I turn to look out the window, where the snow seems to be slowing. It’s beautiful out there, the entire world dipped in a thick, white glaze. It looks the way Christmas should look. Except that I’m in a car, and my mother is alone. This will be another awful Christmas and why? Because I just couldn’t miss the last day of my art show? I couldn’t fly home on the 22nd like I always do, but instead had to push it until now.

I should have known better. I tempted fate, and fate is making me pay.

“Watch your—”

Whatever Brecken is going to say is cut off when the car shimmies to the left, snow spraying around the left tires. Harper lets out a little shriek that feels a beat late, and my pulse jumps into overdrive at the same moment.

Harper steers right but overcorrects. The right tires bobble out of their lane and into the trail of plowed snow at the side of the road.

The car shudders to an abrupt halt, the front tire deep in a rut and spinning uselessly. She tries to pull forward, to steer left and then right to pull out, but the car doesn’t budge.

“Try backing up,” Brecken says.

She does. She tries half a dozen tricks called out from all over the car. But none of them work.

We’re stuck.

Chapter Twelve

Josh grunts and I turn around, wincing when I see both of his hands on either side of his leg brace. His foot is wedged awkwardly behind the driver’s seat.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He lets out a tight breath, his face red when he looks up at me. “Yeah.” Then he pulls his foot loose and bites back a cry. “Okay, I’ve been better.”

“What can we do?” I ask. “Do you want to sit up front?”

Josh groans. “Maybe let’s revisit that when I’m not in agony?”

“And when we’re not stuck in a snowdrift on the side of a mountain,” Harper adds.

“I have no idea what we’re going to get out of here with,” Brecken says. “We’re going to be digging out with the ice scraper.”

“No, we have a shovel,” Harper says. “In the back in that emergency kit.”

“The kit with the busted snow chains?” Brecken asks, pushing open his door. “Superconfident about that shovel, let me tell you.”

The shovel is actually okay. It’s about the only useful thing in the kit. There are a couple of flares, one of those orange, reflective triangles and a matching vest, and a pouch of cheap-looking tools. It’s the lamest emergency kit I’ve ever seen. Still, I’m glad to see the shovel.