dedicated to my homegirl ivey for the super cute banner even though she mispelled "hurricane" i still love her anyway i guess

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               “If I offer to give you my allowance for a whole month, will you please give me enough money to fly home?” I try pleading with Ryan as we check into the ski resort (if you can even call such a small building that). The place is a miniature thing, probably about maybe a little more than half the size of an average ski resort.

               At the present, the three of us are located in a small Alaskan town named after some Eskimo who inhabited this place over a century ago. How do I know this? My history-loving idiot of a brother just had to have our ride stop at the welcome center in town to get a little history pamphlet that he could look over and take home as his version of a souvenir. While he was inside getting information in regards to where we’re staying and what fun activities there are to do, I was freezing my butt off inside of the small car that one of the workers at the resort had driven to pick us up. After my many complaints, the guy, probably in his late thirties or early forties, had sworn up and down that the heater was, in fact, turned on full blast.

               I’m still a little skeptical of how much truth there actually was in his words, but whatever.

               Once Ryan felt secure in his knowledge of the town and returned back to the car to be driven to the resort, a heavy silence had hung over the car. Ellie, who was shoved between Ryan and me in the backseat, had her headphones in her ears, her not-so-subtle way of saying that she didn’t want to talk to anyone. The driver kept insistently flipping the radio from one static-filled station to another before finally settling on one of the few working stations that happened to be playing some old folk song.

               It took a lot of self-restraint to keep from banging my head up against the frosted glass of the backseat window. No matter how long I had stared out the window at the passing scenery, my mind couldn’t seem to absorb the reality of our situation. I couldn’t help but think about how if Mom was here with us, things wouldn’t be nearly as bad. If there’s anything my mom is notorious for, it’s taking a seemingly rotten situation and turning it into something fun and memorable.

               Subconsciously, I fiddled with my gold charm bracelet, the metal chain links cold against my skin. When that failed to calm me, I finally took the pillow that had been resting on my lap and hugged it against my body, gently resting my head against the door to my side and staying in that position all the way until we reached the resort what felt like an eternity but was probably only several minutes later.

               “Opal, I am not giving you money to go back home,” Ryan says as the woman behind the desk in the main lobby hands him two keys. I let out an aggrieved sigh in exaggeration, turning away from the gray-haired lady behind the wooden desk and trailing my eyes around the main lobby of the ski resort.

               The walls consist of glazed wooden panels and the room contains a high ceiling, supported by large wooden logs for beams. The desk is located along the wall to the right of the entranceway and the lobby is split up into two sections, the main one where you first enter when coming in from outside that consists of a bunch of sagging, patched up couches and vending machines, and the smaller recreational one where there are a few foosball and Ping-Pong tables, along with a mini gift shop and convenience store. Hung up on a few of the walls are a diverse variety of very life-like animal heads that seem to be staring into my soul, silently haunting me for being a member of the species who had done this to them. I look away, unsettled by the piercing eyes of deceased Alaskan wildlife.

               “Here’s the key to Ellie’s and your room,” Ryan finally says to me, sliding the scratched key from his hand to my outstretched grasp, the dull silver surface coarse in the palm of my petite hand. I stare down at it for a moment before folding my fingers around it tightly so as not to lose it. I finally skim my eyes over in Ellie’s direction, the corners of my lips curving down in a frown as she texts furiously from where she’s standing, cheeks rosy from the cold outside and eyebrows furrowed in concentration of whatever conversation it is that she’s holding.

               I can virtually guarantee that my friends won’t text me a single time throughout the duration of my spring break. Katie: because she’s probably still mad at me, Nick: because I told him to stop texting me about a week ago when he wouldn’t quit pestering me, and the rest: simply because they all think that I’m in Paris right now, distracted by the enlightening features of The City of Love, completely forgetting about them. Which would be true, had my dad not lied to me directly.

                “Come on, Smellie,” I mumble lightly, using my occasional nickname for her that I reserve using only when she’s grating on my nerves. Of course, she’s always grating on my nerves, but some times just seem a little less bearable than others.

               She glares up at me. “What did I tell you about calling me that?”

               “That I’m not allowed to. Which is exactly why I did. You can’t tell me not to do something and expect me to not do it. That’s like asking an obedient kid to do something and expecting them not to. It just doesn’t work.”

