White Winter

Lights of many neon hues shone like multi-coloured stars in the twilight as tiny white flecks fell in a in a slow deliberate grace in the frigid thin air. It was difficult keeping warm in that kind of weather, but not impossible. A multitude of people swathed in their colourful wool scarves and trench coats of varying lengths and fabric were all buzzing about on the pale white surface although at times you could swear it gleamed silver. The diversity of their headgear was simply amazing. Clouds of respiration floated from their lips as they huffed in mild exhaustion, trailing behind them like mini locomotives as they circumnavigated nothing in particular. Rotating in a seemingly mindless motion, a current set by nobody in particular but followed by everyone; young innocent siblings with their doting parents, love-bitten young adults and wrinkled seniors refusing to give in to the harshes of time.

Sitting on a dry patch of ground overlooking Lasker Rink, Matthew Harkman looked like a hobo in his grizzled fedora and long black hand-me-down coat. He watched with the relentless activity on the solidified pool as he had done every year even after his grandfather passed away. Every winter, just the two of them would cross the Queensboro Bridge and come up to the skating rink on the north side of Central Park. Neither of them would actually skate, but instead sat watching the merry yet somewhat melancholy scene in that virtual snow globe. They sometimes talked but silence was welcomed too. It emptied his mind, cleared his thoughts and left them so blank that they matched his pale skin.

Matthew was an albino and he despised that fact because of all the negative attention he got in school. His bleached complexion coupled with his emaciated features, long opalescent hair, dark, full-length clothes and aversion to sunlight earned him the title Vampire. He couldn't understand why he was shunned and teased by many people but mostly by the brutish and unintelligent jocks. They would shove him in the hallways between classes, target him mercilessly at dodge ball and sometimes beat him up in the locker room or showers for no rhyme or reason. Even if he were the strong and sporty type, fighting back would be futile when he was obviously outnumbered. His mom or more recently his foster parents were incredulous at the short amount of time his glasses lasted. Apparently albinism gave him astigmatism... just one more reason to hate his condition. Why was being different a crime? Perhaps people fear what they don't understand; a primal instinct. In that way, it seems that society isn't so evolved as it has been speculated to be. So he chose to be a recluse, never once stopping to talk to anyone. Even the teachers respected his discretion and rarely got him to participate in class activities unless grading necessitated it. His results were average but he excelled in art. Even though they were mostly dark and sometimes morbid, nobody could deny the skill taken to produce his artworks. Still, sometimes the disgustingly chirpy teacher would mark down his paintings or drawings for being too 'maligned', but he didn't really care.

And up till year ago, going home was just escaping one hell and entering another. His father was abusive tyrant and his mother was an inept yet pitiful mouse. Last February however, she jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and a month later his father got into a drunk driving accident and was imprisoned so Matthew entered foster care, living with a decent couple in a little apartment on Roosevelt Island. They were polite people but entirely naive and almost stupid. Maybe it's good that they didn't have a child of their own. Matthew didn't have any strong emotional attachment to them nor did he talk to them very much, but he was civil and tried to follow most of their rules. Then again, it wasn't like he had any friends to break his curfew with.

Lost in his thoughts, Matthew barely even realised when the eccentric Latino girl plopped down beside him and introduced herself. He didn't fully awake from his stupor until a fuzzy hot pink glove waved in front of his sullen face. He blinked once and turned to look at the bizarre creature sitting on his right. He peered at her through his thick-rimmed squarish glasses trying to take it all in quickly. She was wearing a lime green hoodie with a batik shawl around her neck. Her irises seemed black in this light surrounded by eyelashes so heavily coated with mascara you would think its dripping off at times and eyeliner so dark it almost made her a goth. But she obviously wasn't, for the peachy blusher that powdered her cheeks and the rich crimson that smeared her lips. He realised her hand was still out and he shook it briefly.

"Hi! I'm Tina. And you are...? Why aren't you skating? Funny isn't it, coming to a skating rink and not skating?"

Matthew mumbled his name then turned back to look at the rink. She looked at him inquisitively as if waiting for the rest of her answers, and when he wasn't forthcoming, she continued rambling on about how her day was so bad because some idiot at a diner spilled coffee on her white jeans and they got her onion bagel order all wrong. She asked him questions and he replied at first in one word answers but his explanations started to lengthen.

