IT WAS THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS AND A BLIZZARD HAD just passed. Families were struggling to step outside of their homes or to go to the market for food, but Mia came and knocked on my family's door with a smile. 

She'd only been wearing a thin pink jacket and it had been in the negatives but she beamed at me through shivers. "Wanna play?"

I looked at her like she was crazy then, she was merely only skin and bone with pigtails and she was asking me if I wanted to play in the freezing snow with her. 

I stammered. "Let me get my winter coat." 

She shook her head, refusing with an ear-to-ear grin and she grabbed my hand, yanking me out into the snow. 

She'd pulled me so hard that I nearly fell over, flat face into the snow. In which, she laughed and helped me stabilize myself. 

At first, I was beyond furious she was laughing at my misfortune. And then--she dug her bare fingers into the pile of snow and balled it up with the palms of her hands without flinching. 

My teeth began to jitter together as I looked at her. I was standing on my porch in the snow (in my bare feet) in only a pair of unicorn pajamas and she was fearless in a t-shirt in shorts. 

She slung the snowball, hitting me right in the face. 

My blood was boiling--I was fuming. 

I reached into the snow and formed my own snowball with as much of my tiny self's power and threw it at her as hard as I could. 

She giggled as it hit her face and she even licked the bits of snow left on the tip of her nose. 

I laughed too, then. I laughed because there was white snow stuck in the tips of her braids and she didn't even care. 

And when I threw the second one, her laugh boomed--echoing in the sky and surrounding me. 

She laid back in the snow and she fluttered her arms and feet together, then apart and I saw that she was trying to make a snow angel. 

Sure, she was going to get a cold from this and she knew but she didn't care. She was giddy and happy and a ray of sunshine in the middle of the freezing snow. 

"Come on!" She cheered, and I hesitated. 

I hesitated for a moment but I joined her and we made connecting snow angels on the porch of my home and it was the happiest I had ever been. 

Any time you were with Mia Rowe, you were the most joyous.