Uh-oh, Cleo: Underpants on My Head

Winter showed up out of nowhere!

It went like this: colder, some snow, REALLY cold, MORE SNOW (not to mention WIND!), FREEZING, LOTS OF SNOW, BLIZZARD!

We were in a snowstorm! Just like that!

It was summer! A half an hour ago I was just la-dee-da, my toes in the stream, and now I was making footprints in snow!

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The wind was like a soft wall holding us up, all loud and making our hair crazy. Everything was swirly white.

“Everybody hold hands!” Dad took Jack’s hand, Jack took Mom’s and I grabbed Mom’s jacket and pulled myself close. I turned and reached for Jenna but she just stood there, hugging herself. A tear blew sideways across her cheek.

“Come on, Jen!” I reached harder and grabbed her hand. I had to really pull to get her started.

We found a big rock to huddle next to. I stretched my sleeves down over my hands, but the wind stung my cheeks, like a long slap.

“Here, put these over your heads!” Mom handed us our extra underpants.

I thought about it for a second (EEWWW!) but only a second. Underpants on my head was better than Frosty the Snowman! Me and Jack pulled them on and peeked out through the leg holes.

“I can’t, I can’t . . .” Mom had to help Jenna with her underpants because she was too shivery and whiny.

“Hee, hee, heeheeheehee hee!” Jack pointed at us and laughed until his pointer finger got too cold and he put it back in his pocket.

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Click. Dad took a picture. I thought, People don’t usually stop to take pictures if you’re about to freeze to death, so maybe we won’t.

“Are we going to freeze?” I had to kind of yell so Mom could hear me.

“No, honey,” she yelled back, and kissed my cold hands.

I just hoped, if we did freeze, nobody would find the camera and the entire world would see pictures of me with underpants on my head.

Jenna was really crying, so Mom put an arm around her. I think maybe Jenna read too much Harry Potter, where terrible things happen to kids on every page. She forgot that we’re regular children with nice parents and we probably won’t die on Mount Baldy, or even get frostbite.