The Day

(26) The Freeze

Chapter Twenty-Six

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The cold woke me up. I shivered awake with questions filling my mind.

Cold? It was early summer. And every day before this was warm and humid.

But this bitter cold chilled me to the bones. This was the type of cold that made your teeth chatter. The type that made you run back under the covers after you woke up, and made you swear you shall never rise again.

It made me think of Christmas. And peppermint. Maybe hot chocolate too. This was the type of cold that you expected around Christmas, when the year was coming to an end and everybody wore sweaters and scarves and big boots that made clunking noises everywhere.

In my shorts and cami, I wasn’t prepared for this temperature.

Wrapping my blanket around me, I lazily trudged to my dresser. I was half asleep, but the draft in my room was waking me up at a rapid rate. I was in the middle of grabbing my sweatpants when the thought dawned on me.

It wasn’t supposed to be this cold.

Not bothering with my blanket or sweats, I opened my door and ran to the kitchen, almost tripping over Mr. Meowsir in the process. I saw my mother there, sipping her coffee. I grinned and walked over to her but stopped when I saw that she was wearing that same yellow dress that she wore every day I saw her for the past hundred odd days.

So I wasn’t back.

I felt a wave of goosebumps travel over my body, and end at my lips, which were shaking madly. For some reason, this overcame the disappointment of not being back.

Being fully awake now, I fast walked back to my room, blowing warm air into my hands. I quickly pulled a sweatshirt over my head and put some sweatpants on over my shorts, sighing from the relief.

I started to walk around, but then realized both my feet and hands were chilled. Rolling my eyes, I walked back to my dresser and shoveled around for my gloves and thick winter socks – items I never used in ever so sunny California.

I was in the middle of stepping into my slippers when I noticed it. The vase. Empty. I finished sliding on the slippers and shuffled over to my desk, where the vase sat daintily. It was empty, yes, but that is not what bothered me the most. The vase was clear. Not multi-colored and exotic.

Putting my hand on it, I tried to pick it up, but recoiled when small chips of ice formed on my gloves, attempting to trap it. They looked like small hands for a second, trying to reel me into their frozen world.

Stepping away from the vase, I went to my closet and changed from my slippers to UGGs. Then I walked outside, into the snow.

I’d never seen anything like it. It was, to put it quite simply, a winter wonderland. The trees were completely bare, ice chips hanging menacingly from the skinny branches. Snow covered every inch of the ground, and it glistened in the sun. The air smelt of winter, a mix of pines and chimney fires. My nose and cheeks burnt as the deeply cold air blew against them, and my lips became increasingly chapped with the lack of moisture in the air.