Black Ice

Don't Go Outside

Max whistled, the others all looking their way, “Hey guys, c’mere. We’re calling a meeting with the new guy.”

“The new guy? I’ve been here like four months.”

Max smiled, ever making sure he was between Hector and Jaime. “Yeah? Sounds pretty new to me.”

Scott looked from Alex to Jaime to Kelsey and Andrea and gave a small, tight smile, “Yeah alright fair enough.”

Jaime leaned into Max’s side, more than happy to let him play the part of possessive if it would keep Hector far away from her. It seemed to be working.

Still, she knew by the way Max’s posture shifted, the way his spine straightened and his chest swelled, that it was going to give him the wrong idea in the long run.

Scott finally started talking, “I know this is going to seem nuts, but the snow is dangerous. It’s… making people act weird.”

“Weird how?” Max asked. Kelsey rolled her eyes.

“Have you… ever seen a zombie movie?”

Hector scoffed, “Come on, you expect me to believe you just let every person in here walk into the snow, knowing it was going to turn them into night of the living dead?”

Scott shrank, and Jaime reached out to pull him toward her and Max. “Let him talk,” she said, but even she had her reservations.

He nodded, “I… it might not happen here. I hope it doesn’t. I know how nuts this sounds. Do you really think any of them would have listened to me?” His voice rose, getting quicker with every word. “But I need you to trust me.” He looked directly at Max and Jaime. He didn’t care about any of the others, but these two had to stay safe. They had to.

Jaime saw the desperation in his eyes, and decided that even if he was insane, she owed it to him to at least humor him. “Okay, so we stay inside. Just until the snow’s gone. Is that all you want us to do?”

“Yes. Please. That should be all you have to do.”

“And our friends?”

Scott hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Kelsey stepped forward, and Jaime shifted so that Scott was partially behind her. Max shifted to be partially in front of them both. Kelsey stopped, looking between the three of them. “What kinda slutty threesome you got goin’ on here, Jayjay? You always acted like you were better than us, and now you’ve got two of our boys hanging off of you? And the new guy, too?”

Jaime blinked, caught off guard by the vitriol in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She meant it, but Max and Scott both flinched. Hector didn’t.

Kelsey laughed, mean and low, “You really don’t, do you?” A pout pushed her bottom lip out, and she took a few steps toward them. “Oh, see now that’s just sad.”

“Don’t waste your time with this slut,” she crooned, laying her hands on Max’s chest. He tensed, jaw clenching and fingers digging into Jaime’s shoulder just enough to let her know how much he hated this entire interaction. His eyes didn’t leave Kelsey, but Jaime saw the flash of something in them anyway. Fear? Apology? Fury? Maybe all three.

Jaime threaded her fingers into his hand, and he clamped down on it. Something in his stance changed.

Jaime didn’t have a chance to step in. He didn’t have a chance to explode. Jaime was glad for both.

Andrea stepped forward, all but throwing Kelsey’s hand off of Max’s chest, nails digging into her skin so hard it left crescents in her flesh. “If she’s a slut, what does that make you? She’s not the one throwing herself at a man who clearly doesn’t want her.”

Kelsey spun around and Jaime swore she growled, but couldn’t prove it. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Get your hands off Max before he does something his mama wouldn’t approve of.”

Scott found his voice, then, and said “Well if he won’t, I don’t have a mother to offend. I’d be more than happy to volunteer.”

Jaime almost laughed.

Max actually did, a strange and strangled little nervous titter.

Kelsey was about to fire something back when a throat cleared across the room. They all froze.

“Hey, Guys?”

They all turned toward the doors, where Alex was watching the others out in the snow, “Call me crazy, but does snow usually look that… sparkly?”

“Everything looks sparkly to you, Alex,” Kelsey bit out, unbalanced and furious that the attention had been pulled away from her.

“No, like, seriously.”

Hector made his way toward the door, pushing his shirt into the waistband of his pants, “How would you even know? Have you seen snow before?”

“Well, yeah. My folks and I went up to the lakes last winter. It snowed there, but it didn’t look like this.”

