“You don’t have a bag?” the girl asked.
“No,” Georgie said, then couldn’t think of anything to say next that could possibly make her lack of bag/coat/socks make sense.
“All right,” the boy said. (Georgie still couldn’t call him a man.) “Where to?”
“Ponca Hills,” she said.
The boy turned to the girl. They were all sitting in the front of an old red truck, the girl squished in the middle. The heat didn’t work, and the front windshield was already fogged over. He wiped it with the sleeve of his green canvas coat.
“That’s out north,” the girl said, taking out her phone. “What’s the address?”
The address, the address . . . “Rainwood Road,” Georgie said, relieved to remember even part of Neal’s parents’ address, then hoped that Rainwood Road didn’t stretch the entire length of the city.
The girl typed it into her phone. “Okay,” she said to the boy. “Turn right up here.”
Georgie wondered how long they’d been apart.
The boy kept kissing the girl’s head and squeezing her leg. Georgie looked out the window to give them privacy—and because the whole city looked like some sort of fairy wonderland. She’d never seen anything like it.
The idea that this just fell from the sky.
And then looked like that. Like Tinker Bell had painted it on. How did people ever get used to it?
Georgie didn’t realize at first that it must be difficult to drive in. They were moving slowly, but the truck still slid through a red light. “I can’t believe you drove in this,” the boy said.
“I wasn’t going to leave you at the airport,” his girlfriend said. “I was careful.”
He grinned and kissed her again. Georgie wondered if they were getting close to Neal’s neighborhood. Almost no one else was on the road. A few people were out shoveling.
They must be close. Georgie recognized that park. That bridge. That bowling alley. The girl gave the boy directions. Georgie recognized a pizza place that she and Neal had walked to. “We’re close,” she said, leaning forward and resting a hand on the dash.
“Rainwood should be your next right,” the girl said.
“Yeah . . . ,” the boy agreed. But the truck stopped moving.
His girlfriend looked up from her phone. “Oh.”
Georgie looked up the hill, but didn’t see what the problem was.
The boy sighed and scrubbed at his dirty blond hair, then turned to Georgie. “We might get halfway up that hill. But I’m not sure we’d get down. Or out.”
“Oh . . . ,” Georgie said. “Well. It’s close. I can walk from here, I know the way.”
They both looked at her like she was crazy.
“You’re not wearing a coat,” he said.
“You’re not even wearing shoes,” the girl said.
“I’ll be fine,” Georgie assured them. “It’s five blocks, tops. I won’t freeze to death.” She said it like she knew something about freezing to death, which she clearly didn’t.
“Wait a minute.” The boy got out of the truck, then hopped back inside thirty seconds later with his duffel bag. He unzipped it, and clothes spilled out. He started heaping them in the girl’s lap. “Here,” he said, pulling out a thick, gray wool sweater. “Take this.”
“I can’t take your sweater,” Georgie said.
“Take it. You can mail it back to me—my mom sews my address inside everything. Take it, it’s no big deal.”
“Just take it,” the girl said.
“I’m trying to think if I have extra boots. . . .” He shoved his clothes back into the bag. “I might have some waders in the back.”
The girl rolled her eyes, and for a minute she looked just like Heather.
“Or—why don’t you tell me where you’re going?” he said to Georgie. “I’ll run up to the house and come back with your shoes and your coat or whatever.”
“No,” Georgie said. She pulled the sweater on over her head. “You’ve done enough, thank you.”
“You can’t walk through the snow barefoot,” he insisted.
“I’ll be fine.” Georgie opened the passenger door.
He opened his door, too.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” the girl said. “You can wear my boots.” She reached for the floor. Georgie noticed she was wearing a small engagement ring. “You can have them. I don’t even like them.”
“Absolutely not,” Georgie said. “What if you get stuck in the snow?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “He’d carry me across the city before he let me get my feet wet.”
The boy grinned at the girl. The girl rolled her eyes again and finished pulling off her boots. “Just take them,” she said. “He’s got it in his head that you’re our Christmas mission. If we don’t help you, he’ll never get his wings.”
Georgie took the boots. Knockoff Uggs. They looked about her size.
She kicked off her patent leather ballet flats—a birthday gift from Seth, so undoubtedly expensive. (Seth always bought Georgie clothes for Christmas, usually to replace the most pathetic item in her wardrobe. Good thing he didn’t know about her bras.) “You can have these,” Georgie said, “if you want them.”
The girl looked dubious.
“We’ll wait here for a while,” the boy said. “Come back if you need help.”
Right, Georgie thought, putting on the boots. If my husband doesn’t recognize me. If my in-laws don’t live there anymore. If everyone I know is either dead or not born yet because I ruined time. . . . “Thank you.”
“Merry Christmas,” the boy said.
“Be careful,” his fiancée warned. “There might be ice.”
“Thank you.” Georgie swung her legs out of the truck and jumped onto the ground, catching the door as her feet slid out from beneath her.
No one had shoveled yet on Rainwood Road. Georgie vaguely remembered that there weren’t any sidewalks; she and Neal had walked in the street that time they went to get pizza, their hands swinging between them.
The snow came up to the top of Georgie’s calves—she had to lift her feet high to make any progress. Her ears and eyelids were freezing, but after a block of climbing, her cheeks were flushed, and she was panting.
God, she’d never even been able to imagine this much cold before.
How could people live someplace that so obviously didn’t want them? All that romance about snow and seasons . . . You shouldn’t have to make a special effort not to die every time you left your house.
Everything was so quiet, Georgie’s breath sounded thunderous. She looked back, but she couldn’t see the red truck anymore. She couldn’t see any signs of life. It was easy to imagine that every house she passed was empty.
Georgie felt tears in her eyes and tried to pretend it was because of the cold, or the fatigue, and not because of what was waiting for her—or not waiting for her—at the top of the hill.