Frosted RosesKAI MOORE
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Issue 5
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“I like your roses.”
John stopped mid prune. “You do?” He pulled his head out of the rose bush. “They don’t smell very nice, though. And they don’t look like they’re supposed to.”
“Still, they’re prettier than anything else on this block.”
It was true. Out of the entire stretch of drab homes shoved together, the exact same block copy and pasted across the entire neighborhood, John’s roses were the only spot of color.
“Did you just move in?” John asked.
“Yes. From up north.”
John laughed. “Well, you’re not going to get much snow down here. It’s so hot—”
“You can fry an egg on the sidewalk. I know, I’ve tried.”
“Did it work?” John peered around the young woman. He didn’t see any sizzling yolks on the cracked sidewalk outside her house.
“I did yesterday, after I finished unpacking. It tasted fine.”
“You ate it?” John’s question finished in a rasp before he broke into a bout of coughing. The ash falling from the sky was thick today. “We should get inside. I’m not sure what it’s like up north, but here, you never stay outside in the summer.”
“For us, it’s never stay outside in the winter. Or at least it was. The cold’s not a problem anymore.”
John opened the door to his house for his new neighbor. He called out a hello to parents that wouldn't get home until after dark. From the woman’s fine fur coat and the way she’d wasted an egg on the concrete, she didn’t have to worry about money. So he would pretend not to either, pretend that his parents didn’t work from seven AM to seven PM every day.
A gust of wind and ash followed the woman in before John could shut the door. Blinding heat burst on the surface of his eyes. The surety of the street outside was replaced by a scarlet pain as his eyelids snapped shut. John stumbled into the wall.
“Are you alright?”
The ash in his eyes kept him from speaking as he clawed towards the kitchen sink. John’s head slammed into the side of a table. “Can you help me up?”
The young woman didn’t answer.
A pair of heavy boots bounded down the stairs. Of course. Mari. “John? Did you get ash in your eye?” Her voice paused. “Hey, who are you?”
“I’m your new neighbor.”
“Not the time for a handshake, miss.” That was just like Mari. Nucleafam, the company in charge of reassigning children, had sent Mari to live with John’s family after her own borough had turned to ash. His family had been picked because John and Mari were the same age, and both of his parents were predicted to live at least another ten years. For a year now, he had planted flowers while she tended to the vegetables.
Mari grabbed John under his armpits and heaved him up. He heard the faucet squeak and then water sprayed across the top of his head. Grabbing the rag passed to him, John wiped off his face and let the water dribble into his eyes.
He blinked them clear and leaned back. The girl and the young woman were still blurs, one a watercolor of a forest and the other a blank piece of paper. But at least he could see. “Sorry about that,” John said. “Not really the best way to meet a new neighbor.”
“It’s alright. How are your eyes? They look quite red.”
“I’m fine,” John said. The woman became clear, and he was more than fine. He had never seen anyone more beautiful or more handsome, and he doubted that he would again. There was a delicacy that reminded him of a snowflake but also the sharp tip of an icicle.
How odd. He’d never seen snow before, or an icicle. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been cold.
But then, what a wonder this woman must be, if she was able to give him a sense of something unfelt in all his life. John wanted to bow to her. She must be a queen to hold such power.
“John, you’re not looking too good.” Mari, towering over him as always, helped John sit down. Had she always been so overbearing? He could pull out a chair on his own.
“I’m fine,” John snapped.
That evening, John couldn’t stop talking about their new neighbor during dinner with Mari and his mothers. “I’ve never met anyone like her, Mom. She’s so graceful.”
“I don’t know,” Mari said, passing him a bowl of formerly air-dried peas. “I didn’t see anything too special about her. But then again, she left pretty soon after I came downstairs. When Ms. Doe called to say that she would be late.”
“Why were you late?” Mama asked.
Mom flushed. “It’s just work.”
John’s knee bounced under the table. He didn’t get it. Why were they having the exact same conversation they did every single night, when they could be talking about her?
“I’m going to bed,” he said, chair legs scraping against the floor as he shoved it back.
“It’s only nine,” Mama said. “The sky was still red half an hour ago.”
