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“Yeah, well so did you”
“You knew I needed to get to Timmins!”
“You tried to act like you’d just let Jonny decide as best, but the whole ti what you wanted, weren’t you? Because you knew he’d side with me, with family”
Hannah felt hot sha to do just that “My mom needs help! And he’s not your real family”
“He is family,” snapped Peter “Just because he’s not blood-related doesn’t mean he’s not faet sooddamn family He would have takento screw et what you wanted You lied to me”
Peter’s face athed in frost as he shouted, little pieces of it sticking to his scraggly facial hair and fogging his glasses Off to their right, chickadees chirped in the bush, flitting around an empty bird feeder
“Yeah?” she shouted back “Well, I don’t need you, and I didn’t need this stupidineffectually at the handlebar of the snowet there onback because you’ll probably get lost since you’re too stupid to even knohere you are!”
“I’ me free stuff like I’m some charity Screw you, Hannah My ht You wouldn’t know hard times if they slapped you in the face” He threw the tarp haphazardly over the snowmobile and put his snowshoes back on
She stood back, her fists clenched and heroff my mom just because you don’t have one!”
He’d finished putting his snowshoes on, and he stood up and looked at her His eyes were dark and his lips white, his face twisted “You’re just a snotty little city girl Go to hell,” he said, starting back toward the sled, lifting his snowshoes high to cl
ear the snow
She stared after him, so numb with shock and disappointment — they had worked so hard, and it had seeht best Wasn’t she the leader? — that she could only watch as each of his snowshoes lifted, dripping snow, canted, then hit the snow again as he drove it angrily through the snowpack
Eight, nine, ten steps, and then his right foot came up, dripped, canted, caed in thehard and solid, and Peter yelled, then leaned sideways, losing his balance He fell on his side in the snow and grabbed his right leg with both hands
Hannah fumbled with her snowshoes and stulove off and was rocking back and forth, holding his leg Beside hi spiky handle of an old hand plow stuck out of the snow, the shearing pin sticking up at an angle His snowshoe dangled froed rip in the side of his pants, froone right through the sinew and lashing of the snowshoe, and the shearing pin had acted as a knife along one side of it and up Peter’s leg The sh they had cleaned the shoes as best they could, the spilled fuel had eaten through the webbing of his snowshoes The resistant force of the plow coupled with his angry sto His snowshoes were useless now
“You idiot,” she said