Miss Snow by Rosy Adams
Miss Snow - He’s waiting for me. I saw him this morning when I opened the curtains. It’s dusk now. I haven’t checked but I know he’s still there. I can feel his eyes.
The telephone calls started last week. Silent, at first. Then she worked herself up to energetic sobbing interspersed with verbal abuse. She calls herself his girlfriend. I suppose she was, once upon a time. She’s his girl next door. But he’s not interested in her anymore. Not now he’s decided that I’m the queen of his horny adolescent dreamland. Revolting, but it’s a means to an end.
I suppose I should start at the beginning, or what I consider to be the beginning, anyway. After all, I’m the one telling this story.
It starts like this.
Once there was a boy named Kai and a girl named Georgia. They lived next door to each other, in a pleasant street lined with pleasant semi-detached houses. They were the sort of houses that appeared quite well-to-do, but behind the mock stone fascia were cheap materials and shoddy workmanship.
Kai and Georgia’s bedrooms were only a thin wall apart, and they would talk to each other every night, pressing their mouths and ears against the plasterboard, telling each other stories, secrets, promises…
Both sets of parents worked full-time, as well as having quite active social lives, and because they lived so close to each other they thought it sensible to share babysitters. So the children had a series of teenaged minders of varying degrees of attentiveness. Inevitably, as most children do when left to their own devices (which was more often than not) they played the ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ game. With time, and hormones, this evolved into the ‘I’ll touch yours if you touch mine’ game. You don’t need me to tell you what that led to.
This is where it starts to get interesting. Kai was just shy of his sixteenth birthday, and he had what most teenaged boys could only dream about; a girl who would have sex with him, and not only that, as an added bonus Georgia had grown from a chubby snub-nosed pre-pubescent into an exceptionally well-developed young woman. She had the sort of hair that other girls could only imitate with copious usage of toxic liquids and the application of hot metal. It was poker straight and pale, like the silky stuff you find under the skin of a corn cob. Put that with wide eyes of Barbie blue and a sweetheart shaped face, and she wouldn’t have looked out of place on the centre fold of Playboy Magazine.
But when one person spends a long time with another, especially when they grow up together, they no longer see that person in the flesh. Instead, there is an overlay of memory, coloured by love, bitterness, fear, pain… eventually it becomes impossible for them to separate past from present, inner from outer. To Kai she would always be the same old Georgia. Playmate and partner in crime. But with more interesting anatomy.
It’s a sad thing, because it could have been an ideal relationship. They knew each other inside out, and Georgia would have married Kai at the drop of a hat. Or knee, as it were.
But Kai was bored. It wasn’t a problem, not at first. They did what many couples do when their relationship suffers from ennui (although it has to be said that this usually doesn’t happen until after a good few years of marriage, or indeed after a good few years of life in general. But they had started earlier than most, and time passes differently when you’re young).
They decided to spice things up a bit. A wonderful euphemism that. It covers such a range, some people’s version of spiciness being a subtle dash of vanilla and a pinch of nutmeg. Others, wild concoctions of smoky paprika, cayenne, cumin seeds, and exotic varieties of chilli. Kai and Georgia’s tastes tended toward the latter. Techno-brats that they were, they had access to a whole world wide web of inspiration. They took to it with unbridled enthusiasm. Or perhaps, in Georgia’s case, I should say ‘bridled’.
Sorry. Bad joke.
Although, it’s hard to say just how genuine Georgia’s enthusiasm was. She was motivated, at least in part, by her desire to keep Kai firmly attached. But you couldn’t say she was unwilling. She took great care to let me know, regardless of my insistence that I had no interest in either of them, or what they did to each other. I suppose she was trying to prove that she would do anything for him.
Now, Kai and Georgia were muddling along quite well together, but there was something missing. For Georgia, it was simple. She no longer had Kai’s undivided attention and she wasn’t happy about it. For the first time in her life she couldn’t find a way to get what she wanted. She could have had any number of other boys, but she loved Kai, and she wasn’t prepared to let him go. She loved him with a fierce dog-in-the-manger kind of love that would rather see him dead than with another girl.