“And don’t you have homework?” Mom asked.
“I did it already,” John lied. He hated lying to his parents, but they just wouldn’t leave him alone. They never had. Even as he raced up the stairs, he could still see Mama’s massive nose poking into his business and Mom’s lips flapping as she asked why his grades were so bad.
Flashlight in hand and covers over his head, John tried to sketch his new neighbor. But for some odd reason, he couldn’t even remember what she looked like. He knew what she felt like, like hot chocolate on a winter day. But John wasn’t a good enough artist to draw a feeling. He never had been, and as he thought about it now, flicking through the drawings in his sketchbook, he knew that he never would be.
“I know you haven’t done your homework,” Mari said through the vent below the head of his bed. The storage closet that was now Mari’s room shared a wall, and a vent, with John’s. There was just enough room for Mari’s mattress and some shelves nailed to the wall above them. “Look, if you’re having trouble with the Morality worksheet, we can do it together. I’ve got a good grade in that class. I can help you.”
John wanted to tell her that bragging was going to drive all of her friends away, but he stopped himself just in time. Mari would never help him if he said that. “Can you just read me your answers? Like, for question one, it asks, ‘What should you do if you hear your mother and father plotting against Mr. One.’ Which choice is it?”
“C, turn them in.”
John laughed. “Of course it is. Hey, do you think if I turned Mom and Mama in they’d raise my grade in Morality?”
Mari smacked the metal grating, sending John rolling back as the vent rattled. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s just a joke! Come on, can’t you lighten up?” He groaned.
“Well, it’s a terrible joke. What’s gotten into you?” Mari sounded like she was on the brink of tears. For a second, John’s stomach twisted, until he remembered what had happened to Mari’s parent. Of course she’d be sympathetic to insurgents. “You can do your own homework. I’m not letting you copy off of mine anymore!” she yelled through the vent.
“Mari, wait—” John pressed his face to the grate, but she just kicked her boots against it. “Wow. Real mature of you. You know, one day Mom and Mama are gonna get sick of you doing shit like this, and then you’ll be out of here!”
John had once had an entire box of photos and artifacts from his childhood in Mari’s bedroom, when it had still been his family’s closet. And his parents had had several crates. Each box was a time machine back to their own childhoods, when there had been trees in front of every building. In some of Mama’s photos, the ones she’d gotten from her grandfather, there had even been a blue sky.
A handful of pebbles clattered against the window a few minutes later. John yanked back the curtains. Standing on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the front of his house was the woman. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her fur coat, and she stared up at him with a half-quirked smile.
John’s jaw dropped. What was she doing? Had she come to see him?
The woman crooked a finger at him. It seemed that she had.
Shoving his arms into the sleeves of an ironed shirt and buttoning it up as quickly as he could, John pushed open his bedroom door. “I’m going out,” he yelled, hoping that his parents would be asleep in front of the television.
“Where?” Mama asked. Of course she’d heard him.
“Just to get some fresh air.” As he passed by the bathroom, John checked his hair in the mirror. It was a good thing that his school’s biweekly buzzing day had been a couple days ago, otherwise his grey hair would have already grown patchy. Mari was one of the few people John had met whose hair grew in fully and in the colors he’d seen in Mama’s photographs. He’d used to believe that it was because she’d been born by the coast, where it had taken longer for the green cloud to spread. But now he wondered if it was because she’d gone against the Morality Codes and gotten a wig. Hopefully that wasn’t the case, because then he’d have to report her. She’d deserve it, of course, but then his mothers would be mad at him.
The woman was already walking away when he opened the front door. She almost seemed regretful, as though she wished that she hadn’t pulled him outside.
“You’ve done your buttons wrong.”
John rebuttoned his shirt as he caught up to her. “Why are we heading towards town?”
“I’ve got a car in one of the garages by the general’s office.”
John’s eyes widened. “I thought you had to be a Two to have one?”
“There are ways around Mr. One’s orders.”
John chided himself for being surprised that the woman had evaded Mr. One. Of course she had; she was the smartest person out there.
