The Poconos are bigger than I expected.

  I mean, I knew they'd be big. Mountains. Obviously. But knowing something and seeing it are different, and standing at the base of Camelback with a rented snowboard under my arm and my breath fogging in the January air, I feel small in a way that doesn't suck. Usually feeling small sucks. Usually it means someone's talking down to me, or I'm stuck in a classroom that's too quiet, or I'm waiting for something to happen and nothing's happening and I want to crawl out of my skin.

  This is different. This is the good kind of small. The kind where you're looking at something so much bigger than you that your brain just goes oh and shuts up for a second.

  "Jasmine! Keep up!"

  That's Mr. Hendricks, the trip coordinator. Eighth grade class trip, three days in the mountains, subsidized by some grant the school got. Half my class couldn't afford to go even with the subsidy, but Mami picked up extra shifts at the hospital for two months and Papi sold his old car instead of fixing it up, and here I am. Camelback Mountain. The real deal.

  I jog to catch up with the group, snow crunching under my boots. The rental gear is janky - the boots don't fit right, the board has scratches on it from a hundred other kids, and my jacket is technically Papi's, which means it's way too big and smells like motor oil. I don't care. I literally do not care even a little bit.

  I'm going to go fast down a mountain. Everything else is details.

  "Alright, everyone!" Mr. Hendricks claps his gloved hands together. "Beginners on the bunny slope with Ms. Patterson. Anyone who's been boarding before, you're with me on the intermediate runs. No showing off, no going off-trail, and for the love of God, no one try the black diamonds. I'm looking at you, Marcus."

  Marcus, who has been talking about his family's Aspen trips all week, puts on an exaggerated innocent face. Whatever. I tune him out. I've been boarding exactly once - a church trip to some sad little hill in Jersey when I was twelve - but I'm not going to the bunny slope. No way. Not when the real mountain is right there.

  I stick with the intermediate group.

  The chairlift is its own adventure. I've never been on one, and getting on without eating shit is harder than it looks, but I manage. And then I'm rising, the ground dropping away, the trees getting smaller, and the mountain is spreading out beneath me like--

  Like nothing. I don't have a comparison. I've never seen anything like this.

  Camden doesn't have views. Camden has rowhouses and the waterfront and the skyline of Philly across the river, which is pretty at night I guess, but it's not this. It's not white and green and blue stretching out forever, cold air so clean it hurts, the whole world laid out like something from a movie.

  My brain, for once, is quiet.

  The thing about my brain is that it's never quiet. Ask anyone. Ask my teachers, who write "Jasmine is bright but needs to focus" on every report card. Ask Mami, who's taken me to three different doctors trying to figure out why I can't sit still. Ask Papi, who says I got his engine but somebody forgot to install the brakes.

  But right now, on this chairlift, wind in my face and a mountain waiting for me, my brain is just... here. Present. Not racing ahead to what comes next, not replaying something stupid I said yesterday, not itching for something to happen. Just here.

  I want to feel like this forever.

  The first run is good. The second run is better. By the third run, I've figured out the edges, figured out my balance, figured out how to carve instead of just pointing downhill and hoping.

  I'm not the best on the slope - Marcus actually can back up his bragging, which is annoying - but I'm not the worst either. I'm in that sweet spot where I'm good enough to go fast but not so good that I'm bored.

  I don't get bored.

  Lunch is hot chocolate and cafeteria pizza in the lodge, everyone comparing bruises and wipeouts. I inhale my food and then I'm restless, leg bouncing under the table, eyes drifting to the windows where I can see the lifts still running.

  "You're not going back out already." That's DeShawn, who's been my best friend since third grade, mostly because he's the only person who can keep up with me. "We just sat down."

  "I'm not hungry anymore."

  "You ate in like thirty seconds. That's not eating, that's inhaling."

  "Same result." I'm already standing, grabbing my gloves. "Come on, one more run before we have to go back to the bunny slope babysitting."

  "I'm eating my pizza like a normal human being," DeShawn says. "Go without me. Don't die."

  "I'm not going to die."

  "You say that a lot for someone who definitely might die."

  I flip him off affectionately and head for the door.

  The afternoon runs are emptier. Most of my class is taking a break, and the other schools sharing the mountain have thinned out too - lunch hour, everyone warming up. The lift lines are short. The slopes are open.

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  I take run after run, each one a little faster, a little sharper. My legs are burning. My face is numb. My brain is perfect, just pure focus, just the mountain and my board and the physics of staying upright while gravity tries to kill me.

  This is it. This is what I've been looking for my whole life without knowing it. Something big enough to match what's inside me.

  I'm at the top of the intermediate slope for the dozenth time, catching my breath, when I hear it.

  Not a sound, exactly. More like a feeling. A shift in the air pressure, or maybe the way the snow settles, or maybe nothing at all, maybe I'm imagining it--

  The mountain cracks. First, a loud noise, like a firework going off. That's not what I expected to hear. Then, the second crack.

  Not a gunshot sound. Bigger. Deeper. Like the earth itself is splitting open somewhere far above me. I look up and I see it—a line spreading across the white face of the upper slope, too high for anyone to be skiing on, and below that line the snow is moving.

  Not falling. Moving. Like a wave. Like the whole top of the mountain decided to become liquid and roll downhill.

  Toward me.

  I have maybe four seconds.

  My body moves before my brain catches up - not down the slope, I'll never outrun it, but sideways, toward the trees at the edge of the run. If I can get behind something solid, if I can find cover, if I can--

  The snow hits me like a truck made of static. White everywhere, in my mouth, my eyes, my lungs. I'm tumbling, no up or down, no way to know which direction I'm moving. My board catches on something and my ankle screams and then I'm underwater except it's not water it's snow, cold and heavy and everywhere, pressing in from all sides.

