Snow by Sophie Castro

It starts snowing at eleven, soft flurries that turn thick by noon, the kind of snow Christmas movies recreate with shaved soap and synthetic chemicals.

By one, the grass is covered, white powder builds on the branches of towering trees, and maintenance trucks sprinkle salt on the main roads. In town, local businesses flip their open signs to closed, they draw their blinds, and workers start the slow drive home. One by one, school districts announce an early closing. Parents call their jobs, they take off, drive to the bus stop, and wait for their kids in the warmth of their cars. 

At Westbury Elementary, the same kids charge the buses bundled in puffer coats and knit gloves, still young enough to listen when their Moms call from the kitchen, “wear a coat!” Their bags hang from the crook of their elbows, threaten to fall from the edge of their shoulders, but they don’t care. They’re planning their snow days, naming their snowmen, charting their sledding paths.

In the back of the building, Rachel Lynn shepherds her small group of students to the parent pickup door. They all want to go home, and some ask if they can please just this one time ride the bus. But Westbury is a rural school, and the bus routes don’t drop off at all the students’ homes. So instead, they wait together in the quiet stillness of the snow as her group of five dwindles to four, and then two, and then it’s just her and Ryan Caddel, a third grader in her home room. He doesn’t wear a puffer coat, like the other kids. He wears a yellow peacoat with a matching scarf that his Mom made him for Christmas.

“If you had to die, would you want to be decapitated, or freeze to death?”

Rachel smiles as she watches Ryan bury his hands into his armpits, the breath through his nose white above his scarf.

Ryan is receiving his first communion this year, and every Wednesday he sits in his church’s basement as he learns about Jesus and saints, God and death. 

“Are these my only options?” she asks.

He nods. Snow catches in his hair. 

“Decapitation,” she tells him. “It’s quicker.” 

Ryan makes a face. “But then you wouldn’t have a head. What if you come back as a ghost and you just don’t have a head!”

Rachel laughs. Ryan had had this same conversation with his friends that morning. They had given him the same answer and he’d said the same response. Tonight, Rachel thinks, she’ll tell this story to her fiancé. 

“Eh.” She reaches out to mess the curls of his blond hair. “I still wouldn’t want to be cold.” Ryan laughs, he ducks from her hand and keeps on with his questions. He asks death by shark or bear, falling or drowning, vampire or zombie. Some answers he agrees with (drowning is worse than falling) some he doesn’t (he’d prefer to be eaten by a bear). And all the while, they wait for his Mom’s red car.

This past September, Ryan’s Mom joined the PTA. She threw herself into big projects and leadership positions and now comes to parent pickup always with papers spilling across her passenger seat, her trunk filled with bake sale ingredients, fundraising flyers, talent show decorations.  

Rachel checks her watch. Ryan talks about a new superhero movie, craning his neck out ever so slightly. They search for that dot of red driving towards them down the white road. But it doesn’t come, and their feet are getting cold now. Rachel considers putting her foot down, pulling Ryan back into the warmth of the school. But if she did that, it would feel like giving up, admitting they’ll be waiting here a long while when really his Mom could be just around the corner.

Ryan’s stopped talking now, and snowflakes have begun to stick to the edges of his eyelashes.

“It’s quiet,” he tells her. 

“Mmm.” Rachel nods. “Snow makes it quiet sometimes.”

Ryan readjusts his hands in his coat pockets. He leans back to look up at the trees, the sky, the new world washed in white.

“It’s nice,” he says.

Again, Rachel nods, and together they wait as snow falls around them.

---

SOPHIE CASTRO — Sophie is a recent graduate from both the University of Maryland and the Jiminez-Porter Writers’ House. She is the recipient of the 2024 Sebastian Herbstein Memorial Scholarship in fiction writing and her work has appeared in the National Endowment for Humanities Humanities magazine.

Art by OLWYN CARDEW — Olwyn is a rising senior in high school based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She focuses on exploring many mediums in her artwork. She is also interested in pursuing a career in the art field specifically art education.