The security guard at the garage’s entrance said nothing when the metal detector went off as they entered. The guard only waved, bloodshot eyes following the woman as she strode past the grey pillars.
“Do you know them?” John asked.
“It’s not about knowing. Even if we’d never met before, that guard would do anything for me.”
“Really?” John wished, desperately, that he could have that kind of power. “You should take them with us. They probably have a clearance card.”
“That would be nice. Unfortunately, I’ve tried their patience enough. That’s why we’re doing this tonight.”
“So what are we going to do?” John pulled open the driver’s door for the woman before jogging around to his own side. He sunk into the white seat, the sharp smell of leather billowing up.
“Just a little payback.”
“I like the sound of that.” The woman turned to face him.
“Look, kid, I should say something before we start. I know that you’re not seeing things clearly right now, and I’m kind of using that to my advantage, but you can still stay out of this. It’s not going to be fun. It’s necessary, and important, but I can’t go through with this until I give you the chance to walk away.”
John’s throat dried up. Why was she giving him the chance to leave? Did she not want him there, not think him strong enough to help her? John ignored her words about him not seeing clearly or her admission of manipulation, because of course he was seeing clearly. The ash no longer burned his eyes when it fell into them, and John had never been so sure of anything in his life as he was of the woman’s mysterious cause. “I’m staying.”
Before the words could finish leaving his mouth, the woman had whipped the car into reverse. The trunk plowed into the car behind them. John shot forward, seatbelt useless in his hand. The woman’s arm shot out to keep him from hitting the dashboard.
“Sorry about that. I only just learned how to drive.”
John gently removed her arm, his chest freezing where her skin had met his shirt. “It’s fine.”
“Hey! What the hell’s going on over here?” The security guard whipped around the corner, stumbling as they skidded to a stop. The blood had left their eyes and rushed instead to their cheeks, each an angry rose. “God damnit, what am I going to tell my boss? You’re going to get me fired!”
“It’s funny, what knocks people back to reality.”
The woman shifted the car into first gear and drove towards the guard. “You’re going to hit them!”
“They’ll get out of the way.”
John wasn’t so sure, but at the last second, the security guard pressed themselves against the wall. The woman rammed through the lowered gate and sent the red and white metal screeching across the asphalt. There wasn’t a single scratch on the car.
John gasped as the woman crowed, shifting the car to second and then third and all the way up to sixth until they were roaring down the street. Clouds covered the moon and the shattered streetlights had never been replaced, so it was only them and the yellow headlights as the town faded behind them.
“How fast are we going?” John yelled over the guttural roar of the engine. The fields they passed blurred to a brown smear.
“I don’t know.”
John touched his chest. There was still a roughly rectangular block of frigid skin where her arm had pressed against him. His nerves whispered at the unfamiliar feeling.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m so cold, aren’t you?”
John nodded.
“I’ve got it all locked up inside me. The cold, I mean. Everything that’s left.”
“And Mr. One’s just letting you run around with it?” John asked.
“He doesn’t know. And as long as we get out of here quickly, he never will.”
John looked out the window. They were nearing a bridge. His eyes followed the river below to its end, where dark rapids met the white caps of the ocean. Without any other cars on the road he could hear every single droplet hit the sand. “Wow,” he whispered.
“You’re going to want to hold on.”
The woman yanked the wheel all the way to the left. They spun across the asphalt, John screaming as the car rolled over the concrete barrier and off the bridge. The woman’s laughter was bright even as John’s heart froze in his chest.
But then they were riding a sleigh over the river’s frozen rapids. John clapped his hands over his mouth at the sight of the six white reindeer pulling them. He turned in his seat and looked behind them. The few lights of his borough were long gone, the only bright spots the red and orange clusters of wildfires that Mr. One’s forces had yet to put out. A tear froze halfway down his cheek. “Why do I miss it? I never loved that place before.”
“Is it the people?”
John shook his head. The names of his school friends were already vanishing into the folds of every little thing he hated about them. And his family had been bothering him all day. “I don’t know,” He said. “Maybe I miss it because it was safe.” The woman let out a snort and then grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me about it.”
“About what?” John asked.
