Snowbound Read online

  “What’s wrong?” I asked Mom, closing the front door behind me.

  Mom looked up. I don’t think she’d heard the door open.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t like the sound of the weather report.”

  “What’s the report?”

  “For heavy snow.”

  “Oh, Mom. They’ve been saying that for days now. Have you seen one flake of snow? Have you even seen a drop of rain?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Besides, what’s so bad about snow?” I meant, what’s so bad about it apart from the fact that it’s freezing cold and wet? As a California girl, I am rarely warm enough in Connecticut. Oh, sure, California isn’t the tropics. It has its share of cold, damp weather. But nothing like Connecticut’s freezing winters. And I had certainly never seen snow where I lived in California. Winter in the East had been sort of a shock.

  However, my mother had grown up in Stoneybrook. “You used to drive in snow all the time, Mom,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but I didn’t like it. California was a huge relief.”

  “Well, think about Jeff instead.”

  “I have been. This is not good flying weather.”

  “He doesn’t get airsick.”

  “He gets scared, though.”

  I sighed. Every now and then I feel as if I am my mother’s mother. “In a few hours he’ll be here, your worrying will be over, and we’ll start a wonderful winter vacation,” I said. “Personally, I am excited.”

  Finally Mom smiled. “I am, too. And bored. I’m finished with the dusting.” (She had dusted, like, one end table and a couple of chair legs.)

  * * *

  Guess what. By the time we left for the airport, it was snowing. I could not believe it. The weather forecaster had finally been right. (Well, I suppose in Connecticut, if you constantly predict snow, you’re bound to be right occasionally.)

  Mom was a wreck.

  “Why don’t I ride to the airport with you?” Richard asked Mom. (Richard is Mary Anne’s father.)

  “Oh, honey, that’s okay,” said Mom. (If Mary Anne had been home, she and I would have exchanged a smile. We always do when we hear our parents call each other “honey” or “sweetheart” or something. Jeff just says, “Gross me out.”) “I’m sure we’ll be fine. I should get used to snow again. Besides, you promised Mary Anne you’d be home in case she or Mallory needs you.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Richard.

  “Positive.” Mom smiled. (Sort of.)

  So we took off. Mom had insisted on leaving way before Jeff’s plane was due in. As it turned out, that was smart. Mom backed down the driveway at a crawl, then edged onto the road. Okay, so it was snowing a little. About an inch had collected on the ground. But I didn’t see what the big deal was. Surely she could speed up to, oh, ten miles an hour.

  No way. It turned out Mom knew what she was doing. As she crept toward the stop sign at the end of our street (which took about twenty minutes) I felt her put on the brakes very gently. And the next thing I knew, our car was slipping eerily to the right, to the left, and to the right again. I looked around frantically, trying to see what we might crash into — the stop sign, a mailbox, a phone pole. Is this it? I wondered. Is this how I’m going to die? By sliding, on an inch of snow at five miles an hour, into the Bahadurians’ mailbox? (Which, by the way, is shaped like a cow.)

  Well, we did run into the cow mailbox, but since we were moving so slowly, we barely bumped it. In fact, we touched it just hard enough so that some of the snow that had landed on the cow’s head showered to the ground.

  Nevertheless, I heard Mom say a word I have never heard her use before. In fact, I’ve heard it only in movies that Mom doesn’t know I’ve seen.

  “Mom!” I gasped. I was more stunned by what she had said than by the fact that we’d had an accident while our house was still in view.

  “Sorry, honey,” she murmured. She straightened out the car, and soon we were on our way again, Mom all tight-lipped and gripping the steering wheel. Once we reached a main road, the driving wasn’t quite so horrible. As the snow fell, it was turned to slush by the wheels of the cars that ground over it. The slush wasn’t as slippery as the unplowed snow. Plus, the road wasn’t as dark. It was lit by street lamps.

  “The highway will be a piece of cake,” I said to Mom.

  Wrong. The snow was falling more thickly by the time Mom inched onto the highway. And there weren’t as many cars on the highway as there had been in downtown Stoneybrook. The few cars that did come by were edging along like Mom. This was when I turned into the backseat driver.

  “It’s getting windy,” I murmured, flakes swirling before our headlights. “Go slowly, Mom.”

  “Right.”

  “And the snow is sticking. No slush.”

  Grimly, Mom drove on.

  “We could turn around,” I said in a small voice.

  “Go back?” replied Mom. She shook her head. “Jeff would be stranded at the airport. Then he’d really feel abandoned.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  We continued in silence. Finally, I glanced at my watch. “Hey, we’re late!” I exclaimed. “At least, we’re going to be late.”

  Mom shook her head. “All we can do is keep moving. Jeff will wait for us. He’ll probably call Richard.”

  “And Richard will tell him how long ago we left the house and then Jeff will think we’ve been in an accident.”

  “Dawn, I —”

  “Mom, look out!” I screamed.

  On the other side of the highway, on the other side of the median strip, the headlights of a Mack truck wavered as its wheels skidded. Then the truck bumped off the highway, heading for the snow-covered divider — and for our car.