               “Sucks that you’re not an obedient kid,” I hear her mutter to herself.

               I clench my jaw and march my way to the stairs, peeved that this place doesn’t even have an elevator. If I had to draw up the worst possible way to spend my spring break, you would see a sketched charcoal outline of this exact moment: me trudging up the stairs, large suitcase in tow, Ellie coming from behind, and piles of snowoutside. Aside from back when we used to visit my grandparents’ home in Minnesota, the last of those trips taking place when I was nine, I have no experience with snow. And now there’s enough of the frozen white substance outside to double the Atlantic Ocean in size.

               Talk about a disaster.

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               A couple hours after sifting through my suitcase, most of the clothing inside foreign to my eyes and definitely not what I had packed, it was safe to say that I was downright furious with my family. At some point, my dad must have switched most of what I had packed for proper winter gear, which I was quite reluctant to discover when I finally cracked my suitcase open in our tiny box room, Ellie’s space already neatly organized and the girl in question long gone to explore downstairs. I’ve been left alone in here for nearly two hours, pacing the room and trying to formulate a plan to get the heck out of this godforsaken place.

               I walk over to the little mirror hanging on the wall by the closet and study my face. My mouth is set in a straight line, gray eyes blazing with an overwhelming vehemence and raw anger. I’ve mastered this face a long, long time ago. It’s my winning method of intimidation. Nodding at my reflection in satisfaction, I back away from the mirror, slip on a pair of boots, and finally bring myself to venture outside my new temporary room for the first time since we got here, phone clamped tightly in my hand. I’m ready.

               I go downstairs to find Ryan, and am surprised to discover him in the rec room, sitting on a couch and surrounded by several other teenagers who appear to be his age. It’s strange, seeing my brother surrounded by people. Especially people who are strangers this quickly. I can’t help but think about how there is no way that my brother approached these people on his own.

               I march my way to where he’s sitting and lock my fingers around his wrist, pulling up as I do so. His arm jerks forward, but his body remains sitting.

               “What do you want, Opal?” he questions irritably. Five unfamiliar faces are suddenly watching me in interest.

               “Opal! I finally get to meet you,” a black-haired boy greets cheerfully, shooting me a welcoming grin. “It’s nice to meet the infamous sister of this stud we got over here. Your brother is a cool dude.” He points to Ryan, whose face flushes a bit at this when a short-haired girl who I only just notice to be sitting beside him nudges him playfully.

               I cock an eyebrow at this but say nothing, too focused on my sole mission: to negotiate with Ryan a way that I can get back home before my tan begins to even consider fading. “I’m sorry; can I borrow this stud you got over here for just, like, a minute?”  I ask as politely as I can manage, given the circumstances.

               “Sure thing, Lapo,” the dark-haired guy says with a goofy wink. I resist the urge to shudder. Gross.

               “Um, Lapo? What the heck is that?”

               “That’s just Chris. He has a thing for calling people by their names backwards. I’m Lizzy, or as Chris likes to call me, Yzzil,” the short-haired girl explains, pronouncing Yzzil like easel.

               “Oh. Um, cool,” I manage to reply, though I think that it’s kind of tacky, if anything. She smiles at me, and I relax my face, too uptight to smile back. Finally, I pull Ryan up with me and drag him away from his new—bizarre— friends.

               “This better not take long,” he warns once I’ve dragged him out of earshot. “I’m actually having fun, and I don’t want you to ruin that for me.”

               I roll my eyes. “Please. With those people? They’re kind of losers, no offense. Especially that Chris dude, like, can he not call me ‘Lapo’? That sounds like a stripper name. Anyway. Listen, I can’t spend my spring break here. This place sucks. It’s too cold and boring and the people are lame. Please Ry, I’ll do anything you want; help me get a ticket back to Florida. I cannot share a room with Smellie. And what am I even supposed to do here? Build a snowman? Whoop-dee-doo.”

               He narrows his eyes at me. “You can’t be serious right now.” Staring at him with a blank expression, I wait for him to understand that yes, I am dead serious about leaving. When he gets the point, he shakes his head, raking his hands through his fluffy brown hair in frustration. “Who am I kidding? Of course you’re being serious. When isn’t my sister acting like a princess who has to have everything her way? I guess I just figured that maybe just this once, you could make an exception. My bad.”

