3 - rowena

 This was some English exercise about growing up and I got slightly carried away.

   
   She was born under a starless December sky. Her eyes were a blue as cold as the ice that lined the streets, and as bright as the lights from the cars that skated over them in the darkness. They wrapped her in blankets and tucked her tiny feet into fuzzy little socks to protect them from the cold. Her name was Rowena. 

    She lived in a small house made of smooth wood and soft carpets and candles and windows. The world outside was nearly always pale with snow, or clouds, or both. With her toddler feet clad in clunky rubber boots and her torso encapsulated in a puffy coat, she'd step into the great outdoors, resembling a marshmallow or a child whose parents were cautious and loving. She loved the snow since the very beginning. She loved the family dog – fluffy, huge, and with a bark as resonant as a bass drum.

    She got older and her tawny-colored hair got longer. Soon she was in school – sitting at a desk painted to look like wood, surrounded by manufactured warm air and blackboards. She liked books, though. The pages were always soft under her fingers. She disliked the whiny voice of the teacher, and she disliked math. The sight of the bright yellow worksheets always made her squirm.

    Years passed. Rowena was twelve and she carried a backpack that weighed her down as if the snowy ground was trying to suck her into the underworld. Sometimes boys with feathery messy hair and crooked mean grins and voices that cracked every few words would ask her why she always spent her time reading instead of speaking, and when she looked at them indifferently they'd laugh and walk off. They'd dismiss her as a nerd. They made her realize that her indifference was turning to insecurity.   When they bothered her, she'd sit outside on the porch chair and crush snowballs in her mittened hands as if they were her worries, and as if getting rid of them was that easy.

     Rowena was fifteen and everyone was vibrating with the weird energy of adolescence. Everyone was acting like they were too old for themselves and once she caught her best friend kissing someone else she cared about under the bluish light of the staircase leading to the library, and she whirled around and ran out of school like the Alaska winds were causing her to fly. The tears froze to her reddened cheeks. She tripped in the driveway and her jeans tore and her skinned knee leaked cherry red onto the ice and she cried and felt unbelievably hurt and stupid. Rubbing the wound with snow numbed the pain somewhat.

    Rowena was nineteen and she happily left behind the old brick school where she had grown up in favor of one where she could read all the time and people wouldn't scoff. She missed her parents, and she missed careless snow days at home.

    Upon graduating, she moved to a city where the sun was blazing hot and snow was nothing more than a zamboni driver's wildest dream. She got used to trading fur-lined boots in for strappy sandals, and to giving up hot chocolate for lemonade. She married a man who had eyes like starlight and a laugh like birdsong. Their house became full of books and children.

    It was a long time before she remembered the snow again.