“About every little thing you hate about them. Why it’s so hard to love the people back there, to live in that place. Just don’t say anything good.”
His stomach twisted as ice spilled from her fingertips and frost spread down his sleeve. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to help me, give me advice or something? Tell me that it’s going to be okay?”
“It’s not going to be okay. Sorry to tell you, kid, but there’s nothing you can do that will change that.”
“Why would you say that?” John couldn’t stop shivering.
“Because it’s true. You think it’s not? I used to live in a place where the sky was still blue. But it didn’t matter if the cost of ruling every last blade of grass and pumping out every last dollar meant that that glorious, robin’s egg sky turned as red as blood. Nobody cared but me.”
“Who’s Robin?” John asked, because he didn’t know how she would react if he pointed out all the others that did care. He cared. His parents and friends cared. Mari cared too, even if it was in a dangerous way, a way that would have the Twos knocking on their door.
“It doesn’t matter what a robin was. What matters is getting this ice out of me and giving it to everyone else. That might be enough to stop the fires, and the green cloud. But I can’t do it alone. I’m so cold that I can’t do anything, be anything, and there’s a lot of things I need to do, and be, to free the cold.”
The woman patted John’s cheek. Her hand wasn’t anywhere near warm, but his skin didn’t burn when she drew near anymore. And as they burst through frozen waves, John wanted nothing more than the sleigh to turn over. He knew that he’d float, like an ice cube. Or a corpse.
“I want to go back,” he whispered. Even as the cold was replaced by warmth, he knew that it was the false warmth his parents had warned him about. The warmth of their northern homes when the cold grew so strong that you fooled yourself into thinking it was fire.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Though your friend, your Mari, she’s looking for you. Maybe she’ll even find you. Or maybe our revenge will hit first, and all that will be left of this world is the undisturbed snow.”
“I don’t want to help you anymore,” John pleaded, tears pushing against the ash in his eyes. His jaw was so stiff he could barely get the words out. “Take it back, please. I don’t want to be cold anymore.”
“It’s too late. Just give up, and maybe you’ll make it out of this alive.”
John couldn’t see the shore anymore.
John stopped mid prune. “You do?” He pulled his head out of the rose bush. “They don’t smell very nice, though. And they don’t look like they’re supposed to.”
“Still, they’re prettier than anything else on this block.”
It was true. Out of the entire stretch of drab homes shoved together, the exact same block copy and pasted across the entire neighborhood, John’s roses were the only spot of color.
“Did you just move in?” John asked.
“Yes. From up north.”
John laughed. “Well, you’re not going to get much snow down here. It’s so hot—”
“You can fry an egg on the sidewalk. I know, I’ve tried.”
“Did it work?” John peered around the young woman. He didn’t see any sizzling yolks on the cracked sidewalk outside her house.
“I did yesterday, after I finished unpacking. It tasted fine.”
“You ate it?” John’s question finished in a rasp before he broke into a bout of coughing. The ash falling from the sky was thick today. “We should get inside. I’m not sure what it’s like up north, but here, you never stay outside in the summer.”
“For us, it’s never stay outside in the winter. Or at least it was. The cold’s not a problem anymore.”
John opened the door to his house for his new neighbor. He called out a hello to parents that wouldn't get home until after dark. From the woman’s fine fur coat and the way she’d wasted an egg on the concrete, she didn’t have to worry about money. So he would pretend not to either, pretend that his parents didn’t work from seven AM to seven PM every day.
A gust of wind and ash followed the woman in before John could shut the door. Blinding heat burst on the surface of his eyes. The surety of the street outside was replaced by a scarlet pain as his eyelids snapped shut. John stumbled into the wall.
“Are you alright?”
The ash in his eyes kept him from speaking as he clawed towards the kitchen sink. John’s head slammed into the side of a table. “Can you help me up?”
The young woman didn’t answer.
A pair of heavy boots bounded down the stairs. Of course. Mari. “John? Did you get ash in your eye?” Her voice paused. “Hey, who are you?”
“I’m your new neighbor.”
