Till Forever is Ours

05.

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES THE NEXT MORNING, SOMETHING was different. It was the light. It was still the gray-green light of a cloudy day in the forest, but it was clearer somehow. I realized there was no fog veiling my window.

I jumped up to look outside, and then groaned in horror. A fine layer of snow covered the yard, dusted the top of my truck, and whitened the road. But that wasn't the worst part. All the rain from yesterday had frozen solid— coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway a deadly ice slick.

I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry; it might be safer for me to go back to bed.

Derek had left for work before I got downstairs. In a lot of ways, living with Derek was like having my own place, and I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely.

I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice from the carton. I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment. I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Yelena Belova. And that was very, very stupid.

I should be avoiding her entirely after my brainless and embarrassing babbling yesterday. And I was suspicious of her; why should she lie about her eyes? I was still frightened of the hostility I sometimes felt emanating from her, and I was still tongue-tied whenever I pictured her perfect face. I was well aware that my league and her league were spheres that did not touch. So I shouldn't be at all anxious to see her today.

It took every ounce of my concentration to make it down the icy brick driveway alive. I almost lost my balance when I finally got to the truck, but I managed to cling to the side mirror and save myself. Clearly, today was going to be nightmarish.

Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Yelena Belova by thinking about Billy and Peter, and the obvious difference in how teenage boys responded to me here. I was sure I looked exactly the same as I had in New York. Maybe it was just that the boys back home had watched me pass slowly through all the awkward phases of adolescence and still thought of me that way.

Perhaps it was because I was a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between. Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as an endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress. Whatever the reason, Billy's puppy dog behavior and Peter's apparent rivalry with him were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored.

My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. I drove very slowly, though, not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street.

When I got out of my truck at school, I saw why I'd had so little trouble. Something silver caught my eye, and I walked to the back of the truck— carefully holding the side for support— to examine my tires. There were thin chains crisscrossed in diamond shapes around them. Derek had gotten up who knows how early to put snow chains on my truck. My throat suddenly felt tight. I wasn't used to being taken care of, and Derek's unspoken concern caught me by surprise.

I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains brought on, when I heard an odd sound.

It was a high-pitched screech, and it was fast becoming painfully loud. I looked up, startled.

I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work much more faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.