Snow(45)

She’d known Jared from high school, although they hadn’t dated until after they’d graduated and took full-time jobs together—merely by chance—at the local Ben Franklin. He was a bird-chested, narrow-faced lover of classic rock who couldn’t grow a full beard if someone said they’d pay him a million dollars, and in truth, Shawna hadn’t even liked him at first. She knew of him from school—it was a small town, needless to say—but they hadn’t been what you’d call friends. While she’d hung out primarily with girls from the soccer team, Jared Calabrese had smoked dope behind St. John’s with the motorheads from Mr. Barnholdt’s shop class. So when Jared had asked her out after two weeks working in adjacent checkout lanes at the Ben Franklin, she was taken aback. She’d merely smiled and told him she had a boyfriend—an utterly ridiculous and easily refutable lie, since everyone knew everyone else’s business in Woodson. Yet Jared hadn’t called her out on it; he’d only grinned his goofy grin and given her what approximated a two-fingered salute, which had coaxed a surprised laugh from her before he returned to work.

Eventually, though, he’d cornered her in the stockroom, where they’d shared a cigarette and where she’d finally succumbed to his persistence. (Shawna had taken up smoking after her father, a health-conscious marathon runner, had died from lung cancer, which was when Shawna figured f*ck it, there were no guarantees in life, bottoms up and smoke ’em if ya got ’em and all that.) She hadn’t even been attracted to him but, in the face of total honesty, there really weren’t a whole lot of prospects around Woodson. So they’d gone on a number of dates, Jared keeping his hands astoundingly to himself in a display of self-control worthy of some award, and before she knew it she’d found herself falling for the son of a bitch.

They’d spent the next few months rutting like feral cats. Twice she feared pregnancy and sweated her period, wondering what her mother would say, until it eventually arrived and she was able to breathe normally again. Jared had been clumsy in bed but Shawna found the trait surprisingly endearing, and it soon erased all doubt about whether the stories she’d heard about him back in high school—about his sexual deviance—were true. He’d gotten her flowers and candy for her birthday—rather uninspired, but appreciated nonetheless—and this Christmas would have marked their one-year anniversary. She had been looking forward to it. (Back in her bedroom on Fairmont Street, in the top drawer of her dresser and wrapped in a tube sock, was a Timex watch with a silver band and their initials engraved on the back—a Christmas gift that had cost her four months’ salary, meticulously saved.)

But then earlier this week, all that had changed.

It started at the high school. During a fresh snowfall, a group of kids sledding down the steep hill behind the school had never returned home. Frantic parents had donned hats and gloves and poured out into the streets. At this time, Jared had come to pick Shawna up after her shift at the Ben Franklin—it was his day off, something they were unable to coordinate because of a lack of employees at the store—and he’d filled her in on the mystery of the disappearing children with the excitement of someone who’d just come from seeing a kick-ass rock concert.

“Where’d they all go?” she’d asked.

“Don’t know,” he’d said simply, jerking his shoulders up to his ears. “But that’s not the weird part. Just as I was leaving, I heard from Mr. Dormer across the street, who was outside talking with some of the neighbors. They were talking about the sheriff being called out to the school, too, and that some of the parents had come running back into town, saying stuff about the snow rising up off the ground and covering people.” His grin had looked fiendish in the glow of the Subaru’s dashboard lights. “Like, the snow f*cking came up in a wave and swallowed them whole.”

“Are they okay?”

“You don’t get it, ’Na. They’re f*cking gone.”

She scowled, searching through her purse for her lipstick. “What do you mean, they’re gone?”

“Gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Snow swallowed ’em up. They can’t find them.”

“That’s bullshit. That’s Dormer f*cking with your head.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were there. Mr. Dormer looked scared enough to shit bricks. I could hear the cop cars racing through the snow from the house.”

“They’re probably just out looking for the kids.”

“They won’t find them, either.”

“Why’s that?”

“Snow got ’em,” he’d said, as if this were the most logical thing in the world. “Swallowed ’em up like popcorn.”

Upon arriving back at her house, her mother was quick to usher her inside. As she watched Jared drive off through the snowy streets, Shawna felt an awful premonitory pang resonate in the center of her chest. Her mother, a frail woman encumbered with a perpetual scowl, rushed her to the kitchen before Shawna could even take her coat off, her sneakers squeaking wetly on the linoleum.

In the kitchen, all the lights were off. Shawna went to flip them on but her mother slapped her hand away. “Ouch! Mother, what’s going on?”

“Be quiet!” her mother chastised. She grabbed Shawna’s wrist in a pincerlike grip and dragged her over to the bank of windows that overlooked the backyard. The rear porch lights were off, too, but orange-pink sodium light from the nearby streetlamps filtered through the bare branches of the surrounding trees.