“Not the time for a handshake, miss.” That was just like Mari. Nucleafam, the company in charge of reassigning children, had sent Mari to live with John’s family after her own borough had turned to ash. His family had been picked because John and Mari were the same age, and both of his parents were predicted to live at least another ten years. For a year now, he had planted flowers while she tended to the vegetables.
Mari grabbed John under his armpits and heaved him up. He heard the faucet squeak and then water sprayed across the top of his head. Grabbing the rag passed to him, John wiped off his face and let the water dribble into his eyes.
He blinked them clear and leaned back. The girl and the young woman were still blurs, one a watercolor of a forest and the other a blank piece of paper. But at least he could see. “Sorry about that,” John said. “Not really the best way to meet a new neighbor.”
“It’s alright. How are your eyes? They look quite red.”
“I’m fine,” John said. The woman became clear, and he was more than fine. He had never seen anyone more beautiful or more handsome, and he doubted that he would again. There was a delicacy that reminded him of a snowflake but also the sharp tip of an icicle.
How odd. He’d never seen snow before, or an icicle. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been cold.
But then, what a wonder this woman must be, if she was able to give him a sense of something unfelt in all his life. John wanted to bow to her. She must be a queen to hold such power.
“John, you’re not looking too good.” Mari, towering over him as always, helped John sit down. Had she always been so overbearing? He could pull out a chair on his own.
“I’m fine,” John snapped.
That evening, John couldn’t stop talking about their new neighbor during dinner with Mari and his mothers. “I’ve never met anyone like her, Mom. She’s so graceful.”
“I don’t know,” Mari said, passing him a bowl of formerly air-dried peas. “I didn’t see anything too special about her. But then again, she left pretty soon after I came downstairs. When Ms. Doe called to say that she would be late.”
“Why were you late?” Mama asked.
Mom flushed. “It’s just work.”
John’s knee bounced under the table. He didn’t get it. Why were they having the exact same conversation they did every single night, when they could be talking about her?
“I’m going to bed,” he said, chair legs scraping against the floor as he shoved it back.
“It’s only nine,” Mama said. “The sky was still red half an hour ago.”
“And don’t you have homework?” Mom asked.
“I did it already,” John lied. He hated lying to his parents, but they just wouldn’t leave him alone. They never had. Even as he raced up the stairs, he could still see Mama’s massive nose poking into his business and Mom’s lips flapping as she asked why his grades were so bad.
Flashlight in hand and covers over his head, John tried to sketch his new neighbor. But for some odd reason, he couldn’t even remember what she looked like. He knew what she felt like, like hot chocolate on a winter day. But John wasn’t a good enough artist to draw a feeling. He never had been, and as he thought about it now, flicking through the drawings in his sketchbook, he knew that he never would be.
“I know you haven’t done your homework,” Mari said through the vent below the head of his bed. The storage closet that was now Mari’s room shared a wall, and a vent, with John’s. There was just enough room for Mari’s mattress and some shelves nailed to the wall above them. “Look, if you’re having trouble with the Morality worksheet, we can do it together. I’ve got a good grade in that class. I can help you.”
John wanted to tell her that bragging was going to drive all of her friends away, but he stopped himself just in time. Mari would never help him if he said that. “Can you just read me your answers? Like, for question one, it asks, ‘What should you do if you hear your mother and father plotting against Mr. One.’ Which choice is it?”
“C, turn them in.”
John laughed. “Of course it is. Hey, do you think if I turned Mom and Mama in they’d raise my grade in Morality?”
Mari smacked the metal grating, sending John rolling back as the vent rattled. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s just a joke! Come on, can’t you lighten up?” He groaned.
“Well, it’s a terrible joke. What’s gotten into you?” Mari sounded like she was on the brink of tears. For a second, John’s stomach twisted, until he remembered what had happened to Mari’s parent. Of course she’d be sympathetic to insurgents. “You can do your own homework. I’m not letting you copy off of mine anymore!” she yelled through the vent.
“Mari, wait—” John pressed his face to the grate, but she just kicked her boots against it. “Wow. Real mature of you. You know, one day Mom and Mama are gonna get sick of you doing shit like this, and then you’ll be out of here!”
