It’s tiny snow, sharp and icy, the sort that you don’t want to play in. I see people running to the windows of the glass-and-steel buildings to stare at it whirling around the city. It’s gotten colder almost instantly, a fact I don’t notice so much as I notice how hard I’m pressing against Kai to combat the new chill. His arms are still around my waist, the unzipped army jacket he always wears open on either side of me. It’s a silly jacket, oversize and at odds with the name-brand clothes Kai wears, but it’s incredibly warm and can almost wrap around both of us.
“It’s early for snow,” I say, mumbling the words into his shirt.
“Way early,” he agrees. “The roses aren’t going to last if we’re already getting snow in October.”
He’s right—I look around at the tiny specks of snow that cling to the flowers. They make the roses look sick with something akin to chicken pox, tiny spots covering bright red flesh. The wind rattles them around a bit. Is it snowing harder?
“Let’s go inside,” he suggests.
“We aren’t technically out of school yet,” I remind him. “We could build a fire?”
“Yeah…” Kai says, glancing to the metal barrel on a corner of the roof. We hauled it up here ages ago. Probably not the safest thing in the world, but it’s pretty glorious for roasting marshmallows over.
“We could go to my apartment,” I say, “if we’re quiet. Mom’s still sleeping, I think.” Truthfully, I’m not sure she knows what time school gets out anyway, though I’ve never told Kai this. The magic of us sneaking around would be lost if my mother made it easy by way of indifference.
“Nah, I don’t want to risk it,” Kai says as the snowfall undeniably intensifies. “We can just wait by the roof door till we’re out of school. I don’t want to be out in this.”
“All right,” I agree, and he steps away from me; the icy air sweeps around my body. I hug my own coat closer, but it’s nothing compared with Kai’s chest against me. He lets his fingers pause on mine for a moment, but then releases them, too—the path out of the roses is too narrow to walk side by side. We weave through the flowers, listening to the traffic below slow down to a crawl, drivers inching through the snow as if it’s feet thick instead of barely coating the ground. As we reach the access door, the wind picks up, blowing so hard that Kai struggles to open it. He yanks and tugs, and the wind grows stronger.
Are we trapped up here? Kai finds my eyes, and his are full of matching worry. He turns back to the door, leaving room on the handle for me to grab hold, too. Together we wrest the door open, sliding into the stairwell. We’re barely on the top step when the door slams shut. The wind howls behind it, as if it’s angry.
“I wonder if Grandma has noticed the weather yet,” he says, sitting down on the top step. He checks his watch—thirty minutes until we’d be out of school. Is she ranting about the Snow Queen already? Winter’s royalty, the ruler of the beasts Grandma Dalia fears. We’ve heard about the other beasts in somewhat disgusting detail—how they turn from men into monsters with fur and fangs, that they rip you limb from limb, eat you from the inside out. But the Snow Queen… we know little of her, other than that the thought of her makes Grandma Dalia’s face go white.
There are no windows in the stairwell, but we can still hear the storm outside. How much is on the ground now? Is it sticking, or just melting away like most Southern snow? It’s only October, surely it isn’t accumulating…. The wind howls again. Kai grows quiet—though he’d never admit it, sometimes I think he’s inherited Grandma Dalia’s fear of snow and the cold. Only fifteen more minutes till we can go downstairs, pretend as if we ran home. Seconds tick by slowly, then minutes, ten more to go—
There’s a crash downstairs, a bang. Voices shouting, someone running. We’re on Kai’s side of the building; he rises and walks down a few steps. The noise continues, muffled voices… Kai glances back at me and in a split second, we’ve decided to ignore the fact that we’re ten minutes early. We bolt down the stairs together, drowning the sound of the wind with our heavy footsteps. Down to the eighth floor: nothing but closed doors and piled-up newspapers. The seventh, all’s quiet. I swallow. The sixth. The floor Kai and I live on. Is someone being robbed? Arrested? We round the corner.
The hall is packed with people.
Doors are open, neighbors in graying robes and boxer shorts leaning out to see what’s happening. Kai speeds up, we run, which one is it—oh.
Paramedics are running in and out of Kai’s apartment; the floor is wet with snow, making their boots squeak on the dirty tile. Kai skids to a stop at his door, eyes wide; we reach for each other’s hands automatically.
