The sound of car engines cut through the silence as jack stood atop the large council building, looking down at the snow laden ground below and admiring his work. He loved coming in the early morning, than watching kids expressions when they wake up to find it's snowing outside. Everyone loves a snow day. There was some honking a distance away that kept distracting him. "Can they keep it down?" He looked in the direction of the noise to see that a few streets over, there was a traffic jam. "What's going on?" He asked himself as he leapt effortlessly across the street, and over to the two lane road that had cars piled up as far as he could see on either end. "Is the circus in town or something?" He wondered hopefully. He loved watching the elephants, and the little dogs that could ride a unicycle, but he hadn't seen anything about it while he laid the snow down. The traffic seemed to be leading one way, so he followed it.
Jack guessed it was bumper to bumper for about five hundred meters. "What the-"He noticed that there was now a line of people who had camped out, how had he not seen this? The line led to a shop- a book shop called 'Paper Heroes'. He raised an eyebrow, "Why would people camp out for a book?" He looked at the signs in the window, there were posters of cartoon girl, dressed in yellow from head to toe. The title underneath the girl said, 'Summer Day: The Frozen Town'. He almost scoffed, "what is this garbage?" He noticed some of the campers were starting to wake up now. He would wait to see what the hell this crap was, and miss seeing kids happy faces because of the snow. Instead he saw annoyed faces, freezing cold kids, mainly girls around nine to fifteen years old. "Could it not snow right now?" He heard one muffled voice whine from under a pink sleeping bag. "It's just Jack Frost, ruining things as always…" another muffled voice said from the sleeping bag beside her. He whipped his head in their direction, "Ruining things as always?" Confused and agitated, he folded his arms and waited for the shop to open.
It opened at eight A.M, and then the doors were opened and people flooded through. He noticed it wasn't set up like regular book stores- not that he had been in many. There was a stage, with an empty desk and chair, where people kept looking excitedly. They bought their books, then started lining up in front of the small stage.
By nine o'clock, the place was packed, so he sat on top of a bookshelf, where he could see the stage clearly. Obviously there was something going on. The door behind the stage opened and a young girl walked up, she was blonde, with a face he thought he had seen somewhere else, but he had seen a lot of faces before. The people lined up were cheering loudly, but they piped down as she held the microphone to her mouth, "Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell" She looked into the crowd nervously. Jack looked at the poster and sighed in understanding, "the author" He rolled his eyes.
She signed books for the entire day, while Jack was outside enjoying the snow, piling it on so it was hard for the people in the store to leave. He threw snowballs at Jamie's window, but since he started community college, he never liked to mess around. Jack sometimes wondered if he even saw him anymore, but pushed the thought aside- of course he can see me, he's Jamie!- Jack thought to himself as he leapt back to the bookstore, silently eager to see Rosie O'Donnell tired and exhausted. Whenever he thought or said her name, he'd say it in a stupid voice. 'Jack Frost, ruining things as always' the voice echoed in his head as he kicked at the snow. What had she been writing about him?
The shop was almost empty now, and the line was getting pretty short. "And what's your name?" She asked the last young girl standing in front of her, "Lia" The girl answered.
"Lia? You know, I wrote about a Lia..." She smiled. She didn't seem exhausted at all, to Jacks disappointment. As the girl left, he realised there was no one left in the line, but she was still sitting there, waiting. After a while, she sighed and stood up. "Your Jack Frost costume is really good" She looked at him. His eyebrows almost touched his hairline, "You can see me?" He asked, stepping forwards excitedly. She laughed half-heartedly, as if it was a joke she'd heard a thousand times, "Well, I do believe in Jack Frost" She said sarcastically. But it wasn't sarcastic, he realised, because she could see him. "What do you write about me?" He asked, watching her as she picked up her handbag. "Oh, well, just that time when you froze all the crops on Summer's farm" Jack felt anger boiling inside him, "And that time you caused a nationwide blizzard so that no one could enjoy their summer holiday" She was remembering them like they were memories, not stories. Was that how people thought of him, if they thought about him at all? "Why does he have to be so mean?" He folded his arms defensively, "Because he's Jack Frost!" She said as if that was the answer itself, then sighed, "Imagine if you couldn't be seen by anyone, no one even knew you were there…" a frown planted itself on her forehead, "and the only thing you could do was make it cold. Wouldn't that make you bitter?" He hated her answer, it felt like being punched in the stomach.
"Maybe you should give him some credit, okay. What's wrong with making everything cold? People love snow- Kids love snow!" He argued. She pursed her lips, mulling it over,
"I guess you're right, but still, no one could survive that long without being seen, well at least not mentally. He'd be so…" She thought of the word, "Broken".
She had left after that, leaving Jack to think about her words. For the first time, he started feeling something vanishing, everything falling apart, melting. It felt like Band-Aids falling off because they've been on for so long.
He felt Broken.