Hello, Snow!

Chapter 3

A familiar nasally voice from the door, "Lovebirds! You left me all alone in the dark for far too long." He walked in, leaving the door wide open behind him. Brian was always careless and lacked, seeming, the ability for true emotional intimacy that Kali seemed to have with ease.

And yet, intimacy was not the only reason for a closed door; instead, a shattering thought occurred to Kali, and he snapped, "Shut that door, Brian."

Brian did as he was told with a dramatic amount of attitude, whining, "Why? What's your problem?"

"The lights are out," he said, cold and rather panicked, "The electricity is out."

Neko's eyes widened as she tracked, "And the heaters, too." The classroom was eerily silent. No hum of a heater, no whirr from lights, no buzz of a mini fridge or smartboard or laptops. It was totally, scarily silent. And cold. The cold had begun to creep in from windows, from beneath the door, from cold stone walls. At first, it would just be chilly, but sub freezing temperatures outside would quickly take over the small school.

"How will we stay warm?" Neko asked, eyeing them. All of their eyes were wide with the familiar grasp of fear at death's door. Suddenly, the situation felt much more severe and much more real.

Brian slowly suggested, "We gather things. Objects, clothes, food, anything in the school we can find..."

"Everything is behind locked doors," Kali pointed out.

Neko, "We break the windows, then." They both turned to look at her, and she shrugged, "The doors all have windows on them. We can break them."

Kali shook his head, blinking a few times as a thought formed, "Why are we staying here?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, "We can get out of the school. If we can break windows here, we can break windows elsewhere. The boulevard is lined with stores, grocery markets, supplies stops... We could easily survive with those resources."

"We'd have to go outside in the cold," Brian whined.

Kali snapped, "It's going to get much colder here if we don't get up and protect ourselves!" He was heaving, anger igniting in his eyes, fueled by pure fear. His shoulders rose and fell quickly with the struggle to control his dissent. "How long do you think we will survive without water? Without food? Two, three days? We can't expect this to be over by then. The ice is still accumulating and it will take days to melt at the minimum. We cannot survive in this school!"

Neko sighed, "I hate to admit this, but Kali's pessimism might be the only thing that saves us tonight. When night falls, this open, windowed, concrete school is going to turn into a freezer. We need someplace compact and easier to keep warm. We need food, water, and layers of blankets. We can't get any of that here."

Brian seemed unsettled, shaking slightly, "Where would we go? Are you saying we're going to die in here? We're going to freeze to death? What if we get out but can't get back in? Don't the doors only open from the inside? What if we try this and we can't get in anywhere else and can't get back in the school and we just get stuck outside?"

"Good point," Kali said. "One of us can stay here. If we find a suitable place, we can come back to get you."

The boys turned to Neko.

"What? You want me to stay?"

Kali said, "You're the odd one out. Brian and I get along better. We will be more decisive when the moment comes. We can predict each other. We can't predict you."

Brian turned to glance at Kali, then, "Actually, Kali... We can't predict Neko. We can't even trust her. This is her fault to begin with. What if she leaves and we get locked out?"