He found her somewhat intriguing. Her fiery way of talking matched her lipstick and was such a contrast to the chilly air around them. The way her delicate hands, with fingernails painted in vermillion glitter nail-polish, made random haphazard motions as she spoke and the way her eyeballs rolled in their sockets in sarcasm sometimes. Her high and uninhibited laugh that rang clear and simple like she was genuinely happy. Gentle odours wafted from her... the smell of cocoa and honey. It comforted him like wholesome, sinful fudge brownies that already obese women ate to qualm their feelings of low self-esteem. He almost had to resist moving closer to get a stronger whiff. She had a confident air about her. She may not have looked like a supermodel but she didn't care. She loved being who she was.

After about two hours, she finally stood up brushing some dirt off the back of her jeans. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow then. Goodnight!" she exclaimed with such certainty and walked off to take a bus to her place at the edge of Harlem. It wasn't a very elegant walk nor very poised but it held a certain dignity about it. Matthew smiled to himself as he too got off his cramped buttocks and left for home.


As she expected, Matthew was there the following evening and she greeted him with a warm, wide smile her lips parting to show all her white teeth. Only after a moment or two did he realise he was smiling as well. A random thought hit him and he simply grabbed her by the wrist and steered her quickly but gently in the direction of the trees. She made to ask him where he was taking her but he simply shushed her in a placid way. After a while winding through the not-so-dense forest, they arrived at a frozen pond, maybe about 10 metres in diameter, gleaming like a pearl in the darkness. He had found it while wandering off as a kid when his grandfather dozed off.

"Awesome!" she chirped and started gliding on the ice taking long slow strides. He beckoned him to come onto the slippery surface so he walked to the middle hesitantly. She tried to flamenco around him kicking up clods of ice and trilling in a high pitched, almost annoying way but he simply smiled in amusement. After a while she allowed him to walk back to dry land as she continued dancing on the makeshift rink, trying to emulate those figure skaters on television. He sat down and they picked up right where they left off the previous night. He got so immersed in her life that he sometimes forgot about his own. Unfortunately he was forced to divulge the skeletons in his closet when she asked. He trusted her. His heart was open to her. He had never felt... anything at all before this except hurt and neglect, so for the first time, he didn't mind telling a stranger his undesirable past and present.

Her reaction to his stories just puzzled him. It wasn't as if she didn't care, but she regarded them with an air of such calmness as if his mother's suicide was yesterday's weather. He felt confused. Half was happy that he didn't seem like such a freak to her and the other half of him was angry that she didn't seem to want to understand the full weight of his situation. He was even mildly disappointed, and he was thoroughly ashamed he thought this way, that she didn't pity him or take on a note of proper empathy.

He watched her jump and land in the centre of the pond with her legs crossed and arms upraised in a mock bravado. She giggled so infectiously it made him chuckle too.

Then a sickening crunch cut through their laughter like a knife as the ice cracked, jagged lines running through the flawless surface. There was a brief millisecond where Tina looked at him in complete horror before she plummeted into the subzero-temperature water. He swore then shouted her name, looking for signs of the purple sweater she wore. He grabbed a long branch seemingly out of nowhere and when she bobbed to the surface, thrashing, he tried to reach her with it but it was a foot too short. She ducked under again and he panicked. There were still large slabs of white floating on the murky liquid so as soon as he found an opening, he dived right into the icy, black depths. The shock of cold hit him like a big yellow school bus but after that momentary inertia, he started swimming towards where he last saw her. He realised he could barely make out anything because it was so dark and his glasses were gone. He kept at it, flailing his arms about like a retard.

Finally after what seemed like forever and his lungs felt like they were going to burst, the tips of his fingers brushed a wooly texture. He grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her up to the surface. Dragging her to shore was a painfully sluggish affair and when he got there he was exhausted beyond reason. He laid her motionless form on the bank. He swiped a lock back to her luscious tresses of obsidian revealing her smooth olive skin. He put his ear to her mouth and sighed with relief but realised if she didn't get help soon she'd probably freeze.

So with an almighty heave, he got her in his grasp and stood up. 'Damn, I should have worked out more' he thought as he lumbered back through the trees. It was difficult; grappling with his own shivers, carrying a weight his thin arms weren't used to plus not being able to see clearly where he was going, relying more on instinct and memory. After an agonizing few minutes he finally reached the edge of the rink. He only had enough time to shout before unconsciousness took him and the both of them collapsed in a heap.

He awoke with a jolt opening his violet eyes to bright fluorescent lights and shielded them reflexively. "Hey, you're awake," the paramedic beside him exclaimed stupidly. Matthew's stomach squirmed and he asked if Tina was alright. "That little Latino girl? Yeah your girlfriend is alright. What happened anyways?"

Matthew didn't bother correcting him and was too tired for any explanations so just drifted off to sleep in the jerky rocking of the ambulance.