Snowed in
That day he felt the petrifying cold on my feet. Trying to settle into the old computer chair; moving his limbs little by little; shrinking and stretching the toes; rubbing each other calves covered by stockings long gray cotton. He couldn't get up, not even to drink water. The assignment was prompt and guilt gnawed at him for the procrastination. He should stop doing that, but he couldn't help it. When the white specks fell at his feet on the rooftop, the music from his stereo played light jazz and the noise of the city washed over him, the nostalgia building in his chest.
And he began by remembering who he left and who he will no longer be.
Sid, for example, who after his father's second marriage had moved to Seattle on a snowy day in 2003, after a horrible rhinitis that left Sid in bed for weeks, the cold had been so intense; that his frog almost died. The last time he had seen it was in a photograph that a friend of a friend uploaded on social media.
People like Rhonda, for example. He remembered her a lot when he went shopping for clothes; He remembered her and her comments. The most vivid memory of her was that in third grade, at Christmas, where she had given a three-hour lecture on why mixing orange with dark blue was the worst thing anyone could do for humanity. It had made him so paranoid that he donated all of his orange sweaters to charity.
He started wearing green and red the day after that when a blue box with an anonymous sender arrived at his feet with two pairs of green sweaters, with such luck that that same day he discovered a box with his father's old red striped shirts...
She went on a winter vacation to California one day and never came back.
Another one of his memories was going to Harold with whom he had gotten to have a firm relationship in early high school. After being his almost enemy for a long time; After San Lorenzo, he called him every snowy day supposedly to play, but they secretly went to animal shelters to feed baby kittens and rescue other animals from the cold abandonment. Now, he no longer looked back at him and sometimes he found himself in that awkward position where a person raises their hand to say hello and you raise them because you think it is for you, but in reality it was for someone behind you.
Stinky had gone back to the countryside when a terrible winter wiped out all of his uncle's crops and his entire family had agreed to meet again in his great-grandfather's large house to raise their loved ones together.
Gerald who had gone to a winter camp and returned with new friends, at first they were together with the other boys and later they had gone out without him. He had even gone from being the main man to being the main man's man, if that made any sense. It felt bad not being the best friend of your best friend, but people grew and things like that happened, life and relationships slowly faded in their memories like snowflakes in their pink hands.
That's why he couldn't concentrate, that's why he got up every five minutes and left his homework half done, that's why he would also have to stay up late today, because of that and because of his colleagues who didn't do their part of the work. But mostly it was his fault and now have to spend another sleepless night, with midbrain running trying to protect himself from the cold, wrapped in blankets and blankets from the hips down, like a caterpillar, concentrating on doing a job that frankly do not he wanted to make and longing for the softness of his bed or his past.
He can't get the cold off his feet and thinks of Helga. He gets lost in thought and gently closes his laptop.
Helga's hands have always been cold. Sometimes he wondered if it had to do with her lack of pulse. " It looks like a dead hand, " Gerald had said that time when the sports teacher had demanded a health test where they measured their physical aptitudes and took different measurements, his best friend had complained a whole day about how he had had to hold the blonde's hand for longer than necessary trying to count her beats per minute, without success. In the end he had to strain against his discomfort and take her pulse from her neck.
She had laughed, often used her dead hands to tease me by touching my neck. It was everything icy you could imagine, it sent shivers down mine spine and I could hardly stand up straight after that without feeling wobbly, with the remnants of the electrifying sensation on mine shoulder blades.
"I'm dying of cold".
"You are never cold." I said and resigned myself. No matter the grade, I needed to sleep.
"Today is an exception" She told me "my face burns, even".
"It's snowing" I say like it's a good excuse. "Maybe they will close the university"
"The assignment is online, Arnoldo"
I was very romantic in those days, I cried about everything and nothing. I look out the window, the thick snow had blocked any kind of escape from the guest house. I felt uncertain, nothing ever stopped moving and yet at times I felt stuck. "Do you think it will ever stop?"
"I don't think so... I'm sorry" She gave him a little guilty look and added smiling at her with those gleaming teeth "at least you're stuck with me"
Of course, there is always a bright side.