The Snow Apocalypse, Part 2

(The Snow Apocalypse, Part 2)

Time Frame: December 2010

            My freshman year at the university I was told that hoping for a snow day was a waste of time. The school hadn’t had a snow day in over twenty years. So when the sky started to darken and soft flurries began to tumble to the ground everyone expected their prayers for a day off to go unanswered. Most of us just really wanted to get out of tests or quizzes. The end of the semester was just around the corner, which meant that finals were coming up. Which, in turn, meant that all of our professors decided that it was the perfect time to give everyone tests, quizzes, and to make major papers due.

            The last thing any of us wanted to do was study. We would much rather build an igloo colony, which was quickly becoming a favored idea among the students. People had actually started making runs to Walmart to purchase shovels, buckets, and sleds. Coffee was nice and passing classes was nice but the idea of living in an igloo and going inside only to get hot food was even nicer.

            

By the third day of constant snow, we’d gathered a depth of six inches of snow. The idea of a snow day was becoming increasingly realistic. Especially as local schools started shutting down. On that third evening I was laying on my bed and staring out the window of my dorm room, watching a couple people building a snowman in the dying light outside, as my roommate sat on the sofa. She had a horror movie on and her laptop open on her lap. Her fingers were typing away at the key board as she hurried to finish a science paper she had due the next day.

I had an open British Literature book in front of me. The words of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury tales did nothing to keep my interest that evening. I knew I should have been reading it and highlighting things to talk about in class the next day, but I was more fascinated with the frost on the window and the couple building the snowman.

“Frick, have you guys been outside?” one of my and my roommate’s friends walked into our room through our open door. Snow clung to her boots, coat, and brown hair.

“Not since dinner,” my roommate stated, looking up from her laptop.

Our friend shed her wet coat and shoes, “Well don’t go back out. It’s like the freaking ice age out there.” She plopped down on the sofa. “What is this movie?”

My roommate gave her the name as blood trailed down a wall on the television and a girl screamed.

“I know it’s not going to happen, but is it really too much to ask for one snow day?” our friend wondered aloud as my roommate put aside her laptop in favor of watching the movie and chatting with our friend, who was really more her friend than mine. To be honest, she and all of our mutual friends from that year, I hardly ever talk to anymore. The last correspondence we had was when she ‘liked’ something I posted on my social media page. I can’t even recall that last time we actually talked to each other.

Regardless, they were who I hung out with my first semester at the university. It wouldn’t be until January that would meet my best friend and actually start gaining friends that I had things in common with.

As my roommate, our friend, and I chilled in our room that night our other friends slowly joined us. First it was just the girls. Four other girls besides myself and my roommate. Then, as the sky darkened and the hour shifted to one that admitted boys on the hall, the guys joined us. Until eleven that night they all watched horror movies and I tried my best to pretend that I was actually interested in the show with the creepy hauntings and the blood curling screams. I spent a lot of time with my mind wandering though.

Eventually, I silently got up, grabbed my laptop, and logged onto our school website. My English professor had a nasty habit of sending last minute directions for the next day’s class at ungodly hours of the day. I figured I should probably check my school email to see if she had anything to say.

Sure enough, when I logged in, the first message waiting for me was from said professor. I clicked on the email, opened it, and read something that I had to re-read twice before actually believing my eyes.

“Due to class being canceled tomorrow, please read the following pages for next time…”

Class was canceled? Was school canceled?

I clicked out of the email and grinned when I found another unread one waiting for me from the school, announcing that the following day would be a snow day.

“Snow day,” I weakly called out in a false happy tone that was laced with just an edge of genuine excitement. Excitement for the day without classes, fake happiness because I knew the following day would be spent with fake friends.

A loud whoop sounded from the others in my dorm room. They all checked their emails and text messages to find that what I said was true. The cheer they let out when they found out that because of the snow day the boys were allowed in the girls’ dorms (and vice versa) for an extra two hours that night.

I was not elated.

I had to stay up until one in the morning listening to the screams of the damned. It was irritating. I wanted to sleep. I was frustrated because even though we had a day off I had no one real to spend it with and no one around that wouldn’t judge me for wanting to spend the whole day in bed writing.

When I woke up at ten the next day –an ungodly hour by the standards of my roommate but a perfectly reasonable hour to be up by my own –I left the room as quickly and quietly as possible, getting a pillow thrown at me and curses flung my way in the process. All I took with me was my student ID, so I could get food from the cafeteria, and my laptop.

It was far too cold to sit outside and write, plus it was still snowing, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing a seat by the large window in the cafeteria and watching as the first igloo of the desired igloo colony was erected.

I had decided that since snow days were rare on that campus I would savor the one I got. For the record, we received a whole week off from school that year and everyone started calling it the great snow apocalypse of 2010. Every year since then, we had snow days. 2010 broke the school’s streak of no snow days.

As I sat there watching the cafeteria workers go about their jobs and the people outside building igloos, I started to write a story that I never finished. I didn’t know at the time but in that cafeteria, restocking the oranges and refilling the ice in the soda machines, were the people that would come to be my real friends.