Snow in Love

by Aimee Friedman

  But it clearly is a big deal if Leigh’s heart is racing the way it does just before she reads a new piece of poetry at an open mic night. Like some part of her soul is about to be on display and people can throw whatever they want at it.

  Which is so dumb. They’re texts.

  Right?

  Leigh taps back over to the messages from a number with no name attached.

  Leigh would’ve known it was Harper Kemp without the second message—ten minutes before she got the messages, she was on the phone with Mama, who’d let her know Oh hey, sweetheart, Harper’s stuck in Atlanta too. Her flight was earlier than yours but also got canceled. I gave Janice your number to pass along to Harper, so she’ll probably reach out. Maybe the two of you can wait things out together.

  And even without that Leigh would’ve known.

  There’s only one Harper.

  And now it’s been twenty-seven minutes since Harper sent Leigh those messages.

  Leigh takes a deep breath …

  (She has no clue why she’s lying.)

  Crap.

  Leigh switches back over to Niecey:

  Except that’s a question Leigh doesn’t really know how to answer.

  Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. Leigh could tell Niecey about how the last time Leigh and Harper saw each other—joint family cruise to the Bahamas the summer before ninth grade—things got weird on the last day.

  Well, at least for Leigh they did.

  She and Harper had been at the on-boat pool together (still so weird to think about: a pool on a vessel in the middle of the ocean), and it was time to go get ready for the final dinner of the trip.

  Which was fine. They’d been in the water for a solid three hours at that point and Leigh’s fingers and toes were all gross and pruney. Also, her hair—typically big and curly, but presently crispy as burnt rotini noodles—was gonna give Mama a conniption, because Leigh hadn’t worn her swim cap like she was supposed to.

  It was truly time to get out.

  Except Harper did first.

  And when she did, Leigh noticed.

  It was the stomach that caught her attention. Harper’s stomach was smooth and brown, the color of roasted almonds, faintly lined with muscles that flexed beneath her skin as she pushed herself out of the pool and stood upright.

  Then the legs.

  Long. Lean. Again with the flexing muscles.

  And Leigh felt super weird about it, but the addition of dripping water to those otherwise regular ol’ body parts …

  Well.

  It was confusing.

  And the weirdest part was no matter how hard she tried—and she really did try—Leigh couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away.

  She eventually heard her name in Mama’s voice. And when Leigh’s eyes snapped up to Harper’s face, Harper’s furrowed brow and narrowed eyes made it crystal clear she’d caught Leigh staring.

  In that exact moment, Mama walked up wagging her finger and fussing, and Leigh had never been more grateful. Harper took it as her cue to exit with nothing more than an “Uhh, see ya!” And Leigh pretty much hid in the cabin for the rest of the cruise.

  Barring the awkward wave they exchanged as the Wellses and Kemps went their separate ways upon getting off the boat, that was the last time the girls had seen each other.

  And maybe Harper doesn’t even remember, Leigh tells herself. She and Harper were having a great time together on that cruise before the whole thing, and they’ve each been through seven semesters of high school since, so maybe the incident got blotted out of Harper’s memory by a combination of elapsed time and new experiences.

  Leigh reads back through Harper’s texts. They seem pretty innocuous. Distinctly not laced with uncomfortable recollections of being ogled by another girl …

  Leigh is probably overthinking this.

  Right?

  She lays her phone facedown in her lap and lets her gaze drift out the window. The snow is really coming down now. It’s actually kinda pretty.

  Maybe this is exactly what Leigh needed: to get grounded. Literally and otherwise. The past couple of months have been … trying. The breakup with Jabari definitely took a toll—largely because “Lebari,” as everyone referred to them, was considered the premier senior couple at the Evanscroft School of Northampton, MA. So for the first few weeks, it seemed like the entire school was grieving. For the first week, in fact, every time Leigh came back to her dorm, there was a new pile of sympathy gifts: flowers, expensive candy, stuffed animals. There was even a Louis Vuitton clutch with a flask hidden inside on day three.

  Interestingly enough though, the breakup itself wasn’t the main thing on Leigh’s mind.

  That’s what she hasn’t mustered up the courage to tell Niecey: the real reason “Lebari” fell apart.

  Because while Harper was the first girl Leigh ever noticed in that way, she certainly isn’t the last.

  Nor the most recent.

  And frankly, Leigh doesn’t know what to do with that. Everyone thinks there’s some big, ugly secret behind the breakup, but in truth, Leigh just … stopped being interested in Jabari.

  Actually that’s not quite true. It’s more like Leigh started to realize she’d never been into him in the first place. And that only happened because of Zuri, a transfer student from Kenya who was by far the most beautiful girl Leigh had ever seen. Leigh’s mind would go blank and her palms would get sweaty whenever Zuri was in the same room. And when Leigh started thinking—and dreaming—about Zuri in ways she’d never thought about Jabari …

  Yeah.

  She tried to hold on, Leigh did. Went so far as to sometimes* (*always) shut her eyes whenever it was possible to take a moment and imagine that Jabari was Zuri whenever she was with him (even/especially when they were making out).

