At first, the snow came down as lonely flakes and then as cluster seen by Madison Brooks only amidst the background of the trees lining the Machu’s house across the street.
I wonder if it’ll stick.
I doubt it.
She looked for a moment out onto the road that ran beside her house. The black concrete had acquired a gray look, matching the sky in a day of drabness.
Brooks had turned off the lights of in the kitchen and was wearing an ash sweatshirt, paired with sweatpants. Her socks were a smooth, light pink, a single soldier of color amidst the surroundings.
Is it always cold when it snows?
Of course it is.
Stupid Madison.
Everyone knows that.
Brooks finished gazing at the snow and moved into the dining room where she had left a puzzle that she had started yesterday. Its outer edges and inner core assembled in parallel chunks, the puzzle had the look of the fence that Brooks’ dad, Jimmy, had worked on two summers before.
He had visited Home Depot four times and even spent a July morning accosting an online workshop titled “How to Build the Best Fence of Your Life”. But, after that laborious morning, Mr. Brooks realized he didn’t know first thing about building a fence. He was an accountant after all. Let the engineers build, he decided.
Brooks didn’t think of herself as like her dad one bit. She was determined to finish the puzzle within the next hour, even though it had nine-hundred-and-forty three pieces. Besides, the puzzle already hinted at the worthy possibility of a sunset above a beach on the shores of Morocco.
What do they call it when it snows a little bit?
A flurry?
No.
A coating?
No.
No.
No.
A dusting!
F***.
Get your s*** together, Madison.
At once Brooks felt very tired. Not exhausted, but very tired. The sort of tired a person absorbs in the middle of the day after their coffee and cell phone batteries had been drained. Brooks felt tired very often. Her doctors said it was just part of the condition.
Brooks also felt extremely bored. Very bored and very tired. She couldn’t read for very long before the headaches surfaced. Ditto with spending time on the computer, running, listening to loud music and staring at the forgotten Christmas lights of the Thomas’s four doors down.
Sometimes the headaches rolled in like the Russians tanks on the news, unprovoked and unsanctioned. Wasn’t there a drug that could treat headaches?
If America can put a man on the moon, then surely they can cure just one, persistent headache. As her favorite doctor, Dr. Phu, liked to say, there was not nothing and not something. Research is preliminary. Whatever that means.
Does it really snow in North Carolina in March?
Well I guess it does.
It snowed, like, two years ago. No three years ago. When Ms. Maranet gave us three extra chapters of Frankenstein to read.
I hate Frankenstein.
Maybe I can burn Frankenstein to keep warm.
Ha.
But I am really cold. Really cold.
After she first got a concussion in October—on October the 14th of all days, her half-birthday!—Brooks had been forced to abandon the Scrabble games she had played on her computer for more solitary pursuits. Although sometimes she still played Scrabble with her parents, or her younger brother, Thomas, on the bisected board, for the most part she had settled on puzzles as a way of passing the minutes of unused time frequently donated for free throughout the day.
After Thanksgiving, she had arrived at the idea that she should—No! She must!—complete the multitude of puzzles representing the places she wanted to visit in the world. Then, when she was able to travel as an adult, without the doppelganger of a concussion, they would be as familiar to her as her own socks.
At first, she had reserved her own imagination to just the United States. Mount Rushmore. Niagra Falls. The Alamo. But then her mother had purchased a one-thousand two-hundred and fifty-two piece masterpiece of Tokyo at night. How could she resist?
Brooks was still going to school. Homebound school, if such an experience can be called a school. There weren’t any lockers, or freshman at Brooks’s school or plastic chairs. It was, exactly as it sounded, a very lonely experience. A teacher Brooks didn’t know dropped off work every week. Thus it was Brooks, her English and Government textbook and that was all.
What day is it?
Tuesday.
You’re a retard, Madison.
No what day is it really?
Wednesday?
No. Just stop.
Wait.
I’ve got it.
Decision Day.
At the date of her latest and third concussion (Was it an “incident”? A life-changing event? She wasn’t sure), Brooks had mostly completed her college application to Davidson College. It was Zoe Brooks, her mother, who had typed the last paragraph of the personal statement. Alongside her, Madison dictated from under a pair of get-well Teddy Bears she had named Thomas and Jerry.
Now the day she had envisioned for years had arrived in a sorry state. She wasn’t even sure what had attracted her to Davidson in the first place. It definitely wasn’t the basketball team. She hated basketball; although she briefly had dated Mike Sencer in eighth grade and he had great jump shot. Regardless of the initiating thought or dream or mirage that had led her to apply to Davidson, Brooks wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the college if she got in. All she remembered from the tour was that the campus didn’t have a beach, just a few shallow ponds that parabolically slinked behind the Jamestown Center.