The source of Kai’s discontent was less definable. When he thought about his life (which was rarely) all he knew was that there was something missing. He couldn’t put his finger on it. He seemed to have everything he wanted, yet it wasn’t enough.
It was late December when he discovered his heart’s desire. The evenings were long and black, and the days were gloomy, the year poised between ending and beginning, as it is in midwinter, time and time again. That particular evening there was snow. It was the first snowfall of winter, all powdery-soft and new. It fell like feathers, as if thousands of pillows had been split open and their contents strewn across town, from North to South and from East to West.
Kai was on his way home. He was pushing his bicycle because the road surface was too slippery to ride. The snow flirted around him, sticking to his eyebrows and settling on his lashes.
He stopped to brush his face clean with one gloved hand, balancing the bike with the other. That was when he saw it. A shape in the falling snow. The shape of a woman, but made all of snowflakes. Swirling, spiralling eddies of them. He felt a part of him awakening, a part that spoke up and said this. This is what you have been missing. Then a gust of wind parted the snow, but the woman remained, although she did look somewhat crystalline, as if the snowflakes had come together to form her. Everything about her was pale, and slender, and cold. Like an icicle.
This seems to be the impression people usually get when first they see me. They like to look, but from a distance. Some things are too cold to touch.
Yes, this is when I join the story. I was walking home, taking my time, enjoying the cosy feeling of the snow. He caught a glimpse of my profile, and then my back as I walked away, before the snow flowed around me like a cloak. And that is when Kai’s peculiar obsession began. An obsession with someone he had never met and knew nothing about. Just like a fairy tale.
If this little town in which I chose to settle were a city, perhaps it would have been more difficult set my trap, but this is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and even someone as reclusive as me becomes known. All the more so, because the very act of withdrawing from society invites scrutiny. There’s nothing quite as effective as distancing oneself for attracting attention.
Winter is when I am at my most gregarious. I can be found in the library, the school, and even walking through the park where I can feel the soothing chill of the wind on my skin. The day when Kai found me again I was in the library, browsing the reference section in search of obscure and forgotten stories.
He had a brash way about him. A bit of swagger and a whole lot of masculine arrogance. He’s not bad looking, to tell the truth. He has that sturdy, sandy Anglo-Saxon peasant look about him. Much like Georgia. They’re probably descended from the same tribe.
He asked me what I was reading. I’ve always found that unbearably irritating. If I’m reading then I’m uninterested in conversation, and it’s a pointless question anyway. All the asker need do is look at the cover. I was curt to the point of being rude, but he continued to pester me with pointless small talk.
I left.
He followed me all the way home, trying to strike up a conversation. I shut the door in his face. He loitered outside for a bit, looking hopeful, like a lost dog, but eventually he went. That could have been the end of it. But Kai is one of those people who always wants what he can’t have.
The next day he sought me out between classes, and the more I rebuffed his advances the keener he became.
When I got home I discovered a card he had slipped into my bag, unnoticed. In it, he called me his ‘Snow Queen’. He wrote that he had fallen under my spell. Ironic really. He thought he was being metaphorical.
He must have been ignoring Georgia by then. Teenaged boys can be very cruel. She had been following him, as he followed me, and had come to the most obvious conclusion. She caught up with me as I was leaving the library one day, and informed me quite clearly that Kai belonged to her, and that if I so much as touched him I would be ‘dead meat’.
Neither of them realised that I was supremely uninterested in him, in that way at least. In fact, he repulsed me. He imposed himself on me, causing stress and disorder, so sure of his own worth that he assumed everyone wanted either to be with him, or become him. I long for the life where I have no need to associate with people like him.
I stopped going to the school. It wasn’t hard. To them, I am only a lowly supply teacher. I have other occupations, and I’m used to working at home, but I did miss walking outside at this, my favourite time of year.
They found out my phone number. First Kai. Then Georgia, a few days later.
I stopped answering the phone.
