The Heat of the Winter

It was the hottest day of the summer, and Megan had never felt more miserable. The sun was beating down on her as if it had a personal vendetta, and the only relief she had from the heat— a single cherry popsicle— was steadily melting into nothing. Her entire body was sticky with sweat and the remains of her popsicle, which only added to her misery. She still had a long way to walk before she got home, and she didn’t know how much more of this she could take. She stared miserably at her melting popsicle, wishing she had a million of them to cool her down.

Her mind lingered on the image of a million popsicles around her. They seemed to grow in her mind to the size of buildings, huge sheets of sugary ice. On a normal day, Megan would have wanted all the sugary goodness, but today all she could think about was the blissful cold that being surrounded by popsicles would give her.

The more she thought about it, the more real it felt. Now the popsicles were not just the size of buildings, they were buildings. Every store and house around her were turned into a brightly colored skyscraper emanating its own blast of cold air. The road below her was no longer concrete, but wooden popsicle sticks, each one discolored from the popsicle that used to give it meaning.

Megan smiled with delight at the world she had created around herself. Even just the thought of such a delightful place made her feel better. When she walked down her road of popsicle sticks, she had a little bit more skip in her step than when she had just been walking down the sidewalk.

Of course, Megan wasn’t the only one in her world. There were other people walking on the sidewalk, and they were just as miserable as Megan had been before. Their misery made Megan feel bad again and reminded her of the reality where she was being beat down on by the sun. That wouldn’t do at all, so she imagined that these weren’t people at all and certainly not miserable ones. They were snowmen, like the kind Megan made at Christmastime. Their faces were made of lumps of coal and so they wore perpetual smiles. The snowmen made Megan happy, unlike the sad people on the sidewalk with her.

Megan kept walking, imagining that she was skating along. She noticed that she hadn’t put any clouds in the sky and so she imagined the fluffiest clouds she had ever seen. They were huge and sprawling, providing a blanket of shade for everyone in her little world. They made her smile too, and they reminded her that she could put anything she wanted in her world. She imagined the sky full of bubbles and it was so. She imagined her house, which she could finally see on the horizon, as a huge castle made of ice and covered in colorful sparkling lights. The ice sent the lights in all directions, and because Megan didn’t know how far the lights would shine, the colors spread out into infinity. It was the best castle that Megan could ever imagine, and she was drawn to it in her fantasy just as much as she was drawn home in her real life.

She giggled as she moved along the sidewalk, twirling around as she imagined herself doing complicated and beautiful tricks. Sometimes the snowmen would turn to look at her, but she was past them in a flash, onto the next trick before she could see whether they looked angry or impressed.

When she got to the castle she felt as though she had been taken in by the light around it. The light now felt as though it had substance and thickness. It was tangible around her, and she turned all around to take it in. She had never imagined light to be so entrancing before, and she couldn’t peel her eyes away. It seemed almost to sink into her, permeating every part of her being in an inexplicable way. She imagined that something like that would tickle, so she giggled a bit.

Of course, the light was only a result of the castle that stood before her, and Megan could not keep her attention off it for long. She ran up to the door and burst inside, ready to be greeted by a glorious interior, full of long hallways and elegant ballrooms. For just a moment, she got a glimpse of that world, but everything seemed to fall apart when the snowman in the middle of the hall turned to her and started to talk.

“How was school today, Megan?” her mom was asking, standing in the middle of Megan’s shabby living room, exactly where the snowman had been mere seconds before. “It must be a hot one out there today, you look sweaty.”

“Yeah,” Megan said. “It was hot at first but then I was looking at my popsicle and I started to think about a whole world—”

“Your popsicle? Oh, Megan, darling, is that what’s all over your arm? You just let it melt all over you? Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up.”

“No, but mom—”

“Come on Megan. I’m sure you can tell me all about this little world you made up later. Right now, we’ve got to get you cleaned up.”

Megan sighed. She knew her mom wasn’t going to let her talk about her new world later. She knew that there would always be more important things to do than listen to her talk about the things she imagined. Her mom just didn’t understand how amazing they were. She didn’t understand how they made everything more fun, even a blisteringly hot day. Megan shook her head and went to go wash the melted popsicle off her arm. For now, her fantasies would have to stay in her head. Luckily, she knew just what to do with them in there.