The craziest thing just happened a few minutes ago. I'm still not even sure if it's all tangible.
It was right after sixth period, and I was walking through the schoolyard. The wind was unreasonably cold for a day in May, so I was freezing in my tank-top and basketball shorts. I had the feeling that someone was watching me, but there was no one around.
By the time I was about fifteen meters from the campus exit, my skin was burning from the frost in the air, and I could just tell that I was extra pale right then. I had been borne unnaturally pale for a half-Egyptian girl, and my skin would always feel freezing to others, but this was just ridiculous.
Then something made me stop dead in my tracks. I felt as if something – someone – was watching me, right in front of me, but I just couldn't see it!
If only I had known. If I'd any sense I would've run for all I was worth.
Then I felt hands – cold, freezing hands – grab my arms, and I began to freeze over, literally. What seemed to be a tornado of snow swirled around me, and all my skin turned blue. Honest-to-goodness blue! My hair flew wildly around my face, and from what I could tell, it was turning purple. I was forced to close my eyes because of the dull yet screaming pain enveloping my body. The cold had entered my veins and was in fact turning me into a cold-blooded creature. I could feel it getting closer and closer to my heart, and I just knew that when it made it there, I'd be done for.
When it did reach my heart though, I past out.
I woke up to panic-stricken rambling and the sound of pacing, figuring I was in the hospital.
" –Killed her. I've killed her. I just know I've killed her!" The voice was young, male, and definitely overwrought. I pried my eyes open, which hurt quite a bit, and found myself looking at a cement floor covered in old, dried up gum. To be more specific, the cement floor that covers my high school. Which means that I was still at school, and that perhaps the whole being-turned-into-a-human-popsicle really happened. I certainly hoped not.
I lifted my shoulder slightly, causing me to moan in pain, and heard the pacing and rambling stop. I turned my neck to look over to where the sound had been, and saw a teenaged boy looking down at me in complete horror.
Actually, correction; a blue teenaged boy.
I gave out a strangled gasp of surprise at the oddly coloured individual, and for some reason, it caused him to start grinning like a lunatic, which only freaked me out even more. He made a step closer to me, so I backed up in response, hoping he'd take the hint.
Apparently not.
He bent down and helped me up. Once I was standing along with him, I took a good look at him. His eyes, skin, and hair were all blue, each a paler variation of the colour than the last. He was quite tall, lean, and muscular, so I supposed he was sixteen. He had a mischievous glint in his eyes that both unnerved and excited me.
"Hi!" he said, though it sounded like he was yelling. I quickly covered my ears only to pull my hands back down a moment later. They were blue. I screamed then, very loudly. The boy swiftly silenced me by putting his hand over my mouth. "Shh," he whispered. "I don't know if the mortals can see you or not."
I bit his hand and was about to start yelling at him when what looked to be a wormhole appeared in front of me. I just stood there dumbfounded, gawking at the swirling of blue and purple for a while until the boy waved his hand in front of my face. He gestured awkwardly at it. "Uh, after you."
I looked back and forth at the wormhole and the boy until I found my voice, which turned out to be scratchy-sounding. "You mean, it's like a portal?" He nodded and told me that we should really get going. In response, I held up my hand and said, "Yeah, how about no? I don't know you, or how portals are possible, so I'm just gonna go home. Bye." I feigned a smile and picked up my backpack from off the floor and started to walk away, but he was faster than me, and before I knew it, he was right in front of me.
"Okay, I know this sounds weird and everything, but you have to come with me through that portal." He planted his feet down to show that there was no way that I was getting around him. I sighed in anger and glared at him, but that didn't make him move, and it's not like I could've overpowered him, he had at least twenty pounds on me.
I thought about it for a while, and then knew what I had to do. I had to trick him. "Hmm, fine. But only if you tell me your name."
He wavered for a moment, but finally said, "Jack."
"Jack what?"
"Jack…" he hesitated, then set his jaw in what could only be annoyance with me, somehow making him look taller, which only scared me more. "Jack Frost."
I snorted and was about to tell him how ridiculous that lie was, until it hit me. He's blue, the air around him is very cold. He's Jack Frost, the Jack Frost. My eyes widen from shock and I am unable to move, so he takes this as an opportunity to lead me over to the portal, and push me through it.
