Excerpt from 'The Snowman'
At exactly noon was when the boy groggily blinked open his brown-blue eyes. He groaned lowly and flipped himself on his back to take a moment to stare at the ceiling. He smiled gleefully to himself as he made out a shape that looked vaguely like a long-necked dinosaur.
Finally, he decided it was time to get out of bed. Even though, really, he could lie there all day and make shapes on the ceiling. He went to swing his legs over the side of the bed, however, he didn’t realize how tangled in the sheets he was and succeeded in throwing himself on the floor, landing hard. The noise was thick but absorbed by the carpet and other clutter of the room.
“Gunner!” His mother’s voice carried from downstairs and even made it through his closed door. “Stop pounding on the floor!”
“Sorry, Ma!” He called back, still on the floor trying to detangle himself from the ever-binding sheets.
As he finally was able to break free from the ties, and he jumped up on his feet, he saw that his window was frosted over. Which really didn’t surprise him all that much, but it was what he saw in the space between his blinds. White. Bleak white. He jumped over his bed and stumbled to his window. Quickly he drew up his blinds and immediately wiped away some of the ice from the pane with his sleeve. A small smile graced his lips as he stared out the glass.
His window faced the residential street, so he could see a good deal of the neighbourhood, which was swept by a jacket of icy flakes with a new dusting falling from the sky. It was obvious that children had already been out to play, for there were little footprints and remnants of snowball forts dotting the sidewalks. There was even a little snowman all dressed up in one of the yards.
Gunner quickly dived back over his bed and scrambled to get dressed so that he could go out and play in the snow. Actually, he didn’t really do anything special to get ready; just added a pair of red gloves and a slightly thicker jacket to his everyday clothes. As for his hair, well, he never really did anything with the dark brown locks except to ruffle his hands through them to make them even more unnecessarily messy. It was something his mother always scolded him for.
He excitedly bounced to the door, almost tripping on the way there, and swung it open. Skipping downstairs, his eyes were already searching for any breakfast that his mom had laid out for him, even though now it was nearing lunchtime. He jumped the last step and grinned when he saw the kitchen table Score! Two pieces of toast with a little scoop of butter on the side, just like at the restaurants. He spread the butter on the toast and sandwiched the pieces of bread together.
“Gunner, your hair’s a mess; why don’t you run a comb through it?” Without fail, it was his mother’s voice.
He spun around on his heels, a corner of the toast still in his mouth. “Ah, Ma,” he smiled, putting his arms around her but not actually answering.
“Are you going out?” She asked, even though he was already slipping his shoes on.
“Yeah,” he responded, swallowing down a few bites of food. “I’m gonna be around the neaighbourhood; I’m gonna go play in the snow.”
“Aren’t you a little old for that?” Her arms were folded over her chest now.
“Nah. Snow brings out the child in everyone.” And without further word he was out the door and halfway down the street.
It was amazing how completely silent the snow made everything. The neighbourhood – which was normally overpowered by noisy children and residential traffic – was silent as death. All of the children had gone in for hot chocolate or tomato soup. Gunner, however, was a typical teenage boy whose day stared at noon. Now the only sound on the street was the sound of his shoes crunching the fresh snow.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that the thin layers he threw on weren’t quite the warmest covering for this kind of weather. The snow was still falling at a constant rate and didn’t show any signs of letting up. The cold didn’t really bother him all that much, for he was too lost in reveling in the greatness of the snow.
He was just about too lost in his own though that he was forgetting to observe the icy blanket. However, as he was passing one of the houses something caught his eye. A snowman. It was the snowman he had seen from his bedroom window. It was dressed up nicely with two little rocks for the eyes and a baby carrot for the nose. The snowman’s smiling mouth was formed with sic misshapen rocks. It even had a red and white striped scarf draped around where its neck should be.
A mischievous sly smirk crept onto his lips. Gunner cautiously looked down the sidewalk to the right, then to the left. He looked over his shoulder across the street, then between all of the houses. The neighbourhood was vacant.
Carefully, he lifted the scarf away from the icy man and wrapped it around his own neck. As he turned to continue his walk, he saw the fleeting form of some girl ducking into a backyard. He hesitated a moment to see if she would reappear from behind the house. She did not. So, he simply kept walking down the sidewalk with the snowman’s scarf hanging around his neck.
He made it all the way around his neighbourhood and almost back to his house when he spotted a familiar figure. It was the girl he had seen diving into a backyard. Her hair was brown with just and tint of red in the sunlight and lighter brown, almost blonde, highlights. It barely brushed her shoulder and fell into her face with nothing pinning it back. He couldn’t tell what colour her eyes were at the distance, but as he got closer he could tell that it wouldn’t matter what colour they were, because they were almond-shaped and slightly slanted.
“I was gonna give it back,” he said, startling the girl who was studying the snowman closely.
“What?” She asked, looking at him with wide grey-blue eyes. Ah, that’s what colour they were.
“I was gonna give the scarf back,” he repeated.
She just stared at him with doe-like eyes and shook her head slowly, seeming almost frightened.
“Don’t start pretending now,” he continued with a smile. “I know you saw me earlier.”
She eyed him carefully, however continued to only stare and never utter a word.
“I’m the kid you saw taking the scarf from the snowman,” he explained, looking to see if this extra piece o information sparked anything. Slowly, her pink lips curved into a little smile and her eyes twinkled in amusement. She tried to stifle little giggles at the back of her throat but did not succeed.
“Do you have a name?” She asked, not completely through with her fit. “Or should I just call you a thief?”
“Gunner,” he answered, removing the scarf from around his neck. “And it’s not stealing if you give it back.” He cautiously placed the scarf back on the snowman and then turned back to the girl, smiling that crooked smile of his.
“I’m Gale,” she responded, her smile not faltering once. “I just moved in up the street.”
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