I took in a sharp, painful breath, my heart panicking at a sudden speed too fast for my chest to keep up. I exhaled from holding in my breath too long; a cold fog seeped off my lips like I’d just smoked a cigarette. I watched as the cold fog melted up into the air, then looked down at my hands, icy pale, snowy white. Shivering, I shoved them back into my dark navy blue jacket pockets. Breathing in more of the cold, I took a step, my feet crunching in the stiff snow beneath my feet. The crunch was getting annoying, but it was just one of the perks of having to come visit my dad down in Alaska due to my mom’s financial issues back up in Chicago. Alaska, aka the coldness place on the planet earth.
Back in Chicago, I looked tan, and pure blond while out in the sun, the heartwarming, breathtaking sun. Here I look like a snowman, my skin a pale, pale white, and my hair a dry frail blond, dried to a crisp, but still long down to my bellybutton, and the healthiest looking hair here.
Shaking, I shoved my hands deeper into the coldness of my thin jacket. I could never seem to escape the coldness, or for that matter, my own shadow. It seemed to follow me wherever I went. It was not only annoying, but I soon began to get weird thoughts hammering into my head. Thoughts like, what if my shadow was actually alive? Like in that Peter Pan movie. Weird, right? The cold is probably just getting to me.
But here, it’s a skin biting, lung stinging, nose reddening cold that no one can out-run. No one, believe me, I’ve tried. I found that out the hard way.
If there was one good thing about moving here (only temporarily, of course), then it would have to be the location of my dad’s house. He’s the towns “five star chef” at the local diner (the only diner): Pines Pizza (Our last name is Pine).
We live in the middle of a forest, a dark, mysterious forest full of enchanting noises and lingering silences. I walk through these woods ever morning to Newberry High School, the school I’ve been going to for about a month now, and have managed to somehow surprisingly make three whole friends. As my dad says, “It’s a miracle.” I just threw a grape from his “famous” fruit bowl at him.
The forest is dark, the vines hanging from trees casting long, trembling shadows onto the cold dirt ground. The trees are like claws, tall with bony fingers to reach down and grab you. Barely any light crawls into the forest, for there is no sun here, it has disappeared deep behind the greyness of the sky. The ground is covered in long shadows and mysterious broken tree trunk I’d occasionally have to jump over (they would get huge).
After about fifteen minutes walking in the dim light of dawn, with the angelic glows of light beaming down from the sky through the ceiling of trees and into the forest, I would finally get out and continue to walk another fifteen minutes down a skinny, narrow sidewalk to the high school.
Little did I know, today was the day death would confront me for the first (second) time, the first time death would speak to me, would touch me, would consume me. It would be the first time I reached for deaths hand, and took it.
Walking into the school would always send enormous butterflies to jitter away in my stomach, making me cave with nausea. I didn’t like the feel school had. Especially this one. The dull walls and grey skies out the windows just made it seem like a prison, a depressing, murderous prison. The kind that you’d kill yourself instead of it happening the other way around.
I followed in the sea of buzzing students, some talking, most texting, all looking bored to death, and all with their eyes dug into the bags of skin underneath. After a couple hallways, a bell ring, and a descending staircase, I managed to reach my locker without having died, which was surprising. Usually, being as clumsy and uncoordinated as I am, I’d injure myself on accident trying to get to my locker.