  I covered my eyes with my hands and prayed that my seat belt would do whatever it was supposed to do. A second later I felt our car swerve.

  Then Mom said that word again.

  I dared to open my eyes.

  Somehow, the truck was back where it belonged. It was still across the median strip. It had run into the car in front of it (and we had nearly run into a van in the right lane), but I didn’t think anyone was hurt. I could see the drivers of the truck and the car opening their doors and climbing out to examine the damage.

  “A fender bender,” said Mom through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, my lord,” I muttered. “I thought we were dead.” I started to shake and couldn’t stop, even though Mom turned up the heat.

  During the rest of the torturous drive I could do nothing but look at the cars around us and yelp for Mom to be careful. Also, I kept announcing how late we were. “Jeff’s plane landed ten minutes ago.” … “Jeff’s plane landed fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Dawn, I am doing my best,” said Mom. “Would you relax?”

  “Jeff is going to be in a panic!” I cried.

  No answer.

  Somehow, we reached the airport. Mom found a parking spot near the entrance. (The lot was mostly empty.) Then we hurried inside. Mom had phoned the airport before we left, so she knew the gate where Jeff’s plane had landed.

  I grabbed her hand. “Come on!” I said, and we raced through the airport.

  To be honest, I’m not sure whether Mom tipped Joyce so well because of the good work she’d done or because Mom was distracted by the woman who had come into the salon and announced that it was snowing. It could have been the snow since, as I mentioned, my mother is not very experienced at driving in it. At any rate, Joyce looked awfully pleased with her tip.

  Mom rushed me out of the salon before I’d even put on my coat.

  “Hurry up, sweetie,” she said.

  “Let me get my coat on.”

  “You can do that while we’re walking.”

  Walking? Ha. Mom dragged me through the mall at sixty miles an hour. We were moving so fast that I hadn’t, in fact, managed to shrug into my jacket by the time we reached the exit.

  Mom frowned as she waited for me to
zip up.

  “What?” I exclaimed, exasperated. “You want me to go out in that with no jacket?” Then I just had to cover my head so my wonderful new perm wouldn’t get wet.

  I thought Mom would have a cow.

  But I forgot about my hair, my jacket, everything, the second Mom opened the door. When she did so, a gust of snow blasted us. That is how fast the snow was moving: It actually hurt our faces.

  I thought Mom would close the door and come right back inside. But no, she set her jaw and continued toward the car. I hustled behind her, shielding my eyes from the stinging snowflakes.

  We found the car, which was a wonder. The lot was full of snow-covered lumps. How Mom could tell our snow-covered lump from all the others is beyond me, but she could. She aimed right for it. She must be equipped with special Mother Radar.

  In a flash she had unlocked the doors, and we were sitting in the car with the defroster and the windshield wipers going. The wipers were not strong enough to clear the windows, though. Mom had to get out and work on them from the outside with an ice scraper. Then she slid into the driver’s seat again.

  She turned to look at me. “Ready?” she asked.

  “I guess so.” I removed the scarf from my head and shook out my hair.

  “Phew!” exclaimed Mom as she turned the key in the ignition. “Your hair —”

  “I know. My hair smells like rotten eggs.”

  “Well … yes.”

  I giggled. “I thought moms were supposed to be supportive.”

  “Oh, we are, we are.” My mother started the car, and we pulled out of our parking place and inched through the lot to the exit.

  “You okay?” I asked Mom. She was hunched over the steering wheel, leaning forward to peer through the windshield.

  Mom nodded. “It’s hard to see, that’s all.”

  We reached the end of the ramp leading to the highway, and Mom looked over her shoulder. She looked for so long that I finally said, “Ahem.”

  “I still can’t see very well, Stace. The snow is awfully thick.”

  “Oh. I don’t mind if we go slowly.”

  Mom eased onto the highway. “Not bad!” she exclaimed a few moments later. “The highway is clearer than the other roads were. I think we’ll make it.”

  “Yes. We are survivors,” I said seriously. “Intrepid snow explorers. We should be written up for ‘Drama in Real Life,’ and our story should appear in Reader’s Digest. Don’t you think?”

  Mom smiled. “Let’s see. The title would read, um … ‘BLIZZARD!’”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “‘BLIZZARD!’ And the story would tell how these two gorgeous young women —”

  “Thank you, thank you,” interrupted Mom.

  “— who have just spent a grueling afternoon malling and getting their hair permed, climb into the family car —”

  I stopped short.

  Which is exactly what the car in front of us had done. With no warning, it just stopped. I mean, its brake lights flashed on, but only a split second before the car stopped moving. Instinctively, Mom slammed on her brakes.

  We fishtailed across the highway.

  I screamed. (I couldn’t help it.)

  “Stacey, be quiet!” said Mom, but I don’t think she was aware that she’d spoken.

  I was sure we were going to slide right into another car, or that another car was going to slide into us.

  But that didn’t happen. We came to a stop in the left lane. I rubbed away the frost on my window and tried to see why the driver of the other car had slammed on his brakes. But I couldn’t make out anything through the snow.

