Chapter 3

3

“I’m calling the police. I’m calling 911.”

Mom dragged herself up from the floor, her trembling hands fumbling to pull her soaked phone from her coat pocket.

Her fingers shook so violently from cold and terror that she failed to enter her passcode several times.

“Don’t you dare!”

Father lunged across the room in two strides, ripped the phone out of her grip, and hurled it violently against the brick wall.

The phone shattered into pieces, the cracked battery tumbling across the baseboard.

Father pointed right in her face, his eyes bulging with rage.

“Call 911 for what?! A father disciplining his own son is none of the law’s business! This is a private family matter!”

“You just want to ruin my reputation in front of my family, don’t you? You want to see me in handcuffs? How vile can you be?!”

Mom sobbed hysterically as she scrambled toward the corner, trying to piece together the shattered plastic and glass, but the device was completely dead.

“You’re the monster! That’s your own flesh and blood!”

Uncle Hank set his beer down, his face tightening with concern.

“Garrison, maybe we really should make a call or check in? Three hours without moving in this blizzard is a little...”

Father glared sharply at his older brother.

“Hank, don’t tell me you’re getting soft like a woman too?”

“The boy is just lazy! He’s waiting for me to break first! If I soften up now, all the suffering he endured today will go to waste!”

“It’s a psychological battle! Don’t you get it?”

Right at that moment, a crisp notification chime rang out from Father’s phone on the table.

It was the distinctive alert sound for a GPS position update.

Every eye in the room locked onto the screen.

Father picked it up, and a triumphant grin stretched across his face, wrinkling his cheeks.

“It moved! Hahaha! It moved!”

He raised the phone high above his head like a trophy.

“Do you see that?! Look! It moved over a hundred yards uphill!”

“I told you he was faking it! I told you he was playing mind games with me!”

Mom lifted her tear-stained face, a faint spark of desperate hope igniting in her deadened eyes.

“It moved? Did it really move?”

She crawled over on her knees, desperate to see the screen.

This time, Father didn’t push her away; instead, he proudly held it down so she could look.

“Look closely! It’s still moving! And pretty fast, too!”

Father traced the slowly creeping red dot with his thumb.

“The boy realized I wasn’t taking his bait. He got scared I’d cut off his funds, so he finally got off his ass.”

“Some people just need a boot to the ribs to get moving!”

Mom stared at the shifting red beacon, fresh tears spilling over her cheeks, but this time they were tears of pure relief.

“Thank God... thank God he’s moving...”

She slumped onto the floor, clasping her trembling hands together in prayer.

“Thank you, Lord... thank you...”

The relatives in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.

Aunt Clara smiled, trying to smooth things over.

“See? I knew Ethan was a good boy. Even if his constitution is a bit delicate, he still listens to his father.”

“Nora, you really overreacted. Garrison is his biological dad, after all. He’d never put his own son in real danger.”

Uncle Hank raised his glass again.

“Alright, alright, just a false alarm. Come on everyone, let’s get back to drinking!”

The tense atmosphere in the dining room vanished instantly, as if the violent screaming match had just been a minor misunderstanding.

Only I, hovering in the cold air, looked at that moving red dot with absolute horror.

That wasn’t me climbing.

That was a mountain wolf.

Before I took my last breath, I had heard the low, guttural howls echoing close behind the boulders.

My lifeless body was currently being dragged across the snowpack by a starving predator, leaving a wide, jagged streak of dark red blood in its wake.

The beast had clamped its jaws around my frozen leg, dragging me toward its rocky den to serve as a midnight meal.

Every single pulse of that moving GPS dot represented another piece of my flesh being torn apart.

Father looked down at Mom with smug condescension.

“See what almost happened?”

“You nearly ruined everything! If you had actually called the cops, and they hiked up there only to find him hiking strong, where would my dignity be?”

“We’d probably get hit with a fine for wasting emergency resources!”

He leaned down and repeatedly poked Mom’s forehead with his index finger.

“You hysterical jinx!”

“You almost destroyed the most important transformation of his life! He would have hated you forever!”

Mom didn’t fight back; she simply stared blankly at the screen, muttering softly to herself.

“As long as he’s alive... as long as he’s breathing, he can hate me all he wants.”

Father stood up, dusting off his jeans.

“Alright, stop playing the tragic victim.”

“Since you’re already here, pull up a chair and eat!”

“Watch with your own eyes how your son conquers that mountain! See for yourself how strong he can become without your coddling!”

He dragged Mom up by her arm and forced her into an empty chair.

Mom sat curled up in the corner, shaking, her eyes glued to the phone screen without blinking.

The red dot jumped one more time, and then went completely still again.

The wolf had likely reached its den and stopped to feed.

Father didn’t think twice about it, pressing the voice memo button again.

“Since you found your footing, keep moving! Don’t slack off like a little girl! That pace earlier was decent, keep it up!”

“If you make it to the summit lodge before midnight, I’ll transfer you a hundred-dollar bonus!”

To him, that hundred dollars was a generous reward; to me, it was blood money paid too late.

Too bad I would never be able to collect it.

I looked at Father’s flushed, alcohol-soaked face, watching him spew hot, foul breath across the table.

“Come on, everyone raise your glasses! A toast to Ethan’s successful training! A toast to our family raising a real, unbreakable man!”

“Cheers!”

The sharp clinking of crystal glasses echoed merrily through the warm room.

I looked at my mother, huddled small in the large dining chair.

Her plate was completely empty, her swollen, bloodshot eyes locked onto the glowing dot that she believed represented my beating heart.

She was praying for it to move again.

While I prayed that the wolf would finish eating quickly.

At least that way, my so-called father would never get the chance to preach over my battered corpse again.