Frozen in time

I was only seven when I first found out I was going to die. A boy with curly black hair and a gap between his two front teeth taught me about mortality. He was two years older than me; I know because he was in my sister’s year. On a cold December day, during morning break, he interrupted my conversation with God by pulling my ponytail hard. I turned to see him staring at me through cold eyes, so dark they were just wide pupils. With an evil pride, born of his supposed superiority in age, he told me my sister was dead, and then stuck his sticky pink tongue out before running off.

It wasn’t surprise that caused the air to trap in my throat; it wasn’t disbelief or grief. It was anger. Perhaps I already knew. The day before, when I enquired about Laura’s sudden disappearance, my parents had told me she was on holiday. As the boy’s words cut through me, letter by letter, I remembered how my mum had turned her back on me and returned to the washing up, when I asked where Laura had gone and why I hadn’t gone with her. I remembered the guilty look in her eyes when I asked when she was coming home: “Soon.”

I stood in the playground, my sister’s pink woollen gloves with yellow polka dots, covering my small hands; protecting them from the bitter winter air. I don’t know how long I was standing there. The second hand on the clock of my mind had frozen. Long after the bell rang and all the other children had returned to the orange glow of the classrooms, my teacher looked out of the window, through a gap in the children’s paintings of Father Christmas and paper snowflake cut-outs, and observed me with what might have been pity, but looked more like scorn. I thought I had done something wrong. She didn’t come to get me, or get anyone else to; she just turned away and continued to help the other children make paper chains with shiny strips of silver and gold paper. I knew I was cold, because I was shivering, but I couldn’t feel a thing.

Then it started to snow. At first just a few small flakes floated through the air, landing softly at my feet and disappearing into the grey concrete; soon millions of huge fluffy flakes, like white candyfloss, fell at once, and kept on falling, until the whole world was white.

There were woods at the end of the playground. We’d been warned to stay away from them for various reasons: bad men that ate children, wolves that ate children, drug dealers that sold children and devil worshipers that sacrificed children, amongst other things. The closest I’d dared venture before, was to peer through the rusty iron fence, with a dark curiosity, in the hope that I’d see something I shouldn’t. On this day the world felt different. The woods weren’t any scarier than life. My fear was replaced with a hungry urgency to hide. Through the thick falling snow, I ran across the playground, through the iron gate, and on and on until I didn’t recognise where I was anymore. I think that somewhere inside I believed that if I ran far enough I could run back in time and my sister would still be alive. That’s if I was thinking at all; my mind was so full it was empty.

My legs didn’t stop until my lungs began to burn so much I couldn’t take it anymore. My breath entered and exited my throat with a loud rasp, turning the air white. Lost and scared, I sat down next to a tree and closed my eyes tight. If I couldn’t see the darkness, it couldn’t see me.

I was woken by the sound of dogs. Dogs that had big deep barks and made continuous sniffing sounds, like someone with a bad cold. Fear ripped at my skin; I tried not to breathe in case they’d hear me. I was sure I was going to be eaten. But then I saw them. The dogs had men on the other end of the leads. They were pulling them through the forest. The men were shouting things that I didn’t understand, or couldn’t hear, I couldn’t tell which. A German Shepherd with thick brown and black fur came right up and sniffed me. My stifling fear was washed away with tingling relief when I saw that the men were wearing police’s uniforms; they were looking for me. I’d been rescued. I thought about all the nice food that would be waiting for me at home (we were guaranteed hot food at Christmas). I was pleased when the policeman called his dog off; confused when he petted it and told it there was nothing there. The dog whimpered and looked me straight in the eye. I tried to talk, but couldn’t find my voice. It must have frozen. There was a big commotion and I heard one of the policeman say “Oh God.” then in a whisper, “She’s here.”

Disappointment filled my heart like lead. I scrambled to my feet to see what they had found.

I saw a little girl with long brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, like mine. Her clothes were covered in snow. For a minute I thought she was me. Then I saw her gloves, my sister’s gloves, then her face, my face – and I knew she was.

