Snowhook by Jo Storm

She considered feeding the dogs — the day before had been long and rough — but then she thought about Bogey’s unfortunate start yesterday and decided she’d give them two meals at the end of the day, wherever they ended up.

“Hello, Earth to Hannah? Here,” said Peter. He was holding out a spoon. In his other gloved hand, he held the steaming pot.

She realized she’d been standing there staring at him like an idiot while she was thinking about the dogs. She grabbed the spoon and they both squatted back down. Peter placed the pot in the snow and stirred, and they watched it melt a hole in the packed-down snow until it was half-buried. The cold from the snow quickly cooled the contents of the pot, and they ate right out of it, spooning the brown liquid — stew, Hannah guessed — into their mouths, dribbling juice down their chins. Peter used the back of his sleeve to wipe away his dribbles.

“What time is it?” he asked her again.

She was already tired of looking at her watch every time he asked, but some part of her did want things to be part of a routine or a schedule, like back home; maybe he felt that way, too. In the city, clocks were an essential part of life. Get up at 6:00, ballet until 7:30, change for school, breakfast, class at 8:30. She liked the orderliness of it, how she could go from day to day in a groove like a sled track on a crisp day. Just like her running dream before it went bad. That was what she liked: the freedom of routine. It allowed her to do different things in her head, like work out the hard math problems, or wonder whether Billy had been talking about her — and if he had, what he’d said — or worry what the more popular girls’ clique was saying about her. But the bush was not like that. She had slept until 11:00 and the day didn’t care; it just went on.

She had to get that sense of order going again. “Time to figure out what we’re going to do,” she said. She dropped her spoon into the stew pot and walked back to the tent to get her water bottle. She would start by remembering to stay hydrated. Her legs felt as weak as runny eggs, and her head was like a mouse nest, inside and out — her hair was plastered to one side of her face and her thoughts were sluggish.

She came back and crouched near Peter. She stared at the fire as Peter fed the water pot with more snow.

“How far is it to Timmins?”

“Too far, Hannah.”

“Well, how far is that?”

Peter shrugged. “Why don’t we go back to your place?” he asked.

“There’s no power at our place.”

“We could use your car. How sick is your mom? I can drive.”

“There’s no way. It’s buried under the snow, and the road isn’t even plowed. Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”

“No,” he said. In his tone, and the way his face pulled down, he made it seem like people who listened to the radio were somehow inferior. “Dad’ll call when he gets back, though.”

“How come you guys have power?” asked Hannah.

“We have the generator,” said Peter. That must have been the source of the humming she had heard when she approached the cabin.

“This is so stupid,” she said.

“If you hadn’t brought those goddamn dogs, if you hadn’t yelled and banged on the door, then everything would have been okay,” said Peter. “That’s what does it — when things surprise her or mess up her routine. She was already stressed out by the storm.”

Hannah thought about it. Whenever her dad wanted to see Jeb, he phoned ahead, and it was almost always when Scott was present. She hadn’t really noticed before — although she was piecing it together now — how careful everyone was about what they spoke about and how they said things in front of Jeb. The only time Hannah’s mom had gone over, she and Jeb had argued over putting a penny in the vase of tulips she’d brought (supposedly to protect the flowers from bacteria). Jeb had suddenly started to shout, and surprisingly, Hannah’s mom had quickly acquiesced. With anyone but her husband, when the shouting began, her mom was just getting started.

They sat and watched the water in the pot begin to bubble. Peter took it off the fire and placed it in the snow.

“We could go to Jonny Swede’s,” he said. “He’s nearby.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter. He looked around and squinted up the trail. “We’re about halfway, I guess.”

“So a full day on the sled?”

“Maybe less. I don’t know. I’m not a dogsled expert like you are. Most people go on snowmobiles.”

“How far is Timmins from his place?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, “I’ve never gone to Timmins from his place. Maybe an hour?”

“By car?”

“Yeah,” he said, in a tone that said obviously, idiot. “We won’t need to go to Timmins, Hannah,” he added.