I look at her and I can’t help but laugh.

“Oh, you asshole,” she says, but she’s smiling too.

I nearly double over. It’s just too much. She makes a face and stomps off, but I follow her. “Hold on, okay, wait,” I say, still laughing. “It’s not that bad.”

“I look like a freaking ‘80s workout video,” I say. “I mean, come on. Seriously? Leg warmers?”

I gasp for air, doubled over again. She takes off one of the leg warmers and throws it at me. I let it hit me in the chest, just making me laugh even more.

She groans and throws the other leg warmer at me. I fall over onto my side, cracking up, tears in my eyes. She comes over, laughing, and pushes at me, falling on top of me.

“You’re an asshole,” she says as I finally control myself.

“I know. But you look hilarious.”

“Dick.” She knees me in the gut, not too hard, and stands up.

I sit up and grin at her. “Come on, I’ll stop. I promise.”

She crosses her arms. “Promise. Right now. No more comments.”

“Fine. I promise.” I grin at her, and push back more laughter.

She sighs, shaking her head, and gathers up her leg warmers.

I follow her back into the living room. I have the ski equipment out in the garage already. She’s wearing a bunch of old clothing from the ‘80s, stuff I didn’t even realize I still had, shoved up in a box in my attic. I think it might be some of my mom’s stuff, clothes I never got around to throwing out and just kept lugging around with me over the years. Either way, it’s brightly colored, made of that awful swishy material, and the most ‘80s stuff in the world. But at least it’ll be warm and it fits her.

“Come on,” I say, still smiling to myself. I get my boots on before she follows me out into the garage. Jones barks and wants to come out, but I don’t let him. “We’ll be back, Jonesy,” I say. “You can’t be outside for that long, it’s too cold.”

He barks again and I just shut the door. Poor guy, but he’ll just sleep all day.

“Okay,” I say, grabbing a set of skis and slinging a backpack on. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she confirms, grabbing my old skis from when I was younger. We trudge out into the snow and around to the side of the house where I have a snowmobile parked.

She climbs on the back behind me as I get on and turn on the engine. It starts effortlessly. I keep my snowmobiles in good shape, since they’re the only way to get around when the snow gets to a certain depth like it is right now.

We ride out around the side of the house and start to head uphill. There are some decent slopes around here, although some of them have trees. I know a good spot where it’s not too steep where we can glide down and trudge back up a few times, just for something to do.

It’s a five-minute ride up around the back of the house. We make pretty good time, since the snow is nice and fresh and the snowmobile gets through it easily. She clings tightly onto me as we fly through the trees, maybe afraid of how close they’re getting, but I’ve done this a thousand times. I weave my way up along the hill.

Finally, we make it to the end of the slope we’ll go down. I park the snowmobile off to one side and climb off.

Mia follows me. “This looks pretty good,” she says.

“Not too big,” I agree. “We can go further down if you want.”

She nods. It’s clearest up ahead, but if we go back the way we came, the trees encroach closer to the empty path.

We trudge up the slope together. It’s slow going but eventually we make it to a good spot. I toss down my skis and she does the same, stepping into them and latching down.

“Ready?” I ask her.

She nods. “Is it too late to tell you that I haven’t been skiing since I was a kid?”

“Yep!” I say, and hop forward. I start down the slope, flying in the breeze.

I love skiing. It’s part of why I came up here. There are some even better slopes up further north, but I figured we’d stick to something easy. This one’s maybe a quarter-mile long, which is pretty decent. Mia catches up with me as I start to make my turns, cutting side by side, but she blurs past.

“Loser!” she calls out, flying forward. I laugh and realize that she’s better at this than I thought.

I catch up with her and we come up to the snowmobile. We both stop this time, breathing and laughing.

“Again!” she says. “I thought this was going to be lame, but that’s actually pretty good. I just wish there were a lift.”

“I know. Haven’t gotten around to installing one yet.”

She grins as we take off our skis and head up the slope.

We make the trip down a few times over the afternoon. It takes us a while to get up to the top, and the last time we make the climb, she’s a little winded.

“Last run?” I ask her.

She nods, looking thankful. “I’m not really in mountain-climbing shape anymore.”

“I hear you,” I say. “Not everyone can keep up with me.”

“You think you’re so fast?” she asks.

“Definitely am.”

“Okay then. Keep up with this.”

She hops forward and starts flying down the slope. I hop and go after her, leaning forward, loving the feeling of hurtling through space, the wind whipping against me.

As we get closer to the snowmobile, she doesn’t slow down. I grin to myself as she plummets into the more dangerous part of the slope, keeping well in the middle of the trail, but making cuts to slow her speed.

I plunge past her, laughing and hollering as I go. She’s clearly too worried as I whiz in around the trees, cutting past them, kicking up fresh powder.

Mia yells something, but I can’t hear her. I can’t hear anything but the thrill of the moment as I push ahead, heart beating fast.

Suddenly, there’s a crack, and I look ahead to my right. I cut hard then, pushing against the snow, knees bent and straining, as a huge tree branch cracks off a tree and drops down inches in front of me.

The top of the branch catches my skis and I go over. I hit the snow and slide before tumbling once or twice. I skid to a stop, maybe ten feet away.

I stare up at the sky, blinking, as Mia stops next to me. “Holy shit, Ethan, are you okay?”

I turn my head and nod. I don’t feel hurt at all. “The snow broke my fall,” I say, grinning.

She’s not smiling. “You could have died,” she says. “That branch was huge. It nearly hit you.”

“But it didn’t.” I get to my feet slowly, unlatching the one ski that I didn’t lose. The other one’s about six feet away in the snow. I trudge over to it and grab it.

Mia takes off her skis and follows me. We head over to the broken branch and stare at it.

She’s right, the thing’s huge. If I hadn’t turned at the last second, it would’ve fallen right on me, or at least I would’ve ran right into it. I could easily have died, or broken some bones.

“How’d this even fall?” I ask softly.

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. She walks around to the end and looks down at it. “Check this out.”

I follow and look down at the edge of the branch. She points and it takes me a second to realize that it looks smooth until the bottom, like someone sawed it mostly off before pushing it down.

I stare at the branch then at Mia. She stares back at me, eyes wide.

I grin at her. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s get back.”

“Wait, hold on,” she says. “That branch was clearly—”

“No,” I say, holding up a hand. “Don’t say it. That’s just too insane.”

“But you can see it.”

“I see a broken branch in the middle of nowhere. Covered in lots of snow. Maybe an animal gnawed at it, and the weight of the snow did the rest.”

“So you’re saying that’s just bad timing?” she asks.

I shrug. “Bad timing, and wind, and whatever else. Definitely not what you were going to say.”

She bites her lip. “Are you sure, I mean, it looks like someone—”

“Mia, please don’t say it.”

“—cut it,” she finishes, and I sigh.

“Nobody cut it.”

She watches me quietly for a second, and I want to throw up. I know she might be right. In fact, I’m almost positive that she’s right. There have been some strange things happening ever since Mia came to stay with me, nearly six days ago now, and I’ve been trying not to look too deeply into it.

But this is hard to ignore. That branch is clearly cut. I just can’t admit it to myself.

They’re finally coming for me, and Mia’s caught in the middle.

“Come on,” I say, suddenly cold. “Let’s get back.”

She nods and doesn’t argue any more. I trudge up, back toward the snowmobile, and she stays close. When we get there, I half expect to find it smashed and broken, but it starts up with no problem and we head back to the house.