  I stop moving.

  I don't know which way is up.

  I'm buried.

  The silence is total. Not peaceful - crushing. Like being wrapped in concrete. I can feel the weight of the snow above me, pressing down on my chest, my arms, my legs. I try to move and nothing moves. I try to breathe and there's no room for my lungs to expand.

  I'm going to die here.

  That thought is very calm, very clear. I'm thirteen years old and I'm going to die under a mountain in Pennsylvania because I didn't stay with the group, because I couldn't sit still, because I had to have one more run.

  Mami is going to be so mad.

  Papi is going to be so sad.

  DeShawn is going to feel guilty forever and it won't be his fault but he'll carry it anyway because that's who he is.

  I can't breathe.

  My chest burns. My lungs are screaming. I try to move my arms, to dig, to do anything, but the snow has me pinned and I'm so cold, I'm so cold, I've never been this cold in my life. It feels like... It feels like being crushed. Entombed. I don't know what's going to kill - kill! - me first: the cold, or the weight.

  I feel my nose burst open. There's no light to see by, so I can only guess that a vein somewhere popped. Then, another feeling. Something sort of like crinkling paper. It starts in my chest and spreads outward, flooding through my veins, into my arms and legs and fingers and toes. I want to sob, but I don't have the space to crunch my face up. The snow fills every gap.

  I feel my skin flush. Feel my heartbeat accelerate. I must be dying. I feel so bad. The worst part is worrying about what everyone else is going to think. The news articles. The funeral. Oh, God, the funeral. I start crying. I start huffing air. My face feels hot. Something in my chest is burning and I don't know if it's pain or hypothermia or what. The only thing I can hear in here is me.

  The snow around my face starts to melt.

  I take a breath - hot air, wet air, but air - and I feel the weight above me lighten as the snow closest to my body turns to slush. I can move my arms now. I push, and the snow gives, and I push harder, and--

  I burst out of the snowpack like a swimmer breaking the surface.

  Steam. I'm surrounded by steam. It's rising off my body in visible waves, and the snow beneath me is melting into a puddle, spreading outward in a circle of slush and bare earth. My entire body feels bright red. I can't see anything under my snow equipment, so I rip a glove off.

  My skin is red like a tomato. The air is shimmering around me. I put my gloves back on and take a deep breath.

  I should be scared. I should be confused. I should be doing anything other than what I actually do, which is:

  Look around for other people.

  Because if the avalanche caught me, it caught other people too. I wasn't the only one on that slope. And I'm fine - somehow, impossibly, I'm fine - but they might not be.

  I hear someone screaming. Muffled. Far away. But I hear it. There's an engine in my heart. I grab nothing - I reach forward with my hand - and shift down like one of Papi's old Mustangs. Immediate relief. Snowflakes swirl around me, and I can tell instantly that something is wrong because they're avoiding me. By the time I look down and notice that all the snow around my feet has melted down to bare earth, I mark that down as the least weird thing going on.

  I start running.

  The first one is easy. A guy, maybe sixteen, buried shallow enough that I can see his hand sticking out of the snow. I grab it and pull and he comes loose with a gasp, eyes wide, snow in his hair. He stares at me - at the steam rising off my body, at the flushed heat of my skin - and his mouth opens but nothing comes out.

  "You're okay," I tell him. "Stay here. I have to find the others."

  I don't wait for an answer. I'm already moving.

  The second one is harder. A girl, younger than me, buried deep. I can't see her - I can't see anything - but I can hear her crying, muffled through the snow, and I drop to my knees and start digging.

  Except I'm not digging. I'm melting. My hands sink into the snow and it turns to slush around them, water running down my wrists, steam billowing up. I carve a path down, following the sound of her voice, and when I find her she's pale and shaking and her lips are blue but she's breathing, she's breathing, I got her.

  I pull her out. She clings to me and doesn't let go.

  "It's okay," I tell her, even though I don't know if that's true. "Help is coming. Stay with the other guy, okay? Stay warm."

  She nods, teeth chattering. I give her thirty seconds of superheated hug as I bounce off the ground, jumping like a big cat, hurling myself up and then down and then up and then down. She looks like she's about to pee her pants. But I get her with the other guy, and then yank my snow clothes off to wrap around the two of them. "Take care of her," I sort of bark like a dog.

  "You're gonna freeze to death, man!" The guy protests.

  "No I won't," I snap back.

  Then, I'm gone.

  The third one isn't making any sound.

  I almost miss him. I'm scanning the debris field, looking for movement, listening for screams, and I almost walk right past the spot where the snow is slightly disturbed, slightly wrong. Something makes me stop. Something makes me look closer.

  I start digging.

  He's deep. Really deep. By the time I reach him my arms are shaking and the heat is starting to flicker, like a flame running out of fuel. He's unconscious - or worse, maybe, I can't tell - and I have to melt the snow away from his face, have to clear his airway, have to--

  He coughs.

  Water sprays out of his mouth, and he coughs again, and his eyes flutter open, and he's alive. He's alive.

  I drag him to the surface. He's too heavy for me to carry, but I manage somehow - the heat giving me strength, or adrenaline, or just sheer stubbornness. I get him up the slope to where the others are huddled together, the three of them staring at me like I'm a ghost.

  "Help is coming," I say again.

  I'm so tired.

  The heat is fading. I can feel it guttering out, like a candle at the end of its wick. My legs wobble. My vision blurs.

  Someone's calling my name. Mr. Hendricks, maybe. Search and rescue. I don't know.

  I sit down in the snow.

  I close my eyes.