As I tightened the laces on my rented ice skates, I found myself asking the same question that I’d been repeating since we left the house: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Bundled in my mom’s spare winter coat and a scarf, Sophie sat next to me on one of the old, wooden benches that lined the pond, staring out at the dozens of people already on the ice. “Oh my God, stop asking me that,” she said as she swung her thin legs up and down. “Obviously I want to do it, it was my idea.”

“You’re going to get worse,” I warned, hitting the back end of my skate’s blade against the mat on the ground and wriggling my toes around inside the boot.

“Somehow,” Sophie said, “I doubt it’ll be fatal.”

“Suit yourself,” I replied, getting to my feet and teetering towards the rink’s entrance.

“Stop trying to make me feel bad,” Sophie said, her voice lilting in a slight whine as she got up and followed me with small, uneven steps. “I mean, give me a break. I’ve been stuck inside for three days straight, I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Welcome to the suburbs,” I muttered. “Seriously though, what did you expect—a chartered flight to Jamaica the minute you got bored?”

“Don’t do that,” Sophie said. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, well, just try to remember that your goal is to keep a low profile.”

“Right, because going ice skating is really the scandal of the century.”

Sophie rolled her eyes and I shrugged off her protest as I neared the break in the rink’s wall, hesitant to cross the threshold and leave dry land.

Like most people who’d grown up in my neighborhood, I’d learned how skate long before I even knew how to read. Mastering the skid stop had been an early rite of passage among the boys on my street and by the time I turned five, my skills on the ice were good enough to get me recruited for the town’s pre-peewee hockey league. Unfortunately, despite my dad’s misguided belief that I’d grow up to be the starting goalie for the Bruins, my two-season career came to a swift end when Scott fired a puck into my face during a Saturday morning practice. I could never quite pinpoint when it happened, but at some point between having my front teeth knocked out and waking up in a hospital with nineteen stitches in my mouth, my hatred of the ice was born.

I could count the number of times that I’d been skating since then on one hand, and yet, that hadn’t stopped my mom from barging into my room and ordering me to take Sophie to Frog Pond that morning. Naturally, my first reaction had been to lie and I crossed my fingers that I looked as sick as I had the day before as I began my act. Mom remained stone faced as I detailed my made up battle against influenza, but it wasn’t until I’d unleashed a barrage of fake coughs that Sophie had wandered in with her face set in a perfect mask of disappointment.

It took less than three minutes of being cajoled by the tag team for my resistance to break, but as I stood flailing on the ice like a newborn foal, the only thought that crossed my mind was that I had to be the biggest sucker in the entire world—and for what?

I cursed loudly as my feet began to veer in opposite directions, attracting the disdainful glares of several moms within earshot. “Here,” Sophie said, hands outstretched for me to grab as she gracefully glided around me in circles.

“What?” I grumbled as I straightened up and pushed off from the ice with my back foot. “You think I don’t know how to skate?”

I’d gone maybe three yards before Sophie caught up, studying me as she skated backwards with fluid strides. With her focus trained squarely on my face, she seemed unconcerned about the groups of skaters whose faces lit up with recognition when they spotted her or the flock of children that stumbled along the edges of the ice. She didn’t even break her gaze to watch a talented girl in the middle of the rink land a double axel.

“What’s up with you?” Sophie asked as we rounded a curve.

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

Shaking her head, Sophie pivoted so that she was facing forward again and matched her pace to mine. We moved slowly at first but a few minutes on the ice was all that I needed to regain my footing and soon we broke into an unspoken race around the rink. The onset of the competition was fuzzy at best and the fact that neither of us was willing to break the silence to hammer out the rules meant that there would be no finish line and no winner to gloat at the end.

One lap, two laps, three laps wordlessly flew by and by the start of the fourth a burn was starting to rise in the back of my legs. The smooth, repetitive act of sailing around the frozen pond dulled my thoughts to a mindless hum and I found myself enjoying the break from the usual chorus of screenplay characters that constantly fought to have their ideas heard.

An insistent tug on my arm brought me out of my trance and I drifted to a stop with Sophie clinging to my sweater. Her eyes were watering and for a moment I thought she was crying. “Sorry, I…”

Sophie’s thought was cut short by a fit of angry coughs. It sounded like a jackhammer was pounding against the walls of her lungs and I silently kicked myself for so easily forgetting about her cold as I made her chase me around the rink.

“Are you okay?” I asked when the coughing had subsided to gentle puffs of air.

Shaking her head, Sophie looped her arm around the crook of my elbow, turning me into a human anchor as she propped herself up. “I’m kind of tired,” she admitted.

