A friend for each snowflake

She had been here for five days and hadn't yet set foot outside. She wasn't scared she assured herself, just cautious recalling her first night as she made her way from the car to the door dragging her luggage and almost slipped. Surely this snow, practically frozen rain, was dangerous.

They had no snow where she came from. It was all sun and heat and drenching rain all year long. But she had needed a better life, a brighter future, so to speak and when the opportunity had presented itself, there had been no hesitation of packing her off and sending her here. To the land of milk and honey. Already conspiring against her with deceptively glossy surfaces specially designed to make her break something.

There were people outside there though, Children squealing happily, mothers urging them on, sounds of life and happiness. Young girls hanging out in groups, heads bent close to better share that gossip about which boy liked who and which girl was to be cut off from the group for doing xyz, dressed nearly identically in their puffy pink jackets and white earmuffs. She looked down at herself, definitely wouldn't start from there.

It felt good creating stories for the people outside. Could be better than going out there. Him, with the black poof jacket, standing alone on the side smoking a cigarette. Something she always wondered about, never having smoked herself. Maybe it was all this cold. She could go out there and ask, he didn't look very different from the men back home who were so open to conversation with a stranger she wondered if it had been something in the water. Wandering, her mind. He didn't look like a father, more of a bad boy type if those black pants, she was pretty sure were leather, were anything to go by, and those killer boots with the gold studs. He had no visible tattoos although to be fair he was pretty bundled up.

A mother and her daughter, sitting close together on a bench reading from a book. She could see the little girls bright smile, all the way from here, and it was a genuine smile. Why thy chose to read from outside though was beyond her. The place was beautiful in an all white bad things hidden kind of way. Maybe that's what drew them. Or it was better than being at home, maybe they didn't want to go back. Could be anything.

A gang of boys who apparently didn't feel the cold because all most of them were wearing were hoodies, jeans and sneakers, nothing more, lounging, in that I'm-cool-and-you-can-see-it way only boys know, by the fence separating the park from the establishment next door. As she scanned their faces to come up with fitting stories, the last one turned and looked straight at her making her duck below the windowsill. Her mind went blank, a total stranger, had just seen her in the window, staring. Stalker tendencies really.

She jumped when a knock came at the door. Oh no, what if it was him?

Slowly and as quietly as possible, she shuffled her way to the window beside the door and furtively tried to peep through the curtains. Couldn't see much but the back of a hoodie. Oh no, it WAS him. Another knock.

"Coming,", she called out, ran to the door and opened it.

" Hey, I'm Joshua." Smiles and teeth and dazzle and laughter dancing in brown eyes.

"Um, hi I'm Emily."

"Would you like to come outside?"

"I do not think that would be wise." She could hear her voice sounding breathless. Where was grace when you needed it? Sophistication? Here was a boy on her doorstep and she couldn't sound right. Her hair was probably doing its let's get crazy trick and sticking up at all angles.

"And why would you say that?"

"I don't know you."

He cocked his head to one side, smiled and she saw he had a dimple, solitary and glorious in his left cheek. Life wasn't fair really. "Don't you? I'm Joshua, you're Emily. I live upstairs, you live downstairs. See, I know you."

She couldn't help it, but she laughed. And probably took her first breath since he saw her in the window.

"You must be crazy. I can't come with you. You might be a serial killer or something."

"How about if I promise to kill you with happiness?"

Dear God, he was bold. And cheeky! She could definitely see him as the popular kid, the one all the girls wanted and friendly to everyone.

As she struggled not to laugh, he suddenly got serious.

"Okay look. My friends and I knew there was someone new coming and we've been waiting for so long because nothing exciting ever happens in this neighbourhood, so today, on a whole stupid bet, I was dared to come and try to make you come outside. Obviously my wondrous charm and wit aren't going to make you move. But how about if I said, all you have to do is walk with me to my friends, say hi, then I'll bring you straight back and I'll leave you alone."

She just stared at him for a while, marveling at the level of confidence it took to walk up to a stranger and just...talk.

She guessed he took it to be something else because he then said, "Or you could tell me to go jump in a drum of boiling oil, that ought to teach me not to bother people."

But she was tired of being in this house alone, all day long and she had vowed to try and socialize more in her new life, so she made a snap decision which her headless ghost might taunt her with forever if she ended up in some ditch rotting away to nothing, plastered a smile on her face and said the words on her tongue before her brain could process them.

"Fine. Let's go."

He did her the honour of looking shocked for a second, turned on his heel and started walking away.

And this is how, an hour later, cheered on by Joshua and his group of definitely non serial killer friends, she found herself tentatively placing her foot on the frozen pond to really see if it could hold her weight as they had all promised after she had mentioned she had never seen an actual frozen water body and wouldn't trust it with her life.