I Would Want To See You One Last Time.

Piece 18

        The mid-term break is over and school is back up and running again. School started this Monday and it's the middle of the week, Wednesday. Currently, it's lunch. I'm walking away from the cafeteria with food in hand when I notice Noah in the distance. He's standing in the corner of one of the buildings like he's waiting. He's looking in my direction. I look away from him and continue walking towards where Maria and I usually sit.

         When I arrived, I let my bag fall to the ground and sat beside Maria. She puts her phone back in her bag and picks up her food from home. She doesn't look at me, she knows it's me.

        "Hi, Winter," She says, smiling at me.

       "Hi," I exclaim. I grab my food, trying to figure out what to talk about. I wrap my hands around the hot meal since my hands are almost numb. "I'm freezing," I say when several memories of this past week appear in my head again. Dally and Noah have been staring at me all week since we returned to school.

         "It is freezing out." She replies. "Feel my hand," She says as she reaches for me. I extend my hand out to touch her fingers and flinch my arm back from the icy touch.

        "Ack," I yelped, not even knowing what noise had just come out of my mouth. "Why are you so cold? You feel like ice." I exclaim as I put my hand back onto the warm container.

        She laughs, "I'm lifeless. Naturally cold since all my organs are dead. It gets awful like this in the wintertime." She looks up at the grey sky. "Like now." She stares up at it for a moment longer before looking back down and opening her lunch box. "I can't feel it though so it doesn't bother me."

        "Okay, Elsa," I say and laugh. She gives me a confused look. "Never mind. It's from a movie about an ice princess."

       "That's not that funny." She says in response. My lips close and I grab my utensil to start eating.

      "I saw Noah today," I say and feel her tense up on my arm. "He was far but he and Dally have been staring at me all week."

      "Grudges, probably. You did run out at that party without talking to anyone about it, which would seem wrong in their eyes." She says.

      "Hopefully it's just that. I don't want to interact with them anymore, let alone even see them here." I sigh and my breath turns into steam, quickly dissipating into the cool air. My eyes sting with tears for a moment then disappear. Maria glances at me for a second, too quickly before I can look back at her. I swallow before saying, "I had a nice time during the break with you. We should catch up on our cooking lessons though, haven't done that in a while." The memories of our cooking sessions flow through my head. The hours flying by that just made it feel like minutes. I think about the time when we tried to bake a cake from scratch. I had to convince Maria not to make me turn the grain into flour and to just buy the flour bag. I was begging her in the store not to make me do that.

        "What?" I exclaimed. "From the grain, are you kidding me?"

        "Do I look like I'm kidding?" She asked with furrowed eyebrows, before turning back around to grab more ingredients. "Plus, that's what you get for asking if we could use mix."

       "It was just a suggestion, please don't add more steps to this." I pleaded, grabbing onto her arm and putting my forehead on her shoulder. "Baking is already hard enough."

       "No, it's not. You're being dramatic." Neither of us had moved from the embrace. She continued pretending to look for something on the shelf. I didn't move and only held onto her tighter.