A Year of Winter

five

October 8th, 2012

Now that summer had abandoned us, it started getting progressively colder in Upstate New York. Our town was a tiny community nestled right outside of Buffalo, which froze remarkably quickly even in the earliest stages of Autumn. If there was a warm day, we savored it. Only, there was rarely ever any of those days to savor; so before I left the house, I grabbed a heavy coat and my keys, and went on the search for my little sister.

“Hattie, get your ass down here now, or I’ll leave without you!” I screamed up the stairs, probably adhering to our daily routine of our constant battle to get her out of the bathroom. I swore, I never knew how girls could take so long to get ready.

From the foot of the stairwell, I could see the bathroom door creak open, Hattie’s face peering out from behind. She shooed me away, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a ride!” She shouted down at me dismissively.

I frowned, this being the first I’ve heard this news. “From who?” I asked curiously.

“My friend, Jake.” She called back. But before I could try and put a face to the name, she spoke again. “But you don’t know him.”

I looked thoughtfully at her for a moment, and I pursed my lips, thinking how I didn’t know a lot about Hattie lately. However, I was not in the mood for an argument, and I let it be and said goodbye, wondering if I’d ever get my old sister back.

❄

October 11th, 2012

Physical Education was, by far, the bane of my existence.

I’d never done anything that took so much physical exertion, only to reward you with so little. I felt no better after class was over; I only felt tired and out of shape, compared to all of the other mechanically wired automatons in my grade, programmed to sprint a mile in little under six minutes. It seemed as if every day was just an opportunity for the most competitive kids in the class to get their fill of tormenting the weak and fragile kids, like myself.

“You’re just growing into it,” Andrew often would say, followed by a sportsmanlike pat on the head or condescending grin; or in many cases, both.

I looked at him, the cold air burning my lungs as I tried to keep up with him on the track. I wiped the sweat off my brow, frowning, “I don’t want to grow into it.” I snapped back at him, “I just want to go home and sleep.”

Andrew laughed, his voice booming through the air like he had room in his lungs to spare, while I sounded like a dying horse. He shook his head, still chuckling, when his eyes flickered with something strange, changing emotion like a switch. He turned to me, his pace slowing down, “So, where did you run off to the other day, anyway? Noelle and I just looked back, and you were gone.”

Biting back the urge to tell the truth, I simply shook my head. I knew that Andrew would only reprimand me about talking to Winter. There was probably something in the “bro-code” against it.

“I, uh, wasn’t really hungry.” I excused terribly. My lying skills had never quite been in good condition, similar to the state of my athletic capabilities.

Andrew frowned, “So where’d you go?”

While I knew I should have lied to Andrew to save my own hide, if I’d told him anywhere else but the library, he’d have known I couldn’t be telling the truth. So very quietly, and as nonchalantly as possible, I shook it off my shoulder as though it were nothing.

I frowned, “The library.” I said curtly, the words spilling out of my mouth much less fluidly than I’d hoped.

“Of course you did,” Andrew said with a roll of his eyes. “You’d trade in a book for your friends any day, wouldn’t you?”