“We should probably get going,” I said, trying to ignore the slight fluttering in my stomach as she tightened her grip and leaned into my shoulder.  

“No,” she said. The word came out like a scratchy croak and she cleared her throat twice before continuing. “I’m okay, I just need to catch my breath--you don’t mind if I hang onto you for a minute, do you?”

I shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“Thanks,” Sophie said and nudged me in the side as a signal to start moving again.

I began carefully towing her along the rink, unable to ignore Michael’s voice in the back of my head as it reminded me to maintain a professional distance from Sophie. Flashbacks of my own disaster on the ice kept me on edge and each time we approached a turn, adrenaline coursed through me as I imagined myself stumbling and sending her flying into the boards. It didn’t help that more people had begun staring openly at Sophie—and me, thanks to our proximity. Each step that I took felt like it was being scrutinized under a giant lens, but one look at Sophie told me that she was oblivious to the attention, her thoughts clearly somewhere else as she chewed methodically on her bottom lip.

“Ready for Thursday?” I asked as we began our second lap linked together.

Nodding, Sophie said, “No.”

“What?”

“I’m nervous.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, gathering it so that it fell over one shoulder.

“Don’t be,” I said, realizing how stupid that advice sounded when Sophie chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll kill it.”

“I hope so,” Sophie murmured, the crevices in her lip darkening as she gnawed. After a moment, something seemed to dawn on her and she looked up at me with a hint of panic in her eye. “Hey, did Michael say whether or not Kelly’s already cast his male lead?”

“The only thing that Michael’s told me recently is to go make photocopies.”

“Seriously, he didn’t mention who Kelly’s brought in to read?”

“No,” I replied. “I have no idea. Why?”

A flurry of emotions flitted over Sophie’s face before she took a deep breath and said, “Just wondering.”

Puzzled by her reaction, I opened my mouth to ask why she’d brought it up when Sophie let go of my arm and cried, “Look out!”

In the time that it took me to process her warning, a sweater clad cannon ball crashed into me, knocking the wind out of my chest as I was sent careening into the same boards that I’d been eyeing warily. I grunted loudly as I collided with the wall, saved from another round of stitches by my hands flying up to brace myself for the impact. The thud of my heart pounding in my ears echoed over the faraway sounds of someone crying.

“Are you okay?” I heard Sophie ask and I deftly checked my limbs for obvious cuts and breaks before turning around to face her.

“Don’t worry, I’m…” I trailed off when I saw that Sophie was pulling a sniffling kid to his feet, her attention solely focused on brushing ice water off his clothes as she cooed soothing words; she hadn’t been worried about me at all.

The kid’s cries slowed until they stopped entirely and he stood blinking up at her with eyes that were too big for his tiny face. As annoyed as I’d been initially, one look at the boy’s frail frame and gaunt cheeks was enough to know he wasn’t a healthy child. That knowledge sobered me considerably as I hovered next to Sophie, watching her work.

“Where’s your mom?” she asked in a sweet, patient tone. “Do you know where she is?”

The little boy nodded and pointed towards a frazzled looking woman with unruly brown hair. She was making her way across the ice in street shoes—short boots that left her slipping and sliding across the ice each time that she set her foot down. I skated over to offer her a hand and she accepted gratefully, thanking me once we’d reached her son.

“Oh, Danny,” she said, kneeling to appraise the boy at eye level. “Are you hurt?” Danny shook his head and his mom sighed. “What did I say about how we skate? You have to go the same direction as everyone else, remember?”

“But I’m practicing how to be a salmon,” Danny argued, folding his arms over his chest. “I have to go upstream because I’m different.”

Sophie made a noise and I glanced at her, only to find that she was looking at Danny with pure adoration as she smiled at the scene unfolding.

With another sigh, Danny’s mom stood up, taking hold of the boy’s hand as she rose. She looked between us before her gaze settled on Sophie. “I’m sorry about that. This is the first year that Danny’s been well enough to skate on his own, I guess I need to watch him more closely until the novelty wears off.”

Still smiling, Sophie shook her head and said, “We’re fine.”

I stopped myself from pointing out that I was the one who’d been bull rushed by the kid, not her, instead saying, “Yeah, it’s all good.”

Danny’s mom looked relieved until Danny began tugging on her sleeve, begging for her attention. “Yes?”

“She’s on TV,” Danny announced confidently, pointing openly at Sophie in that shameless way that children often do. “Her name’s Sophie and she’s on that show that I watch sometimes, except now she’s old.”

