Alex Morel - Survive

“Were you really trying?”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

I’m silent for a while.

“How very Hart of you,” I say. “That’s sort of harsh to say to someone.”

“Wouldn’t you be happier if you owned up to it and moved on? Whether you were serious or not doesn’t matter, really.”

I want to be mad and angry, but I can’t ignore the blunt truth, that I think he’s right.

“The other night on the plane,” he said, “were you going to cut yourself too?”

I shake my head. “No. Pills. A concoction of things I researched and put together. They spilled on the floor during the crash before I had taken very many.”

I stop talking. I am unable to speak as the enormity of what has happened-what could have happened-hits me.

Then Paul lightly touches my neck with his fingertips and gently pulls me to him. He kisses me. His lips are open and wet. My mouth opens and our lips slide together without hesitation. Then he pulls back for a moment, and we lock eyes. In that instant I know he knows my heart. He kisses me again. I can’t speak. I can barely think. My body tingles with hope and lust and love and desire.

We kiss over and over again, and then he gently bites on my ear. I want to explode out of this bag. I turn toward him, ignoring the pain that shoots through my back when I move, and our legs get all tangled up. He kisses my mouth and I hear a rushing sound in my head. My left arm reaches around and underneath his shirt, rubbing his hip bone and belly. He groans softly. And then just as suddenly, the day weighs on me and I curl deeper into his body and hold his hands and arms against my body. He kisses my neck a few more times, and then we fall asleep.

I dream. I am in the hospital and Old Doctor stares at me, but when he talks, I hear my mother’s voice. He asks me the same question over and over, like he doesn’t hear me. Finally I scream.

“You don’t fool me! You don’t fool me!”

Old Doctor stands and walks to the window. He stares out into the courtyard for a moment and then he turns back to me and beckons me to come over. I do and it immediately starts to snow and I smile.

“What are you smiling about, Jane?” he asks.

“The snow-it’s beautiful.”

He looks outside and then says: “What snow? There’s no snow, Jane. You know that, right?”

“You’re a liar,” I say.

He just smiles, and suddenly my mother is sitting next to him, and my dead father and grandmother are off in the distance, making snow angels.

“Can I play?” I ask.

“No,” Old Doctor says, shaking his head, still smiling. My mother cries. And Old Doctor puts his arm around her. He whispers something in her ear and she nods. He kisses her on the cheek, and I want to kill him for my father. She digs in her purse and pulls out my father’s watch, hands it to me, and tells me not to lose it again. I get up and walk toward Dad and Grandma, and by the time I reach them, they are gone. The snow angels are there, and their eyes come alive and then they fly away. I look up to watch them, and then my father is standing next to me and I’m opening and closing his watch over and over again. Then Paul walks toward us. But he is dead. I try to reach out and touch him, but there is glass between us. I smash my hands against the glass over and over and scream his name.

His eyes open and he says, “Tell me the truth?”

“About what?”

But his eyes close before I can speak and I know he is dead again.

• • •

“Hey, sleepy,” Paul says, shaking my shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Why?”

“You’re hitting me.”

“You’re here,” I say, half stunned, half asleep.

“Well, yeah.” He leans over and kisses me. I remember last night again and then I kiss him back, putting both hands to his face. He breaks it off.

“Stay here,” he says, “I’m gonna go scout our next move.”

I nod, and almost in an instant, he slips from the bag into the woods. It happens so fast that for a minute I wonder if I’m dreaming, and I scramble out of the bag to go after him.

“Wait,” I shout. “Paul! Paul!” But no answer comes. I shout again. Silence. Trust, Jane. Trust. He would never leave you. But what if it’s not up to him? I shove my feet into my boots and get my gloves and shell and the little second-guesser in my head rises, fresh and alert, like she’s just risen from her own nap. He could just keep walking or fall in a lake; what if his foot is stuck in a bear trap or he tumbles off a cliff? Stop! Quiet the voice, Jane. Focus on what is real. Focus on what you can control.

I roll up the extra sleeping bag, my hand caressing the warmth that remains where our bodies were. I play back every detail from the night before. The kisses and touches tumble together in my mind and I smile. My dream, my dream, for the life of me it has disappeared in a matter of seconds. I try to catch it, but all I remember is his face in the window, waving goodbye.

My hand finds his little book at the bottom of his sleeping bag, the one his brother gave him. I pick it up and feel the cover. I slide back in the sleeping bag and then open the book and pull out the letter I read once before and snuggle into the bag where I’m hidden in case Paul reappears.

I read it again, with what I now know about Paul and his life after his mother died. What was Will trying to tell him?

I fold the letter up and place it carefully back inside and close the book.

Then guilt grows inside me; perhaps I shouldn’t have read his brother’s letter. Hold it! I definitely shouldn’t have read his letter! It is so wrong to be reading Paul’s private things. If he found out, would he ever forgive me?

I crawl back out of the bag and switch out what I can for drier things. I pack up. I grab the water bottles and pour the last drop or two onto my tongue. Then I pack them with snow and place one down my jacket and slide it over to the small of my back. Damn, that’s cold. I roll our bag up and crawl out into the forest.

He is standing a few feet from the cave, looking at the mountains.

“Do you know where we are?”

“I’m not sure I do. But I think if we can climb up that peak, there’s none higher. We’ll be able to see the world below, and, hopefully, they will be able to see us.”

“Is it possible?”

He shrugs as if to say he doesn’t know for sure.

“Anything is possible,” he finally says. “You just have to get yourself to believe it first.”

I look out over the range above and before us. I see where we need to go, but I don’t see how to get there.

“Look over there.” Paul points.

I look. I see a sea of trees and some hills and then a deep gully separating our peak from the higher peaks.

“I don’t see what you are looking at,” I say.

He comes and holds my arm, pointing it toward a speck on the horizon. “There,” he says, guiding my hand with his.

I realize that he is pointing down. Down into the next valley, then up.

“All the way down?” I say.

“No, see there,” he says. “There’s a natural bridge connecting the two peaks. It could be dangerous, but I feel like it’s our best shot.”

“How far is that?”

“I don’t know. Should take us a day or so to get there.”

I have no idea if he’s kidding. I’m trying to imagine how we’ll ever be found. Maybe twenty years from now, the wreckage will be located and our bodies found frozen under ten feet of snow. Actually, that’s unlikely, because the bears will never let us sit that long once they wake up in the spring. We’ll be tasty morsels once the snow melts.