Frozen

Chapter 9: Cold Front

(Holiday)

It seemed like a normal morning. Fresh frost turning the grass a seasick turquoise beneath the white snow that dulls its color. The branches that scratch my windows are littered with sparse leaves, the only bit of young, innocent green in the entire frozen world, it seems. It is like foreshadowing, knowing that they would not survive the harsh winter, freeze them until every last drop of life is squeezed out onto the icy ground. Stepping outside the wind was blowing like nothing could limit it, a kind of cold that can't be kept away by the thin sweaters that I clung to with wistful hope for summer.

Now back to the normal morning, which it wasn't. The eggs sat in a disgusting, scrambled heap on my plate, only useful to hold your hands above them until all the heat is sucked out. I wasn't hungry this morning, not uncommon since I am forced to get up at unusual-forms-of-torture hours and my stomach isn't always so quick to wake up. So I was just pushing the cold, limp eggs around on the plate with a fork when the phone rang, something I was so used to I sometimes didn't even notice anymore. This time I noticed.

I stood up groaning, straining my voice for mom to get it with no prevail. Ugh. I numbly walked into the kitchen to grab the phone, imagining my bones where made of jell-o.

"Hello?" I croaked, just as the pre-recorded female voice begins playing.

"Powell residence. The school is very sorry to inform you that one of our students met an untimely death the night of December 3rd to hypothermia. We hope you can all think of some kind memories of her to put in the box that can be accessed in the hall during students lunch. Her name was Danielle Zimmerman and..."

That's where my head began to swim and I dropped the phone, only for the dramatic gesture to be ruined when it became stuck in my hair on its way to the floor. Danielle, Dani, I knew her. She was the little four-year-old from preschool who I sat next to at snack time. The first day she hadn't known so I'd shared my crackers and cranberry juice with her. I don't know how I remember these things, I certainly hadn't five minutes ago, but I guess someone's death just releases all your good memories of them so you can cry even louder. Now that my eyes are watering I remember the bad ones. She sat alone in middle school one day, I remember, crying into her lunch with puffy red eyes, the bad kind that are too noticeable to pretend you're "just fine". I remember walking right past her, feeling glad I had someone to sit with.

Hypothermia. Freezing to death. How could that happen? I was outside last night and though it was cold I was nowhere near dying. I imagine the cold peeling back my skin to freeze over my heart to stop it, stop the blood pumping and the lungs breathing. The the final emptiness when life slips away and the body isn't mine- I mean hers, anymore, and its just that, a body, a thing that is no longer a he or a she but an it. No emotions attached. I shudder and want to think that will never happen to me even though it will. That thought that used to keep me up all night crying into my pillow is too scary to approach right now.

Just then a screech echoes against my eardrums and though its just the bus I jump like the devil himself pulled up outside to collect me. Either way it is taking me straight to hell.

..............................

Its like when Dani Zimmerman froze the rest of the student body froze with her. The halls are quiet even though they are full of movement, but it is like everyone is holding their breath like they're afraid to offend anyone for laughing too soon. Maybe I'm just being overdramatic. Sloan, Jessica, and the goth girl, Hope or Faith or something, stride through the school like nothing is off, if anything Sloan looking even more pissed than usual with her posse of mindless followers, a mitchmatch assembly of Rachel's former friends and high school regects. Sloan giving me a sidelong glance and the wafting smell of too much perfume as she passes by. Shay ran up to my locker like nothing was wrong, and I found her leaning against the wall when I closed the door.

"Hahl-iday, did you do the algebra homework." I know this is code for 'I didn't do the algebra homework', but I play along anyway.

"Yes." she pretends to be genuinely concerned, and nods along, her eyes bulging more than usual. I guess she remembered, her 4th grade pool party when she invited everyone in the class but anti social Danielle and Gina Vera who had had a crush on the same boy as Shaylee at the time. Looks like I haven't been the only one a little messed up. I went back to getting my books when Shay plucked a paper from my folder.

"Good, because I didn't. Thank you for letting me copy the-" she was gone before she finished.

"Yeah, you're welcome."

..............................

I could feel the day slip away, and back at home with nothing to do since the swim season ended I laid on my bed staring at the old popcorn ceiling. It was silent except for the faint buzz of my cell phone. I roll over on the floral-on-white sheets and slide the phone out of the tightly stretched jean pockets.

Katherine: Hey

hey

Katherine: So.....

just cut to it

Katherine: ok. I was thinking about Dani. I mean, her parents must be heartbroken. I feel terrible that I never got to know her and, idk...nicer to her.

kat, always so concerned :)

Katherine: What's that supposed to mean?

sorry, I shouldn't have anything.

Katherine: ...Anyway, maybe we should put something in that box they have on display with all the old school pictures of her on it.

i don't think i know enough about her.

Katherine: Knew. knew enough about her.

There are no more texts so I turn off my phone and let it drop to the floor. I feel like a slug. Finally I stand up and move a few feet to my desk where half finished pictures are coating the whole surface and a good chunk of the floor. I want to draw something but instead just grip the pencil until my fingertips go numb. I can practically feel every last drop of talent ebbing out through them, the half blank pictures that I have spilling out of boxes and shoved under my bed will never be finished. Finally my hand unfreezes and sketch a loose, lazy figure with too many dark stray lines. I was always dependant on my one skill I never thought that the saying you don't know its good until its gone could be so true. Until the light outside fades I am bent over with a red, cramped up hand, asking my mom to leave my dinner on the counter.

Finally I'm done and an eerie face stares back at me from the paper that I would sometimes rather not remember. Danielle. After I am done I notice something odd about the picture. She had Sloan's sharp, degrading eyes.

..............................

"Oh, good, you're here." Shay called out from her backyard. I'd cut across a few back yards and hopped a bent up metal link fence to get to her house, blue and one-and-a-half stories tall with the basement poking out of the ground. Shaylee was leaning against her brother's old bike, he'd moved out two years ago and his old stuff was littered all around her house.

She sat up off the bike with her manilla color scarf blowing in the wind over a sweatshirt. The air was humid so her hair was up all around her head like she was an electrocuted cartoon character. She tilted her head back and belted a lyric from an old show tune that was always blasting full volume from her headphones.

"So, Holly, I was thinking-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there for a second. If this is chasing people down the street with eyeholes cut out of newspapers I am going to remind you how that turned out last time."

"No, nothing like that. I was thinking you should sleep over tonight, we can finally talk about boys." she winked at me with a sly smile. I know Shay and I know she thought I need to be distracted from feeling bad Dani. Shay knows me too, and she was right. We had done this so many times before, baking marshmellows in the mircrowave, watching Grease for the first time, other cliche girl-stuff. But I don't think I should take my mind off of this. Maybe some things are important enough that you just have to deal with them.

It would feel like a sham. Our time to be kids was already expired, and it seemed like there was no point in pretending. I shook my head and started to plod through the damp grass home.