Free The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens Page A

another—that sounded like the closest thing you could get to time travel.
    I couldn’t read once it got dark though. It was hard to imagine cool mountain breezes when I was stuck with Frankie in that crappy Gremlin. I remember looking out the window and not knowing which state we were driving through, Frankie humming along with the radio the whole way, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, day after dismal day.

    That first night on the mountain with the three women, shivering together in the dark, we were not lost, but stranded, with the long night before us. You’d think we would have gone around the circle and told a little bit about ourselves. You’d think we might have taken a minute or two to discuss what just happened and what we should do next. You’d think that one of us would have cried or freaked out or laid blame. We did none of those things. At least not at first. We were quiet for a long time.
    “How’s your hand?” I asked, finally, because I could see Nola, in her red poncho, grimacing in the moonlight.
    “A little swollen is all.” With her good hand she reached into her knapsack for the yellow canteen. “We should drink.”
    Bridget reached out to take the canteen. “Here, let me do the cap.” She opened it and gulped the water, and then passed the canteen back to Nola, who drank modestly before placing it in the hands of Vonn, who took only a very small sip. Our fingers touched when Vonn passed the canteen to me. Hers were surprisingly warm.
    The feel of the yellow canteen brought back the memory of the worst night of my life—and that’s saying something—one year to the day earlier. I could not bring myself to put my lips on the spout. “I drank a lot at the fountain before,” I managed to say. It was somewhat true. I handed the canteen back.
    “This really is an adventure, isn’t it? I mean it really is,” Nola said. “I could never have imagined that today would end like this.”
    “We don’t have much water,” Bridget said. “Just the one canteen.”
    “In the morning we’ll find the bag,” I said.
    “And my binoculars.”
    “And your binoculars.”
    “I’m freezing,” Bridget said.
    “We’re all freezing,” Vonn said.
    There was a long pause. I didn’t need to see their collective expressions.
    “Maybe some people have a lower tolerance for the cold,” Bridget said.
    “The cap, Bridget,” Nola said.
    Bridget reached across and took the yellow canteen back from Nola, saying, “Let me do it, Mother.”
    Mother? Did she say Mother ?
    In the moon glow I saw what I hadn’t noticed before; the shape of their jaws, the slope of their noses. Mother and daughter. Bridget’s cosmetic alterations had thrown me off. She’d removed the dent between her brows, which would have deepened in time, like Nola’s, and her lips were plump and pouting where Nola’s were thinner but shaped prettily. It was clear that even denatured, Bridget was her mother’s daughter.
    “How did you get us so lost, Wolf?” Bridget asked plaintively, tipping the yellow canteen for another gulp of water.
    “We should ration the water, Bridget,” Vonn said.
    Bridget pounced. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me, Vonn? What happened to that? I liked it better when you were doing your silent thing.”
    Another puzzle piece. Bridget knew Vonn. They were not friends.
    “You’re so stubborn!” Bridget hissed. “I can’t believe you. Even with all this!”
    “Studied with the master,” Vonn returned.
    “Didn’t your therapist tell you to disengage , Vonn? Can we please just go back to that?”
    Nola tsked. “Let her be silent if she needs to be silent, Bridget. Let her talk if she needs to talk.”
    Sisters? I wondered.
    “Retreat into silence,” Bridget said mockingly. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Retreat into silence?”
    “One of us has to be the adult here. I have the most experience,” Vonn said.
    “You’re eighteen, Vonn,” Bridget said. “What do you