Elsa

Seven

I wake up in the middle of the night. Nightmares, all over my skin. No worse than normal. But even the mild ones leave me shaken up. Normally it takes me a good hour and a half to fall back asleep- if I fall back asleep.

My roommates insisted on turning the heat up before bed. All the way up. And now Anna is snoring. I find myself tapping my fingers against the bed repeatedly, trying to let go of my annoyance. After a while it really gets on my nerves, and I have to get out of there. I jump out from under the blankets and exit the room.

A wave of cool air hits me, and I take a deep breath. I walk down the dark hall and slowly descend the stairs, soaking in the quiet. It's so silent I can hear my footsteps on the thickly-carpeted staircase, my breathing.

I enter the living room, trying to let go of the nightmares. It's easier to distract myself if I keep moving. But skiing all day really wiped me out, and my legs don't want to keep going. I yawn and sit down on the couch.

On somebody.

I gasp as I hit the lump on the couch and jump back up. They groan and roll over. I see the white hair and I know who it is.

Jack sits up and stares at me with that sleepy anger- the kind people get when they're disoriented and not fully awake yet.

"I'm so sorry," I whisper. My face is red, I'm sure. This is so awkward. I cringe, but Jack chuckles.

What?

"I've been woken up in a lot weirder ways at the frat house, believe me," he says in that croaky morning voice. It would be kind of adorable if this wasn't the single most embarrassing moment of my life right now.

He yawns. "I wasn't really sleeping anyway," he said. "I heard you on the stairs."

I crease my brow. I could hardly hear me on the stairs. How did he hear me? "You did?"

He nodded. "I don't sleep very well on these kinds of trips." He smirks. "Neither do you, apparently." He scoots over and motions at the couch. "Sit?"

I swallow. No. I don't want to sit. All I want to do is run back to my oven of a bedroom and curl up in a ball and die.

But for some reason, I sit. Some seed in my brain says 'he helped you get out of your skis earlier', and for some reason, my brain thinks that's enough reason to sit. I really need to tell my brain that that's stupid.

"Don't you have a room assignment?" I ask. I'm kind of afraid that the question seems rude, but he doesn't seem to mind.

"Yeah. I just... I can't fall asleep with other people in the room. I mean, with some people I can. My bros at the house, they're fine. I'm used to them. Strangers, though-" he breaks off and looks at his hands. "I... I get nightmares, sometimes."

My eyes widened. "Me, too," I jump in, maybe too enthusiastically.

"Yeah?"

I nod. "That's... why I came down here."

He looks up at me and smiles. "We should make a club. Bad Dreams Anonymous. We meet once a night and discuss our night terrors." He laughs at his own stupid joke. I smile. Then he looks at me seriously and bites his lip. "But seriously. Sometimes it helps to talk about them."

All my walls go up at once. Alarms blare in my mind. I stand up.

"Sorry," he says. "You don't have to." I look down at him. "Please don't go."

I don't move. But it occurs to me that couch boy isn't the sloppy fraternity jerk I first thought he was. "So this is why you sleep down here?"

He shrugs. "I don't really do much sleeping." He sighs.

I sit back down.

"Neither do I." I lean back against the couch and cross my arms. "I know college and sleep deprivation are supposed to go together, but sometimes..."

"Sometimes you think your brain will literally explode if you don't catch a few winks?"

I make a face. "No."

He snorts. "Sorry," he says, smiling.

"I was going to say sometimes I wish they didn't."

He doesn't say anything. I don't say anything.

So we just sit there. After a while, I lean my head against the arm of the couch. Jack leans against the other side. I hear his breathing get slower. My eyelids get heavy. I rub the palm of my hand, the electricity of ice under my skin, refusing to fall asleep.

"I always dream that people don't notice me," Jack whispers.

My eyes crack open wider. My ears perk up.

"I'm just standing there, but everyone runs right around me, looks right over me."

I straighten up and look over at him. He's still laying down, but he's staring ahead.

"So I try to get their attention. But-" he breaks off, and for a second he's lost in thought. I can see his muscles tense. I can feel his pain. "I hurt them."

The words hit unexpectedly close to home. My eyes are watering, and it takes me by surprise. My throat is knotted up, but I swallow and gather myself. Jack looks at me.

"I can't control it," he says. "What I do to them. It just happens."

He doesn't even know how familiar it is. Except he doesn't have powers he can't control, he's just talking about normal life.

Then I notice he doesn't have a blanket over him. It's got to be only forty-something degrees in here. And sure, I'm fine, and I don't have a blanket. But he's not me. He doesn't have ice in his veins.

"You must be cold," I say, trying to get him to explain it. My mind is begging for an explanation. I'm desperate for him to shiver and say 'yeah, I sure am'.

But he doesn't. He sits up. "I'm not, actually," he says. I'm trying to make this fit with him just being an unusually warm person when he takes a deep breath.

"Elsa?" he says. I stare at him wide-eyed. My heart is pounding. Who is this person? "You're not either."

I swallow hard. I reach for a blanket, but I wonder what he's thinking. He knows I'm not cold, and he has some explanation. I'm waiting for him to give it. Maybe he just thinks we're both... Alaskan. Used to the cold. Surely I'm over-reacting again. I do this all the time. I stare at him, waiting for him to give an answer, but he doesn't say anything.

He holds out his hand and turns his palm to the ceiling. 

And creates a perfect snowflake.