oh, anna [-hs]

the forum

hi :)

73.

FIVE MONTHS LATER (oof)

I hope extending this doesn't make you uncomfortable. Mitch told me not to do this, he doesn't even know I'm asking. I've just been listening to rehearsals, and I think you need to come experience it for yourself. I hope I see you next week.

-Jack

I scan the email again. My finger lays still over the touchpad of the laptop. My heart flutters at the words.

"Quinn," Emma sings from the floor. Leo bats at a wire she's working on. She holds it up out of his reach. My eyes dart to her. "What did he want?"

"He wants me to come to LA," I glance back at the laptop screen. "For the thing."

"What thing?"

I chew on my lip. "Harry's thing."

Emma's face darkens. "Oh." She looks back at Leo, scratching him between the ears. "What're you gonna do?"

"I don't know," I click the attachment, a VIP ticket to the forum. His premiere, the big album. The album about me that's going to be released in a week. I hover my cursor on his name. "Do you think I should go?"

She sighs and lays flat against the floorboards, squinting up at me on the couch. I tuck my feet deeper into the blanket around my legs. "You're so happy, baby." I smile and pick at my cuticle.

"Yeah."

"We haven't talked about Harry in so long."

It's true. The last time was before it snowed.

But that doesn't mean that I don't think about him.

It's a romanticized version of what we had back then. I've warped history, painted him in a better light to ease the grief. But they're still there.

Unfortunately, those thoughts have all but consumed me. I think them everyday.

"You've already decided you're going," Emma puffs her bangs out of her face. I shrug.

"I don't know."

"You have," she sits up and brushes Leo's hair off her sweater. I watch her figure slink off to the kitchen, and then my gaze turns to the window.

Frost is climbing up and around the edges of the glass. Beyond the picture the trees in our backyard are weighed down by blankets of white. I smile. I love winter, the puffy banks of snow, the cold, the coziness. It feels so quiet.

It snowed a lot in Hibbing. When I was little, my dad used to drive me and Danny out to the iron range after there had been a storm the night before. I would jump out of the car as soon as he put it in park, running to the edge of the lot as fast as I could. Danny wouldn't be far behind, he was still pretty young back then too, barely a tween.

Dad would grab the sleds from the trunk and the thermos of hot cocoa Mom had packed lovingly away. Danny would steal my hat and I'd chase him in circles around the car until Dad yelled at Danny to come help him carry the sleds. He'd plop the hat back on my head and dash away.

Danny would want to sled right away, but I would demand that he wait. I made both of them sit on the hood of our car and stare out at the iron range, at all the undisturbed snow that had smoothed over the rough quarry. In a couple of hours, the range workers would come and start to clear away the snow, piling it up and ruining the picture. But in those few hours, it was perfect.

"And what are we looking at Quentin?" Dad would rub my back and pull me up to sit on his lap. Danny would roll his eyes, impatient to ride down the ginormous hill.