The Sudden Weight of Snow Read Online Free PDF

shadow beneath the brow, darker shade in the crease, liner as a frame for the eye. Mascara on the top lashes only, on the bottom lashes it was prone to smudging and would look cheap. Cheeks hollowed out with blush. The amount of effort put into covering our lips baffled me but I followed Krista’s lead. Lips lined first, then filled in with lipstick, blotted, smeared, blotted again, glossed iridescent. Lips of many layers. If you bit into those lips, you would leave marks. The mark of ridges in layers of colour and gloss, a pink stain on teeth. We refined our faces until I was sure my mother had fallen asleep.
    My mother slept as though night descended for her own personal benefit, designed to plunge only her into darkness, a place where all her senses were wiped black and nothing could reach her. When we were children, this frightened Nick and me. We would come to her in the night or early morning, and if Vera was asleep, she was gone from us – unwakable even when we bounced together at the foot of her bed, using her legs as a hurdle. It wasn’t until exactly seven and a half hourshad passed that she would sit up in bed, suddenly and irrevocably awake. By the time I was seventeen, Vera’s deep sleep was a boon. Her sleep was my freedom and I was sure that I could feel it when it settled on the house. The feeling of old wood contracting, of ground shifting. Once it fell, we could walk right out of the house, no need for cunning.
    The air hit us as soon as we stepped out the door, a slow, cold bank. It was always thick in November, before it snowed, and hung in the fields like sheer fabric. The mill made the air like that. The smoke was laced with a smell I identified as wood processing and the lingering scent of trees divided and stripped to the grain. The mill yard was always lit and, although it was out on the highway, its light seeped into the air and everything glowed pink. It could’ve been beautiful, if you didn’t know what it was from. The valley did things to the air as well. In the summer it would hold heat, which would push the clouds out, keep the valley arid and light. In the winter, cold would settle on the valley floor and the air would clot up until there were banks of it, surface upon surface of drafts, woodsmoke.
    “Fuck, it’s cold,” Krista said, digging her hands into the pockets of her jacket, tossing her hair around her face like a scarf as we started down the driveway toward the road.
    “Yeah, and those jeans are going to cut off the blood flow to that heart-shaped ass.”
    “Uh, thanks, Mom.”
    “Like your mom would say that. She’d say, ‘Can’t you get ’em any tighter, honey?’ ”
    “Granted.”
    The road was wet, no ice yet but dense, wet cold. I didn’twant to walk to the party. It was across town, up on the hill where the people with money lived. “Hey,” I called to Krista, who was already walking, or mincing, her steps short and quick in the jeans. “Let’s take the bikes.”
    “The bikes? Why would we do that?”
    “Because it’s so cold. We’ll get there faster on bikes – and we’ll be warm by the time we do.” I turned back to the shed at the end of the driveway, my mind made up.
    Krista yelled at me in a whisper clenched between teeth. “Harper, are you crazy? We can’t ride bikes to a party. Numero uno, my jeans will split. Numero twono, hello? We will look so cool arriving on bicycles. I can hardly wait for
that
.”
    “We’ll bike into town, park them, and walk to 7-E to find a ride,” I said with finality. “We bike into town or I’m not going.”
    We were used to riding bikes at night. In the summer, we rode to the subdivisions on the hill, where the houses were separated by narrow corridors of lawn. Backyards full of pools. Motion-sensor lights hadn’t gained popularity yet and these were people whose pets were clean and quiet, kept inside at night. The pools lay ready to be entered, fences and plastic covers the only things keeping us out.