Frost

XXX.

E v a  G r e e n   as   C l a i r e   B e l c o u r t

**ALSO rest in peace xxx :(

       "Aspen!" 

Josie's voice could be heard from the other side of the park. It was midday, in suburbia Chicago, I sat on the bench in the middle of Sunshine Park. A playground was before me, and I kicked my legs impatiently, swinging them off the bench. A pair of white lace gloves covered my hands and fingertips, despite being early June and the weather getting warmer, I still had my lucky pair of gloves to prevent the frost from erupting. 

I watched as the little blonde girl from my third grade class run around playing grounders with her friends, the same blonde girl that I had followed from after school. She walked with her two parents, hand in hand, alongside her two best friends to the park across the street from school. I hated her. She made fun of me. 

"Why do you always wear those stupid gloves?" She had screeched on the school ground. 

All the other kids ganged up with her, pointing at my gloves, calling me a freak- even worse, an albino. 

It was a nickname I heard whenever I went, "Mommy look at that pale girl" I heard one of the other girls say as they pointed at me. I shifted uncomfortably. I didn't have any friends, and I walked the school ground as a stranger- nobody wanted to associate with a girl that Lillian practically condemned. 

Yet there she was, Lillian, on the playground with her eyes closed and following another brunette named Poppy. I hated them both. 

I wanted to see what it was they did everyday after school, what a normal childhood would actually look like. In my young strangled mind, I wanted to witness what a normal third-grader did every day. I rubbed my gloves together, paying no mind to what was going on around me, with my focus directed at this one girl. Josie Iverson, however, was on the other side of the park searching for her daughter. 

Her brown locks were held in a bandana today, wearing her paint splattered jeans and flip flops, she looked around the playground for her adoptive daughter in a hurry. She was late to meet her from school and felt bad about it, but caught sight of her familiar white-blonde tresses trying to cross the street with the crossing guard. 

"Aspen!" She called again. 

I sat on the bench, kicking my legs. Against my will, spirals of delicate frost patterns sprouted from where my gloved hands touched the bench. 

"Aspen!" Josie caught sight of her little girl on the bench across from her and practically darted to the park bench, stopping to sit beside her. 

"What are you doing?" She asked calmly, Josie was never one to yell or become furious at Aspen. 

"Watching her, I wanted to see what so great about this stupid playground" I motioned to the little blonde girl playing grounders, not taking my eyes off of her. Josie leaned back in the bench, scooting over to me and covering my gloved hand with her own. The frost immediately stopped, I looked up at my Mom.