Inside the apartment, it is dark. Stained-glass shades on lamps, blinds on windows, clouds outside. It smells like baking and scented candles, things that have always contributed to it feeling more like home to me than my own apartment. Perhaps that’s why it stabs at me to see the paramedics inside, bunching up rugs and knocking around furniture. They’re using flashlights, moving them so quickly that it’s almost like watching lightning flicker across the room. The paramedics surround a white thing in a sea of darkness—a gurney, with an old woman in a nightgown on it.
Grandma Dalia probably once had Kai’s olive-toned skin, but now it’s pale with age and illness. Her eyes are cloudy, her hair wispy, and an oxygen mask is pressed against her face, fogging up the tiniest bit with each exhale. They push her toward us, running over the remains of a broken mirror that’s fallen from the wall. Kai steps away from me to meet her at the door frame.
“Grandma?” he says weakly, like a child. She looks at him, stretching her fingers out like she wants to reach for him.
“You must be Kai. She was asking for you,” a thick, strong-looking paramedic says, capturing Kai’s attention. He stops in the door frame for a beat as the others move the gurney to the stairs.
Kai and the paramedic talk, but I don’t hear most of it—I’m too busy watching his grandmother’s chest rise and fall, so shaky that it looks like it might shatter on the way down.
“She was stabilizing fine, but then she got scared when the wind cracked a window. Do you have a preference where we take her?”
“A preference?”
“Which hospital?” the paramedic says.
“I…” Kai looks from his grandmother to the paramedic and back again, as if he’s being asked something in a foreign language.
“Piedmont,” I cut in. “She went to Piedmont last year when she fell, right, Kai?”
“Right,” he says, staring as the gurney disappears at the top of the stairs. The paramedic nods and jogs after his fellows.
“I’ll go get the station wagon so we can follow,” I say quickly, grabbing the keys to his grandmother’s car off the counter. Kai looks at me blankly. “Maybe you should bring her medicines, so you can show the doctors what she’s on?” I suggest. He half nods and disappears deeper into the apartment.
I’m held up by the paramedics in the hallway—they’ve made it to the third floor and are negotiating around a corner. Grandma Dalia’s eyes are open, and for a moment I don’t think she’s conscious—but then her gaze finds mine, and she stares at me so long that I feel frozen. Her lips are parting; is she speaking? Then she’s jostled, and they move again, down to the second story. The first. The double doors leading to the courtyard are ahead; it’s still snowing, with at least an inch or two built up on the ground.
The red light from the ambulance bounces off the fallen snow and off windows that are full of neighbors staring. Grandma Dalia’s bony hands form fists, and she closes her eyes. Her chest starts to rise and fall faster, and I see the paramedics glance at one another. They try to hurry, but the snow makes the ground slicker than normal, and they can’t rush without risking the gurney’s stability. A younger paramedic leaps from the ambulance and rushes to throw another blanket over Grandma Dalia.
I run across the street to the little parking lot attached to our building. The snow hides the uneven concrete underneath; I trip and fall, skin my palms, and finally make it to the station wagon. It’s burgundy, both outside and in, and it’s shiny and sleek—it was top of the line when it was new, and I don’t think Grandma Dalia has driven it much since then. I slide into the front seat and jam the key into the ignition. Breathe. Just breathe. And don’t crash.
I put the car in reverse, turn around, and look back at the building. They’re bringing Grandma Dalia around now, about to load her into the ambulance. Her eyes are still squeezed shut; the paramedics have grown almost silent. I tap the gas, ease the car back—
The tires spin. I turn back to the wheel and press down harder—nothing. The rear begins to fishtail a little, but I can’t get enough traction to back up. I curse—this isn’t working. I punch at the steering wheel, pull the key from the ignition, and get out. Solution, think, Ginny, think. We have to get there somehow.
As I jog back toward the building, Kai bursts through the doors. He holds a plastic bag full of pill bottles, rattling like maracas with each step. I pull my phone out of my pocket to look up a cab company….
“Everything okay?” a female voice calls out. I look up—it’s a girl, driving a silver Lexus. She leans across the passenger seat, platinum-blonde hair spilling over her petite shoulders.
“Yeah, yeah—” I say, waving her off. I hurry over toward the ambulance, finding Kai’s eyes in the fray.
