Snow Struck by Nick Courage

Author:Nick Courage [Courage, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-01-25T00:00:00+00:00

December 21, 6:30 p.m.

It looked like it was two in the morning when Ashley finally pushed her way out of the overheated lobby of the Paris Theater—and after warming up on their soft velvet seats, the cold, wet blast of the storm hit her like a freight train. She zipped her jacket up beneath her neck and double-wrapped her scarf, shivering as she peered up and down Fifth Avenue. It wasn’t just the Paris that had lost its power. Every streetlamp and traffic light in sight had clicked off, and—without the reassuring glimmer of its windows lighting up the night—even the Empire State Building was just a speck of shadow on the horizon. Its steadfast antenna was lost in low-hanging clouds, shrouded in a sky that was both dark and strangely bright, and Ashley bit her lips to keep from cursing as her cousins joined her on the sidewalk.

All she wanted was to get home.

But every step of the way just felt harder and harder.

The streets were supposed to have been plowed while they were inside, for starters. That’s what her dad had promised her: that they’d wait out the snow in the theater, then catch a cab. That they’d be home “even sooner” than if they tried to walk the whole way down. And he wasn’t wrong. Ashley had to grudgingly hand it to him—the roads had been cleared…but with the blizzard still raging, they’d only filled up with snow again while Matty and Elizabeth napped through three long dance numbers and the closing credits.

Ashley was so mad she could scream.

She kicked her way to the center of the street instead, her long brown hair whipping across her face as she squinted into the storm. It was hard to see more than ten feet in front of her, but Ashley didn’t have to see very far to know that there weren’t any taxis making their way down the wastelands of Fifth Avenue. Not when the snow was halfway up to her knees—and if the subways were having trouble running on time when the blizzard was just getting started, there was no way they were going anywhere in the middle of a blackout.

Which meant they were stuck.

For the second time that day.

“C’mon!” Ashley shouted, fighting her way down the middle of the street while her dad mumbled into his phone beneath the darkened marquee. As miserable as it felt to be outside again, she was happy to finally to be moving. To be doing something. She’d felt like she was going to lose her mind sitting in the stuffy old theater and worrying about Fang, and as badly as every single muscle in her legs was burning, she wasn’t going to stop until she found her.

They’d wasted enough time already.

“Hold on!” her dad yelled.

But Ashley was already running ahead, into the darkness.

She would have slowed down if she hadn’t heard them racing to join her—the last thing she wanted was to be even more lost and alone in the storm—but knowing that they were at her heels, Ashley didn’t even bother to look back.

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