colder+water

Colder Water

I could feel the melting snow making its way into my new boots. //Damn, why didn’t my mom spray these? They’re suede! They can’t handle water!// The frigid air blew across my face and the smell of salt and the outdoors was present. I was turning into a human ice-cube and all I wanted was to change my shoes. The water finally found my socks and the constant chill in my feet made it quite uncomfortable to exist in this weather. //why did I agree to this?// That question seemed to roam around my head like a wandering nomad, a wandering and freezing nomad. I had nowhere left to go except for Sammis car, but even there, I’d find myself in agony. The wind picked up again and knocked off my hood. //Damn hood!// I pulled it back up over my head, but the wind resented me for that and blew it off again. //I give up.// Taylor stood there, holding her camera, almost looking as pained as me. “So who wants to do the lip stick first,” Taylor laughed, knowing that nobody would commit. I took out one of the tubes. //I don’t want to do this.// Shivers swarmed up my whole body, just trying to twist the lipstick up. “That’s not even red,” Sammi declared, barely giving the helpless lipstick a chance to run across the side of my hand to prove that it was in fact: red. “It look’s purple, but it really isn’t.” I said, trying to defend it. Taylor grabbed another tube from my bag that I had filled with endless amounts of lipstick. “Yeah, the other ones are ugly colors,” I chimed in, realizing the rest were shades of browns and oranges. “Alright guys, just do whatever,” Taylor said loosely, as she threw my bag on a wet barrel. The original plan was to have Sammi and my face smeared with lipstick to make it look like we had just kissed this kid Marcs cheeks, who was also there, standing with his hands clutched deep in his coat pockets. I’d like to believe that is was the bitter cold that was convincing me to not apply the lipstick, because I don’t like to think of myself as a coward. Although, it would be something out of the box for me, being that I was not use to going outside my neighborhood with other people, let alone on a school night. But I was, and whoever it was who called me “sheltered” in early November was wrong. I wasn’t "sheltered", just slightly protected. Protected from things like friends who drove, or kids that were older than me. I’m sure whoever that person who had the dignity to call me out, would care less about my newly found freedom, or whatever it was. Thankfully, someone decided before me, that the lipstick wasn’t going to happen, and that all I had to do was be myself. Somehow, the numbness crawling through my skin began to make me feel better, because I realized, that even though I was behind some random warehouse that stored trucks and salt, there was still //me//. A "sheltered" girl, who seemed to be having the ever so slightest epiphany about everything and anything she had missed out on in her whole entire high school life.

Freedom.

I breathed in the air, but it only hurt my throat, so I coughed, “Are you all right?” Sammi asked, leaning against a random gate that read, “propane.” I shrugged, ignoring the fact that I was getting sick. Sammi pushed herself off the gate, and Marc entered the frame of Taylors vision. Stray chains hung down from the metal poles and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was fully clothed, I may have considered it explicit, but being that he was, I found it rather amusing. “Leah,” get in there,” Taylor glowed as she danced around the snow, avoiding the slush. I jumped in front of the gate and stood still. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t do this!” The feeling in my face was lost and the emotion being photographed was a mystery to me, I just hope it didn’t read; //I’m fucking cold// and instead something more expressive like: //I’m happy I’m here//, because I really was. Marc grinned, “I love how shehops into the photo and stands there.” Being that it was in all good fun, I didn’t take any offense to it. “I feel awkward, posing, that’s why.” I concealed my eagerness to make this all worth something with a half-assed smile. //At least I’m photogenic.// The four of us proceeded down the narrow pavement surfaced with a strip of ice. //My boots!// Only three weeks old and already the bottoms were covered with mud. //I don’t care anymore. I do. No, you shouldn’t, it is what it is.// My boots were ruined and so I promised to ignore them for the rest of the photo shoot. I had came to the realization that it was affecting me more than it should have been. We finally approached the end of the sloped drive way and found ourselves standing in front of yet another gate that read, “stop.” //yeah I have to **stop** worrying.// Taylor pointed to an address sign. “Ahhh, it say’s Comstock Road,” she screamed, making sure she emphasized the “com’ in “Comstock.” The three of us laughed like immature school girls. For some reason, that ill humor made up for all the seriousness that was trying to push me to my limit. “Hold on,” I said trying to place myself under the sign. I heard the clicking, echoing between the tranquil wind. It started to feel easier, even if I was under an almost filthy named street sign. The yellow light was absent and big forestry trees took it’s place instead. I felt safer here, like I wasn’t as exposed, just there, and that was enough for me. I coughed again and puffs of air clouded in front of my face. //Damn cough!// I’ve always had this cough. It’s called croup. It’s a chronic cough. So I never really could tell if I was really sick or just coughing because I wasn’t immune to it. I walked back to Sammi and Marc who were performing strange poses next to the sign which was attached to a gate. I went to the other side and was attacked by a prickle bush followed by an almost slippery fall, but I managed to latch onto the gate. Everyone laughed, but I didn’t take any offense. It was all in good fun. So I just held onto the gate for a couple of minutes and let Taylor get her photos in. I carefully went back around making sure I didn’t make the same mistake I so mindlessly made the first time. I trudged up the road which felt like a hill, letting my boots taste the repugnant flavor of polluted snow. My toes ached in misery and the thought that I may have been experiencing frost bite came to mind, but then again, that was just me being “sheltered,“ believing that only the worst could happen to me. Looking back now, I’m surprised that no doctor, or mental doctor for that matter, ever classified me as a hypochondriac. Around ten, I lived in the ongoing horror that I was getting sick. Day after day I’d take my temperature, but it always reassured me that with a 98.5 temperature, I was surely going to survive.I'm aware that i live in the constant fear that the world is too big for me, but really, I think it's just to big for me to understand. I should have just accepted the fact that I had stepped into colder water, because like a lot of things in my life that I couldn't control, frost bite was surely one of them.