Free Towering by Alex Flinn Page A

bored at Old Lady Greenwood’s. Because, if you are, you should get a lift ticket for Gore Mountain. It’s not too far. We go all season.”
    “I ski a little, but probably not as well as you. I’d drag you down.”
    “Doesn’t matter. You could take lessons. My older sister goes to UAlbany, and she’s a ski instructor. We’ve got extra skis. How tall are you?”
    “About six feet.”
    And then, I heard it again, not the bird or the wolf or the loon or whatever, the other thing, off in the distance.
    “There! Did you hear that?”
    She shook her head. Maybe I was going nuts. Thankfully, we had reached the house. It wasn’t a whole lot warmer than outside, but there was wood by the fireplace. “Know how to make a fire, City Boy?” Josh asked.
    I nodded. I’d been in Boy Scouts. This, too, reminded me of Tyler. He wanted to get his Eagle Scout and had pressured me to stick with it, to do it together. “Got a lighter? Or do I need to rub two sticks together?”
    Josh handed me a long, blue lighter, and I busied myself, breaking off smaller splinters to use as kindling and arranging the logs just right while, around me, people I didn’t know talked about other people I didn’t know. But I kept listening for the sound from before, which had sounded closer, so much closer, than at Mrs. Greenwood’s house, but now, all I heard was the chattering of strangers and the howling of the wind.
    But it was a voice. A girl’s voice. And somehow, I knew that whoever she was, she was beautiful and also lonely, like I was. I told myself I didn’t want to be around anyone, but that wasn’t true. I only didn’t want to be around people who knew me.
    “Need any help?” Astrid asked. She’d taken off her hood, and I could see she was pretty, auburn hair and cheeks flushed pink from the cold.
    I didn’t really need help, but it was probably better not to be a recluse. Someone had turned on music, loud stuff like Nikki used to like, gothic metal, and someone else was complaining about the music choice, trying to push their own stuff. So I couldn’t have heard an outside noise, even if it did exist.
    Which it probably didn’t.
    But Astrid was hot, so I handed her Josh’s lighter. “Can you hold this, maybe? And could you see if there are newspapers or anything.”
    “You mean like these?” She pointed to a pile underneath all the logs.
    “Oh, exactly like that. Sorry.”
    She reached for the papers. “Any particular section you like? Local? Sports? Looks like the Adirondack Phantoms were having a good season in 2011. Sorry, they’re a little old.”
    “That’s okay.” I took the paper and started rolling it up.
    “What I said before, I’d be perfectly happy to ski with you even if you completely suck at it.”
    “I wouldn’t say suck.”
    “In fact, if I can be totally honest here, there are, like, seventy-five people in my class at school, and we’ve all been together since kindergarten. It’s nice to have a new face in town. We get so few.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “So, basically.” She put her hand on her hip. “Any guy shows up with all his limbs or maybe even missing one or two, and he doesn’t actually pick his nose in public, he’s going to get a lot of attention.”
    “That’s flattering.” I laughed and stuffed the rolled-up newspaper between the logs. “How do you know I don’t pick my nose in public?” I held out my hand for the lighter.
    “Do you?” She shrugged. “You haven’t so far.”
    Instead of handing me the lighter, she leaned down across me and lit the paper herself. Her hair, brushing against my nose, smelled familiar, and I remembered last year at midnight. Even though I hadn’t told anyone, Nikki and I had kissed at midnight. Would I be kissing this girl tonight? Would something bad happen to her?
    Stupid thought. She was hot. She was coming on to me, and I was choosing to be in bed every night, reading a dead girl’s diary all alone.
    The paper caught, and the flames