ALEX.
Making snow angels had done something to me I hadn’t expected. The moment I had watched the twins fall backward into the snow, laughing as they moved their arms and legs, something in my chest had cracked wide open. The white ground beneath them hadn’t looked playful to me; it had looked endless, cold, and cruel. It had looked like the winter my world fell apart.
I remembered being fourteen, standing alone on the school playground after my parents’ funeral. The snow had been fresh that day too. Some of the kids had whispered when I passed. Others hadn’t bothered whispering at all.
Curse.
That was the word they used.
They said death followed me. That my parents’ accident meant something was wrong with me. One boy had shoved me into the snow and told me to lie there, “since that’s
