Snowed in for Christmas

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Benjamin

I SHUT THE REFRIGERATOR and turn to my laptop sitting on the kitchen island. I place a “four” in the column beside “apples” and a “one, already open” in the column beside milk. Then I sigh.

The snow hasn’t let up all day. The pass is getting worse instead of better, every hour dumping even more snow on it and shutting it down for longer. I’m trying not to run the numbers in my head, but it’s hard when even my social media timelines are full of people wondering how much of this shit is going to fall. They’re calling it a “White Christmas,” and Christmas isn’t for several more days. Which means everyone expects this snow to hang around for a while.

Exactly like I said it would.

I try to push that from my mind, but I can only ignore so much before one of the dire thoughts buzzing around my head like an insect lands in my ear. All of this was so eminently predictable, and yet here I am trapped in Stone Valley.

With Jett.

I would not say he’s taking the news well. After stealing my coffee, he drifted back upstairs like a sleep walker trudging through a nightmare. I’ve heard him on his phone a couple times, but otherwise, he’s vanished behind his closed door. I’ve never known him to be so quiet and peaceful. I suppose if there’s been any positive outcome to this, it’s been taming Jett. At least for now.

I scan my spreadsheet. I’ve cataloged the refrigerator, so I turn to the pantry next. Jett and I are going to have to survive off my groceries for at least a few days, if not the entire week. That could mean rationing them. I didn’t make my purchases with this scenario in mind, though perhaps I should have. What else could have resulted from my correct prediction about the snowstorm? And obviously Jett wasn’t going to prepare whatsoever. I should have known we’d be living off my instant noodles and chips for the next week.

I set to work, cataloging the unopened bag of Doritos and stack of instant noodles. Thank God they come in such huge packages. I didn’t intend to buy so many, but now I’m grateful the convenience store only sold them in bundles of twelve. We’ve used two, so we’ve got ten left, but that’s pretty good if we each only have one per day. Whenever the snow stops falling, Stone Valley may begin plowing. A ski town like this should be used to snowfall, so we might only need to last a couple days before we can walk into town or something. It won’t be an easy walk. Likely, we’ll be trudging through feet of snow for several miles, and I have no idea if Jett brought any true cold-weather gear. Even I’m a little underprepared in that arena, though I do have snow boots and a heavy winter jacket. Hopefully, that’s good enough to get me to a store. Eventually.

I return to my spreadsheet and note the chips and instant noodles. Then I go back to the pantry, rooting around for anything I might have missed. Jett must have brought something with him, perhaps a favorite snack he couldn’t bear to be without. Any calories count right now.

…Except maybe those calories.

My heart races when I find a reusable shopping bag nestled under the shelves in the back corner of the pantry, but it clinks when I drag it closer. Instead of food, I find several bottles of liquor: Whiskey, vodka, even a fancy bottle of tequila with a lime resting beside it.

My thousandth sigh of the day blows past my lips. Of course this is all he brought. He did say as much just yesterday. I didn’t really believe he’d try to get through this by keeping himself in a drunken stupor the whole time, though. We can’t even cook with this stuff. It’s completely worthless.

I trudge back to the kitchen island and jot it all down anyway. My supply list will be worthless if I don’t record everything, even things that won’t help us.

Before I can return to my task, the crinkle of a bag opening jerks me away from my spreadsheet. I whirl to find Jett standing in the pantry, our singular bag of Doritos open so his pilfering hand can root around inside. As I watch in horror, he shoves a handful of chips into his mouth.

“Whatcha doing, bro?” he asks around the mouthful.

“What are you doing?” I shoot back.

He glances down at the chip bag. “Uh, eating?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m hungry? You alright, man? These questions are weird, even for you.”

I stomp toward him and snatch the bag out of his hands. Orange cheese powder dusts his fingers and rings his mouth. He blinks at me in confusion before turning the look into a seething glare.

“Hey, I was eating that,” he says.

“Yes, you were, and it’s going to ruin the spreadsheet.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Spreadsheet? You have a damn spreadsheet for your groceries? No, wait, of course you do. I should have predicted this. It’s actually the least surprising news of my life.”

I bristle. “I have a spreadsheet of our supplies , which happen to all be my supplies because you arrived with nothing but a liquor store worth of booze!”

“Supplies? Bro, chill. We’re not lost in the woods. We have this whole house.”

He gestures at the home around us with his cheese-smeared fingers before popping those fingers one by one into his mouth to suck them clean.

“This house is empty,” I say. “And we are trapped in it for several days at a minimum. We have nothing to eat but what I brought, and when we run out, that’s it.”

Jett rolls his eyes. “You’re acting like it’s the end of the world. It’s just some snow. It’ll melt tomorrow and then we can get the fuck out of here. Thank God.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” I say.

