Heather packs the final clump of snow into place over my head. The cold presses in around me, cutting through the fabric of my snowboard jacket and trousers. I blink into the grayish half-light and take slow, deep breaths, hoping I’m never in this situation for real.

I’ve lost some good friends to avalanches. Doreen Clavette, the French number five in the half-pipe, was swept away while freeriding this summer. There was nobody up there looking for her—the guy she was riding with was buried, too. Is this what their final moments were like? How long did it take them to die? No, I don’t want to know.

I touch my fingertips to the ice. The girls will be looking for me by now. Saskia and Odette, with their transceivers in search mode, pacing the snow above and homing in on the signal from the transceiver strapped around my neck.

As the person least likely to ever be doing this for real, Heather’s doing the burying. Highlight of her winter, I should think, burying me. She bristles when Dale and I talk snowboarding. Hates that we get on so well. Anyway, the current snow depth up here on the glacier is ten meters, so it was easy enough.

Hang on. Is my transceiver even on “transmit”? I was playing with it before I climbed in here. Damn. The snow is packed too tightly around me for me to open my jacket and check.

Panic creeps in. I want out of here. Where are they?

This drill was Saskia’s idea. It’s a whiteout up there. The visibility was too bad to ride the pipe, so we came up to the glacier intending to build a jump but soon realized we wouldn’t even be able to see it.

“No point having transceivers if we don’t know how to use them,” Saskia said. “Who’s up for being buried? Milla?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Why? Scared?”

The satisfied glint in her eye compelled me to open my mouth. And like an idiot, I rose to the bait. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

Daredevil Milla strikes again. Why did I have to do that?

Uneasily I think of Curtis’s warnings. But Saskia has kept her distance from me for weeks now—he must have said something to her—and it’s not as though she can get up to anything, not in front of him and all the others.

It’s freezing in here. My hands are so cold I can hardly feel them. I should have put my gloves on.

Saskia and Odette are taking forever. What’s taking them so long? Curtis is down the slope, timing them. Naturally we had to turn this into a competition—girls against boys. Saskia’s idea again. Come on, girls. Where are you?

I can’t hear anything. How much longer will the air last?