Page 19 of Winter’s Teeth

Fox shrugged subtly. “So, in a roundabout way... Sure. I work out.”

Despite the circumstances, some of the crushing despair lifted off my back, evaporating like mist in the moonlight that broke through the dense canopy as shining silver strings. The corner of my mouth lifted, loosened, and eased like a rusted hinge by Fox’s dry humor.

He was beginning to grow on me.

Like a lichen.

Please turn up soon, Everly, I inwardly sighed. I want you to meet Fox, and I need you to be okay.

We lapsed into amiable silence, and I let myself be briefly lulled by Fox’s crunching, steady steps through the ice-crusted forest.

Chapter 8

The lull lasted for all of three seconds when we made it back.

There was no sign of Everly as I desperately looked around. People were yelling and carrying on, either at me or about me, and Fox disappeared the moment after he set me on a wingback chair by the fireplace.

I wrapped my own ankle, tending to it alone with materials that another Winter boy brought me—the one with eyeliner who snuck me a dinner roll. All the while, my dad and stepmother raved about how thoughtless I’d been to go out again in the dark.

I didn’t have it in me to argue that all my thoughts had been with Everly.

The nagging didn’t stop until an officer pulled them away to discuss the new plan of action. I caught snippets of it—a helicopter in the morning, another search on foot with rangers and dogs, and a missing person alert put out right away.

“She didn’t just disappear. Someone had to see her,” an officer said to be encouraging, but all I heard were the unspoken words that they knew nothing yet.

No one knew anything.

***

I WAS HELPLESS THE rest of the weekend, spending each day either in my car or waiting at the nearest station, itching for any news from the teams hunting down my sister.

If they found any clues, they never shared their leads with me, my parents, or Brett.

The waiting grew unbearable on Sunday evening, so Brett and I took a drive in his Jeep. We cruised down the state route in the dark, Brett watching on the left, me watching on the right in total silence.

Every part of the drive was uncomfortable, from the frigid temperature Brett kept the car at, to the nature of the drive looking for a dead or missing sister. Then there was the matter of Brett’s odor. Every breath, I tried breathing in through my mouth and out through my nose to avoid it. It wasn’t horrid, but his natural musk offended me for some reason, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Everly would be attracted to such a smell. Then again, she didn’t have the same sensitivities as I did when it came to scents, and I was probably the only one who would consider someone’s scent when choosing a significant other. Call it a biological survival response, or maybe I just had a keen smell for the good ones.

My nails were raw nubs after biting and drumming them all night and day. I tried to keep them away from my mouth, but the nervous anxiety switched to my legs, making them bounce incessantly beneath the dashboard.

Brett let out a weary sigh when we passed the Raymond B. Winter state park entrance for the third time. The wooden sign cropped up in the high beams, welcoming us even if we were far from welcomed in this place. Brett shattered the silence entirely when he said, “At this point, I’d even consider alien abduction. Nothing makes any sense anymore.”

A snort rushed out of my nose, but the idea stuck to me like burrs on wool socks. Just another unbelievable possibility to consider. Another stone to turn over at some point.

***

COME MONDAY MORNING, I was the first one to be found in the school library. I had seventeen tabs open on a school computer ranging from local abduction stories, to werewolves, to Bigfoot. Everly’s abduction hadn’t hit news networks yet, but that was probably because they couldn’t dress it up as another sensational missing hiker story.

“Do I even want to know?”

I jumped at the voice, whirling around to face my friends—Karissa, Angela, and Ben.

Riss eyed my screen with a cocked brow, lips pursed in utter judgment. “Bigfoot? Chupacabra? What the hell happened on your weekend in the woods?”

I scrambled to ex out of all the pages on local legends. “Um... Yeah. I should have called earlier, but there wasn’t any service where I was.” And I hadn’t had a clue what to say to them.

We were freshmen survivors of the school’s toughest professor for Anthropology 101, but were we close enough to tell each other about missing family members and harebrained ideas of folklore involvement?

Angie’s caramel brows tightened. “Rae? You don’t seem well, and Riss said you never made it back to the dorms last night. What happened?”