               I scowl at him. “Shut up, Ryan! Believe me, lots of things don’t go my way. But this one is all your fault!” I jab my index finger in his chest. “Nobody asked if this vacation was okay with me. Dad lied to me, Kristen’s just an overall wench, and Ellie can go fall in a hole for all I care. You’re supposed to be on my side. Please get me out of here. If you care about me at all, you’ll understand that I can’t spend break in Alaska.”

               As we stand there, glaring at each other, I wait for him to do it. He always does, after all. Sometimes he’s able to fight it longer than others, but he never succeeds the whole way through. I wait for him to give in, to finally give up and let things just go my way. Yet he doesn’t. He studies me with his stormy blue eyes, the same pair that always made me jealous growing up. It wasn’t fair that he got such a dark yet beautiful shade of irises and I was stuck with eyes the color of the sky during a rainstorm.

               He looks over my shoulder at the group of teenagers who are sitting around on the other side of the room, and then his eyes find their way back to me, something new and unfamiliar clouding up within them.

               “No.”

               I raise my eyebrows, confused. “I’m sorry? Did you just say no?”

               I’m giving him a chance to reiterate his words. Out of my sixteen and a half years of existence, I have never heard Ryan say that word to me. Not that I can remember, anyway.

               He sighs and shrugs his shoulders at me hopelessly. “Yeah, I did, Opal. That’s life. It doesn’t always go your way. Although in your case, it goes your way probably ten times more than the average person. But just this once, it’s not about you. Get over it. So Dad lied to you about where you’d be spending break, big deal. Far worse things have happened. My whole life, you’ve always gotten what you wanted. Everything gets handed down to you on a silver platter. But just this once, I’m getting my time to have things go my way, and you’re not taking that away from me. If you want to sit up in your room and be miserable all week, be my guest. But don’t even think about ruining my vacation, because I wanted to come here. And for once, you get no say in the matter.”

               I stare at him helplessly, baffled by his sudden newfound defiance. This is not my brother. He starts to turn away, but I latch onto his arm, stopping him.

               “You have no idea what you’re saying. Do you really think things always go my way? In case you haven’t noticed, nothing in my life has been going right lately. And clearly you don’t understand that, so whatever. Go get high with your new best friends or whatever crap you do. Screw you, Ryan. And thanks for ruining my week. I appreciate it,” I say, bitter sarcasm oozing from my voice as if he’s squeezing it out of me. I clench my hands in fists and narrow my eyes at him. “You’re gonna regret this.”

               He shakes his head. “No I won’t. You’re just mad that I’m not giving in to your pleas. For the first time in forever, Opal Finnegan doesn’t get her way. And honestly, I don’t care anymore.”

               He slips past me, bumping into my shoulder on the way, and makes his way back over to his so-called “friends”, slowly going back to normal as if he hadn’t just mentally slapped me in the face with his words. I slump back, still attempting to process what just went down between us. Had my brother—my quiet, lame, druggy of a brother—just argued with me? The very same brother who seems to magically run away as if I have the plague whenever I even hint at bringing any kind of trouble?

               I hear a laugh from the other side of the room, and look to find him and that Lizzy chick grinning at something, some private joke between the two of them. Rolling my eyes, I exit the rec room and make my way into the main lobby, collapsing onto one of the patched up couches arranged around the middle of the room, trying not to focus on how grimy and gross of a condition it probably is in.

               I pull out my phone and try to call my dad, only for it to go right to voicemail. Sighing, I fling my phone to the other end of the unoccupied couch, closing my eyes and massaging my temples. The main lobby is currently fairly quiet, most people either outside doing whatever they came to do, in their rooms, or the few individuals settled in the rec room. I have no idea where Ellie is, and I prefer it that way.

               As I sit there, legs curled up behind me, I realize how much I want my mom. The suckiest part of it all is that she even offered to let me come stay in Africa with her, an offer that I was strongly considering, until my dad insisted that he wanted me to stay with him and Ryan back in the states and basically decided for me that I had no choice in the matter. I had been beyond pissed that he didn’t even let me decide what I wanted to do. It wasn’t fair that my mom couldn’t be part of my life, simply because she wanted to pursue her dreams. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of her and I love her a lot, but I need my mom.

               And Kristen doesn’t count, so forget about that prospect.

