17
The winter of 1995 descended on Rocky Barrens University. The college in the woods was covered in snow. The first creak of an avalanche before everything tumbled down.
Aurelle hadn’t fully appreciated how different the season was up north compared to the comfortable experience of winter in the city, where snowplows cleared the streets before they woke and school was rarely closed because of the snowfall. Having not often been north in the winter, she had never seen this much snow. Rocky Barrens was a Christmas card of picturesque white-topped cabins and a glass-like frozen lake. However, beneath this quaint appearance was a fierce cold, a threatening ice, a kind of seasonal treachery.
Aurelle’s parents had shopped for her in the summer, when it seemed like winter was still a faraway