John had once had an entire box of photos and artifacts from his childhood in Mari’s bedroom, when it had still been his family’s closet. And his parents had had several crates. Each box was a time machine back to their own childhoods, when there had been trees in front of every building. In some of Mama’s photos, the ones she’d gotten from her grandfather, there had even been a blue sky.
A handful of pebbles clattered against the window a few minutes later. John yanked back the curtains. Standing on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the front of his house was the woman. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of her fur coat, and she stared up at him with a half-quirked smile.
John’s jaw dropped. What was she doing? Had she come to see him?
The woman crooked a finger at him. It seemed that she had.
Shoving his arms into the sleeves of an ironed shirt and buttoning it up as quickly as he could, John pushed open his bedroom door. “I’m going out,” he yelled, hoping that his parents would be asleep in front of the television.
“Where?” Mama asked. Of course she’d heard him.
“Just to get some fresh air.” As he passed by the bathroom, John checked his hair in the mirror. It was a good thing that his school’s biweekly buzzing day had been a couple days ago, otherwise his grey hair would have already grown patchy. Mari was one of the few people John had met whose hair grew in fully and in the colors he’d seen in Mama’s photographs. He’d used to believe that it was because she’d been born by the coast, where it had taken longer for the green cloud to spread. But now he wondered if it was because she’d gone against the Morality Codes and gotten a wig. Hopefully that wasn’t the case, because then he’d have to report her. She’d deserve it, of course, but then his mothers would be mad at him.
The woman was already walking away when he opened the front door. She almost seemed regretful, as though she wished that she hadn’t pulled him outside.
“You’ve done your buttons wrong.”
John rebuttoned his shirt as he caught up to her. “Why are we heading towards town?”
“I’ve got a car in one of the garages by the general’s office.”
John’s eyes widened. “I thought you had to be a Two to have one?”
“There are ways around Mr. One’s orders.”
John chided himself for being surprised that the woman had evaded Mr. One. Of course she had; she was the smartest person out there.
The security guard at the garage’s entrance said nothing when the metal detector went off as they entered. The guard only waved, bloodshot eyes following the woman as she strode past the grey pillars.
“Do you know them?” John asked.
“It’s not about knowing. Even if we’d never met before, that guard would do anything for me.”
“Really?” John wished, desperately, that he could have that kind of power. “You should take them with us. They probably have a clearance card.”
“That would be nice. Unfortunately, I’ve tried their patience enough. That’s why we’re doing this tonight.”
“So what are we going to do?” John pulled open the driver’s door for the woman before jogging around to his own side. He sunk into the white seat, the sharp smell of leather billowing up.
“Just a little payback.”
“I like the sound of that.” The woman turned to face him.
“Look, kid, I should say something before we start. I know that you’re not seeing things clearly right now, and I’m kind of using that to my advantage, but you can still stay out of this. It’s not going to be fun. It’s necessary, and important, but I can’t go through with this until I give you the chance to walk away.”
John’s throat dried up. Why was she giving him the chance to leave? Did she not want him there, not think him strong enough to help her? John ignored her words about him not seeing clearly or her admission of manipulation, because of course he was seeing clearly. The ash no longer burned his eyes when it fell into them, and John had never been so sure of anything in his life as he was of the woman’s mysterious cause. “I’m staying.”
Before the words could finish leaving his mouth, the woman had whipped the car into reverse. The trunk plowed into the car behind them. John shot forward, seatbelt useless in his hand. The woman’s arm shot out to keep him from hitting the dashboard.
“Sorry about that. I only just learned how to drive.”
John gently removed her arm, his chest freezing where her skin had met his shirt. “It’s fine.”
“Hey! What the hell’s going on over here?” The security guard whipped around the corner, stumbling as they skidded to a stop. The blood had left their eyes and rushed instead to their cheeks, each an angry rose. “God damnit, what am I going to tell my boss? You’re going to get me fired!”
“It’s funny, what knocks people back to reality.”
The woman shifted the car into first gear and drove towards the guard. “You’re going to hit them!”
“They’ll get out of the way.”
