The next thing I knew Kyle was lifting me up again and dragging me somewhere where I wasn’t being bombarded with snow. With added words of encouragement we walked inside the school and I caught my first glimpse of the people I would be spending the duration of the storm with. There were only three at the time, not everyone stuck in the building. An older man who clearly had African American heritage and wore a blue jumpsuit held the door open for us. There was a little girl, no taller than my waist, holding Mrs. Snowburn’s hand, and of course Mrs. Snowburn herself. “Who’s that Mrs. Snowburn and why isn’t he moving that much?”
The little girl’s were stuck on me as we walked in, the janitor’s eyes were making sure there was no one else outside, and Officer Kyle was just trying to stand up. No one else saw what I saw. Mrs. Snowburn shivered. It wasn’t a big thing, even then I hardly noticed, but over the last five years of thinking about what happened. Of thinking how she died, why she died. Every time I go back to it that was her only moment of weakness, when I walked into the school she let the cold in and it would eventually be what killed her.
During one of the few times I had alone with her while she lay on her hospital bed, which would later become her death bed, I mentioned the shiver. I told her this whole story up until that point and told her what I though that shiver meant. It was when I was at a breaking point, a breath I needed to take, that she placed her hand on mine and smiled weakly. “If what it took to help you survive was for me to pass on, then I accept that. I’ve lived a wonderful life, I have three children. My husband passed away three years ago and it’s time for me. That’s everything I need to know. You don’t have to rationalize my death for me to make yourself feel better. Just know that I don’t blame you and that I can’t blame you, and therefore you shouldn’t really be allowed to blame yourself.”
***
By the time they’d found some place comfortable for me to rest and recover Officer Kyle was gone. No one knew when he left, just that when they went to go talk to him the snow path had recently been cleared but that there was no one in sight. That was the last I heard of him, though I’ve tried to track him down on numerous occasions. I guess that’s just another reason why Mrs. Snowburn thought it had been a helper sent from heaven.
There were very few rooms that didn’t have some sort of window to the outside, whether it was to the inner courtyard didn’t really matter. That’s why I ended up in the nurse’s room. Set up like a veritable cave, the cheap cushions and numerous blankets allowed me to get warm. The janitor moved his space heater into the room and everyone gathered around to add their own warmth. They as quiet as they could, if a kid got too anxious one of the adults would take them for a walk around the school. It was the best situation they could manage, and it saved my life I guess.
I was in and out of consciousness for a few hours before I was warm enough to even begin to figure out that there were people with me. Sure, I asked for water sometimes, but that was simply because I expected it to magically appear in my hands. I never really understood that there were people getting the water for me and helping me even drink. But when I did finally have the energy to sit up and ingest something solid the space heater had already needed a battery change and no one really was paying attention to me anymore. To some I had been a lost cause the moment I stepped in the front door and were frustrated I had so many of the blankets when they were cold and more likely to survive.
The little girl who asked why I hadn’t been moving all that much was the first to see me, she stood up from what she was doing and quietly walked to the head of my bed. She stood there for some time and just looked at me, clearly unsure of what to make of the situation. “Hi.” I smiled as much as I could, though my muscles wouldn’t do as much as I would have liked. “What’s your name?”
“Jessica.” She was small, like I said she only reached to about my waist. She was dressed for the winter; her heave coat enveloped her almost completely. It hung from neck to ankles the only thing visible was her face and, when she let her sleeves fall, her pencil thin arms. With the exception of a large red bow tied around her dirty blond hair everything about her was with pale pink or pale yellow.
I noticed she held a piece of paper in her hands that had the marks of being used on carpet, little wrinkles that would never really go away. “What do you have there Jessica?” My teaching degree wasn’t really for children her age; I had spent my time studying for high school level education. That didn’t mean I didn’t know how to interact with her on a basic level though, a smile here and a compliment there and she’d probably, at the very least, not kick me in the shins. “May I see it?” I held my hand out to see if she would show me her drawing, but she turned around and hid behind a large man sitting with another little boy. She whispered something in the adult’s ear before turning around and drawing some more, though I watched her look back at me a few more times before forgetting becoming more interested in her drawing.
