Trapped

Trapped by Michael Northrop

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Authors: Michael Northrop
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my arm around her. I’m not nearly smooth enough for that, and it probably would’ve been a disaster, so I didn’t. But just the thought of it — the thought and the opportunity, I guess — was enough to get me going.
    The big double doors were still open when we got to the cafeteria, but the heating vent just outside there had died completely. This time I didn’t jump the counter: I felt around for the latch and lifted the counter up for Krista.
    “After you,” I said.
    Yeah, it was pathetic, but there was no one around to call me on it.
    It wasn’t as bright in the kitchen now. The snow was farther up the windows and the sun was lower. We started with the coroner’s doors under the counters, but most of that stuff was canned. We wasted a good fifteen minutes looking for a canopener that wasn’t huge and attached to the countertop. When we found one, it was about the size of a worn-down pencil. I guess everything had to be extreme in here: too big or too small.
    We decided to go light on the canned stuff, because it was heavy and because it would take forever to open the ginormous cans with our little mini-opener. I also wasn’t too sure about that “syrup” everything was packed in. It was probably made from like horse bones and toxic waste.
    Then we went into the walk-in fridge before the light got too dim. We took turns going in, handing her cell phone back and forth to use the glow from the screen as a light. It probably would’ve made more sense to have one person get more familiar with it, but we took turns because it was like we were playing a game. It was sort of like Hide ‘n’ Seek, except this one would’ve been called Find d’ Jelly. We didn’t take anything that needed to be cooked, but we did find some cold cuts that seemed safe. There was no mayo that we could find, but that was probably just as well.
    Pretty soon we had all we could carry. Apparently, Krista wasn’t content just to be better looking than me. She had to be smarter too. She’d emptied out her backpack and brought it along. That hadn’t occurred to me, so I just had to grab as much stuff as I could and sort of cradle it all against my chest.
    Anyway, it was fun. At one point, Krista was carrying the two jumbo-sized cans we’d picked as keepers: one of peaches and the other of chocolate pudding. That’s what you get when you let a freshman and a sophomore do your food shopping. So,she’s leaning back and carrying them toward the counter and I go, “Man, you’ve got some big cans!”
    And she was like, “And you’ve got some mysterious meat,” because I was holding something called Potted Meat Food Product.
    We laughed, caught our breath, and then started laughing again. We left the meat product behind though. That stuff hadn’t even been refrigerated. Weird.
    A few times, when it seemed to be going really well, I thought I should try something. My mind was like: make a move, make a move, make a move! Would I ever get a better opportunity?
    “Krista?” I said.
    “Yeah?”
    We were just a few feet from each other….
    “Regular or crunchy?” I said. I couldn’t quite pull the trigger.

SEVENTEEN
    “So, Scotty, you ever heard of a storm like this before?” Krista was asking.
    “No, never. I mean, I know there are places in like Buffalo and Alaska where they get like sixty feet of snow a year. But that’s a full year.”
    “Yeah, I know, but that’s nothing like this storm. This is like ten feet in a day.”
    I was trying to figure out how many inches per hour that was, but between that and balancing all the stuff in my hands and talking, the numbers just flew out of my ears. “You ever been up there, to like Buffalo or wherever? It’s because of the lakes they get so much snow.”
    I was vaguely aware that I was speaking like a third grader.
    “I used to live there. Well, near there.”
    “Seriously?” I said. Take that, third grade.
    “Yeah, Watertown.”
    “That’s pretty far north,

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