By six I’ll have an answer.
Wow.
Brooks wasn’t making much progress on her puzzle, so she walked back into the kitchen and stared at the refrigerator for a moment. It was really white. Even whiter than the snow outside.
Damn it.
This headache.
Makes me want to chop my head off
Wait.
Why would anyone ever want to cut their head off?
Maybe they were really cold
And you lose all your heat through your head
Ha.
That’s a good one.
With her mind popping,she stayed away from checking her Facebook and text messages.
Two days ago, she had asked Jenny if she wanted to walk up to the frozen yogurt place at the Henderson shopping center. But Jenny must have been busy in school or softball because she hadn’t replied. And now it was snowing. Hardly the right time to eat froyo.
Besides, Brooks had decided that Jenny was just about the most boring, mediocre thing in the all of Henderson.
I bet she swings the bat with her hands on the barrel.
She’s probably scared of the ball.
Silly Jenny.
Scared of a softball?
Probably.
Brooks was looking at the snow again, accumulating on a dirt-pasted pair of swing sets in her backyard.
They used to be yellow, right?
How long ago?
Why hasn’t Jim torn them down my now?
Note to self: Ask for the swing set to be torn down
It’s downright depressing.
All the snow. The puzzle she couldn’t solve. Jenny. College. The snow. College. Her head.
Why not take a nap, she decided.
Hanging up her sweatshirt on the hooks in the dining room, she closed the shades in her room, although one was broken and let in a beam of light near her computer. She could almost forget that it was March and that she hadn’t been able to walk her customary two miles a day; a goal that she had set for herself as a belated New Year’s resolution.
Stay positive, girl.
Snow or not.
I’ll cover 4 miles tomorrow.
Alright?
Alright.
S
cott Andrews was proud of himself. A ninety-eight on a chemistry test. All calculus and The Road work done. Before three-thirty in the early afternoon.
That’s good work. Good, good work.
Henderson High School had postponed Andrew’s soccer scrimmage, along with every other after-school activity, at the first outbreak of wintery weather, freeing up the remainder of Andrew’s evening.
Can’t you play soccer in the snow?
Of course you can.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, contract lawyers at different firms in Charlotte, were at the office until nine, perhaps even nine-thirty. The day suddenly looked very empty and very forgiving to Andrews.
Andrews’s thoughts shifted to the possible, even probable, whereabouts of his uncle, Chris Andrews.
I’d guess he’s out at lunch with David Berby. Maybe right now, he’s opening one of his folders marked “Top Priority” on his iPad and swiping out the proposed investment agreement.
It frustrated Andrews that he often had to explain to his friends who exactly Berby was.
“Have you ever heard of Zoom?” he’d ask.
“Is that the new app that tracks your muscle flexibility?” they would say.
“No. No. It’s the car-sharing app, so you can rent out your car and get rides when you need to,” he’d reply. “And it’s worth Fifteen Billion Dollars. Billion. Not Million.”
They would shrug and say that’s pretty cool for something they’ve never even heard of.
But Chris Andrews had heard of it. And now he was offering to make Cornerstone Capital a minority shareholder of Zoom and a front-seat partner in Berby’s ride to becoming the youngest billionaire in the world.
No wonder Scott couldn’t focus on his last two pages in his history textbook. His uncle was about to make the biggest business deal of the year and no one except Scott even knew about it yet. Scott jotted down a message on a Post-It note: CHECK THE WSJ IN THE MORNING! (He wrote on not just any Post-It note, but a Silicon Sticky Note. The kind that synched with Scott’s computer. Chris sent it as a gift last year for Scott’s birthday after he had forgotten to wish him a Happy Birthday.)
And what was it? Five years until Chris has promised me a starting job at Cornerstone. Right out of college.
For the first time that Tuesday, Scott silently thanked the Lord and the Universe that had calmed the tumultuous waves of fate to give him this pending good fortune.
But you have to stay focused.

Chris had said. Two weeks ago.
“The hardest workers are the highest winners.”
Then let’s get this work done.
This little, mind-filling pep talk still didn’t make Scott any more interested in the history of the Cold War. But he opened up the textbook anyway, searched up a few tracks of The Killers and read quickly, searching for words Mrs. Bennett would feature on the quiz.
Ten minutes after he started, he was finished and he slammed the book shut and satisfied with himself again, flipped the TV remote in his hands twice before activating the screen and pressing three-eighty eight to check the score of the Manchester United game.
