Make Snow Mistake

Jules Kendall and Buck Meltsner stay late at the high school to study for a chemistry exam, tucked away in an upstairs library room. Jules is annoyed with her sister Connie, who keeps calling and even wants her to install a tracking app on her phone. "I need that like I need a hole in my head," Jules scoffs, ignoring call after call. But when the two finally emerge, the lights are off, the halls are empty, and a blizzard is burying the town. A winter storm warning is dumping over a foot of snow, the roads are closed, and because Jules and Buck never signed in at the library, the school was evacuated without anyone knowing they were there. They are snowed in, and no one can come get them.

At first, being stranded is a blast. Jules assures Connie they are warm, dry, and fine, and she and Buck bowl with a mop bucket and wastebaskets, invent ridiculous cafeteria meals, and end up in a whipped-cream fight. Meanwhile, out in the storm, Whit and Wooton are trudging through the woods searching for Wyatt Perkins. The bus Wooton was driving broke down, and Wyatt set off alone to find help. Following clues like Wyatt's striped scarf and an empty spaghetti MRE - because of course Wyatt carries meals ready to eat - they realize he has wandered the wrong way, back toward town.

The fun at school ends during a game of hide-and-seek. A cracked-open rooftop door lures Buck outside, and when Jules pops out to gloat about her trick, the door slams shut behind them - locked. Their phones are back in the office, they have no coats, and the cold quickly turns dangerous. Just as fear sets in, they spot a figure crossing the snowy football field: Wyatt. Ever prepared, Wyatt talks them through a parkour-style escape - sliding down a slanted drainage pipe to a lower roof, then leaping to a covered dumpster. Buck makes the slide and the long jump safely. Jules slides down too, but the jump is farther than it looks, and Buck begs her to stay put until help comes. Insisting that she is an athlete and can do anything Buck can, Jules jumps anyway. She falls short, striking her head on the corner of the dumpster, and lies unconscious and bleeding in the snow. "This is all my fault," Buck says miserably. The boys press gauze to the wound, cover Jules with a coat, and Wyatt pulls out yet another surprise from his backpack: an air horn, which they blast in Morse code - SOS.

Nearby, Connie - who borrowed Wooton's snowmobile to reach the school - has run into Whit and Wooton and joined the search for Wyatt. When they hear the distress signal coming from the high school, they race over, arriving just as the boys are rigging a sheet-metal sled to drag Jules through the snow. Together they rush her to the hospital.

There the news grows grim. Nurse Kelly reports swelling in Jules's brain; she needs an emergency burr hole procedure to relieve the pressure, but the neurosurgeon cannot get through the storm, and a helicopter may not be able to fly. While Connie fights back tears, Whit reminds her that Jules is in God's hands, and he prays for a way to be made. Later, over vending-machine snacks, the friends marvel at how everything lined up: the snowmobile left at Connie's the day before, the rope Penny kept under its seat, the air horn in Wyatt's backpack, the signal heard at just the right moment. "I don't believe in coincidences," Whit says - and he doesn't believe the amazing things are finished, either. Sure enough, Nurse Kelly returns with word that Dr. Calhoun has somehow made it in after all and has hurried - or as she puts it, "rolled" - straight into surgery, leaving Wooton puzzling over what that could mean.

The surgery succeeds. When Jules wakes with Connie at her side, she learns the doctor drilled three holes in her head to save her life, and that it was touch and go for a while. Humbled and grateful, Jules thanks the sister she once brushed off: "Apparently, I do need you. Like, I need a hole in the head." Connie smiles - her little sister is clearly back to her old self.