Ice (2 page)

I bowed my head across the table from him as he said grace. Usually it was the same words, but tonight he thanked God for the beef, corn, and other foods on the table he was able to buy from the grocery store.

And, “Thank you for healing Christine. Amen.”

“Amen,” I echoed with a little smile. I was grateful to be well, but it felt a little unusual. My parents had believed in God, but they almost never said prayer over a meal unless it was Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. Uncle Justin never missed a meal. Even though it felt odd, it felt nice, too. It felt a little wholesome for some unknown reason.

Uncle Justin immediately started passing me the necessary things to make a hamburger. He passed me the slices of cheese, hot sauce, the plate of patties, and the buns. I could see that he was looking forward to me eating a burger like him. I wondered how I was going to be able to sli
p the patty to Big John. I didn’t see how it was possible without Justin noticing, so that was one ordeal with meat I wasn’t going to be able to wiggle out of. I started building up my burger like he said.

“
...And then you load up the hot sauce!” Justin said with the largest smile I had seen on his face yet.

I felt my eyes widen in horror. That much hot sauce?! I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy foods.

I momentarily had an internal panic attack while he continued to shake drops of sauce onto his beef patty. He then passed the bottle to me. To my relief, not long after I started putting the hot sauce on my burger, he started eating his. I immediately stopped since he wasn’t looking anymore, and then closed my burger before he could pass me anything else. I took a bite and my mouth was instantly on fire.

Justin looked up from his burger. He swallowed and asked, “What’s wrong?” with a worried look on his face.

I couldn’t spit it out; not only would that be gross, I didn’t want to risk hurting his feelings, so I chewed it as fast as I could. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and forced it down while it was still a big, hot lump of food. I grabbed my glass and gulped down the icy water for several seconds. Eventually I had to put the glass down because I needed to breathe. I took a few breaths, seeing Justin grin awkwardly through my watery eyes.

“Too hot, wasn’
t it?”

I nodded.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand despite the napkin next to his plate, just like a typical guy. “Sorry, I forget how hot that is to people who aren’t accustomed to it.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay. You didn’
t know. I should have said something.” I took another big gulp of water and then continued, eager to drown out any doubt that I didn’t enjoy it, “It’s really good, though. Really.” I nodded for extra emphasis.

He smiled, and then returned to his burger, believing my lie. He passed t
he jerky next, and when he wasn’t looking, I quickly broke off pieces to drop for Big John, who was sitting diligently beside me. I then chewed, pretending I had just taken a bite.

Justin asked me if I liked the jerky and I lied, nodding my head like before, saying it was delicious. He would smile in that way that was part bashful, part proud.

After dinner, he insisted on doing the dishes, just like he always did. The only reason why I let him do it before was because I had been sick. Now that I was well, I felt up to it.

“No, let me do it,” I said, stepping over to the sink next to him. I held my hands out for the plate he was holding. “I want to. You cooked the meal
, so I can clean the dishes. It’s only right.”

He stared at me for a moment like he was stunned by
my determination to work. I don’t think he expected that from a teenage girl. He hesitantly handed me the plate.

“Okay
...but this doesn’t feel right,” he said slowly with an unsure shake of his head. “I feel like I’m workin’ ya.”

“It’
s fine, I want to,” I said as I poured the bright orange dish soap onto the plate.

Uncle Justin started putting the leftovers into the fridge then. After I was finished with the dishes, I joined him in the living room for a few minutes to watch TV. I sat on the opposite end of the couch and Big John sat between us. I petted him as I watched a boring game of baseball for about ten minutes. I then got up and left for my room. I went through the tiny, dark hallway, and as soon as I had closed my bedroom door, I heard Big John whine.

“Sorry, boy,” I said through the door to him. As if he knew it was a lost cause, I heard his heavy footsteps as he walked away, toenails scratching against the hardwood that wasn’t covered by the dark blue and tan floral rug in the hall.

I walked over to my bed and turned on my laptop. I signed on the
Internet and stared at my empty inbox again. Thankfully, Justin had a computer in his room with high-speed Internet; he had bought a router so I could have Internet on my laptop.

I slipped my feet out of my slippers and tucked them under me as I clicked the “compose” link so that I could write a message to my friend w
ho didn’t want to talk to me. I reminisced about the good old times with Charlotte and Marcus. They were my best and only friends in California. Now it was just Charlotte and me, hundreds of miles apart.

I felt the familiar pain that Marcus’ memory never ceased to bring forth in me. As always, I couldn’t help myself from reliving the nasty memory of how it had all fallen apart.

Marcus Garcia had been more than a friend to me. I had secretly admired him since the first day I laid eyes on him. He was tall, tan, muscular, and always the charmer. It seemed that Charlotte and I were the only girls he hadn’t tried to charm in the school.

Just before my parents’ accident, Marcus started dating a fellow Junior. Not long after they started dating, I struggled with my feelings for him. I told Charlotte, who had always suspected it, and she told me I should tell him how I felt. Just as I was about to spill my guts to him, he told me his girlfriend didn’t want us hanging out anymore, because she suspected I had feelings for him. I went from nearly telling him just that, to lying, saying that it was a crazy idea. He said he had alread
y told her that, but if he didn’t stop associating with me, she would dump him. And, he couldn’t bear that, because he loved her.

But, I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to one of my best friends, especially him…yet, I did anyway.

I had told Charlotte all the details after school that very day, crying my eyes out.

“Marcus and Marcia,”
I had said, scrunching up my wet face.
“Makes me want to gag.”

