Charlotte

Snow dusts the windshield in thin, whispering lines as the car coughs its way off the highway. The heater clicks and dies, and cold presses in from every seam. My breath fogs the glass, and I draw a circle with my sleeve, watching white swallow the road behind us. The trees thin out, and the town rises up quiet and pale.

It’s nothing new. Each town we move to seems to look much the same. There’s the single diner that stays open all night, lights buzzing and windows fogged. One service station with a hand-painted sign that looks like it was put up in the sixties and never touched again. A main street with a bakery, a bank, and a few shops that close early. Then there are the houses. This part is always wildly similar. We pass through the rich streets first because, of course, they’re closest to the centre. They have big fences, warm lights, and driveways already cleared. They are full of silver-spoon kids with room to breathe. Then come the blue-collar families. Though the paint peels from the walls, they sweep the yards and park the cars neatly. They’re the people who work hard and take care of what they have, even when it’s old. Then there’s the edge of town, where the road thins and the streetlights space themselves out. Where people don’t have to see you struggling, this is where the poor, the unlucky and the single parents live. Oh, and us, all of the above. “Hey, Lotty.” My twin brother, Charlie, nudges me with his boot from the backseat. I tear my gaze from the window and look at him. Snow has dampened his hair where it’s brushed the roof lining, making his curls darker than usual. His grin is already there, bright, stubborn and waiting for me. “At least this place has ice.”

I smile and nod because I know what that means to him. The last town was hot, dry and dusty, with not a rink in sight. Charlie had tried to make do with rollerblades, cracked asphalt and a borrowed stick, but it wasn’t the same. Growing up, when Mum was still alive, winter wrapped around us every day. She taught us to skate whenever she could, with hands on our backs and laughter carried on cold air. We both loved it, but Charlie had a dream that dug in deeper. Dad moved us as far away from anything that reminded him of her after she died, but every so often, he slips. He loses a job or gets arrested for something stupid. Then he lands another job in a town that either works for him or for Charlie. Hockey is Charlie’s way out. If he’s good enough, maybe he escapes the cycle. Maybe one of us does.

Dad turns up a narrow street and the car skids, tyres whining, before settling crooked in a drift at the end of a long drive. Snowbanks rise on either side, and Dad swears, shoves the door open and the cold crashes in. “Out.”

Charlie and I scramble. Snow soaks straight through my sneakers. My toes burn, then go numb. Dad lurches past us, boots slipping, and starts up the drive without looking back. The house waits at the top. It’s smaller than the others around it and sort of hunched in on itself. Its siding is warped, and the porch is sagging under the weight of ice. One shutter hangs by a hinge, knocking softly against the wall in the wind. The yard is a mess of frozen weeds and old tools, half-buried in snow. “Come on, Lotty,” Charlie says, already moving. “Let’s grab our stuff. We’ll dig the car out later.”

We each take one box, because that’s all we have. Cardboard softened by time and tape. The cold bites harder as we trudge up the drive and snow squeaks under our feet. My fingers ache through the thin gloves. By the time we reach the porch, my legs feel stiff, and the front door sticks when Charlie shoves it open. Inside smells like damp wood and old oil. Dad is already slamming cupboards. A door bangs before he storms past us, shoulder clipping Charlie and sending his box skidding across the floor.

We run.

The cold doesn’t hurt like this. The ground rolls under us, fast and open. Charlie keeps pace at my shoulder, a dark shadow against the white. We cut through drifts and trees, leap fallen logs, and leave the house and the road behind. The moon hangs low, and our tracks braid together and vanish in falling snow. For a while, there is only freedom, and us, running wild and free in it.