Kai wrote long rambling letters full of sentimental musings on my beauty and purity, posting them through my door when I refused to answer his knocking.
Georgia sent me e-mails. Threats veiling desperation. I could tell she was losing hope.
Most women would have informed the police by now, but aside from the fact that neither of them were doing anything that was against the law (yet), I prefer anonymity, especially where officialdom is concerned. Besides, I have other plans. Georgia has something I want, and she has reached the point where she’ll agree to anything to get him back.
But I have to pitch it just right. With reluctance. As if it’s a last resort.
I’ve already sent the e-mail. I said I would meet her, to ‘talk things over’. She replied straight away, so eager to get her darling boy back, worthless though he is. So desperate. Poor little bitch. Well, she wouldn’t be the first. We’ve all suffered that particular humiliation. Why should she be any different?
Georgia - Sometimes I think back and wonder at how naïve and stupid I was. Oh, she clocked me right away. All that time, thinking she was taking my Kai, and it was me she was interested in all along. It was Georgia, I should say really. That’s not my name anymore. Georgia died years ago, in a quiet corner of the reference section in the town library. Her body got up and walked away, but I wasn’t in it anymore. I made a bargain, for Kai, thinking that I was becoming what he wanted. And I’ve regretted it every minute of every day since.
She tricked me.
He had me, all unknowing, thinking he was finally fucking the pale and fragile Miss Snow, fallen from her pedestal at last. Once the novelty wore off he lost interest. As she knew he would. Two weeks. Not long to get bored of the supposed love of your life. He was nothing more than a toddler demanding to have that one thing that’s he’s been told he can’t have.
The first year was the worst. Suffering the pain of losing him, and the deeper pain of knowing how little he cared about me, in either body. Constantly in fear that someone would realise I was an imposter. A needless fear, because who in their wildest dreams would guess the truth. After a while, I realised that people assume I know what I’m talking about. And I had Miss Snow’s life, complete with garden flat and large collection of scholarly books.
Georgia wasn’t the most academic of students, but now I have nothing better to do, particularly in the summer months. There are so many things I took for granted. Just to be able to go outside all year round. This fragile body is allergic to Summer. My skin burns under anything but a distant winter sun. Invisible clouds of pollen make my eyes and nose itch, and stream with snot and tears. My lungs fill up with thick gluey phlegm, and I’m always coughing and sneezing. I used to hate Winter, but now I long for it. My time of freedom.
You may be wondering what happened to Kai in the end. I watched him at school. I was bitter, remembering all the years I wasted on him. How delusional I was, thinking he loved me like I loved him. By the time he fell for Miss Snow I was nothing more than a habit. Something soft and willing to stick his cock into on a regular basis.
It didn’t take him long to move on. He discovered how to use his lordly status as a member of Year Eleven to seduce the younger girls. He got older, but the girls stayed the same age. I think he saw himself as an explorer, planting his flag in virgin territory.
I had my revenge in the end. It’s funny how much the mind is affected by the body. When I was still Georgia I was hot-tempered. My anger was immediate and violent. This body is cold. I have become glacial. Slow moving but implacable.
I find it perversely satisfying that Kai will never know it was me who dropped him in it. Once he turned eighteen so he would feel the full force of the law. It was so easy. He was already committing the crime. All I had to do was drop a few words in the right ear. Encourage the girl in question to realise just how cruelly he had used her. Then it was wham, bam, thank you ma’am, and Kai ends up with a three year sentence and a permanent place on the sex offender’s register.
Yes, perhaps it was a bit vindictive. But you must admit, he had it coming.
“This story is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’. I’ve rewritten it and tweaked it time after time but it never seems quite right, and I’m starting to think that’s how it’s meant to be. It doesn’t seem to fit anywhere but that’s ok.”
Rosy Adams lives in West Wales. She is part of the 2022/23 cohort of writers on the Representing Wales writer development program for under-represented writers. Her stories, poetry, and articles have been published by The Lampeter Review, Writing Magazine, Muswell Press, Grim & Gilded, and Ceredigion Council’s Carer’s Magazine.