The Blue Girls

We lived in the sort of place where we spent months on end buried under snow up to the windows, but then it would suddenly shoot up to 60 degrees and an entire spring thaw could happen in one day. The spring that destroyed our town forever, started just like that.

It had been a miserable winter with many snow days where it was simply impossible to go to school or anywhere else. The snow fall stretched clear past February with one last big snow in March. Fresh fat flakes covered the dirty layer of icy snow that was still on everything. Within an hour of the start of the blizzard, six inches had already accumulated. And it just kept piling on and on from there.

We were snowed in for four straight days while snow blanketed the world. My parents both stayed home from work. There was no choice. There was no way to even dig out of the driveway. My brother and I also got out of going to school. He was six at the time, and I was sixteen. I didn't mind the time home with my family and recall it fondly as our last good time. Staying in pajamas. Drinking hot chocolate. Playing video games and watching movies until late at night and we all fell asleep in the living room under blankets.

The thaw hit on a Wednesday evening, one week into March. The temperature had already reached 40° f earlier in the day and just kept climbing. By six in the evening it was 62° f and if you went outside, you could hear dripping and water running everywhere as the snow quickly melted away. It was too soon to see a lot of difference, but you could hear it in the dripping.

My parents declared our school routine back in order that evening, certain that life would resume in the morning with the best road clearing mechanism around happening: nature. We were tired anyway from several days of going feral in the blizzard, so my brother and I both turned in around nine and I fell asleep almost instantly.

I awoke with that disorienting feeling that I hadn't moved a single muscle and the entire night had gotten away.

"She's sleeping in the snow."

I blinked open my eyes to find sun streaming in the window and my little brother, Eli, standing by my bed. He was giving me a peculiar look and it dawned on me he had just said something, but I couldn't sort out in my head what he'd said.

"What, bubby?" I asked.

He pointed vaguely toward my bedroom window. "She's out there. Sleeping in the snow!"

His strange remark snapped me a little more toward wakefulness. "What? Who? What are you talking about, Eli?"

He tugged on my blanket and tilted his head toward the window. "A girl! Look! She's out there sleeping in the snow!" he said again, growing visibly impatient.

I tossed back my covers and scurried out of bed, suddenly feeling quite anxious. Eli wasn't really the "make stories up" sort of kid. He and I both went to the window and peered out, revealing a view of our back yard.

A lot of snow had melted overnight. There were even patches of grass visible by then, where there had still been more than a foot of snow left before I went to sleep. What was left sparkled prettily in the morning light. Some of it still drooped in the limbs of the huge fir trees in the yard. I looked all around the yard and its various features, such as the wood pile, the covered grill and yard furnishings, awaiting warmer days. The trees and the fence. And finally I spotted what Eli was talking about. Way out by the back fence, in a plot that had been turned to create a garden, but no such garden had ever transpired.

There was a girl, laying in the snow.

I gasped. She was in nothing but a flimsy nightgown. She was curled in a tight ball, as one might do if they were very cold and attempting to warm themselves. But her skin was blue. She was long past it mattering if she tried to get warm.