The Shuddering

pressed firmly over her hat-covered ears. “I feel like I’m dying,” Jane whined. “ Please , let’s just go to the car, okay?”
    “But Lauren wants to go up again,” Ryan protested, shooting Lauren a look. “Right?”
    Lauren gave both of them a guilty smile while Sawyer looked on, shoulder to shoulder with Jane. “Maybe a little,” Lauren confessed. “But it is cold.”
    “You guys are ridiculous,” Jane complained. “Give me the keys; I’m going to the car.”
    “Just go to the lodge,” Ryan suggested. “You and Sawyer find April, have some coffee. Chill out for half an hour while we go up one more time.”
    Jane winced at the suggestion. Spending time with Sawyer and April was awkward enough, but having coffee with them, alone —she bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from slamming her fist into Ryan’s arm for even suggesting it. She tensed when Sawyer’s gloved hand slid up her back and stopped on top of her shoulder.
    “Come on,” he said, “let them have their fun.”
    “The lift operator won’t let you up anyway,” Jane assured him.
    “He will if I give him a twenty. Besides, who could resist this face?” Ryan caught Lauren by the cheeks and squeezed, her lips puckering up like a goldfish. Lauren smiled through her contorted face, and Jane couldn’t help but crack a smile.
    “Fine, whatever,” she sighed. April would ask them if they had a good time and Sawyer would tell her how hilarious it was when they both fell flat on their backs and laughed into the sky, and April would just stare and scowl and shoot daggers through her eyes. Then Jane would shrug awkwardly and say, “Eh, it was okay,” and April would know she was lying. There was no winning with this scenario.
    Lauren faltered, noticing Jane’s unease. She caught Ryan by the wrist just as he was about to slide back to the lift. “Hey, maybe this isn’t that great an idea after all,” she began.
    “What? Why?”
    “Let’s just go home,” Lauren continued. “Pop in a movie or something.” Jane watched as Lauren gave her brother a wink, admiring the girl for knowing how to get exactly what she wanted. Ryan hesitated, his hand still in hers, and eventually caved to the proposition. If there was one thing Ryan loved more than snow, it was the provocative look on Lauren’s face.
    “Fine,” he relented as Sawyer unstrapped his board from his feet.
    “I’ll go grab April,” he announced, turning away from the group.
    As soon as his back was turned, Jane sighed, her breath steaming ahead of her, wishing he’d just forget April, wishing that Sawyer were giving her a look—the kind that suggested they go back to the cabin, cozy up, and get warm together.
    The Nissan’s heater blasted them as they snaked down the mountain, stuck behind a slow-moving minivan, its rear end covered in dozens of bumper stickers. Ryan amused himself by reading them aloud, then settled into grumbling each time the van hit its brakes ahead of the slightest curve. By the time they made it back to the highway, the sun was setting fast. The sky had grown dark around the edges, the sun casting long shadows across the road when it managed to shine through the gloom. Turning onto the road that would lead them back to the cabin, they rambled over weatherworn potholes, the Xterra catching a particularly brutal one beneath a front tire. Ryan cringed, muttering a curse beneath his breath as the car lurched. This road had always been bad, but it seemed worse this time around.
    With a good three miles to go until the final turnoff, Jane leaned forward in the passenger seat, squinting at something against the glare of the sunset. Ryan slowed the car, seeing it as well: a stain in the snow, the exact same type of blot they had seen the day before—a swath of red, as though someone had taken a giant paintbrush and made a crimson stroke across the ground.
    “What the hell,” Ryan murmured, the Nissan rolling so slowly they all but crawled past it.
    “That’s the same one from yesterday,” Lauren said from the back.
    “Can’t be,” Ryan answered. “This one is closer to the cabin, and it snowed last night. It would have been covered over. This is fresh.”
    Jane twisted in her seat to look at Lauren, noticing that April’s eyes were wide.
    “Holy shit,” April whispered to herself.
    “What?” Sawyer asked, squinting at the dark spot against snow that was turning blue in the low light. “It’s just some roadkill,