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his skin (there were a few of them now that he was dating a white girl). Content that this was, indeed, the origin of the message, it still couldn’t prevent a series of tremors from raking his flesh.
    He was about to reexamine the text when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Ashley staring at him. He put the phone back in his jacket while reassuring himself of his initial theory, that it was just one of his friends back home playing a twisted joke. Probably Dino. In fact, he now recalled, it was even Dino who had warned him not to go on this trip, wasn’t it? Something about being the only black man on a white mountain. Yeah, he thought, that’s who it was. Dino.

    Trying to distract Ashley from his initial reaction to the text, he brought up the question of his snowboarding again. “You know, Heather,” he began, “it was said that no one could stand on his head better than Marcus Hatfield, goalie for the Blue Falcons. ‘Why, that brother was break-dancing right there on the ice, stopping pucks left and right while straight spinnin’ on his head!’ That’s what they used to say about ol’ Marcus of the Blue Falcons. The undefeated Blue Falcons.”
    “Well, we’ll see what they have to say about you snowboarding on your head.”
    “You played ice hockey?” Ian asked, surprised.
    “Four years for township.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Forgot all about hockey once I started playing football.”
    “You miss it?”
    “Hockey?”
    “Football.” They were out of the forest and passing through the town of Sunmount. A school on their left just happened to have a football field that was visible from the road.
    Marcus ran a hand over his head. “Like you can’t believe.” Then he pointed ahead at a road sign they were about to pass. “Route 3. We’re on it for at least an hour now.”
    Route 3 cut north, skirting Raquette Pond.
    “Could you imagine getting stranded out here, though?” Ashley asked, taking in the scenery.
    “Stop it,” Heather insisted, the thought again chilling her bones. She pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned against the door while trying to lose herself in the words displayed across her phone.
    “It’d be an awfully cold walk, that’s for damn sure.” And even though he’d just looked at the needles a minute ago, Ashley’s suggestion had Ian checking all the gauges again. As he followed Main Street further north and away from the huge pond, he could hear everyone else getting comfortable around him and settling in for the long drive, Christmas lullabies massaging their fatigued minds.
    Marcus turned the Christmas music up and reclined in the shotgun chair, repositioning one of the heating vents before closing his eyes and humming along to “Away in the Manger.”
    Heather was trying to immerse herself in the thriller she’d downloaded onto her Kindle app while waiting for their departing flight in Dulles all the way back at the start of their adventure. The Ninth District by Douglas Dorow . It was a good one, and she was immediately sucked back into it. It was a pleasant distraction from the nagging prospect of breaking down in the middle of the mountains and having to start a fire to keep the wolves away. That and her condition’s suspicion that the car was going to fold up into a tinfoil ball at any moment and seal her inside forever. It was much better in The Ninth District ,where an FBI agent was trying to stop a killer from pulling off the granddaddy of all heists.
    Beside her, Ashley had resumed an ongoing Scrabble game with friends at work.
    The car fell silent, each person overtaken by drowsiness and ushered into the privacy of their own singular worlds.
    Ahead, a circle of crows standing across the road took flight, flapping their wings as the red car approached the flattened carcass of a dead animal. Finding perches in the nearby pine trees, they stood, black eyes blinking, and watched the car drive past. It was a few moments before the birds turned