Sophie’s smile hardened and I snickered knowing that she’d be stockpiling anti-aging creams the minute we got back to L.A. thanks to that comment. The boy’s mother looked confused for a moment before her eyes widened and she clasped a hand over her mouth.

“Oh,” she exclaimed. “I am so sorry—I thought you looked familiar.”

Wriggling out of his mom’s grasp, Danny moved in front of Sophie and looked up at her curiously. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen,” Sophie replied. “I’ll be twenty in July. How old are you?"

“I’m eight,” Danny said. “Can we take a picture together now? I want to show my dad. He isn’t here because his back hurts but he likes you, too.”

Laughing, Sophie patted him on the shoulder and nodded. To his mom she asked, “Do you have a camera?”

Fumbling through the small bag that she wore slung across her front, Danny’s mom pulled out a phone, nervously scrolling through the columns of children’s games and coloring apps that she’d undoubtedly downloaded to entertain her son. “Ready?”

Sophie bent so that her face was next to Danny’s as she beamed up at the phone’s camera lens, her arm wrapped around the thin boy’s torso. I watched as his mom snapped several shots before offering to take one with all three of them in the frame. A few skaters grumbled as they maneuvered around us, though most just looked on with envy.

“Thank you,” Danny’s mom said as I handed the phone back to her. “Danny, what do you say?”

“Thank you, Sophie,” the little boy chimed before telling his mom to watch as he darted off, weaving between the throngs of people on the ice. He waved from across the rink before joining a group of kids as they practiced skating backwards by holding onto the wall’s inner railing. From a distance, he looked just as happy and healthy as the rest of them.  

Danny’s mom began to follow him before pausing and turning to look Sophie directly in the eye. “This will mean a lot to him in a few years, I know it. He had… He was sick for a while. Spent a lot of time watching your show with my husband—said it made him feel better.”

With a sympathetic smile, Sophie said, “He’s really sweet, I wish him and your family the best.”

“I—thank you, I appreciate that.” The woman hesitated before blurting, “You’re different than those tabloids make you seem, you know. I was always worried that--well, I guess this just makes me wonder if any of those stories are real.”

Sophie watched as Danny’s mom slowly made her way across the ice before taking a deep breath. “That was so sad,” she murmured, her chin wrinkled in a frown as she began skating again. “What do you think was wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” I said, searching for Danny’s green jacket amongst the herds of children. “Maybe cancer.”

“That makes me feel like a terrible person,” Sophie lamented, fiddling with the necklace that I’d given her. “Like my problems are completely ridiculous in the grand scheme of things.”

“What problems?” I asked, wondering if her concern about her potential costar counted as one of them.

Instead of answering, she scoffed and replied, “Yeah, exactly.”

We skated for a few more laps, though Sophie never took my arm again and I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to offer it to her. “Do you want to go?” Sophie asked when we approached the gate to exit the rink one last time. She grabbed onto the railing to slow herself down before coming to a complete stop. “I think I’m done for the day.”

“Alright,” I said as I followed her off the ice, grateful that my one near death experience of the day had ended without a trip to the ER.

Sophie seemed unusually quiet as she pulled off her skates and slipped into her boots, her eyes filled with dejection. I was about to ask what was on her mind when she said, “I wish I was smart enough to be a doctor.”

“Why? Because of that kid?”

“I guess. I mean I just wish that I did something useful.”

“You make people happy,” I pointed out and Sophie furrowed her eyebrows. “You heard his mom, he watched your show while he was sick and it made him feel better.”

“Whatever medicine he got made him feel better,” Sophie argued, shaking her head.

“Not everything comes down to science,” I said, resting a hand on her upper back. Sophie looked at me in surprise as I continued, “Trust me, I’ve spent three years in LAU’s engineering school. You should meet some of the guys in my classes; they can look at a bridge and tell you its point of greatest structural weakness, but there’s no way in hell that I’d go to any of them if I was having a bad day.”

“Who would you go to?” Sophie asked, licking a patch of cracked skin on her lip.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Probably Scott.”

Sophie nodded and I realized that wasn’t the answer that she had been looking for when she looked back down at the ground. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Actually, it depends. If you were around I might talk to you, maybe.”

Sophie brightened, her frown giving way to a cautious smile as she asked, “Really?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Even though you blew me off an hour ago when I tried to do exactly that?”

“I told you, nothing was wrong,” I replied, embarrassed that she’d called my bluff as I stood up and began fishing for my keys in my jacket pocket.