I wandered off, lost in myself, a million miles away from anything I knew or understood; yet somehow at home in my environment. Drifting through the white woods, I made friends with the few animals I came across. They couldn’t talk, but they saw me, and smelt me. To them I was real. A squirrel with a thick red bushy tail followed me around and took to climbing up and down my legs as if I was a moving tree. The other animal’s honoured my presence with song and sniffs. Each time the sun set I placed a twig in the earth below an oak tree, in a dip between two of the thick snow covered brown roots. That was my only means of knowing how much time had passed.

Even though I didn’t need to wear clothes, (I couldn’t feel the cold and no one but the animals could see me) I kept mine on. Even my gloves, scarf and hat, which still smelt like my sister.

Three sunrises later, as I wandered aimlessly through the trees and plants, I found my feet leading me back towards the school. I passed a frozen stream. Thin cracks glimmered in what I presumed to be the early afternoon sun; golden and soft. My squirrel turned back when the gates to the school were in sight. I wondered briefly if they had similar stories to those we did, only the other way round: “Don’t go to the school, there are bad children that eat animals”.

I was in the playground watching the other children play when I first saw her again. My heart lifted to the top of my chest as the ache I didn’t even know was there dispersed. She was making a snowman with other girls. I ran up to her to tell her it was ok, that I was dead too now and we could play together forever! Just like we thought we could before, when we were alive. I tapped her on the shoulder, but she didn’t turn around. She just shivered and looked left and right. Thorns prickled my throat as I listened to her conversation with her friends. They could see her. She was still real.

“So where did you go anyway? We were all really worried you know! You should have called me.” Said a pretty girl with two blonde braids and a white woolly scarf to my sister.

“I went to meet my real dad.” She looked at the ground; she was ashamed.

“Wow! Cool. You mean your dad isn’t your dad? So what was he like, the other dad? Did he look like you? Was he nice? Was he nicer than your pretend dad?” The girl stared at her with wide eyes, chewing on gum exaggeratedly, her mouth open as her back teeth opened and closed on the pink rubbery substance. We weren’t allowed gum in the playground, or anywhere in school.

“He was alright. He wasn’t angry like my dad. I mean, my other dad. He bought me lots of presents and said sorry a lot.” Boredom clouded her eyes, as if the story was one she didn’t really want to tell. I wanted to ask her who her new dad was and what this meant for our family. I wanted to ask her how she made people hear her and if I could do the same. But my words were invisible.

I felt the boy with a gap in his teeth and black holes for eyes coming before I saw him. His icy grin was wide as he walked his skinny body towards us.

I watched him tell my sister I was dead. With malevolent pride he told her it was his fault, because he’d told me she was dead, even though he knew all along it wasn’t true. His words soaked in venom, he said that her real dad was his real dad too and that our mum was a slut. She listened silently. Without pausing for breathe he said our parents hadn’t told her I’d died because they didn’t love her enough. His dad told him so. With his right hand he dipped into his dirty jacket and pulled out a newspaper cut out, which he shoved in front of her face.

Her eyes widened as she looked at my photo, then up to the headline “Girl Freezes to death in woods”. She snatched the cutting out of his hand and slapped him hard across the face. He didn’t even wince. Like a porcelain doll that had once lived, she stiffened and stared at him through eyes the same colour as the winter sky; then the life returned as the anger was replaced by pain.

I prayed that she’d run away into the woods and join me forever.

With an evil grin spread across his pasty white face, the boy skipped across the grey concrete playground. All the love I’d ever felt for my parents evaporated and rose out of me as soft white smoke. I watched my sister as her heart froze, then melted in drops which fell from her eyes to the ground, forming polka dots in the snow at her feet.

That was the moment I first realised that I hadn’t cried. Not once had even a single tear fallen from either of my eyes since I’d learnt about my sister’s death. Or my own.

I watched the children go inside, looking sadly at her, but just walking straight past, not knowing what to say. I watched the teacher come out of the school and take my sister in her arms. There was nothing I could do to stop her from taking my sister away from me.

I watched my own tears as they fell, one by one, onto the cold, cold snow.