John wasn’t so sure, but at the last second, the security guard pressed themselves against the wall. The woman rammed through the lowered gate and sent the red and white metal screeching across the asphalt. There wasn’t a single scratch on the car.
John gasped as the woman crowed, shifting the car to second and then third and all the way up to sixth until they were roaring down the street. Clouds covered the moon and the shattered streetlights had never been replaced, so it was only them and the yellow headlights as the town faded behind them.
“How fast are we going?” John yelled over the guttural roar of the engine. The fields they passed blurred to a brown smear.
“I don’t know.”
John touched his chest. There was still a roughly rectangular block of frigid skin where her arm had pressed against him. His nerves whispered at the unfamiliar feeling.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m so cold, aren’t you?”
John nodded.
“I’ve got it all locked up inside me. The cold, I mean. Everything that’s left.”
“And Mr. One’s just letting you run around with it?” John asked.
“He doesn’t know. And as long as we get out of here quickly, he never will.”
John looked out the window. They were nearing a bridge. His eyes followed the river below to its end, where dark rapids met the white caps of the ocean. Without any other cars on the road he could hear every single droplet hit the sand. “Wow,” he whispered.
“You’re going to want to hold on.”
The woman yanked the wheel all the way to the left. They spun across the asphalt, John screaming as the car rolled over the concrete barrier and off the bridge. The woman’s laughter was bright even as John’s heart froze in his chest.
But then they were riding a sleigh over the river’s frozen rapids. John clapped his hands over his mouth at the sight of the six white reindeer pulling them. He turned in his seat and looked behind them. The few lights of his borough were long gone, the only bright spots the red and orange clusters of wildfires that Mr. One’s forces had yet to put out. A tear froze halfway down his cheek. “Why do I miss it? I never loved that place before.”
“Is it the people?”
John shook his head. The names of his school friends were already vanishing into the folds of every little thing he hated about them. And his family had been bothering him all day. “I don’t know,” He said. “Maybe I miss it because it was safe.” The woman let out a snort and then grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me about it.”
“About what?” John asked.
“About every little thing you hate about them. Why it’s so hard to love the people back there, to live in that place. Just don’t say anything good.”
His stomach twisted as ice spilled from her fingertips and frost spread down his sleeve. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to help me, give me advice or something? Tell me that it’s going to be okay?”
“It’s not going to be okay. Sorry to tell you, kid, but there’s nothing you can do that will change that.”
“Why would you say that?” John couldn’t stop shivering.
“Because it’s true. You think it’s not? I used to live in a place where the sky was still blue. But it didn’t matter if the cost of ruling every last blade of grass and pumping out every last dollar meant that that glorious, robin’s egg sky turned as red as blood. Nobody cared but me.”
“Who’s Robin?” John asked, because he didn’t know how she would react if he pointed out all the others that did care. He cared. His parents and friends cared. Mari cared too, even if it was in a dangerous way, a way that would have the Twos knocking on their door.
“It doesn’t matter what a robin was. What matters is getting this ice out of me and giving it to everyone else. That might be enough to stop the fires, and the green cloud. But I can’t do it alone. I’m so cold that I can’t do anything, be anything, and there’s a lot of things I need to do, and be, to free the cold.”
The woman patted John’s cheek. Her hand wasn’t anywhere near warm, but his skin didn’t burn when she drew near anymore. And as they burst through frozen waves, John wanted nothing more than the sleigh to turn over. He knew that he’d float, like an ice cube. Or a corpse.
“I want to go back,” he whispered. Even as the cold was replaced by warmth, he knew that it was the false warmth his parents had warned him about. The warmth of their northern homes when the cold grew so strong that you fooled yourself into thinking it was fire.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Though your friend, your Mari, she’s looking for you. Maybe she’ll even find you. Or maybe our revenge will hit first, and all that will be left of this world is the undisturbed snow.”
“I don’t want to help you anymore,” John pleaded, tears pushing against the ash in his eyes. His jaw was so stiff he could barely get the words out. “Take it back, please. I don’t want to be cold anymore.”
“It’s too late. Just give up, and maybe you’ll make it out of this alive.”
John couldn’t see the shore anymore.