Elsa

Twelve

My hands are shaking as I stuff things into my bag. My head is reeling. Anna and Punzie have already left to go the barn to get their skis, and I convinced them I was right behind them.

I grab my coat, then pause. Pierce knows about my powers. I don't have to pretend around him. I drop the coat and head out of my room without it. He said we'd meet at the top of the stairs. My heart is racing, and I'm nervous. I feel like every second is a second too long.

Why did I ever agree to come on this stupid trip? It was a mistake to think I could ever be around other people when I have powers like this. I'm a freak. I'm a monster. Moon is right.

It's time I stopped pretending. I can't do this to people anymore. I glance down the hall and don't see Pierce. 

I don't want to hurt him. I run down the stairs and out the door without him. It starts to snow, and I know it's mine. But I don't stop. I run the opposite direction of the ski lifts, away from the lodge, from Moon- from Pierce.

I don't know how long I run before my lungs hurt. But I don't stop. I keep moving, driven by fear. She called me a monster. She called me a monster. She called me a monster.

The snow is falling harder. The wind blows around me, and my steps slow as I hit a hill and start walking upwards. Higher, higher, but I don't stop.

She called me a monster. I am a monster.

I'm a monster.

My feet burn with pain. My legs ache to stop. My head is spinning, or maybe that's the snow around me. I finally have to stop. The snow stops pelting against me as I take deep breaths and my heart slows down.

I curl up on the snow and cry. No one is there to comfort me.

My mother used to comfort me. My powers used to be much more painful than they are now. They were stronger when I was younger, or at least, they seemed stronger because I didn't know how to control them.

Who am I kidding? I can't control them now.

I thought I could. When my family died, I thought I could keep it all in. But I can't. I've been on eggshells since the day I started college. I've almost blown my cover so many times in just three months. I can't live like this.

My tears are making the snow colder. All the flakes in the sky have turned to ice now, and it hurts when it hits my back. I don't know how to make it stop. I rub my hands over my eyes, and feel the frost on my face. I'm crying snow.

That hasn't happened since they died.

Since I-

I killed them.

I haven't let myself think about it for years. It's always there, in the back of my mind, but now that I'm alone it all surfaces and spills out in my frustrated sobs.

People always tried to tell me it wasn't my fault, but how do they know? They weren't there.

It was because of me that my parents decided to move far away from the city. It was because of me we had to drive miles and miles of desolate backroads to get near civilization. It was my fault that my sister slipped on ice- my ice- and broke her ankle.

It was winter. No one questioned the ice on the road. No one wondered why it was only on one stretch of the road and nowhere else.

I curl up on the snow. The memories are more painful than I thought they would be, but I see it all far too clearly.

I was already terrified because I thought my sister was going to die. The seats in the back of the car were covered thickly with frost, and my mother kept telling me to stop, to turn it off, that we needed to keep my sister warm. But I couldn't stop, and that scared me more. My sister kept looking at me, with fear in her eyes.

Then the car lurched over one of the many potholes in the road, and for a second her eyes were filled with agonizing pain. Then she slumped over. Her eyelids drooped.

I screamed and jumped for her. Ice shot out everywhere, but I didn't even notice. I was sure she was dead.

The car began to swerve wildly. We went into a tailspin, and broke through the road barrier. The car tumbled end over end and crashed into the bottom of the ravine.

I remember bright red on the snow. I didn't realize that some of it was mine until later. My father dragged himself from the wreckage and headed straight for my mother. They were both conscious. In pain, but conscious. Then they reached for us and dragged us from the car.

I hurt all over. I wouldn't let go of my sister, even when our parents had pulled us halfway up the slope towards the road. Then they couldn't go any farther. They dropped in the snow.

"She's breathing," I heard my mother whisper, her head on my sister's chest. Relief flooded me. We were all still alive. We just had to get help, and it would come. Certainly it would come. I laid down in the snow by my parents and watched the breath come out of their mouths in frosty puffs of air.

My shoulder was giving me pain. I didn't want to move. I closed my eyes and took slow, steady breaths, hoping that the pain would subside. And it did- after a while, I felt stiff, but the cold snow beneath me had helped.

I don't know how long I had laid there. When I opened my eyes, I sat up and tested my limbs. They all seemed to be working. I went to my father's side and shook him.

"We need to keep going," I said to him. "Where's your phone? We can call the ambulance."

He looked at me weakly. "Go call them, Elsa," he said. He reached into his pocket, but didn't even have the strength to pull his phone out. I took it from him and stumbled up the slope. There was no service, and I had to walk far down the road before I was finally able to call 911. By the time I came back to my family it was getting dark. My shoulder was hurting more.

I slid down the hill to my mother's side and grabbed her arm. "Mama, I called the hospital," I said. "They're coming. Let's walk up to the road."

She didn't answer.

"Mama," I whispered.

Fear beat through my veins, and I scrambled over her, over my sister, to my father. I shook him by the shoulders. "Papa!" I shouted.

Nothing answered me but my echo.

Their bodies couldn't handle the pain and the cold.

But the cold never bothered me. Not physically, anyway.

I screamed at them until my voice went hoarse, but they never answered. The doctors didn't understand why I was still alive. My temperature was far below normal, but apart from bruises and whiplash I was healthy. Not the slightest hint of hypothermia.