Now, after a montage of swirling colours zipping past me, I fall onto an icy floor. Jack looms over me with his arms crossed, so I get up, ready for a fight, although I have the strange suspicion that there won't be one. A teasing smile plays on his lips as if he enjoys tormenting people, and then I remember that he was known for being some kind of immortal wise guy who ticked everyone off.
Well, it all makes since now.
"So," he starts. "Now you know my name. Why don't you tell me yours?"
I squint my eyes at him in annoyance and shock, then shriek, "No! Take me back home!"
He shrugs. "You are home." I quickly survey my surroundings, surprised to see what looked to be a frozen living room.
I raise an eyebrow at him and plant a hand on my hip. "What part of this is my home?" He doesn't seem to register my question though, because he seems much more interested in what part of my body I'm currently resting my hand on. I snap my fingers in front of his face. "Hey. You've got some explaining to do, Frost."
He looks up at me with a bored expression, as if having to stress whatever it is he thinks he's already told me would just be too hard for him. "Mm, fine. Let's see, where to start?" I believe the question is rhetorical, so I don't answer him, and finally he says, "So, you've heard of me, right? Jack Frost, patron of winter, blah, blah, blah." I nod, and he continues, "Well, I happen to be a member of an immortal family in a race superior to humans called Glaciviri. And the deal with immortals is that when you reach a certain age, depending on the individual, you just stop aging. Mine was fourteen."
"Okay," I try to make since of this all, but the dots aren't connecting. "But what does that have to do with me?"
"I'm getting there." he says to the ceiling. "Now, when immortals get married, whomever they marry becomes immortal also, and they get to bump up their age by two years. So, for instance, if I were to get married, I would become sixteen." He stops, looking at the floor, as if disappointed. "Anyway," he presses on. "After about, oh, two-thousand years, I began to wonder when I was going to meet my soul mate and my mother told me that when I was an infant, she had been told a prophecy saying that my soul mate would be a mortal human."
He stops there, and looks me dead in the eye, as if I'm supposed to understand something. "But wait, doesn't your touch, like, freeze people to death?"
His face breaks into several emotions; pain, shame, sadness, resentment. He looks at me as though that was my fault. "You didn't die."
The words hang in the air for a few long moments, until I finally get it. He's supposed to fall in love with a mortal human, and that's exactly what I am, or at least, was. "Wait, so you mean that I . . . ?" I can't bear to get the word out, because it just makes no sense. I'm fourteen. I'm a freshman in high school. I can't be some immortal teenager's soul mate.
He nods and walks a few steps towards me so that we're only a foot apart. He replaces his frown with an impish grin. "So, I guess we're roommates." I glare at him and tell him to take me home again. He sighs. "Look, this is your home now. If you go back they'll either not be able to even see you, or they'll kill you because your skin is blue and your hair is purple." I don't think he meant to be mean, but I almost cry anyway, and there is no way that I'd let this guy see me cry. He'd either pity me or laugh at me, and, frankly, each would be more awful than the other.
I bite back several curse words. "Fine. Whatever. But there is no way that I'm sleeping in the same room as you." He shrugs and goes around me, and I follow him, hoping that he wasn't just planning to leave me hanging. We exit the living room, go down a long hallway, and finally he opens a door. I peer inside to see a bedroom that looks as though it hasn't been used since I was borne. He tells me that this is where I can sleep for now and that I can put on the clothes in the armoire.
"If you need me just scream like you're being attacked by a pack of wolves. I might come find you." He closes he door behind him and I hear the distinct click of a lock.
Oh, just perfect, I'm locked in.
I walk over to the armoire and pull out a long pink dress that happens to be bone-chilling, but that doesn't bother me, because now I'm freezing, just like everything else here. I take off my clothes from Earth, which as it turns out were melting me, and put on the pink dress.
I then proceed to cry on the floor like a baby. I cry for not being able to graduate from high school, see my friends ever again, and just for the fact that I am no longer even human. I realize that he left without even learning my name.
I can only hope that all eternity will not be like this.