The paramedics begin to make sounds—not really words, just sounds. “Oh, whoa, oh, oh, whoa—” all in unison. I spin to see the cause. Grandma Dalia is grasping for the oxygen mask, trying to sit up. They hold her down, but she struggles, fighting with strength I didn’t know she had yet is still nothing compared with a team of thirtysomethings. She succeeds in getting the mask off, but only for a moment. She gasps for air, inhaling flecks of snow and ice. Her lips move; she’s speaking; she’s trying to reach out to Kai as he runs to her side. His hands and knees are scraped; he must have fallen on the way—
“Don’t go,” she whispers. I hear her only because the wind has changed direction, blowing against her, carrying her voice to me. She sounds like a ghost, as if she isn’t really here. I slide up beside Kai just as she speaks again; her eyes find me and narrow accusingly. She points at me. “Don’t go with the girl.”
“Ginny and I aren’t going anywhere, Grandma, not right now,” Kai says immediately. He allows the waiting paramedic to replace the mask; Grandma Dalia inhales fully, her chest arching up against the blankets. “We’ll meet you there, at the hospital.”
He steps back as the ambulance doors slam shut. I grab his hand. I have to do something. I have to figure out a solution—Kai can’t, not right now. Think, Ginny, damn it.
“Let’s go—”
“The car,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s stuck in the snow. I’m going to call a cab. I’ll tell them to hurry.” Kai’s face falls—cabs are epically slow, especially on this side of town. I can’t help but feel I’ve utterly failed him.
“You sure you’re okay?” the girl in the Lexus calls again. She’s parked directly behind us and is standing outside the car now, tall and bright in a sea of whiteness. Kai stares at her, confused.
“Wait—can you give us a ride?” I shout to her. “To the hospital? His grandmother—”
“Sure,” she says, nodding. “Come on, get in.”
I know I should feel surprised that she said yes—she’s a total stranger—but my mind is too preoccupied with worry. I lead Kai across the snow to the Lexus and sit down in the back seat with him. The girl is barely running the heat; the leather seats feel like ice under my legs. Her eyes flicker to mine in the rearview mirror, two bright blue stars.
“Thank you,” I say as we pull forward. “I tried our car, but—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says smoothly. Kai leans against me, keeping his head down—I worry, for a moment, that he might throw up in a car we can’t afford to have cleaned.
“Don’t be scared. She’s tough,” I remind Kai as I look out the window, watching the world growing ever whiter. People are sledding on trash-can lids and flattened boxes, since no one in the South actually owns a sled. They’re laughing and playing, while Kai holds back tears.
“She looked awful,” Kai says, exhaling. “What if she doesn’t make it?”
I want to tell him that she will, but I’m not so sure. I open my mouth to speak, but the girl driving us breaks in.
“Then you’ll still be here,” she says. Kai lifts his head; she speaks again. “You can’t let yourself die when someone else does. When my sister died, I thought my life was over. But it was just beginning.”
“But,” I say, squeezing Kai’s hand, “that’s something we can think about at the hospital.”
“Your sister died?” Kai asks. The ambulance skids through an intersection; the girl expertly navigates the gearshift, jetting through the red light to keep up.
“Ages ago,” the girl says. “My whole world changed.”
“I’m sorry,” Kai says. “What’s your name?”
“Mora,” she answers.
“I’m Kai,” he says. “And this is Ginny.”
“Thank you for driving us,” I add. “It’s a nightmare, driving in the snow.”
“Not a problem,” she says, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. Her teeth are as perfect as her skin, and I hate that I can see my reflection next to hers. I turn back to Kai, who is staring at the back of Mora’s head.
“Your grandmother plans everything, right?” I say.
“Yeah,” Kai says, sniffling. I can’t tell if it’s the cold or the emotion making his nose red and eyes watery.
“She planned your clothes every day until last year. She planned each and every trip to the grocery store. She even planned arguments she suspected she’d get into. You think she’d really plan for her last words to be about me? She hates me.”
Kai almost laughs, but not quite. He shakes his head and looks away from Mora’s head and at me.
“Then those aren’t her last words,” I say, a promise I’m afraid will become a lie. “She isn’t done yet.” Kai lifts my hand and kisses it, then rests his head against the back of the seat, eyes closed.
It was a lie after all. Grandma Dalia died before she even got to the hospital.