  “That does it,” said my mother.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are getting off the highway. We’ll take the back roads home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are too many cars on the highway. Too many crazy drivers. There are probably accidents everywhere. I don’t want us to find ourselves in the middle of a pileup.” Mom began to guide the car across the highway, back to the right lane. “We’ll get off at the next exit,” she said.

  “Are you sure you know the way from here?” I asked.

  “Yup,” replied Mom. “Stop worrying, honey. I’ll get us home safely.”

  We passed two fender benders before we reached the exit. “See?” Mom said. “We don’t want to end up in one of those situations.”

  “Boy, I’m sure glad Claudia didn’t come with us. We’d never have been back in time for her to sit at the Perkinses’ house tonight.”

  My mom almost drove by the next exit ramp. Not that it would have made much difference, since she was going so slowly. At any rate, she did turn onto it and soon we were traveling through the countryside. (At least, I think that’s what we were traveling through. I couldn’t see anything except snow.)

  “I guess the weatherman was right after all,” Mom commented.

  “What? Oh, yeah. I guess he was…. Mom, are you positive you know how to get home from here? I mean, are you absolutely positive?”

  Mom gave me a Look. “We’re not lost,” she said.

  “Well, do you know where we are?”

  “Honey, if I didn’t know where we were then I wouldn’t know where to go. Relax, okay? Don’t you have something to do?”

  “You mean, did I remember to bring along a coloring book and crayons?”

  Mom laughed. “Sorry. I’m a little nervous. Put on a tape or turn on the radio, okay?”

  “No problem.” I turned on the radio, and tuned it to this rock station I love. Two songs belted out before I said, “Don’t you want the classical station, Mom?” She was concentrating so hard on driving that she didn’t hear me.

  After several more minutes passed she said, “This snow is really thick. It’s sticking, too. There are already several inches on the road.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel glad because undoubtedly this meant … NO SCHOOL the next day! Or to feel worried because there we were, on some dark back road in the middle of nowhere, being practically buried by snow.

  “Do you think this is a blizzard?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. (I think she meant to say, “I don’t know.”)

  I stared outside, gazing at the storm. I remembered snowstorms in New York. I remembered watching the flakes whirl by my bedroom window. Sometimes the wind swept them up in a funnel.

  “It’s really coming down,” my mother would say then.

  “It’s really going up,” my father would say.

  I was thinking about city blizzards when I realized that Mom had stopped the car.

  “What’s wrong? What are you doing?” I asked. (For some reason, I was panicky immediately. My radar was picking up signals. My Kid Radar.)

  “I think I better wait until the snow has let up a bit,” Mom replied. “It’s just too thick right now. I can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me.” She had stopped by the side of the road.

  One thing I did not worry about was being hit by some unsuspecting car from behind. This was because, for one thing, we hadn’t seen a single car or truck or even a pedestrian since we had left the highway. For another thing, Mom left our headlights on so that we could be seen. She also left on the heater. We would have turned to icicles without it.

  Mom and I chatted and pretended we weren’t nervous in the least about what was happening. I kept checking my watch and saying things like, “In ten minutes we should be on our way again.”

  When a half hour had passed, Mom resolutely turned on the ignition again. “The snow isn’t any lighter,” she said. “Well, all right. I’ll just drive again. We’ll reconcile ourselves to a long trip home, that’s all.”

  Mom put her foot on the accelerator. She pressed down. She pressed harder.

  I could feel our back wheels spinning.

  Mom groaned. Then, as if she were moving in slow motion, she leaned forward until her head was resting on the steering wheel. “This isn’t happening,” she muttered.

 
My stomach turned to a block of ice. “Now what?” I asked.

  Mom gathered herself together. “I’ll try to move the car,” she replied. Which was sort of ridiculous because she wouldn’t let me work the accelerator while she pushed the car, and she also wouldn’t let me go out and push.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she said.

  Mom rocked the car a few times, then rushed around and tried to drive us out of the snowy rut our wheels had created. It was no use.

  We were stuck.

  We were stranded.

  “Liar!” cried David Michael.

  Karen was still standing at the window. “I am not a liar,” she said indignantly. “It really is snowing. Come look.”

  “Ha. I’m not falling for that,” said my brother. “That’s like telling someone his shoe is untied when he’s wearing loafers.”

  Karen paused. Then she hissed, “David Michael, XYZ. Your fly is open.”

  David Michael grew beet red. He looked down, then up. “No, it isn’t!” he exclaimed.

  “Gotcha!” cried Karen. “Now come and look at the snow. I’m not kidding about it. I bet school will be closed tomorrow.”

  I put my head in my hands. Why did Karen have to go and mention flies in front of Bart? To make things worse, Bart leaned over to me and whispered, “What does XYZ mean?”

  Karen heard him.

  “It means ‘examine your zipper’!” she called from across the room. “Get it? X-amine Your Zipper? XYZ?”

  Oh, please. Somebody put me out of my misery.

  David Michael did, although he wasn’t aware of it. He shouted, “Hey, Karen’s telling the truth! It is snowing!”