“Stretch out a little more. You have to get on your stomach.”
“I can’t.” I mouth the words. Anything louder will shatter the ice.
“Yes, you can. You’re okay. Keep your eyes on mine. Look at me. Look—Hudson—no, right here. I’m getting you out of this, okay? I promise.”
“But my arms are sh-shaking. I c-c-can’t—”
“Do it, Hudson! Stop screwing around! Just shut up and do exactly what I say!”
The panic in his voice sets me on high alert. I take a deep breath, hold it, and press myself flat against the ice.
“Use your arms and legs to inch forward. Go slow. Keep your eyes here.” He points to his eyes and I follow his instructions, moving a millimeter at a time, gaze locked on his for all eternity.
“Reach, Hudson. Just a little more. Come on!”
My resolve fades and I shiver again, inside and out. Cold and fear suffocate me from all sides. The ice cracks against my ribs like fingers reaching up through the cold and I start to cry and I wonder if the deep blue-gray eyes of Watonka Wolves varsity co-captain number fifty-six Josh Blackthorn will be the very last thing I see before …
“Gotcha!” Josh wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls, dragging me as he inches backward. His grip is tight, energy seeping into my limbs. I rise to a crawl, slow at first, faster as we shuffle on hands and knees toward the safety of the runoff. When we reach the edge where the ice ends and the ground begins, Josh stands and tugs me so hard that he slips backward into the snow. I collapse on top of him. I know I should get up but my arms and legs won’t cooperate and all I can feel is his heart banging against mine like the first time we met, tumbling together on the ice. I’m still crying and he’s shaking beneath me as the wind rushes us, full force.
“I just … I thought you …” He’s breathing hard and jagged, holding me firm against his chest. “Jesus, Hudson. What were you … why did … God.” He takes my face into his gloved hands and I close my eyes, cutting off the tears.
The wind roars across the ice and chokes me with another gale, wet and sharp on my skin. Josh grabs my hands and pulls us up and together we fight our way through the swirling white gusts, collecting my backpack and boots, clomping through deep, heavy snow to the rusted outer building of the mill. We don’t stop until we’re inside, shielded from the bitter bite of the wind, thrown suddenly into blackness.
“We have to wait it out,” Josh says, trying to catch his breath. He pulls off his hat and rubs the snow from his hair and we both look around, eyes adjusting to the dark.
The ground floor is mostly empty. Steel bones jut out from walls lined with white veins, ever-widening cracks where the outside light leaks in. When the wind blows, puffs of snow slip through the gaps, piling up on the floor like loose powder.
I sit on an old wooden crate and change out of my skates, grateful for my boots and an extra pair of wool socks stuffed in the bottom of my bag.
The mill feels hollow and haunted, black inside, the faint clangs of old metal ringing like a ghost ship adrift at sea. The sadness of the place snatches at my soul and I shiver.
Ten minutes ago, Josh saved my life.
“Why did you come?” I ask. “I haven’t seen you out here lately, and things have been … we haven’t talked in a while.”
Josh pulls off his gloves and blows hot breath into his hands. “Not since you stopped working with the team. Will isn’t saying anything about it, so I decided to stalk you today until you tell me what’s going on.”
“So you are a stalker. I knew it.” I smile. I missed this—our easy and familiar banter, still there beneath the sparks.
“I stopped by the restaurant but the pink-haired waitress—Nat, I think?—she told me you’d left already.”
“Yeah, I asked her to cover my shift.”
“I figured I’d find you here,” Josh says. “Only you’d be crazy enough to skate Fillmore today. Not that I expected to find you on the actual lake, but—hey, what’s wrong?” His eyes are soft and warm, two bright lights in all the darkness. My heart fills with a mixture of happiness and dread, the craziness of the last few weeks finally catching up. I open my mouth to speak, but my throat tightens, tears spilling from my eyes as I think about falling through the ice again. He wraps himself around me and presses my head to his chest.
“You see the videos,” I say absently, “but you never think it’ll happen to you. If you weren’t out there today …”
He kisses me on the forehead, caressing my cheeks with his thumbs. “But I was. And you’re lucky I’ve seen a lot of those survival shows.”
“With the guy who eats bugs?”
“Precisely.”
“You’re such a boy. No wonder my brother likes you.”
“Your brother likes me? Score!”
“Score if you like robots, army men, and hamsters.”
Josh laughs. “Who doesn’t?”
Grateful for the levity, I pull away from him and heft my backpack over my shoulder. “Just so you know, I have a granola bar, half a thermos of hot—well, cold by now—chocolate, and some slightly mashed cupcakes. I’m not eating any bugs.”
“Good to know. Watch where you step.” Josh reaches for my hand, gingerly leading me across the building to another large room, where a bunch of desks and file cabinets line the perimeter, covered in junk and cobwebs. On one end, a rusty sign hangs over a doorway, crooked on a single hinge: DANGER—HOT ACIDS!
“This place is so strange.” I swipe a finger over an old desk, leaving a clean line in the dust. “It’s like they all just got up and left. Nobody packed or took stuff away or knocked it down. It’s just …”
“Abandoned.”
The wind slams into the wall outside, and the entire building moans and shudders against the onslaught. I shiver and retie my scarf, memories slipping through my head like snow through the cracks in the walls. The horrible, slushy sound of the lake beneath the ice. The frozen expanse cracking against my ribs. Everything changing in an instant. How could I be so reckless? Ten more seconds and—
“Hudson?”
“Sorry.” I shove my hands in my fleece pockets, momentarily comforted by the familiar crinkle of Lola’s foundation letter. “I was just … do you think this place is haunted?”
“Nah, it’s not like everyone died here. They probably thought it would reopen and they’d get their jobs back. There’s tons of places like this in Ohio, too. Welcome to the Rust Belt.” Josh picks up a weathered jar of something that looks like bright pink cat litter, but is probably one of the aforementioned HOT ACIDS.
“Careful with that,” I say. “There’s a reason all the fish around here have two heads and no eyes.”
“Ah, good point.” Delicately, he sets it back on the shelf next to a row of similarly filled containers, some pink like his and others gray or white. “Help me look through the drawers. We need matches or a lighter or something.”
I rummage through file drawers and cubbies until I find an old Zippo lighter with a World Trade Center emblem, 9-11-2001 etched on the back. Obviously, we’re not the first urban explorers to visit the place since its closure, though I can’t think of anyone who’d willingly hang out here other than Dani, who’d probably shoot a thousand pictures in this creeptastic corner alone.
I wish I could tell her about it.
Josh drags a metal trash can over near an opening in the wall and fills it with paper and dead leaves and any other dry material we can safely identify as not a HOT ACID. He starts the fire easily with the lighter, gray smoke billowing up toward the glassless window frames.
“Nice job, Boy Scout.” I rub my hands over the flames. “If we had a can of beans and a harmonica, we’d rock this joint hobo-style.”
“Pull another stunt like that on the ice and I’ll throw your ass on the next coal train myself. Then you’ll know hobo-style.” He sits on a large, empty worktable. “What were you doing that far out, anyway?”