He was big, equal parts fat and muscle. Despite the cold he wore the least of anyone in the room, a long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His shoes were a cheap brand of tennis shoe that probably wouldn’t hold up for more than a month with rigorous use. He was clearly the school’s P.E. teacher, occupying the kids with arts and crafts would make me chuckle in the future. At the time I was simply curious what Jessica said into to him and what he would do with the information. He didn’t really move, he turned his head to make sure what the girl said, turned back to the boy next to him and told the room that I was awake with three simple words. “Sean. He’s up.” They weren’t loud words, he wasn’t trying to yell to the world that I was awake, but they carried and everyone looked.
The boy, startled at the sudden words, and Jessica because she already knew the news were the only two that didn’t turn their eyes to me. A third child, completely blocked by the large man, leaned back and places his weight on his hands to try and get a better look. Probably the oldest of the children his face was already getting longer and loosing its baby fat, though certainly not all gone. He wore a jacket with a sports team’s logo on it that looked like a
A woman stepped up to the group, never taking her gaze off of me, until she was pulling tight the older boy’s hood. She placed herself between the two of us and began fussing over everything she could, he argued and tried to look around her body. “Johnny, don’t stare,” She whispered. “It’s rude.” She was dressed in a two piece business suits that could have been a light grey, but looked black in the dark room. She wasn’t dressed for the cold and a blanket was draped around her shoulders, though it didn’t seem to be helping. She kept her back to me from that point on, staring at the back wall if she ran out of things to be obsessive over. I wanted to tell her it was all right, but even I knew she had to be scared.
Before I could sit up to look at the others in the room two people sat on the bed next to me. One was, as I would soon find out, Mrs. Snowburn, and the other had to have been Sean. “Hello,” I managed. “Fine weather we’re having.” I smiled weakly, but the other two didn’t.
“My name is Sean Tanner; I’m the principle of this school. This is Mrs. Snowburn, she’s one of the teachers here.” He paused and looked at her for a second. He was clean cut, to the extent that someone in this situation could be. His hair, though messy in places, was pulled back as best he could. Wrinkles had begun to form on his blue pressed shirt from sleeping in it, though it was still completely tucked in. “We’re the ones that have been taking care of you since you got here, though we weren’t sure if you were going to make it at time.” He smiled and patted me arm. “If you get hungry we have some cold foods in the school’s kitchen. One of the good things about being stuck in a school is that we’re almost always stocked with enough food for at least a hundred people at all times. We’ve got enough food to last us the storm.”
“Yeah, but what about water. We’ve used half our supply on him and we don’t know how long we’re going to be here.” Though Johnny’s mother would eventually warm up to my presence at the beginning she was in the crowd of people who disliked my presence and wanted me gone. “What do we do when we run out of water? All of it’s frozen by this point.”
“Claire.” The P.E. teacher placed a large palm on her shoulder and, even from where I lay I could see her immediately tense.
“Tim has enough batteries for the space heater to last us a few days.” Mrs. Snowburn leaned forward and pushed my bangs around before placing the back of her palm on my forehead. Her hand already had many of the signs of age, her tendons protruded out from sunken skin and the entire hand was unusually smooth. That isn’t to say I minded, she was taking care of me and I appreciated it. “We can warm up whatever water we can find by it until then. If it gets really bad we can always try our luck with the snow. It’s not the cleanest water in the world, but we’ll have to manage if the time comes.” Her voice was quiet and soft, but stern. Claire would listen to her whether or not she wanted to.
As Mrs. Snowburn readjusted the pillows under my head Jessica crawled onto the bed next to her. “Hi,” She said quietly. I waved this time, she came to me again and I didn’t want to scare her away this time. “What’s your name?” She reached out to touch my forehead but Mrs. Snowburn grabbed her hand before she could quite reach.
“Come on Jessica, I think it’s time we took another walk to the kitchen.” Jessica hesitated briefly before following. As she walked out she waved, I moved my fingers around the blanket to wave back but she was already gone.
***
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