A Winter of Broken Promises

Chapter 10: Christmas Eve, Bare Hands.

Elena POV

The cold air flies round him sharp, clean-- and brisk as though it were in a hurry to fire me up.

Daniel doesn’t step inside. He merely stands upon the porch and snow gathering on his shoulders, looking plaid at me as though he were frightened that he might turn his head, and I would vanish.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He swallows. “I needed to see you.”

At the back of the house, the house is cosy; golden lights, cinnamon and pine, my mom humming in the kitchen. Here, before my eyes is all that I have been shunning.

I go out and close the door behind me.

Our feet ache on the creaking porch. The railing is lit with Christmas lights, red, green, red. At last he puts his hands forward.

It’s an envelope.

“I went to the studio,” he says. The scholarship was shared with me.

My breath catches.

I did not know, he goes on, fast. “I swear. But once I did… I was unable to get it out of my mind. About what you gave up. About what I let you give up.”

I take the envelope from him. In his scribbling handwriting his name is written across the front.

“I talked to Walker,” he says. “I told him I needed time.”

My head snaps up. “You what?”

“I didn’t accept anything.” His voice shakes. “Not yet.”

Snow is more heavy, and it is covering the porch with white.

I do not wish to see you go, he says. I do not want to be something you are sorry about.

The sound breaks through my laugh. “That would’ve been easier.”

He steps closer. “I love you, Elena. But I do not know how to love you without, asking you that you should shrink. I don’t know how to fix that.”

The words lie down between us, uncouth and plain and frightening.

I put myself some question, he says to himself. “And I need to ask you too.”

The lights flicker.

Snow flies in my hair, and down my collar, though I cannot feel cold.

Were you to choose again, Are you asking me, Daniel, to say, would you?

My hands shake on the envelope.

I open my mouth—

And the answer to this is there in the silence between us.

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Chapter 11: When Christmas Came without Me.

Elena POV

As the day finally arrives when Christmas is upon Crestwood the town is stretched.

The lights are excessive, the lampposts, the shop windows, burnt and blazed and flickering on the roofs, competing in showing up one another. Snow falls on the sidewalks until all seems to be unnatural. Perfect. Intentional.

I go through it as though in water.

Crestwood High is gleaming with the corridors. Tinsel drapes over lockers. The wreaths that hang on the doors of the classrooms do so in a crooked manner. The snowflakes are represented by pieces of paper as they fall off the ceiling, and which turn every time someone passes under them. The halls are crowded with students screaming at one another- about the Winter Festival, about the gala performance, who wears what, who goes out with whom.

Did you hear the solo of last year it is out of this world?

“My cousin saw rehearsals. She’s incredible.”

My head is down, and I have the books in my arms, and my squeaky a-treading shoes on the polished floor. Every word hits anyway.

I had visualized this season in that manner.

Me in the background, burning, fainting to my white tutu. The lights dimming. The silence preceding the start of the music. The lights of the stage falling upon me as I move, no weight, precision, with life and with snowflakes. My parents who were in the crowd, including my mom who was holding the hand of my dad and both of them smiling as though I had performed a miracle.

It is a different version of me which I read about previously.

I am stopped in the main passageway.

The poster cannot be disregarded.

CRESTWOOD WINTER GALA

with Special Solo Performance by

LENA BENNETT

My name isn’t there.

I gawk at it, and ought not to. The letters are made soft and hard and soft. Somebody crashes over me and mutters a sorry and goes on his way. The fact that my life has stopped does not mean that I can simply stop.

Lena. My replacement.

A bubble of laughter is tickling my throat--thin, splintery. Of course it’s official now. Of course it’s printed. Laminated. Strangled in a spot where all can observe.

I turn away before tears will know whether to weep or not.

I feel him even before I see him using the hall.

Daniel.

He is leaning over the trophy case, his jacket in one hand, and addressing a person, who seems to be a member of the game, probably of his future. He looks the same. Familiar. Too familiar. As of nothing that bangs on Christmas Eve.

I don’t know if he sees me.

I don’t wait to find out.

I sneak into the nearest room and as the voices start playing I lean beside the door with a heartbeat going crazy. I feel my mobile phone vibrating on the lower part of my body.

I don’t check it.

I rather inhale the fumes of dry-erasers and pine cleaner and seek to remember who I am since I am not choosing between two things that hurt.

Outside, the bells ring.

It is Christmas in the Crestwood.

And I am in a room which I cannot recognise anymore--and I am asking myself whether, after all, my lost life has been lost forever or I am only waiting to find out whether I will ever see it again.