  He eventually noticed something was off.

  They parted amicably.

  And while Leigh knows no one would take issue with her liking girls, the whole thing—the completely undeniable shift—was disorienting.

  So disorienting, Leigh hasn’t even been able to tell her best-friend-since-ninth-grade the truth.

  One thing Niecey’s right about though: Leigh is about to spend a week with Harper Kemp, and there’s no way she’ll be able to avoid her the whole time.

  So …

  Which triggers a different set of memories for Leigh—of all the stuff she and Harper did before the pool incident: the Hide-and-Seek and I Spy and talking to each other in code over the walkie-talkies Harper’s dad gave them.

  And then she’s got it.

  After grabbing all her stuff, Leigh leaves the gate area in a rush. She heads toward the escalator that will take her down to the “Plane Train”—Atlanta airport’s mode of transportation between the six concourses that house all the flight gates for people who don’t want/aren’t able to walk.

  Three stops to concourse T, then out and up the escalator.

  As soon as she’s at the top, Leigh pulls her phone out and takes a deep breath. Taps to the right set of messages.

  (Leigh gulps and takes another deep breath.)

  (Leigh’s not entirely sure what to do with that, but …)

  (Leigh is blown away right now.)

  It takes Leigh all of thirty seconds to figure out the first clue.

  “Wait, you’re really doing it?!” comes Niecey’s voice over Leigh’s headphones. As soon as Harper said yes to Leigh’s game proposal, Leigh tapped away from messages to call her best friend.

  “Yeah,” Leigh replies. “You thought I was joking?”

  “I mean … ish? I knew you were semi-serious cuz I know how busybody-esque you get when you’re all panicked … but I didn’t expect you to take my advice. You literally never do.”

  “Well, if we’re being honest, Niece, your advice is pretty trash most of the time.”

  “Hey now!”

  “You know I’m right.” Leigh looks around for a terminal landmark of some sort to include in the rhyming text hint she�
�s planning to send to Harper as soon as she gets back down to Plane Train level. “Remember that time you suggested I pour maple syrup in Kennedy Moscovich’s gym bag because you claimed she was flirting with Jabari?”

  “Whatever. I know what I saw.”

  “Still.” Leigh’s eyes alight on a currency exchange booth located across the main concourse from the clue she’s chosen: a family of six, including a fat baby, all decked out in matching flannel shirts, dog-piled on the floor near the back wall of gate area T6. She smiles.

  “So what exactly are you doing?” Niecey asks

  “Well, it’s sort of an I Spy meets Hide-and-Seek scavenger hunt?”

  “So extra, Leigh.”

  “Shut it. So I’m going through the terminals looking for stuff I can send her a ‘hint’ about, and then she has to go find the thing and text me a picture of it.”

  “That actually sounds kinda fun.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “What’s the endgame though?”

  Leigh steps onto the escalator, and as she descends, she gets smacked with a wave of shaky nerves. She’d told Harper to stay put until she receives the first set of instructions, but what if Harper didn’t listen and is headed this way and they run into each other before Leigh’s ready—

  “Leigh? You there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”

  “So … endgame? You plan to send her on a wild-goose chase for how long exactly?”

  “It’s not a wild-goose chase.”

  “Oh it isn’t?”

  Leigh huffs. “Look, I need to stall until we’ve gotten reacquainted by text.” Which definitely wasn’t Leigh’s initial intention (run away for as long as possible was), but she guesses it makes sense now that she’s said it aloud. “Obviously I’ll have to actually see her here at the airport eventually, I just … need a little time.”

  “Hmm,” Niecey replies. “You still haven’t told me what the deal is with this girl, and I’m not buying that we haven’t seen each other in years nonsense. BUT, I’m interested in hearing how this whole game thing goes, so I’ll let you slide. For now.”

  Leigh walks past the train platform and into the long tunnel with moving sidewalks that leads from the T-gates to concourse A. She smiles. There’s something very freeing about not getting on the train. About moving at her own pace and actually taking the time to absorb her surroundings.

  When was the last time she’d done that?

  “I gotta go,” she tells Niecey as she spots what she’s instantly knows will be the second clue.

  “Yeah, okay,” Niecey says. “Keep me posted.”

  (That makes Leigh smile.)

  (Leigh’s sure glad her skin is brown because her cheeks would be rosy right now otherwise.)

  Leigh smiles again.

  By the time Leigh’s phone buzzes again, she’s on her way back down to the between-concourse tunnels after figuring out what clue number three will be. (She’s really proud of this one, and is almost sure it will make Harper smile … something she didn’t realize she cared about until this moment).

  When she opens the text, there’s a photo of the flannel family: Dad is awake now and reading a book, but the cute, fat baby—whom Harper digitally circled in the picture—is still sound asleep, mouth wide, on the mom’s chest.

  (Well, that was unexpected …)

  Leigh switches over to the little poem she wrote for clue two, then copies and pastes it in the text box:

  Leigh smiles—which feels nice—and approaches the walking tunnel between concourses A and B. She hears the sounds first: birds twittering and frogs croaking, crickets creaking and rain falling. When she sees the tunnel, she stops.

