Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for teens .txt) 📗

the window using the broom. In our stash of salvage, she had found an orange and brown woven wool hat with matching mittens. The hat didn’t flatter her, but still somehow made her cute. It was like her natural beauty could make anything sparkle.

Finally, I stopped the Marilyn. It was a little after noon, but we couldn’t see the sun; we couldn’t see anything. And it was at least another hundred kilometers over the pass.

“You can’t see, can you?” Wren finally asked.

“No, not a bit.”

“What’s up, Cavvy?” Sharlotte asked through the communication tube.

“Can’t see to drive, Shar.”

Silence. We couldn’t stop. And if we were going to turn around, now was the time.

I closed my eyes. Oh, I wished for Micaiah and Pilate. Pilate could tell me stories about when he went through the mountains, about our chances, how far it might be. Pilate had been all over the Juniper.

And what would Micaiah say?

He’d say Nikola’s tech was sound. He’d say we had two problems, the depth of the snow and poor visibility. Both kept us going too slow. Both would kill us. Either we’d run out of wood to burn or we’d topple off the road and fall to our deaths. If an avalanche didn’t take us out first. We had to get over the pass and quick before that happened.

Answers came to me for both problems. I’d implement one first, then the other later on. I opened my eyes. “I’ll go out. I’ll scout on the skis. Wren, you’ll drive the Marilyn. I’ll wear your dumb hat so you’ll be able to see me.”

Wren scowled. “It’s not a dumb hat. I like it.”

Which made me roll my eyes. “And I thought you had fashion sense.”

Of course, Wren fired back. I figured she wasn’t so much afraid of dying as she was of having her vanity called into question. “I have more fashion sense than you, Ms. New Morality, and I think it’s kind of silly and cute. That damn pink coat is going to help me see you, not my hat.”

“Girls!” Sharlotte shouted down. “Now is not the time. Cavvy, get out on the skis. Wren, go slow and keep us on the road. The worst might be behind us. Let’s keep on keeping on.”

I got out and figured out the binding on the skis. Very simple mechanisms, and I’d skied before. Thank you, Anju!

I had gloves, I had a scarf, the dumb orange hat, and even ski goggles. One lens was kind of melted, but I could still see. And I had the pink down coat. Like I’d thought, my left wrist grew chilly where the cuff had melted. I’d take care of that with a sock we’d squirreled away in the storage.

The Audrey moved up next to the Marilyn. Marisol rolled down the window and asked, “Cavvy, are you okay?”

“Yeah, thanks to your friend Eryn Lopez. Her gear really saved us.”

I expected Marisol to tear up. Instead, I saw confusion on her on face. Maybe the trauma had jumbled up her memory.

“You know, Eryn Lopez,” I said. “She was your neighbor I’m guessing.”

“Oh yes, yes, Eryn,” Marisol said, and she rolled up the window and leaned against Dutch.

Poor thing.

Still, that look of confusion on her face, like it was a brand-new name to her. That blank look. It chewed on me a little ’cause it seemed familiar.

Now was not the time to ruminate on whether or not Marisol had known Eryn Lopez, who was now surely dead. I had to get us going. And while, yes, I’d been on skis before, it had been a bit ago, and I hadn’t done it all that much.

I poled off and slid across the snow and fell but managed to lever myself up thanks to the poles. I fell a few more times, but it wasn’t long before I found myself in a rhythm. Pole, left heel up, right foot down, pole, then switch. Slowly, I moved across the snow.

My feet were doing better, or so I tried to convince myself.

Up drifts, down into shallower snow keeping tight to the mountain, following the road. Having a background in engineering helped ’cause I would anticipate the slopes based on the contours of the mountain range.

Wren followed me in the Marilyn. We progressed much faster with me scouting out the quickest path out front. Nearer to the ground, I could maneuver us around the larger drifts, which really helped.

A couple of hours later, I was wrung-out exhausted, thirsty, and hungrier than I had ever been in my life.

I started up a slope of snow, steep and deep, and I collapsed over my poles. It would take the Marilyn forty-five minutes to pound through the snow, easy. We were losing the day, creeping along.

It was time to implement the other part of our plan. I skied back as Wren put the Marilyn’s big foot right into the snow. The Marilyn’s mesh feet weren’t keeping her from sinking. She needed snowshoes.

I waved my poles, signaling Wren. She eased the Marilyn back.

“Hold on a minute!” I yelled over the wind. “I’m going to make snowshoes for the Stanleys.”

Stopping even for a minute, the icy breeze shivered me to my bones even with the tights, skirt, and wool sweater. Oh, how I missed my high-tech clothing I’d had on the cattle drive to Wendover.

Wren opened the driver’s side door and swung out. “Snowshoes? Really?”

I unclipped out of my skis and walked around to the Marilyn’s backside. I undid the packing straps and let all the shovels, picks, and iron digging bars drop, clattering down into the snow. From out of the supply cabinet, I got out an extra wool sock. Cutting off the toes, I forced it around my chilly wrist where the coat’s sleeve had burned off. Then I retrieved the all-weather duct tape and commenced to do more Juniper engineering.

Wren and Rachel helped me as the snow continued to blow. Using a lattice work of long-handled implements, duct tape, and the packing straps, I