As we walked to my dad’s car, Sophie took hold of my arm again with a jovial flourish, humming a single note without a clear rhythm. I allowed myself to enjoy the friendly gesture until Sophie abruptly let go and slapped the spot where her hand had been. “You’re such a liar,” she said with an amused smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Am I?”

“You are,” Sophie insisted. “Completely pathological, as far as I can tell. But you’re so disgustingly nice that I can’t even hold it against you.”

“Yeah, well, so are you—nice, I mean."

"Are you lying?" Sophie asked, her eyebrow raised as she studied my reaction.

I raised a shoulder as I hit the Buick's remote unlock button, glancing down at Sophie as we reached the passenger's side door. I opened it for her, letting her climb in and buckle her seatbelt before replying, "You tell me." 

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The drive back to the airport on Wednesday night took less time than it had to get all of Sophie’s things stuffed back into her two suitcases, a fact that my dad commented on as he and my mom joined Sophie and me on the curb outside our terminal. Unlike the car ride in, there had been no awkwardness on our trip from Wellesley, only sighs from my mom as she made me promise to call more often and told Sophie to visit whenever she found herself on the east coast.

“You don’t even have to bring Parker,” Mom added, prompting Sophie to laugh and assure her that she’d keep in touch.

“Thank you so much for having me,” Sophie said as she flung her arms around my mom without hesitation. She turned to my dad and did the same before stepping back and touching the charm bracelet that hung loosely around her wrist. “This was definitely the best Christmas that I’ve had in a long time.”

“We’re so glad,” Mom said and then pulled me into a long hug.

As Mom grumbled about five days not being enough time to spend with her only son, my dad and I eyed each other, silently acknowledging our mutual dislike of sappy goodbyes. We opted for a series of rowdy thumps on each other’s back as I teased him that I’d be back after my internship ended in June, ready to help fix whatever mistakes he’d made in programming the sumo-robot. In that moment, it didn’t matter that the reality of it was I’d averaged a B-minus in every computer programming class that I’d ever taken, that the only thing I’d be able to help with was carrying the final product to the car. Instead, what mattered was the look in my dad’s eye—a look that told me that he was proud of me, that he’d miss me while I was gone. I hoped that even without words, he could tell that I felt the same way.

After a few more minutes together, an airport policeman came to shoo my parents away, sending them packing back into the Buick with backwards glances and a lot of waves. I grew melancholic as I watched them drive off, stricken by the realization that there would eventually come a day when I no longer spent the holidays in Wellesley. I’d gone away to college with the belief that no matter how far away I went my parents would always be home in Boston waiting for my return. The perks of getting older—of having the independence to go out, see things, drink things, thrive or fail—now seemed lessened by the knowledge that with each year, my parents got older, too. It had taken my dad’s heart attack for me to admit how much I missed my mom and dad when I was off at school and to accept that I’d miss them for the rest of my life once they were gone.

I made my way through security unable to stop moping, though Sophie promptly snapped me out of my strange mood as soon as we sat down in our gate’s waiting area.

“I’m still mad at you for picking this flight,” she said, digging through her purse for a magazine that she’d purchased the day before.

“Huh?” I replied, as I was jolted from a morbid mental recitation of whom I’d include in my will. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“There were two non-stop flights to Los Angeles, you know. I don’t see why you made me join you on the only one with a two hour layover in Denver.”

“I never said that you had to,” I countered. “I gave you my flight itinerary and you copied it, that’s on you.”

Sophie groaned, slapping her magazine against her thighs impatiently. “Why wouldn’t you switch airlines, though?”

“Well, because that costs money,” I explained with deliberate slowness as I enunciated each word. “This was the cheapest flight and Michael put a limit on how much he’d reimburse me for after I changed my return date.”

“I told you that I would’ve covered the difference,” Sophie said and I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my palm in exasperation.

“Yeah, and like I said when you offered, I don’t take money from girls.”

“But--”

“It’s not a good look, okay? Not to mention having you pay for any part of this trip would’ve raised a huge red flag with HR if it got out.”

“How would they have known?”

“Why don’t you go switch your flight if it’s such a big deal?” I asked, slouching down in my seat and yanking off my beanie. Heat was being pumped from the ceiling vents and the added warmth of the knit cover on my head made my brain feel like exploding.

“Oh, but I’m enjoying this trip to Grump Town so much,” Sophie muttered under her breath, flipping through her magazine and dog-earing pages featuring outfits that she liked.

I expected Sophie to storm off to the first class lounge when I went to buy a Coke from the vending machine but as I glanced over my shoulder to check on her, I was relieved to see that she hadn’t even shifted in her seat. Scooping my drink from the delivery chute, I fed the machine another two bucks, then realized I had no idea what kind of soda Sophie liked, or if she drank it at all. Eventually I decided to buy her water, handing the bottle to her as I sat back down.

