Snapshot

Chapter One: Beauty

"One large peach ice tea," Ivory says, passing me the clear plastic cup. "I don't know how you can drink anything with ice in its name when it's literally freezing outside." She pulls at the flannel scarf around her mouth and takes a sip of her mocha.

"Call me crazy, I don't care. This stuff is like heaven in my mouth." I take a big exaggerated gulp of the tea and smack my lips for good measure. This was a daily routine for Ivory and I. A quick coffee after morning classes and banter over the insanity of my beverage choices given the weather.

Freezing is an understatement for northern Minnesota. They say hell is full of fire and heat, but I think ice, snow, and the negative forty temps of Mason City, Minnesota seem much more intimidating. It started snowing back in October. The lakes were frozen solid by December and mountainous piles of snow began appearing at the corner of every street by the end of January. Now, standing outside in mid-March, it feels like winter is an endless eternity.

Setting my cup down on the coffee house counter, I jump down from my stool. Quickly, I put on my mittens, swing my backpack and camera bag over my shoulder, and recollect my tea.

"You coming Ives?"

"One sec, I can't find my phone." She frantically scours the floor around the counter and our stools. While Ivory has a beautiful and smart brain inside that head of hers, it's also quite scattered. She is constantly misplacing things, frequently right in front of her face.

I look across the counter at the charging station and see Ivory's pale pink phone attached. Rolling my eyes I unplug it from the dock and pass it to her, "Here Ives, it was plugged in."

Exasperated, she takes it from my hands. "Thanks, Emery, I don't know what I would do without you."

"I ask myself that every day," I smirk.

Ivory smacks me in the arms with her mittens and pushes past me towards the door of the cafe. "So irritating," she mumbles out.

"But you love me," I laugh, blowing her an exaggerated kiss.

Stepping out into the frigid cold is a shock to the body. Instantly the tip of my nose feels frozen and my exposed checks feel like blocks of ice. The steam from Ivory's mug creates a smoke like puff in the chilled air. We walk alongside each other, my short legs trying to keep stride with Ivory's long ones. Luckily, Ivory and I's apartment is a few short blocks from campus, so we don't have to endure the cold for long.

Ivory and I have been roommates since our freshman year of college. She moved into my dorm room the second semester after she had a falling out with her old roommate. Upon her moving in, we quickly became best friends. We moved from the freshman dorms to the upperclassmen dorms together and finally our Junior year we got our own apartment down the road from campus.

Ivory is from Mason City. In fact, her roommate before me had been her best friend through high school. They had decided to live together in the dorms once they were both accepted in but quickly discovered once college had started that they were attending for very different reasons. Ivory wanted to focus on her studies and Mackenzie wanted to screw every football player on the Mason City University team. After a semester of nightless sleep due to squeaking bed frames and unwanted dorm guests, Ivory moved out.

While Ivory is fortunate to have her family right in town, my family is a few hours south of Mason City. My tiny home town of Burnum is all but a speck of dust on the map. I am wholly convinced that they have never changed the census signs in my lifetime. They have read 143 people for the past 21 years. From my count, half the houses on the main street are empty and no one has refilled them after their original tenants passed away.