Frostbitten: The Complete Series

by Bera, Ilia

  “I don’t care if you have to take out another god damned mortgage—I’m not eating that skim milk crap you bought last week,” Brittany said, suddenly convincingly in character.

  “They taste the same! They’re probably made in the same factory.”

  “They do not! Besides, I refuse to be seen eating no name brand ice cream. Do you have any idea what people think when they see you eating no name brand ice cream?”

  “Oh—enough about the ice cream already!” Kane said as he opened the passenger door to his car for Brittany.

  Brittany hopped inside. Kane walked around and got into the driver’s side. He fired up the car as Brittany looked over at him. She smiled.

  “That was fun,” she said, biting her lip to contain her excitement.

  “Thanks for that—If that guard was any more suspicious of me, he would have shot me right there in the bank.”

  Brittany laughed. “You need to cut your hair!”

  “Why? What’s wrong with my hair? You don’t like my hair?” Kane asked.

  “I like your hair—I think it looks good, but it probably isn’t the most practical bank-robbing hair. If you’re going around doing that, you need to look more professional—like you just got off work at your articling job.”

  “Well I suppose I’m not the most practical bank robber,” Kane said, looking over at Brittany. The two looked into one another’s eyes for a moment. Kane looked back forward and put his car into drive. “You won’t tell anyone, right?” he asked.

  “No—Of course not,” Brittany said. “Unless you really piss me off,” Brittany joked.

  Kane smiled. “Where are you headed? I’ll give you a ride.”

  “The library.”

  “The library? What are you doing at the library?”

  “Finishing the rest of that assignment.”

  “Shit—The assignment. I forgot about it.”

  “You’re welcome to come to the library to do it.”

  Kane smiled, but then remembered his promise to Tarun. “I’ll drop you off—but I have to run a quick errand. Will you still be there in an hour?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kane drove Brittany to the library, and then made his way back to his apartment building. He parked his car out front, and made his way to Vish and Tarun’s suite.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  He knocked at the door. After a short moment, the door opened, and Tarun stepped out. The young Indian immigrant closed the door behind him.

  “You’ve got the money?” Tarun asked.

  “Yeah,” Kane said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out multiple stacks of cash and handed them to Tarun.

  Tarun stared at the money, speechless. He looked up at Kane and then back down at the money.

  “You’ve miscounted,” Tarun said.

  “No—That’s for the place.”

  “There’s way more than six hundred here...”

  “It’s for the place.”

  “But—”

  “—It’s for the place, Tarun. Just take it.”

  Tarun stared at the money in total silence.

  “What’s wrong?” Kane asked.

  “This is too much—how much is this?”

  “Three thousand,” Kane said.

  “T—Three thousand?” Tarun had never seen one thousand dollars before—never mind three thousand.

  “Yeah—Take it,” Kane said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Rent—the deposit.”

  “This is way too much.”

  “Why?” Kane asked.

  “Because—Because it is. It just is.”

  Kane smiled and patted Tarun on the shoulder. “Just take it, man.”

  Tarun looked back at the money. “Where did you get it?”

  “My dad was a famous brain surgeon. I got all of his money when he died,” Kane lied. “He had more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime. Just take it. Pay the bills. Go to school. I’d rather see it get used than just sit pointlessly in my bank account.”

  “Thank you so much—Thank you so much,” Tarun said. “This really means the world to us.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s fine. Look—I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around.”

  “Thank you so much, Mr. Patrick.”

  “Bye Tarun.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A HOPELESS ROMANTIC

  With his homework finished, and a few hours to spare before class, Andrew was looking for something to do to fill his spare time. He sat at home, on his computer, mindlessly surfing through the same social media pages over and over.

  He sat back in his chair and sighed. He stared back down at the screen, thinking.

  Then, he curiously searched a name into Facebook:

  Brittany B—

  He didn’t know how to spell her long Polish last name. He thought for a moment, testing out different combinations, and scanning the different names that popped up as suggestions.

  Then, he saw a familiar face—Brittany’s.

  “Brittany Brucheveskyj…” Andrew muttered to himself as he clicked onto her page.

  He sighed as he scrolled through the few photos that she had. All of her photos were selfies. She held the camera out and pointed it towards herself, often featuring her pushed up cleavage. She was smiling in each photo, but her eyes appeared to have a sadness behind them.

  Andrew could see right through her flirtatious demeanour, her carefully applied makeup and her pretty-girl persona. He could see that, underneath, she was an interesting, funny and friendly girl. He could tell that, beneath everything, she was a real person.

  As Andrew stared at his computer monitor, he started to zone out. He felt a strange connection to his pretty, dark-skinned classmate—a connection he couldn’t quite describe in words. He wasn’t floored by her beauty, or charmed by her wit. He was simply and inexplicably infatuated with her. He felt like he understood her.

  Ring! Ring!

  Andrew’s cellphone startled him out of his fantasizing daydream. He picked it up and checked the caller ID briefly before answering it.

  “Hello?” he said into his phone.

  “Andrew?” an unfamiliar older female voice said.

  “Hi—Who is this?”

