The Summer it Snowed

A young girl, Amelia, was enjoying her summer break. It was the middle of July, hot summer days filled with a cool breeze. She woke to the feeling of the warm summer sun shining brightly on her face. She took a deep breath, and rose from her bed. She took her two puppies out to her backyard to play. As she stepped out her back door, and felt the soft grass as her foot left the last step. Amelia ran around, played fetch with her puppies, and layed in the grass, with the feeling of the sun on her face again. A few hours later, she was parched. She went to her kitchen to pour herself a glass of ice cold lemonade, which her mom had made the night before.

  She was quite tired after running around in the sun, so she went to her room, and got ready to take a nap. She turned on her fan, her tv, and put her blanket on the end of the bed. As she drifted off to sleep, she listened to her favorite song play on the tv quietly in the background. Soon she was fast asleep, but awoke suddenly. The same song was playing, so she could not have been sleeping for long at all. Her room felt like an icicle, and she quickly turned her fan off. Her room was not filled with the warm sunlight anymore, but instead her window was hit by the harsh winds of a snow storm. The sky was a dark blue, counteracted with the sight of the white snow. She could not believe that her warm summer days had suddenly blown into a cold, harsh snow storm in only a few moments. 

She went to the back door, and quickly let her dogs in the house, and turned on the heat. 

“Hey, mom,” Amelia said to her mother on the phone. “Where are you?”

“At work. Why, what’s up?”

“How’s the weather at the office?”

“It’s about 92 degrees outside, why?”

Worried about Amelia, her mom questioned her, but Amelia ended the conversation quickly and hung up. How could it still be ninety-two degrees at the office, but a snow storm here? The office was only a ten minute drive away. She decided to do some research and see what she could find. 

“Weather in Council Grove Kansas” she typed on her computer. She scrolled for what seemed like hours, as the weather seemed to only get worse outside. All the websites containing anything about the weather, said nothing about a snow storm in the middle of summer. Now entirely confused about what was happening in her small town, she called her best friend, Noah.

“Hey Amelia, what are you doing?” Noah answered the phone sounding like he was at a party. 

“Oh, nothing. I’m sitting insi-,” she was interrupted.

“Why are you inside on such a beautiful day?”

Well that answered her question, so she ended the conversation, as she did with her mother, and hung up. “So, everyone else is enjoying the beautiful summer day, but I am stuck in a snow storm… in the same town?” she whispered to herself. 

Unsure of what to do, she went back to her room to finish her nap. Getting comfortable in bed, music still playing, cuddled up under her favorite fuzzy blanket, she was fast asleep. Again, she awoke, but this time she had been asleep for a few hours. Her mom walked in her room.

“Hey Amelia, how was your day?” 

“Mom, it was crazy. When I first woke up this morning, it was a beautiful summer day and I was playing with the dogs.. I came inside to take a nap and when I woke up, it was snowing outside.” Amelia ran to the window to show her mom the snow on the ground and the frost on the windows. 

“Honey, there isn’t anything there. It’s mid-July, there’s no snow.” her mom protested against Ameila’s statement.

“Wai- what?” Amelia looked out the window in disbelief. “No mom, I promise there was snow here. But only at our house. I called Noah, it wasn’t snowing there, I called you, you said it wasn’t snowing at the office.”

“Honey, I’m sure it was a dream. And by the sound of it, I’d say a pretty crazy dream. I’ll go make some dinner.”

“I can’t accept that mom doesn’t believe me. She always believes me. Maybe she’s right, it’s July, there is no way it could be snowing in Kansas.” she whispered to herself. She called Noah again.

“Hey Noah, how was your day?”

“Awesome. My mom too-” his voice faded out as Amelia was thinking about the crazy weather changes. She wanted to tell Noah, but did not want to sound like she belonged at an insane asylum. 

“Oh my gosh, Noah, your day sounded amazing. I have a crazy story too.” She went on about how her day was, how a snow storm hit, and everything. 

“Amelia, no way that happened. It’s July. You know, when the weather is sunny and in the 90’s, not snow storms. You sound crazy.”

Amelia wondered why no one would believe her. “But I’m not crazy,” she whispered again, “I just wish you guys would believe me.”

She ended her conversation with Noah, and decided to write about her experience in her journal, something she has not done in a while. As she wrote, she wondered why she stopped writing months ago. She read some of her old journal entries, they were all from last November. She remembered all the fun times she had with Noah last winter, and realized that maybe the crazy storm was a dream after all. She remembered the snowstorm Council Grove had gone through last winter, it was the same as the one that had happened that day. 

As Amelia read through her old passages she realized she loved the winter as much as she loved the summer, and wanted to build snowmen, make snow angels, and have snowball fights with Noah again. Just like the best winter last year.