SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

SNOW BIG DEAL

I see it when I wake up: something white and puffy rising from the windowsill outside. The city is sealed in a fresh sheen of white that sparkles when l turn my head. Looks like something God puked up.

Ho-Ho-Ho. Happy holidays.

Vanessa makes eggs and bacon for breakfast. The heat is going full blast. We eat at the table, except for Sebastian, who eats perched on the edge of the couch next to the window. The kid is obsessed with snow. He has never mentioned this obsession before. I only know of the trains. What other affinities could be hiding behind those innocent eyes? Silent French films? Ventriloquism? Taxidermy?

After lunch, Lin and Sebastian force me to go outside with them. We bundle up in geeky winter gear and head to the park. When we get to the field-- the Tobillo field-- I wrap my scarf around my mouth and flop into a snowdrift. The park is beautiful. The trees and bushes are sealed in ice. The snow reflects sunlight into something brilliant and sparkling. Lin trudges up the hill and pulls the sled behind him. Sebastian gallops in circles at the top. His boots upchuck snow in flurries. He plops down in the sled with Lin behind him, and they push off, leaving a smooth track of ice in their wake. Wheeee.

I tromp to an unmarked section of snow and fall backward. The scarf covers my eyes as I wave my arms back and forth. Snow angels are cool, but I've never been able make one without screwing it up. I always leave footprints in the middle when I stand, or scrape away the snow and expose the brown grass. Something cold and wet hits my face. A snowflake. First one I saw this year. The bruise beneath my eye pulses in the cold. I wave my wings.

I wish I could freeze time. I finished my snow angel, but I don't want to stand and ruin the perfect slab of ice. The air freezes the body beneath my skin. Feels like I could crack my veins in half, like icicles. I hear Lin and Sebastian coming back up the hill. The snow crunches beneath their weight. I close my eyes and let the snowflakes bury my face.

A toddler-sized boulder lands on my chest. "Vid-eeeeee!!!"

I jerk upwards. The oxygen is vacuumed from my airways. Lin runs forward and pulls him off me.

"Oh, God. Vidya, you okay?" He asks. Sebastian leaps from his arms and sticks out his tongue to eat the snow. Lin's face softens when I sit up. "You made a snow angel."

He reaches down and brushes the snowflakes from my nose. "Fall asleep in the snow?"

"Fall asleep?" Sebastian repeats. His earflap hat covers his eyes.

"Something like that," I say.

Sebastian flops down in the snow next to me and makes a dainty little snow angel. His boots spew chunks of snow when he slides them back and forth. Lin flops down on the other side of me and begins his snow angel. When he stands, Sebastian and I stare open-mouthed in terror. Six foot snow angels aren't so dainty.

If it weren't for me, Lin and Sebastian would be back at the apartment right now, wrapped in quilts and eating cookies and watching movies and doing everything they don't do around me because they know I would hate it. I don't know why the Mirandas try so hard to please me. But I like the snow. Places like this are therapeutic. Snow-therapy. That should be a thing. AP students could lay in the snowy Tobillo-field to freeze out the B they got on their last exam. Unemployed actors could freeze out the dream role they didn't get. You cold freeze out every thought in your head. You could snap your memories in half like icicles.

Orange sky creeps above the trees around 3:30. Lin gives Sebastian a piggy-back ride back to the apartment. The moment we step foot into the building, the heat rushes from the furnace and the world melts back into my head. Too bad. I like cold. When I grow up, I'll move to Alaska and freeze my way through life. I'll freeze my way through the afterlife, too. Hell froze over when I decided to leave the apartment in the first place. I'll make snow angels in the arctic underworld with Aaron Brrrrrr.