A Year of Winter

fourteen

January 2nd, 2013 

“You’re losing your touch, Henry.”

I quickly toggled between the A and B button, trying my best to shoot down Andrew’s character; however, it’d been a while since I’d visited his house and sat down to play a game of Bloodthirsty with him, and my skillset had inevitably grown a bit rusty.

“Am not,” I mumbled underneath my breath, quickly diving to avoid one of Andrew’s character’s attacks. I ran across the screen, diving behind table, where I bought enough time to reload my ammo. Though, before my character could even sling the gun back, blood splattered the screen, big, red letters spelling out the words: GAME OVER.

“What the hell, Andrew?!” I snapped, throwing my controller onto the floor, falling back on his bed, “How’d you kill me, you were all the way on the other side of the field!”

He smirked superiorly, standing over me victoriously, “I got the vampire add-on, of course. I sank my badass teeth into your back and you didn’t even notice. You’re so naïve, Carson, I mean really.”

“Since when is there a vampire add-on?” I inquired, confused and annoyed beyond belief. “It’s a fucking shooter game—!”

Andrew rolled his eyes, tossing the control aside, “Since you went M.I.A. I’m not sure if you even noticed, but I got a haircut—”

“—I’m not that interested in the state of your split ends, Andrew, but thanks,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes as I stared up at the ceiling from the mattress.

Andrew frowned, regarding me with a certain annoyance that I’d just felt moments ago. He sat down beside me, the mattress sinking in where his body weight had shifted, so I had to adjust myself. He looked at me, raising his eyebrows, “Are you…mad at me, Henry?”

I looked at him quizzically, “…Mad? At you? Why would I be mad at you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, sighing. “It’s just, with your whole newfound friendship with that Winter chick—”

“—she’s not ‘that Winter chick,’ her name is Winter.”

“Fine,” he emphasized irately, “with Winter. Anyway, I’ve just noticed you’re not quite…the same…anymore around us.”

“Us?” I asked, frowning.

“Yeah, Elle and I. You said you’d talk to her the other day, but you didn’t even show up to lunch. You don’t hang out with us anymore; you spend much more time running around with her than you do caring about us—”

“—you know, Andrew, I’m getting pretty sick of having a fight with you every time we talk—”

“—well maybe you should just spend time with us. That’s what friends do, right? They’re there for each other?”

“I’m always there for you—”

Andrew sighed, shaking his head, “—Well, not lately, anyway.” He mumbled, standing up, pacing across the room several times before he turned to me, summoning the words he’d been holding in all day. “Do you even know why I wanted you to come here in the first place?” He asked, sighing.

I set my lips in a straight line, confused. I shook my head, “…No, I don’t.”

A half-hearted smile fell on his lips, his shoulders slouching like a sunken gutter. He looked at me, his eyes filled with hope, like when we were children. His mouth opened, air escaping from his lips that would form one of the most important sentences of his life.