing but dust. They’ll have to crack the ice on the creek just to get enough water to keep the fire from spreading.”
    “Pike should be locked up.” I blow into my cupped hands. “It’s just a matter of time before he adds
spree killer
to his résumé.”
    In the darkness I see her shrug. “Pike has to go around being Pike every second, every day. That’s punishment enough. Besides, you ever met his dad? He used to be a drill sergeant. We’re talking
intense
. If you had to grow up with that, your brains would be scrambled too.”
    Through a break in the clouds I see a cluster of stars. Growing up in Toronto, I only ever saw the brightest dozen or so. Out here, the longer you look, the more you see.
    We reach Fifth Line, where Ash turns off for her place.
    In the moonlight I can just make out her face. Ash is half-Indian, half-Whitey. But it’s the Ojibwa that shows in her features—high cheekbones, strong nose and a wide mouth with a razor-thin scar on the lower lip, where it got split during one of her fights. When I’m trying to get to sleep lately, restless in the new bed, the new town, I’ve been thinking about that scar. Thinking about tracing it with my tongue.
    “What are you staring at?” Ash asks. Her black eyes are even blacker in the dark.
    “Do I still get to cop a feel?”
    She snorts. “You never caught me.”
    “I was close.”
    “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
    She starts to turn away. But then she grabs me by the collar of my jacket and yanks me in close. Her lips collide with mine. They’re shockingly warm, a little chapped and totally amazing. I reach to put my arms around her, then feel her palms hitting my chest, knocking me back.
    “Tell anybody,” she says, “and I’ll kill you.”
    I stand stunned, trying to think of something smooth to say.
    But then she’s gone, sprinting up Fifth Line and leaving me with a great big stupid smile on my face. She’s already invisible in the night.
    “See you at school,” I say finally, to the empty air.

FOUR
    I stumble on home in the dark, dizzy and delirious.
    The wind whips up, cutting right through me. So I start to jog. Back at the house, Dad will have a fire going and the place will be nice and toasty.
    He’s the caretaker at the Harvest Cove marina, for the off-season, while the owner winters down in Florida. Staying at the small marina house comes with the job. There’s a bait-and-rentals office on the ground floor, with the living space up top.
    It’s a temp job. Everything’s temporary for us. In the spring we’ll be moving on to the next town, next life. I’m not going to think about it.
    I think about Ash instead.
    Back on the first day of school, I was slouching in my seat. Trying to lay low. New place. New faces. Same old same