And I did.

She was almost as sad as I was; she had wanted us to get together so badly. She wanted to confront Marcus, tell him he was being stupid, but I stopped her, pointing out that it wouldn’t do any good because he loved her. He still wouldn’t talk to me, no matter what anyone said as long as it was what Marcia wanted. I knew it was useless, which was probably how I found the courage to let go of him.

I had only called him once since then, telling him I was leaving for
Alaska and just wanted to say goodbye. To my surprise, he showed up at the airport with Charlotte. Apparently, Marcia had granted him the privilege of telling me goodbye in person.

How generous of her,
I had thought bitterly.

We had hugged, and that was it. It still hurt to think about the hug, along with everything else. Somehow I hadn’t cried that day at the airport as I said my goodbyes. I think I had run out of tears.

I forced myself to put the memory behind me and started typing feverishly the first words that came to my mind, hoping he would read them and reply despite the voice in my head that still told me it was useless. At least it would make me feel better. (Well, that’s what I hoped.)

I feel like I should be talking to you right now. I'm used to talking to you whenever I'm sad...but what can I do? I feel like I have no one. I know I have my uncle, but I can’t talk to him like I could with you and like I can with Charlotte. I feel like I'm alone. It's just me, alone, in the quiet of the night on my computer, thinking of all the words I want to say to you, all the words I will never say to you. All these words full of so many different emotions that will never reach you, staying locked up in my frustrated, aching head.

I feel so…it’s so hard to describe. Sad doesn’t explain it. I feel hollow in my chest without you in my life. I need to talk to you, but I know I shouldn't. Know I can't. Know I won't, no matter how much I want to. Besides, even if I did, you wouldn't respond, anyway. You love someone who made a request that you not talk to me. You're going to uphold that request as long as you love her, and that will probably be forever, unlike me, which will be never.

I stared at my words, the literary embodiment of the undeniable and unbearable truth. After I finally got tired of looking at the screen, I let out a heavy sigh and turned away from it.
Perhaps it was a tad dramatic…I would never send it, anyway, so what did it matter if I got a little carried away?

I looked out the window next to me for an escape from my depression. I had my blinds raised enough that I could see that dusk was quickly fading into darkness. I stared at the mass of black pine trees lining the misty sky. There was a forest surrounding the land around Justin’s house with snow perched randomly on the many tree limbs. For a second, I thought I saw a flash of something reflective near the ground between the trees. I stared at the spot for a long while
, wondering what kind of animal’s eyes it might have been. It could have been an innocent deer that would soon end up as jerky on Uncle Justin’s little dinner table, or maybe a raccoon....

Suddenly, I heard a distant howl and wondered if it was a wolf, like Big John appeared to be.

I lowered my blinds, a little uneasy at the thought of wolves being so close to the house. I turned back to my laptop screen and saved the draft for some reason. I closed it and lay down on the bed. I folded my arms under my head and closed my eyes in an attempt to forget it all.

The next day I busied myself doing more chores. It wasn’t very interesting, but it helped keep my mind off of my parents and Marcus, and it made me feel better about staying with Justin. After all, I couldn’t call Charlotte as much as I’d like because I would have to use Justin’s phone to call her, which meant a long distance charge. Since my parents were no longer around to pay for my cell phone, I no longer had my own phone to contact her. Of course, Justin said I could call her on his landline, but if I called her as much as I wanted, I would be talking to her the entire day while he was at work. So I decided to call her only once a week, and limit it to about half an hour. I wasn’t about to be an inconvenience on him after everything he had done for me. I was afraid that if I became a problem, he might decide to send me to another relative.

After I closed the door to the little shed next to the house (I had been mowing), I clapped my
hands excitedly at Big John. “C’mon, boy! Let’s go back inside!”

I was positively excited at the thought of rel
axing in the house after shower. He jumped up in the air, tail wagging wildly. I walked quickly up the steps and into the house, holding the door open long enough for the wolfish dog to run in. I then shut the door behind him and locked it, despite Justin living in such a remote location, and then headed for the bathroom to take a shower.

I stayed inside for the rest of the day on my laptop until Uncle Justin got home. While I had been mowing I had been a little scared at times that a wild animal might jump out of the woods and attack me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the howling I heard last night, so I typed in a search engine:
How do you act around a wolf?

All I got were links titled,
“
How to act like a wolf”
.

I sighed and just searched
wolf
and started reading any random facts about them I could.
To my horror, I came across a paragraph that started with,
“DO NOT APPROACH OR FEED A WOLF! Remember, a wolf is a wild animal. Treat it like you would any other wild animal: with respectful distance.”

Okay,
I thought uneasily.
Respectful distance.

But, what if a wol
f comes to me? What do I do? It’s not like I’m going to go out searching for wolves. Running away seemed like it would just make the wolf follow, which is the last thing I would want if I were to come into contact with one.

Another link’
s description down on the list read, “
Do not let them get close to you.”

This didn’
t seem to be helping me any. Everywhere I looked nobody explained what to do if you were to come into contact with a wolf.

The rest of the week was spent inside the house, making the days long, boring, and depressing.

“I feel like it’
s sucking the life out of me,” I told Charlotte on the phone one day while I had let Big John out. I lay on the couch, watching the big, furry, gray dog mark the trees like before. I was lying on my back so Big John was upside-down in my vision.

“Then go out,”
Charlotte said with an obvious tone, like she was wondering why I hadn’t already. I didn’t want to tell her I was afraid of wolves I hadn’t actually seen.