Prologue
The wind whispers in every other girl's hair. For them, it flutters, flies and floats through their curls as they laugh and the tip of their noses become pink from the cold. You study them from your claimed place in front of the fire – you are not brave enough to bear the weather. To you, they are foreign. These girls are curious, you think. You envy them. What have they done for the wind, to be treated so kindly by its force?
You envy them, because for you, it howls. It bellows and rushes through your clothing, penetrating through the countless layers you wear until it finds your dry, yellow skin. And then, it makes it blue. The purple bruises that dance over your skin are filled out by the icy blue of your thighs and calves. Every day, you make promises to the weather. You will do anything, so long as it does not make you feel the cold anymore. You may not be a good person, but you will pretend to be good so you can feel warmth again.
Your promises go unheard. The cold continues to envelop you in its embrace. It loves consuming you, inside and out, until your heart is as frozen as your skin. A blue heart to match blue fingertips, blue lips.
The same girls with pretty pink noses are amazed by the range of colours your skins produces. When you stand in the shower under the scalding water and pray for the shivering to subside, they whisper to each other, as the wind whispers for them. As you lie in the comfort of your bed, protected by woollen socks and fleecy jumpers, they watch you. They study your colourless lips and the permanent rings under your eyes. They watch as the hair that was once so vivid sheds over your pillow effortlessly. It frightens them. They are terrified that you are contagious, and if they get to close to this lifeless creature, they will become it. After all, you lost yourself so quickly to it. They barely had time to see it happen.
You do not notice their gossip. You are too lost in your empty head, your cold world. You feel invisible to them, to everyone - even to yourself in that mirror of truth. They may spend time talking about you, but you spend all your time thinking about it. You no longer exist here - you are that controlling voice in your head now - it does not allow you to remember who you once were.
Those girls can still remember who you used to be, but only barely. As the voice commands you to forget, you do not – you can only think of a handful of things more frightening than remembering yourself – but they used to feel something different from unease and apprehension when they said your name. It used to be matched with strength, fire and beauty. Your smiles would be met with their smiles – now they wince at the skin that pulls across your cheekbones, on the rare occassion when you play 'happy pink-nosed girl' to draw attention from your ghost.
No, you do not remember living. You do not remember that once, you were a girl with laughter and curls and a pink little nose.
Now, you are nothing.