  “It’s your Auntie Elizabeth!”

  “Oh… Hi Aunt Liz,” Andrew said with forced enthusiasm. “What’s up?”

  “I haven’t seen you in years! Not since you and your family went on that big trip!”

  “Yeah, it’s been a while.”

  “What are you up to these days?” She had a high-pitched nasally voice, and she yelled into the phone, as if it didn’t work otherwise.

  “Oh, you know—Just going to school.”

  “Are you going to SBU now? What are you majoring in?”

  “I’m actually just finishing my high school courses.”

  “Oh,” Andrew’s aunt said. “They let you do that?”

  “Yep…” Andrew replied. “They sure do.”

  “How are your parents doing?”

  “They’re still in India.”

  “India? What? Did you mean Indiana?”

  “No—Puri, India. On the Indian Ocean, about three hundred miles from Mumbai. They decided to stay there during their trip. They bought a place and everything.”

  “What? Do you have their number? Is that long distance?”

  “Yes, Aunt Liz—India is long distance.”

  “Wow! I can’t believe they’re in India!”

  “I have their number in my phone. I can text it to you, if you’d like.”

  “Text—how do I sign up for that?”

  “Hold on—I’ll just read it to you.”

  “Okay, let me grab a pen.”

  Andrew pulled up his parents’ number and read it to his old aunt.

  “You’re so sweet, you know that?” Aunt Liz told Andrew.

  “Thanks.”

  “So tell me, how’s life—when are you going to be down in the big city aga
in?”

  “Life is good—I don’t know when I’ll be down there again. No time soon, probably.”

  “Is there a lady in your life? Should we be booking time off for a wedding?”

  Andrew laughed. “No, Aunt Liz.”

  “Oh, hooey! I’m sure you’ve got a lovely girlfriend and you’re just too shy to tell me.”

  Andrew’s smile sunk. “Sadly not,” he said.

  “Did you hear that your cousin Joey is getting married?”

  “Joey? Isn’t he like eighteen years old?”

  “He’s nineteen.”

  “Isn’t that kind of young to get married?” Andrew asked.

  “Your uncle and I were eighteen when we got married, and look at us!”

  Andrew forced an awkward laugh. “I guess so,” he said.

  “And your parents were only twenty when they got married. Your sister—How old was she when she married that guy?”

  “She was eighteen, but they’re divorced now.”

  “They are? Oh, what a shame. I liked him. What was his name?”

  “Eric.”

  “Eric—I liked Eric.”

  “I’ll let him know the next time I see him.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “I’m twenty-one.”

  “Oh—That’s a good age… Can I talk to your sister?” Andrew’s aunt asked.

  “She moved to Sweden for University.”

  “Sweden! My God, your family has always been so interesting and ambitious. Well—I’ll let you go. It was nice talking to you, Andrew.”

  “You too.”

  “Oh—Have you heard about this online dating thing?”

  “I think I might have heard about it, yes,” Andrew said.

  “I hear that it works for a lot of people. You should give it a try.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Liz. Maybe I will,” Andrew said, forcing enthusiasm into his voice.

  “Bye,” Andrew said, hanging up the phone.

  He looked around his pathetic bachelor pad. There was no sign of female life within the whole space. He kept it clean and tidy, and he had nice, expensive things—a large television, a nice computer, pleasantly framed posters, and high-end appliances. But it was missing that female touch—even just a female glance would have been nice.

  Andrew wasn’t the kind of person to get discouraged or jealous by other people. He didn’t care when his friends all took off for university, and he was left behind to finish school. When one of his friends bought his own house, Andrew was proud—not jealous.

  And he honestly didn’t even care that all of the people around him were getting married. He didn’t care that his parents were already married by his age, or that his aunt met the love of her life when she was in high school. Andrew was wise enough to know that every individual life was different, and that it was unfair to expect to have everything.

  He had always considered himself blessed. He had rich parents and a big free house to himself. His dad’s had a big enough pension to pay for any education he could possibly want. With such a fortunate life, what kind of person would he be if he went around pouting about how he was twenty-one and still didn’t have a girlfriend?

  What really bugged him was that everyone seemed to think that it was so taboo to be behind all of his peers. People seemed to pity him when they heard that he wasn’t in university yet, or that he was still single, and not dating. He’d always considered himself an independent spirit—happy to be alone. After his parents stopped in India, he continued to travel alone, and he loved it.

  He was happy living alone, and he’d always just thought that the right girl would come along and change his mind one day—but it hadn’t happened yet—and it didn’t seem like it was happening any time soon.

  With every passing year, the watchful eyes of the judging drew closer. Each time Andrew went out to the movies by himself, the ticket vendor looked at him with a little bit more pity. If he went out to a restaurant, people would look at him as if he was terminally ill with some nasty disease as they watched him eat alone.

  Andrew zoned back into reality, noticing the photo of Brittany on his screen.

  Maybe a small part of him, deep down inside, was unhappy being alone. Maybe he used the “independent spirit” line a little bit freely, sometimes as an excuse to make himself feel better.

