Snow Angels

I pressed my back against the house’s cream siding. My breath was held, so that no fog escaped. I was as silent as my surroundings.

It was snowing, or had just finished– it was hard to tell which flakes came from the sky and which were blown off the corners of the roof. Diana’s yard had become a sort of wonderland: what seemed miles of virgin snow against a looming black sky. 

“. . .en? Where’d you go?”

Diana’s voice, soft and lilting, drifted my way. I craned my neck around the corner. She was stumbling through the snow like an ill-equipped duckling in her purple snowsuit. Between the hat and the fluffy scarf over the bottom half of her face, she wouldn’t have been recognizable if it weren’t for her brown eyes and the renegade black curl that had dropped from her forehead, bouncing with every movement. 

I ducked back behind my wall, then crouched down to steal a chunk of snow. My hands were less than precise— my fingerless gloves had ensured a certain level of numbness right out the gate. 

Diana began to make her way over to the side of the house, where I was currently hidden. I didn’t give her time to find me.

“Di! Watch it!”

I leapt out from my hiding place and nailed her in the face with my newly-made projectile. It burst into a cloud of flakes— it wasn’t heavy snow— but she still sputtered and whined as if I’d actually hurt her.

“Lauren!”

I bounded forward and wrapped my arms around her waist. She squirmed, trying to get out, but I held tight. We were somewhere between a waltz and a wrestling match.

“S-stop it!” she said. “You’re going to get hurt!”

“Hm? What are you talking about?” I stuck my frozen hand to her bare cheek.

“Ah!” She pushed me off with newfound strength. 

I fell onto my back. There must’ve been a rock or something that I hit my head on, because for a moment I was hit with a sudden wave of déjà vu, and my ears were ringing. My body numb, indistinct yelling in my ear— I swore there was someone, someone right next to me. That I had two bodies, and neither could move.

The stars moved in double images, colors bleeding red and blue, before Diana came running, and I snapped back to the present. She clutched her head, standing over me.

“Are you o-kay? Do you need help getting up?”

She looked so funny, standing there— her eyes, with the big lashes like a cartoon bunny, looked absurd staring down at me. We had known each other all our lives, and sometimes I felt as if Diana would never change. She would always be sweet and shy, always keep the baby fat on her cheeks and stomach, always be a wisher and a dreamer without steel in her spine.

I began pumping my arms and legs. Diana jumped back, startled. Laughter (and spit) bubbled in the back of my throat.

“Don’t come any closer!” I said. “You’ll ruin my snow angel.”

Diana reached out her hands, bundled up with thick mittens, and eventually I took them. I took a running leap to try and prevent my angel from having a runny bottom.

When I turned to admire the work, the snow angel was pinned between the lights from Diana’s house and the street; it looked more like a hole to China than a messenger from heaven. 

“Please don’t do that again,” Diana said, her eyes misty. She was looking up, past my face and towards the sky. She reached a hand not holding mine, and pointed. “A shooting star!”

I didn’t care about that kind of stuff. While Diana made a silent wish, I looked around her front yard. There was only one streetlight even somewhat near her house; most of the yard was reserved to deep, foreign darkness. Dead bushes black under layers of snow, crosses stretching creepy shadows along the house’s siding.

I stiffened. “Did you hear that?”

Diana, who had been looking as if she was about to speak, snapped her mouth closed. “What?”

“I thought I heard something in the bushes, over. . . there!” I pointed to the spot where Diana’s mom usually planted her marigolds in the spring. 

“Oh!” Diana put her hand over her mouth. She drew closer to me without thinking. “Oh, I—”

“Shh!” Quiet, quiet. Our ears were filled with the dull, muffled silence of snow. The drift littered white powder over our shoulders. Diana breathed heavily against my neck, terrified. I could feel her pounding heart. Almost certainly, she was far ahead of me, imagining what sort of dangers— animal, human, neither?— could be lurking out there. Just beyond our reach.