Watching the thousands of scarf-clad fans of the Red Devils made Scott imagine himself as a claustrophobic, struggling for air. He’d expected school to be boring and bearable, but to arrive home and only have the distant masses as company. It was disappointing alright. Where was a soccer game when you needed it?
At least the snow might cancel school if the temperatures dropped and slicks of rain and snow develop into dangerous ice.
Outside his house, a post office truck lurched by. An inkling of carbon emissions polluted the air. Scott was nagged as he saw the mailman (well actually, it was women) stuff a dozen thin envelopes into the Andrew’s mailbox, which had just been replaced two months ago after the previous wooden post had been chipped by a fox.
Today is March 21st.
Isn’t that when Davidson notifies regular applicants?
And didn’t Madison Brooks apply to Davidson as her first choice?
Yes. And Yes.
Oh yes.
He gazed back out at the television screen. United was crossing a ball into the box. It was definitely soaring past Rooney’s head.
You miss ever shot you don’t take in life and then at the end you’ve got nothing more than the shots you did take.
Scott turned off the United game; he realized that he could always watch the replay in the evening with the British sportscasters who were much more knowledgeable than the American on ESPN. Copping a Gatorade from the mini-fridge in his room, Scott laced up the nearest pair of basketball high-top sneakers that he had left lying around.
What is Nike’s slogan?
Just Do It.
Damn that’s good.
T
here was Madison and a turkey when they met for the first time.
It wasn’t a real turkey and Scott wasn’t so sure that he had ever even glimpsed a real turkey except as part of the main course of a meal.
But it was two days before Thanksgiving and he was sitting in Ms. Marelli’s Algebra II class, completing a coloring sheet full of quadratic equations.
Madison walked into the room with her friend, Jenny, of many freckles. Or maybe Madison was already sitting beside the crooked desks and Jenny was playing on her phone; her backpack shielding her chest and her braces matching the backpack.
What did he say?
“Hey, have you gotten Number Four?”
Her cheeks appeared to be absolutely, irreducibly smooth.
“I haven’t even started, sorry”
“Goddammit”
That first time, when he talked to Madison, was long enough ago that it had warped into a memory without a postage stamp and had been cast adrift into mailrooms of his mind. It was a memory always delivered; perhaps one only a few days late around Christmas. But who was really counting?
Here was the funny thing: Scott lived very close to Madison. Up of Revolutionary Court and across Lake Ashburn Drive, her house was the fifth on the right. The Brookss had moved into Henderson right before the 10th grade and to think he hadn’t even known about it for a whole three months until he had tried to solve that turkey!
During his sophomore year, when he was still playing basketball for Henderson, Scott would work prodigiously on his jump-shot in the driveway. He’d pump fake, lean in and bank it off the glass.
And 1!
Madison’s walks would also sometimes intervene. She’d be listening to her iPod and he’d shout and she would take out one of those cheap ear buds and he’d kick out the ball to her like it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals and she was Ray Allen.
God was she a terrible shooter. But it’s didn’t matter much to him. Mostly he enjoyed watching her hop—not jump—as she released the ball. Just so cute like a little bunny.
Why can’t I screw her like a little bunny?
That question nagged him as he closed his front door and snapped his right shoe into the snow. It wasn’t even deep enough to carve out a true footprint.
I can and I will.
Patience.
Scott really had Jenny to thank for the plan because it was she who had posted on Madison’s Facebook wall with a smiley face and a message on Madison’s birthday: “2 weeks and Davidson will give you the best gift!!!”
He’d figured out that the mailman would drop off the mail around four and that her parents would certainly be out at the office. He’d be out for a little, light jog and just happen to swing right by Madison’s mailbox, snatch the letter and accelerate into a sprint until he was safe in his own kitchen.
Then, around three hours later, he’d venture back to Madison’s house, and knock on the baby blue that reminded him of the Tar Heels, and she would answer, dressed in pajamas like she was about to head off to bed.
“Scott?” she’d say.
“Hey Madison, I think I may have gotten something of yours.”
Pause.
He’d reach out of his sweatshirt pocket and extend his hand towards her. She’d grasp her letter with fingers painted blue to compliment the house and her eyes.
“I just opened my mailbox and I was so surprised to see this letter. They must have mixed up when I got in early with the regular admissions deadline.”
She’d slice open the letter now and let the envelope drop to the carpet.
And then she would start hopping. Hopping with joy, ecstasy, relief and victory. She’d hug him. And then her parents would come running.
“What is it?”
“I GOT INTO COLLEGE”
And they would start hopping too, he thought.
