Snow

As I freeze to death, I think my life might flash before my eyes. It does, but not all of it. Only the best parts. The parts with her.

I’m five years old, blonde hair under a wool cap running ahead of me. “Hurry! Hurry!” she yells into the frosty air. She runs down the hill, arms flung wide. Her mother’s careful braiding has come undone, and her hair streams in the wind. I call after her to wait. She only laughs, runs faster. It will be several years before I’m quick enough to catch her.

I’m seven years old. We climb on the rocks behind my house. Our mothers have forbidden it, but she thinks that from the top we may be able to see over the fence and into the neighbor’s yard. Their husky has just had a litter. She has always wanted a husky. As always, she’s ahead of me, nimble and graceful on the slick granite. Then she slips, and I can’t reach her in time. It wasn’t far to fall; I know that now. She was only scraped and bruised, but it looked quite serious to my child-eyes. I run to tell my mother, and I haven’t finished with my breathless explanation before the women are out of the house, running toward the bleeding child who is already protesting that she’s alright, she’s fine. Her mother gathers her in her arms, shouts at my mother. My mother shakes my shoulder, demanding to know whose idea it was to climb the rocks. I say it was my idea. My mother drags me to a lawn chair, pulls me across her lap, and spanks me harder than she ever had before. I think she was embarrassed, and in her string of chastisements she lets slip that part of the blame should go to my absent father. I am not allowed to have anyone over to play for several days.

I’m fourteen years old and we find an abandoned graveyard in the woods behind my house.

“When I die, I want to be out in the woods like they are,” she says, brushing the snow from the stones. “Don’t let them lock me up in one of those big stone vaults. Don’t let them burn me, either.” I tell her to stop being silly. She won’t die anytime soon, and I have no say in what happens to her anyway. She throws a handful of snow at me and we run off into the woods together.

I’m fifteen years old. We watch a movie on TV about a princess and a knight in shining armor. She is excited about the movie. For the rest of the day she talks about how she wants her life to be that way. I tell her she doesn’t need rescuing. She punches me in the arm. “Dummy, I’m the knight.”

I’m still fifteen years old. She’s pointing at a flower, telling me to look. A single violet has poked from the snow. The winter will kill it before it can fully bloom. I pick it for her. She stares at the flower for a moment. I tell her it would’ve died anyway. She takes it, and we walk away.

I’m seventeen years old. We stand on the bridge together, looking at the frozen river below us.

“Do you love me?” she asks. Of course I do. I tell her as much. She smiles at me. “Good.” She scoops a handful of snow from the railing and tosses it in my face. “Catch me,” she says. She laughs as she runs, and I follow her lead.

I’m still seventeen years old, but I feel anxious to turn eighteen. “Remember that time we were climbing on the rocks?” she asks. I do. “And I fell and got hurt, and you told your mom it was your idea?” Yes. “Why did you do that?” After all these years, I thought it was my idea. She frowns at me. “No, it wasn’t.”

I’m eighteen years old. It’s our senior year. I piss off a quarterback and he corners me between classes, and beats the hell out of me. I try to fight back, but he’s too big, too strong. Then I hear her voice. “Leave him alone.” I panic. He’ll kill her. She delivers a crunching blow to his nose. He collapses, sneezing blood everywhere. She runs to my side. “Are you alright?” I tell her I’m fine. I smile. I tell her she’s my knight in shining armor. Her eyes shine with pride, happiness, love.

I paint her portrait in art class and bring it home to show her. She looks at it, tells me it’s pretty good, but I’ve got the mouth wrong. I’m confused. She just looks at me. So I kiss her. She responds to my kiss; her soft lips are eager against mine. As we part, she smiles at me. “Maybe I’ll let you paint another picture of me sometime…”

The next day, we are in my room. “Why don’t you draw another picture of me?” she says. “I’ll pose for you.” I search my desk for my sketchpad and pencils. When I look back, she’s standing there with a strange expression on her face. Her hand is poised on the top button if her blouse. As I watch, she unfastens it with slow fingers. She removes her shirt and folds her arms in front of her naked chest. My hands are shaking. The sketch is worthless. I give up and just watch her.

Snow is falling outside the window, pale and soft as her skin, silent as her stare. She takes me by the hand, leads me to the bed. I lie back on the blanket, staring up at the summer sky painted on my ceiling. The blossoming trees above us contrast with the frozen trees outside. We cry out together. She strokes my face. I want to stay there forever, in that moment. She stands up and gets dressed. I don’t want her to leave, but she says her mother is expecting her. I tell her I’ll see her tomorrow.

I don’t.

I visit my dad over the weekend. Over breakfast he reads in the paper that a girl in my town has gone missing. He shows me. Her picture stares back at me with black and white eyes.

The bus driver remembers her getting off at the end of the lane, her usual stop. I know from there she often takes a shortcut through the woods to her house. The police find her tracks entering the woods, then a second set meet up with them halfway through. Both sets leave the path and vanish into the undergrowth.

Years later, hikers find a man’s skeleton in the woods. He had died of a broken neck.

She is never found.

I never cry for her. I can’t. There is only a frozen emptiness inside me. Everything about the town, the snow, reminds me of her, but I can’t summon a single tear to shed. When she died, my heart died as well.

I leave for college. I call my parents regularly but never visit. The winter before I graduate, my father calls me and asks to come home for a few weeks. My mother has had surgery, and work won’t allow him to take care of her. So I come back and take care of my mother. One night I ride the bus to the end of the lane and get off to walk in the woods. Snow is falling, filling my tracks behind me.

I call her name in the darkness, and the snow catches the sound and swallows it. Then I see her — a ghostly figure between the trees. She looks different with white hair, dark eyes, blue lips, but I recognize her. I run to her, but she’s always just out of reach no matter how fast I run. At last, out of breath, I stop chasing her only to look up and find her standing before me. I’m not afraid. I hold my hands out to her, and she comes to me. Her body is cold, and her hands burn me. I welcome the pain. The smoky clouds of my breath grow more erratic and somewhere I’m aware that I’m dying, freezing to death in the winter woods. But it doesn’t matter. She’s with me.

She’s laughing now, beckoning me to come with her, farther into the woods. I follow her lead.