When she spoke, it was hardly a murmur. “What do you think it is?”

“It could be anything,” I breathed. “But most likely, it’s—” I withdrew the hand behind my back, where I’d hidden my other snowball. “— your worst nightmare!”

I stuffed it down the back of her snowsuit. She shrieked, and took off running. I chased after her, in circles, until finally I tackled her from behind. My lanky arms trapped her in a bear hug.

She squealed, and began whacking at my head and shoulders with her mittens. “Lau! Ren! That! Was! Not! Funny!”

“You’re right,” I said. “It was hilarious.”

“Yo! Losers!”

We looked up, still in our compromising position. Eleanor was silhouetted in the doorway, an arm on the jamb and legs crossed. Her eyes were hooded, obviously bored.

“Mom wants you in.” She gestured with her thumb to the light behind her.

Perhaps I was colder than I had thought; upon entering the Colón home I turned into a tingling, red turkey. Diana’s mother helped extricate her daughter from her snow gear while Dad laid my coat and gloves by the fire.

I kicked my feet at their kitchen island until Diana slid onto the stool next to mine. Sharing a blanket, we were joined by Diana’s mom, my dad, and two cups of hot chocolate.

“I’ve had to ban Eleanor from the living room television. She’s always on Discovery, and there’s only so much doomsday I can handle.” Mrs. Colón was brushing a hand through her short hair, eyes closed in a world weary sigh.

Eleanor heard this as she stomped grumpily up the staircase.

“You guys are just scaredy-cats!” she called down.

Mrs. Colón slammed her hand against the table, making the spoons in our hot chocolates tinkle like bells. “That is no way to speak to your mother!”

But Eleanor had already run to her room, and closed the door. We heard the dull throb of the bass as she turned up her speakers. Mrs. Colón sighed again.

“Oh, it’s all in good fun.” Dad laughed.

Mrs. Colón frowned into her cup of coffee. 

“You know about that, right?” Diana whispered in my ear as I leaned towards her. I shook my head, and she grew nervous. “The end of the world, next year. They made a movie about it.”

“Ohh . . .” I did remember. 

“This isn’t appropriate for the children,” Mrs. Colón said at last, ruining our fun. 

Me and Diana were sent upstairs, blankets trailing and cold cocoa in hand. 

In the upstairs hallway we met Eleanor again. Her hair was even longer than Diana’s, tied into a loose bun. She had on a thick flannel shirt and fashionably ripped jeans, charcoal leggings underneath. She was also closing her door, her coat unzipped and heavy boots loosely laced, with a messenger bag swinging from her shoulder.

Diana stopped, clutching her blanket. “Where are you going?”

“None of your business, Booger.” Eleanor flicked her thumb, turning her septum piercing out. She began to walk away.

“But . . . but it’s New Year’s . . .” Diana said, though it came out as more of a whimper.

Eleanor’s tall back was already going down the stairs, however, slipping her earbuds in. 

Diana turned to me and, talks of Mayan apocalypses continuing downstairs, shared a conspiracy of her own. “I’ve heard her on the phone all night. I think she has a boyfriend.”

“Really?”

Diana nodded. “A secret boyfriend.”

Though she was my best friend, I had to admit that Diana was prone to flights of fancy. I hummed in reply.

I played Happy Wheels on Diana’s computer. As the hapless Segway man zoomed off to his doom, Diana sat on the shag carpet by her CD player and flipped through her music sleeves.

“Just put on Black Parade,” I said.

“Mom says I’m going to wear it out.”

“Who cares?” The little guy onscreen hit a row of spikes, bursting into a cloud of viscera. “Oh, gross! Di, check this out.”

Diana looked green even as she rose to her feet. “You know I don’t like that stuff, Lauren.”

“Just imagine it’s Sydney,” I said. 

Diana put a hand on the back of the computer chair and stared at Segway Man’s bouncing head. “That makes me feel worse.” 