               I wish that I was close with either Ryan or my dad. I’d be fine with either one, really. But of course, Ryan likes to be alone and my dad has the company of whomever his current trophy wife of the week is, leaving me to fend for myself and settle on the presence of my friends. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there is so much drama and irritating stuff that comes with that.

               While I admit, I may bring on some of that drama, I honestly don’t usually plan to. My life just isn’t your average run-of-the-mill lifestyle. Drama and excitement seem to have some kind of magnetic attraction to my body, because they seem to follow me everywhere I go. And it can be exhausting, being friends with the people who I’m friends with. Take Katie, who claims to be my best friend but I know gossips about me and has even tried to start stuff about me a few times so she can be more popular. Or Nick, who mostly dated me for the benefits, and not at all for the love of it. Or even Ellie, who, albeit I’m not friends with her, reminds me so much of a few of the other girls at my school: outwardly innocent and sweet, inwardly heartless and cold. I’m accustomed to the way this stuff works by now. People aren’t ever as great as they try to make themselves out to be.

               I just want something, but I don’t even know what that something is. I can’t help but feel like there’s this gap missing in my life, and no matter what I do to try to fill that empty void, it’s always right there, staring me in the face in all its ceaseless glory.

               “Are you okay?” an unfamiliar voice asks me, causing me to start with a jolt. I look up high off the ground at the tall figure hovering above me and meet a big pair of brown eyes, sparkling from the glow of a nearby floor lamp.

               “Yeah . . .” I mutter, my voice coming out like a question. “Who are you?”

               “Oh, I’m Jack. I, uh, work here. Just got off shift.” I trail my eyes down his lithe body, clothed in multiple layers, and then up to his cheeks that are pink from being out in the cold. His curly brown hair is a bit disheveled from the wind, and he looks kind of tired, though his eyes have a soft glow in them. He’s cute, in a momma’s boy kind of way. Definitely not the player type.

               “Shift?” I question. “What do you do?”

               “Well, my mom runs the place, and I just do whatever she asks me to. Today I had to work the slopes. You know, make sure people are being safe and know what they’re doing, that kind of thing.”

               I think this over and nod slowly. “Okay . . . and now you’re over here because . . .?”

               He opens his mouth and closes it, looking unsure. “I, uh, well . . . I’m not really sure. I just came in and saw you throw your phone like you were upset and I figured I’d make sure you were fine. So, uh, are you? Fine, I mean?”

               I snort. “I’ve been forced against my will to come to this God-awful place, no offense. I’m from Florida, and I guess it’s safe to say that Alaska is the last place I should be spending my spring break. My dad and his new wife ditched us to honeymoon in Paris, where I’m supposed to be, my brother is being a jerk, and my new stepsister is just plain annoying. Does that sound fine to you?”

               To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m telling him all this. He probably doesn’t care, and I’m not looking for his insight on the situation. It does feel good to get that off my chest, though.

               He looks at me curiously. “You don’t want to be here?”

               I sigh, trying to refrain from openly displaying my annoyance. Incompetence must be an Alaskan thing, based off of the people I’ve met so far. “No. I’m from Florida, remember? The coldest weather I know is sixty degrees, and even that’s pushing it. I don’t do snow, and Alaska is the last place I’d want to go for vacation.”

               The tall boy smiles slightly, as if he’s thinking of some private joke in his head. “Alaska is a great state; you just gotta give it a chance. Although I may be a little biased since it’s my home.”

               I let out a small, fake laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”

               “So what’s your name?” he presses, clearly determined to make conversation. Nothing I’m not already accustomed to.

               “Opal.”

               “How long are you staying?”

               I narrow my eyes at him. “So many questions. What are you; my personal interviewer or something?”

               This shuts him up. A faint blush creeps up his neck and he trails his gaze to the floor uncomfortably. I brush a strand of hair out of my face as I wait for the stranger to do or say something, or go away, at least. He lingers, though he’s very hesitant in doing so, before finally saying, “I’ll see you around, Opal. And give Alaska a chance; it’s a pretty cool place. I promise.” He shoots me a real, genuine smile before turning away and disappearing into some room labeled Staff Only.

               I roll my eyes at his receding figure, though I find the corners of my lips twisting up into the slightest of smiles involuntarily and shake my head.

               Alaskans.