  It’s like a jungle. Inside the airport.

  The ceiling is covered in what look like metal sheets, cut to resemble a tree canopy. Said sheets are backlit by different shades of green, blue, and purple light. There are also blinking yellow lights that simulate the appearance of fireflies, and lights that “splash” on the floor to mimic raindrops.

  Leigh is mesmerized.

  And then her phone buzzes.

  The message contains a picture of a sculpture featuring four children in the thick of play: Three are lined up and bent at the waist with their hands on their knees, and the fourth is using his hands to launch himself up and over the middle kid’s back.

  They’re full on bantering, as Niecey would put it. Which is surprising to Leigh. It generally takes her a solid few weeks of interacting with someone to drop her guard.

  And yet.

  She steps onto the moving sidewalk that will carry her through the jungle. Decides to take a video, and focuses the camera on the illuminated ceiling.

  Her phone buzzes again, and she almost drops it.

  (Leigh really did forget about the game for a minute.)

  Leigh steps off the conveyor, pauses to jot down the next hint, and then shoots up the escalator steps, two at a time, into concourse B. Harper’s moving too fast. Maybe Leigh should’ve done more than one clue in each concourse …

  Jabari hadn’t been interested in Leigh’s writing. At all. He wasn’t a jerk about it or anything, just … indifferent. And Leigh said it didn’t bother her. Yeah, poetry was her passion, but she wrote for herself, so if he wasn’t interested, who cared, right? It wasn’t about him.

  Except now, with Harper complimenting her little rhymes—that yes, she has been trying to kick up a notch since you certainly know how to turn a phrase—Leigh wonders if maybe it did bother her that Jabari couldn’t have cared less about the thing that was most important to her.

  As a matter of fact, something about being away from the overwhelming whiteness of campus—from the buildings to the linens to the snow to the students and faculty—and surrounded by people of other races here in the Atlanta airport is making Leigh realize that perhaps a lot of things she says don’t bother her actually do.

  She stops to look out one of the wide windows. All is still outside except for the snow, which is coming down with force in fat, clumped flakes.

  She pulls her phone from her pocket.

  There’s a pause and then:

  A video appears in the message thread. Leigh’s still got her headphones on, so the minute she hits play, a smooth, rich voice—makes her think of chocolate fondue—fills her ears and shoots a tingle down her arms and legs.

  “I like what you did with the word simply,” the voice says as the sign for Simply Books comes into view. “You’re clever, Miss Leigh. Real clever.”

  Leigh grins.

  The video pans around the little airport bookstore, and the voice continues: “This place is cute! OH, yo, have you read this yet?” Zooms in on a book spine: Exit West. “It’s SO GOOD, Leigh. Matter of fact, I’m buying it for you.” A brown hand appears and pulls the book from the shelf. “Moving on, then,” the voice goes on. “Time to find this clue. Hmmmm …” The video moves around the store for about thirty seconds with Harper saying, “Nope. Not here,” and then lands on someone up in a red apron on a ladder stocking books on the uppermost shelves.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Harper says. “Could you tell me where to find the book To Kill a Mockingbird?”

  “Hey, that’s cheating!” Leigh says. Aloud. In concourse B.

  Heads turn. (Oops.)

  Leigh shifts her attention back to the video and picks up her pace. Gotta get downstairs to find the next clue.

  She watches the bookseller lead Harper to a table in the back corner where To Kill a Mockingbird is on display with a bunch of other “Classics.” That same brown hand from before lifts the book from the table and holds it up in for the camera.

  “Wham bam,” the voice says.

  And then the video cuts off.

  On her way down the escalator, Leigh spots a young man headed up, his arm draped over the shoulders of a blonde girl. He looks so much like Jabari—same deep brown skin the color of coffee beans, same cleft chin, same prep-swag style: plaid button-down, puffer vest,
nice slacks, Air Jordans (which works somehow)—for a second, she can’t breathe.

  He lifts his chin at her in greeting as they pass each other (whoops … was she staring?) and Leigh gets slammed with some of the intense emotion she fights to suppress at school, but doesn’t have it in her to keep in check now.

  While the whole school “grieved” over the end of #Lebari, it didn’t take long for Jabari to pop up on social media in photos with different girls who’d definitely wanted him while he was with her—and clearly weren’t that sad about him being available again.

  It was the strangest thing: No, she wasn’t actually into him, but that didn’t make it sting any less to see him with other girls. Not because she wanted him back. That wasn’t it at all. It was more the fact that … well, nobody else at that school seemed to want her. Jabari was treated like a celebrated warrior returned from a brutal yet victorious battle, but Leigh was just some piteous castaway.

  At least with Jabari she felt like she was a part of something. There were a lot of things they connected on, being two of only six black kids in their graduating class (Niecey was the third, Zuri the fourth, and the other two were a set of identical twins who through four years of high school really only seemed to interact with each other). When she and Jabari were together, Leigh’s guard—that thing inside her that lowered her sensitivity and raised the armor that helped her cope when surrounded by people with more power than she had, but who were oblivious to the differences in their experiences—would fall away of its own accord.