I was happy to imagine someone like Sydney smeared across the pavement. Diana was too nice, sometimes. 

“You know what she said to me the other day?” I swung around in the chair and folded my arms.

Diana shook her head.

“She went, ‘oh Lauren, I noticed that your nail polish is all chipped. You know, it works better if you have gloss. How did you not know that, you stupid idiot?’”

“She didn’t say that second part?”

“No, but she thought it.”

Diana nodded. “Sydney can be mean.”

I kept on playing, but soon got bored. Diana laid down on her bed and began to read her book, kicking socked feet into the air. Her walls, still pale pink from an impulse decision made at age six, were covered in taped up CD inserts— Black Parade (of course), some Taylor Swift album, Owl City— and drawings of mine she’d rescued from the trash can.

I opened Paint and clicked around, making big blobs of gray and red.

“Eleanor looked really tired,” I said.

“She’s fine.” Diana sighed. “Mom says it's a symptom of being in high school.”

She flipped a page. I took hold of the mouse and shakily drew in a black skull.

“Don’t look now,” I said. “I’m drawing something really scary.”

Diana let out a little eep, and pulled the book closer to her face. But she was smiling.

I spooked her all the time, and not just as a joke. It was to the extent that, one time, when we were just starting middle school, I stubbed my toe on her bathroom tile and let out a shout. She’d come rushing in, and later told me, “Whenever you scream, I always come running.”

And I said, “I would, too, Di. But you’re always screaming.” 

“Because you scare me!”

We shouldn’t have been friends. We couldn’t have been more opposed, more inclined to scratch against each other. But— maybe because we were both misfits, maybe because proximity could allay any clash of personality— we stuck together like glue, two peas in a pod (as my dad said). We never fought, or at least— we never fought long enough for grudges to stick. Diana was a part of my life, same as my Dad or my house, the continued rise and fall of the sun and moon. I took her for granted.

“Sweetie?”

“Hrgh . . .”

I came to groggily. Dad was shaking my shoulder. I had fallen asleep at the computer, my face in the keyboard. I looked over to see Diana in the same situation, face smushed against Twilight’s pages. 

“Can you wake Diana up?” Dad said. “The countdown’s going to start soon.”

We trudged back into the living room together, like conjoined zombies. Dad had given us a lot of leeway; we still had 10 minutes until the ball dropped. 

In the kitchen, Mrs. Colón was laying out shot glasses, clinking against the island. Champagne for the adults and sparkling cider for us. 

Diana took out her DS and balanced it between our laps. We paid half attention as the television got louder and louder, the tinny sounds of the crowd drowning out the crackling fire. Dad joined us, standing under the TV as Mrs. Colón began handing out the shot glasses.

I looked around the room, but it was just us. “Where’s . . . ?”

Diana made a slashing motion across her throat. Even with the aborted acknowledgement, Mrs. Colón’s eyes darkened.

Dad winked at me as he un-flipped his phone and began dialing. 

“We are going to remember this night forever,” the television said. The numbers were clicking down over the Toshiba logo and storm of confetti. 25, 24, 23. . .

I met Diana’s eye. We clinked our glasses together. 

“Happy New Year!”

“¡Feliz Año Nuevo!”

Dad sputtered and coughed over his shot, his glasses going askew. Mrs. Colón took the phone, singing “Auld Lang Syne” to Mom. I hugged Diana until the excitement died down to a simmer. My face pressed against hers until we were both sweating with undue warmth; we wilted, exhausted by the long night.

“Your call has been forwarded to an automatic messaging system. . .”

 I wiped my face with my sleeve, cider sticking to my teeth. 

“She must already be asleep.” Dad removed the phone from Mrs. Colón’s grasp and shut it without a sound. “She’ll hear it in the morning.”

Dad wrapped me in a hug, lifting me straight off the couch. I was too old to be held, a lanky preteen and no longer his precious little girl. Still, I was too tired to complain. I let him have this.