“Thanks,” she said, not looking up from the glossy image of a stunning Asian woman elegantly posed against a bicycle. “But I just can't accept gifts from male interns. People might talk, it would look bad--I'm sure you understand."

“Seriously?”

“No, of course not,” Sophie said, unscrewing the cap without batting an eye. She lifted the mouth of the bottle to her lips and drank. 

By the time we boarded, Sophie’s water bottle had been drained and she left me with a smile as I continued past her on my way to coach. Weariness settled over me as I buckled my seatbelt and I started drifting off the moment I rested my cheek against the cool glass of the window.

I was out cold long before the engines roared to life for takeoff.

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I dreamt of a robin as I slept, watching its striking red plumage flutter between barren branches as I followed it through a snow covered forest. At first I thought that it was trying to escape from me as it made its way, ignoring the berries that I pulled from my pocket and sprinkled on the ground as an offering. After awhile, however, I noticed that it would stop and wait whenever I fell behind, looking over its tiny shoulder to see that I hadn’t been lost amidst the trees as their sturdy roots slept through the winter. I began to whistle and the bird responded with a cheery song, light and clear like the feathers on its belly against the grey sky.

After I dug out another berry, I held it between the fingers of my outstretched hand, still whistling to the bird between spoken promises that I wouldn’t hurt it. Betrayed by its hunger, the robin swooped down and settled on my wrist as it pecked at the purple fruit, casting me nervous glances as it ate. When it was finished, I cradled the bird in both of my hands, thrilled that it had allowed me to get so close—that it had chosen to trust me.

The clouds darkened and it was time to go home, the robin flapping its wings in the air as it said goodbye. I raised my hand to return the gesture, startled to find a gun had appeared within my grasp. As I stared at it, the crack of a bullet rang through the air and the bird tumbled to the ground, its crimson feathers mixing with the blood that seeped from its wound.

“I’m sorry,” I said, scooping the bird up as its body began to turn to golden ash. I looked around wildly for the gunman. “I swear, I didn’t do it.”

With an accusing stare, the robin used its last breaths and replied, “You didn’t stop it either.”

The ground began to shake violently and I was thrown backwards, the forest fading away as my eyes snapped open to reveal the airplane’s cabin. Shaken, it took me a moment to realize that the earthquake I’d imagined hadn’t ended when I’d woken up, and I looked out the window to see the hazy shape of the airplane’s left wing bouncing up and down wildly as we skidded to a halt on the landing strip’s tarmac.

“Oh God,” I heard myself say aloud as I reached for the complimentary paper bag that airlines tucked in every seat pocket, hoping that I wouldn’t be sick.

“It’ll be okay,” a kindly older woman seated next to me said as she removed her reading glasses and tucked them into a case covered with Picasso-inspired renderings of cats. “You slept through the worst of it, we’re here now.”

Her words were meant to be soothing, I knew, but instead they made the nightmare that I’d woken up to a reality. The world beyond the wing had been coated with a blinding shade of white—a hue that I knew could only be painted by a blizzard’s snowfall. As the plane came to a stop and the pilot’s voice echoed over the cabin’s speakers, the gusts of wind wailing outside told me everything that he was going to say.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Denver International Airport. Local time is 8:24 P.M. and the temperature is a low eight degrees. I’ve been alerted by the control tower that due to current weather conditions, all outgoing flights have been delayed until further notice. Therefore, if Denver is not your final destination this evening, please make sure to check a departure board for further information…”

The rest of the scripted speech sounded like angry static and I bit my tongue to keep from swearing as I switched on my phone and pulled up Michael’s contact information. The thought of Sophie’s early morning audition made my hands tremble as I typed out a text message that read, Stuck in Denver--snowstorm. Keep you posted.

The plane’s speaker system crackled as I hit the send button and the pilot concluded his monologue, his words prompting me to burst into what I knew sounded like crazed laughter. The woman beside me leaned away, undoubtedly concerned that I’d lost it.

“On behalf of Northeast Airlines and the entire crew, thank you for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you on board again. Have a great night and we hope that you enjoy your stay.”    

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A/N: Curious as to how this (seemingly random) chapter will play a part later on? Be sure to stay tuned. :) Thank you x infinity for all of your support despite my random absences. I really do love all of you.

Although I usually dedicate my chapters to users that I've spoken with recently or that have encouraged my writing at one point or another, today I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my Aunt Nelly, who passed away early this morning. RIP. <3