Was he not listening to me this morning when I told him we’ll be here for a while? He clearly heard me. His face went ashen. This must be willful self-deception, a refusal to believe the reality staring him in the face.

I return to my laptop and slam it shut. I need to adjust for the chips, but I’ll worry about that after I get away from Jett and his incessant need to be as irresponsible as possible at all times. But I don’t manage to escape the kitchen island before he grabs me by the arm.

My eyes go first to his hand on my bicep. He’s squeezing hard, and I’ve gone tense with surprise, so there’s a lot of … flexing happening. His grip shouldn’t be that strong, but judging by the look on his face, he also didn’t expect my bicep to bulge under his touch. I catch a flutter of eyelashes before he collects himself and remembers to glare. He releases me with a jerk.

“What do you mean ‘that’s not happening?’” he asks.

It takes me a moment to remember what he’s referring to. When I do, I wave at the snow piled up at the glass doors and the flakes still fluttering from the sky to add to the heap.

“It hasn’t even stopped falling yet,” I say. “As I told you this morning, this isn’t clearing out anytime soon. That much snow takes more than a sunny afternoon to melt off.”

“But…” He flounders, seeming genuinely taken aback by this news, even as he receives it for the second time. “What are we going to do?”

I scoff. “ I have been cataloging our food supplies so we don’t starve.” I hold up the bag of Doritos like it’s a guilty verdict passed down by a judge. “A catalog you have just gone and ruined.”

“It’s one bag of chips. It can’t possibly matter that much,” he says, but his voice is weaker than before.

“Everything matters when we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck in here like this,” I snap. “What if it’s three days? Four days? The entire week?”

His face drains of blood. “It won’t be the whole week.”

“It could be!” I wave angrily at the doors again. “If this is how things look here, I assure you, the pass is far, far worse. No one is getting in or out of Stone Valley for a long time, and that includes us.”

His eyes drop to the floor. He blinks at nothing, and I can almost hear the gears in his head churning as he tries and fails to find a hole in my logic. Unfortunately, I’m every bit the “nerd” he takes me for, and when it comes to stuff like this, I’m almost always right.

I ignore him, rolling up the opened bag of Doritos and sealing it with a clip. He only got a handful or two before I stopped him, so I can leave these on the checklist of supplies. At least he didn’t pick something more important to ruin, but I’m not sure how I’m going to manage him throughout this. Jett has clearly never struggled, never gone without. He’s a stupid, spoiled playboy who’s always gotten everything he wanted. I have to wonder if he’s ever heard the word “no” before.

I skirt around him to put the chips back in the pantry, and for some reason this jolts him back to life.

“Hey, I was eating those,” he says.

“Well, I’d suggest holding off,” I say. “They are our only bag of chips, and a good source of calories, if not nutrition. We might need them.”

“No way. I’m not going to make staying here with you extra miserable by denying myself basic necessities.”

“Doritos are hardly a necessity.”

“For you.”

He reaches past me, grabbing the chips right back off the shelf. But I’ve had enough of him today. These childish antics will see us starving by the end of the week, and I need to lay down the law now if I’m going to have any hope of containing him.

I grab the bag, refusing to allow him to escape with it. He pauses in surprise, then yanks hard, but I’m not about to let go that easily. I pull back just as hard, and soon we’re waging a tug-of-war over the Doritos. The yanking turns furious, both of us pulling as hard as we can but never gaining a true advantage. He drags me a step toward him, then I pull him right back, only for him to wait until I’m off-balance and yank with all his strength. But I’m not letting go no matter what. He can see me as a flimsy nerd all he likes, but this flimsy nerd is going to beat him at this game. I pull with everything I have, throwing my weight backward toward the shelves behind me in the pantry.

And that’s when the bag rips.

Chips fly everywhere, scattering on the shelves, the floor, in our hair. We each hold half a ruined bag, but that isn’t what has us frozen in place. I did indeed manage to pull Jett toward me — so hard that he know stands with his arms braced on the shelves behind me, caging me in with his body.

For a moment, we stand there breathless, our faces too close. I know my mouth is hanging open, but so is his. My eyes must be as wide as his as we face each other with our noses all but touching. With his hands braced on either side of me, I’m trapped, nowhere to go but closer to him.

My heart is pounding way too hard. My blood is too hot in my veins. I’m sweating, the pantry suddenly claustrophobic around me.

And I think he feels the same.

From this close, I swear I spy warmth in his cheeks, but that’s such a ridiculous notion that it snaps me out of my stupor. I shove my way past him, throwing the ruined chip bag on the floor, my feet crunching over the snacks.

“Now I’ll have to remove it from the spreadsheet,” I grumble as I storm away with my laptop.

“Now I’ll have to remove it,” he mocks me, but he’s still in the pantry, and his reply is far softer than it should be.