  Brittany wasn’t the first girl that he’d had a bit of a crush on—there were girls before her. Nothing ever came of them though—Andrew never made any moves. He’d never asked a girl on a date. Sure, he was comfortable talking to girls—he was funny and outgoing, but he never actually took the plunge. Maybe it was because he valued his “independent spirit”, or just maybe it was because he feared the embarrassment of rejection.

  Andrew shut off his computer and brought himself to his feet. He grabbed his coat and laced up his boots. He was only driving himself insane stooping in his boredom.

  Making his way outside, Andrew began to wander the streets of Snowbrooke—something he had been doing a lot since he returned from his travels. Years of adventuring, exploring strange towns and cities, and immersing himself in different cultures left Andrew with a lingering wanderlust. He couldn’t sustain his focus or interest on any one activity for longer than a day, and he found himself getting bored incredibly easily. It didn’t help that he was stuck in Snowbrooke—the most boring town he could possibly fathom—which was saying something, as he’d been to many, many towns.

  In a way, he was facing a mid-life crisis. He couldn’t help but feel like his glory days were behind him—that the stories that he told over drinks in bars would be the same stories he would be telling in twenty—thirty—forty years.

  Sure, they captivated people now—but when he was a fifty-year-old man, telling the same stories he’d been telling for thirty years, would anyone care? Would anyone even listen?

  Unlikely.

  Andrew dug his hands into his pockets, hiding them from the cool breeze in the dark evening air.

  He turned into a little local café and stopped in line to buy a coffee. He stared up at the menu of different winter themed drinks. Then, he looked around the café at all of the ignorant people—drinking their coffees as they talked and laughed with one another.

  They were the same people he’d seen there day after day—people with “routines”—people who looked forward to their daily speciality coffee—people who loved things like “half-off movie night” and “casual Friday” at work. They seemed to get ridiculously excited over mundane activities—letting life slip by under their feet while they sat, lobotomized by society’s dreary little distractions.

  Their conversations were always the same—“Did you see the latest episode of that HBO program?”, “I can’t believe the weather we’ve been having!”, and “The music they’re putting out these days is just so foul!”

  The content of their conversations may have changed slightly, but the message was always the same: “our lives are boring and we’re too blind to realize it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  COURAGOUS INTENT

  Andrew tried watching one of those “exciting” HBO programs once. He couldn’t even finish a single episode.

  Andrew stared at the menu, not actually reading the options. He was completely zoned out, remembering his glory days abroad—his days adventuring the vast oceans.

  The image of Brittany kept popping into his head. He couldn’t shake the thought of how happy he would be with her. Andrew became depressed thinking about a life without her—a life without travelling—the life of boredom that he had to look forward to.

  “Are you ready to order, sir?” the barista asked Andrew, pulling him out of his tired daydream.

  “Um, yeah—Sorry,” he said as he stepped forward. He looked quickly through his options, and then ended up ordering a plain, black coffee.

  The barista handed him his drink. He turned around, and sat down at a small table by a window.

  It was as if whatever prime mover was
in the sky had a sense of humour—teasing Andrew with the most incredible life he could ever experience, and then tossing him back into reality. He could almost hear God’s voice, laughing at him every time he watched a late night infomercial, explaining “how much you will love your brand new hole puncher!” or “how to make your mornings exciting with soy coffee creamer!”.

  It was as if Andrew had gone his whole life eating cheap canned lobster and then one day someone gave him a taste of a two hundred dollar, fresh Newfoundland lobster. But before he could finish the lobster, they switched it back out with the old canned crap. The canned stuff was fine, until he’d gotten a taste for the real deal. Suddenly, that canned stuff tasted like bargain isle cat food.

  All Andrew wanted was that excitement—that sense of adventure he once had.

  And right then and there, both of Andrew’s conundrums seemed to merge together. Across the street, sitting at the window of the local library was Brittany, sipping a warm drink and reading her class assigned book. The moment Andrew’s eyes fell upon her, his heart skipped a beat—the same way it did that moment the blue whale emerged next to his boat during the storm off of the Fiji coast.

  He watched her sitting peacefully in the library—the first time he’d ever seen her in her element. She wasn’t adjusting her breasts in her push-up bra, or checking her makeup with the little mirror in her purse. She was simply relaxed, sitting and enjoying a warm drink and a book.

  Andrew could still hear his aunt’s voice in the back of his head. “Have you heard of this online dating thing?” her nasally voice reverberated through his brain.

  Maybe it was time to try something new—an adventure unlike any he’d ever experienced. Maybe it was time to take the plunge, and ask Brittany out on a date. The very idea sent his heart rate soaring. His mind raced as it cycled rapidly through all the possible outcomes.

  What if she said no? What if she laughed at him? What if she said yes because she felt bad for him? If she did say yes—how could Andrew possibly know that it wasn’t out of pity? What if she said yes and was excited about it? Then there would be the expectation of an amazing first date. What did people even do on first dates?

  His heart was somehow beating even faster than it had when he encountered that gigantic whale in The South Pacific Ocean. It was beating faster than when he left Puri, India to travel the world by himself.