Scott had gone quiet again, walking to the glass as if pulled in that direction. “No,” he said, “It doesn’t usually look like that.”

When Jaime joined the others, petty squabbles momentarily forgotten, she saw what Alex was talking about. Night had fallen, but the snow stuck to every surface, gleaming with an almost rainbow quality. She had heard snow described as glimmering, but if Scott and Alex both said it looked wrong, maybe it did?

Andrea put her hand to the glass, and flakes of snow immediately gathered against the shape of it on the other side, almost as if drawn to it. The people outside wore it, coated in thin, prismatic blankets. Oblivious, and if Scott was right, already lost.

“f**k…” Scott moaned, his body pitching backwards as he fell into a quick walk back toward the center of the room.

“Wait,” Hector said, actually sounding nervous. “That i***t was being serious?”

Jaime looked back toward him. Max was already headed that direction. “I’m gonna go ahead and say we should probably take his advice and not go out there.”

Andrea pulled her hand away. The snow stayed, a moment, then slid down the glass as a unified print. “Yeah,” she said, mesmerized, “That sounds like a good plan.”

Kelsey, looking between Scott and Max and realizing she had no hold over either of them, let out a frustrated growl, “Well you know what I think? I think all of this is stupid. I’m going home.”

She headed for the door in furious stomps. Scott lurched forward, hand outstretched, then got an odd look on his face and sat back.

Kelsey paused just inside the door.

She had the attention of the room again, just like she wanted, and everyone sat in tense silence to see if she would really go through with it, but nobody stopped her.

Why wasn’t anyone stopping her?

Kelsey waited, a thousand emotions flickering across her face before settling into rage and something close to betrayal.

Nobody was forcing her.

She turned and threw the door open. Scott flinched, grabbing at Max’s arm hard enough to make the larger man hiss in pain. Max wrapped him up in that arm, willing him to calm the trembling that had overtaken him.

Jaime pulled Andrea and Alex back toward the center of the room with her. Hector followed them, hands in his pockets, in his lazy way. Kelsey’s mouth opened, a sound building there between a whine and a growl. “Fine, then, f**k you guys.” And then she went out, snow already sticking to tears she hadn’t shown them.

Alex was the first to speak, once the doors shut again. “Did we just kill her?”

Andrea scoffed, “We didn’t do anything.”

Scott, his voice trembling, “No, we didn’t.”

Jaime reached him, joining Max in trying to calm their friend. “She’s a big girl. She made her own choice.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, his voice so quiet only she and Max could hear him, “But she wasn’t the one who knew what it meant. That still makes it my fault.”

Max sighed. “Scotty, if you think any of this is your fault, you’ve got a screw loose.”

Scott didn’t say anything, but Jaime saw the haunted look on his face. The ‘maybe I do’, that wouldn’t leave his lips.

“Max, why don’t you take him to get cleaned up?” Andrea said. “Maybe grab some food from the kitchen? He looks like he’s fit to keel over if this keeps up.”

“Yeah, yeah let’s do that.” Max hefted Scott up by his armpits. “Boy if you don’t walk, I will carry you like the prettiest pig at the fair, do not test me.”

A few of them snickered. Scott wasn’t one of them, though he did let a quarter smile lift just the very corner of his lip. “Alright, alright, fine.”

They left. Andrea, Alex, Jaime, and Hector stayed.

None of them moved until they heard the door to the bathroom open and shut down the hall.

Again, Alex was the first. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“Kelsey? Who the hell cares.” Andrea flapped a hand. “She’s too much of a b***h to die anyway.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Jaime said, trying to remember if Scott had said that at all.

“Didn’t he? Well if he didn’t, then what are we worried about anyway.” Andrea sat down on the floor, pulling her dress around her and feeling much too prettily dressed for all of this. Out there in that snow, she would have been absolutely gleaming.

Jaime walked to the window and looked out. Kelsey had stopped in the middle of the road, face upturned, eyes closed, covered in that thin, prismatic sheen.