From that point on, he would always be inexorably linked in Madison’s mind when she was accepted to her dream college. Maybe she would re-enroll at Henderson and he’d pass her in the hallways and maybe by the end of the year, just maybe, he’d screw her and they’d move on happily into Davidson in the fall.
The imaginary Chris-voice in his head had asked him once why he didn’t just knock on Madison’s door for the hell of it, instead of part of a crazy scheme.
If I had a concussion, I’d want everything right back to normal and so I wouldn’t want a random neighbor knocking on my door because that is definitely bizarre and not normal.
Scott set out on a methodical pace, mirroring his short strides to Rooney’s back on the television.
Don’t they call it the tele in England?
He looked into the Thomas’s house as he passed the reindeer on the front lawn. The timer hadn’t activated the lights in the early afternoon so the poor machine resembled an assembly of bones stripped of its bare fresh.
Who were the Thomas’s again?
Turning a corner beyond the Thomas’s house, Scott glanced over a SUV to the Brooks driveway. Both cars were gone and tiny slicks of oil, which had statured the driveway, were partially concealed by the snow.
Here we go.
Just Do It.
No sign of Madison in the windows. He briefly considered the possibility that she could be walking around the neighborhood and watching him at this moment. He examined his peripheral vision. Nope. Nothing.
He stopped jogging and snatched open the mailbox.
American Express. Visa. The City of Henderson. Homefix. The Marshall’s and The Henissee’s. That stupid Moo’s Mowers company that always knocks on people’s door.
But no letter from Davidson.
He rushed through the envelopes and fliers again before he reached an inevitable conclusion.
The snow must have postponed the admissions decision!
It reminded him of when his Coach Sellow had posted the freshman soccer team’s roster on Facebook and it turned out that the names listed were the ones cut from the team.
Ha.
He chuckled again to himself.
He realized he had a mantis Mowers card clutched in his hand.
He let it fall to the pavement.
So things don’t always go as you plan them.
But here is what matters: You’re moving forward every day.
Pausing for a moment, Scott wondered if Chris ever saw the offices of Facebook and Google and brushed back his hair and let the thought of making a billion go.
While he opened his garage, Scott thought back to when he tore aside his very own Davidson envelope in December. It was crimson and white and small enough to fit into the pocket.
I almost forgot about it in the mailbox.
He pulled off his shoes without untying them.
I’m going to get you girl.
Scraping the welcome mat, Scott closed the door and lumbered into the house.
T
here is no light in space, she thought.
Wait.
That can’t possibly be true.
How would astronauts find their way back to the modules and the capsules of the space station?
They would be lost and they would tumble through space until they ran out of oxygen.
Cerebral Hypoxia.
A term she had learned at the hospital, when she had a cute nurse tell her what the worst condition was that he had seen in October.
Madison preferred to sleep on her side so, when she woke up, a few minutes before six, she would gaze at the Chelsea pennant her mother had bought her when she traveled to London.
Instead she saw darkness; a sort of darkness that resulted from light pollution in the city on the Fourth of July.
She wasn’t blind and she knew that she wasn’t going to become blind tomorrow, or the next day. But surely it was concerning that she woke up blind.
The lights returned to her eyes, the white first and then the yellow and green outlines of her drawers and closet. Finally, the blindness had retreated in totality and she nudged out of bed.
The snow had slowed. Perhaps it too had comprehended the necessity of an afternoon nap.
F***.
The headache is back.
After the concussion, Brooks couldn’t comprehend why she didn’t hate soccer with a dark passion, as a cancer patient might despise a chemical company which dumped sewage in a nearby, formerly healthy, lake.
Was it the running? Was it the strikes from thirty yards out that ricocheted off the post and into the goal? Or eleven girls on the field that consorted the formation into a shape that resembled the colonial cutouts by Benjamin Franklin (Join! or Die!) that she had read about in history?
Regardless, she was determined to play intramural soccer at Davidson and return to the cuts and formations and crosses that she had left behind since last fall.
It’s time to find out, she muttered.
Dr. Phu had told her not to spend more than ten or fifteen minutes on the computer at a time and in the past, true to his word, she had been afflicted by headaches after just a few games of GeoGuesser.
But this is important.
This is life-changing
This is college.
Ignoring Dr. Phu, she propped open her Dell laptop and stood, gazing at the screen, at once black and then blue to login.
She clicked into her Google account and then logged in.
She hesitated for a moment. Was she ready to click the letter icon of the Gmail? Was she ready to be disappointed?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
She just stared, seeing blotches and spots of pixels in the computer screen.
Is this what it feels like to win the lottery?
I don’t think so.
The headache was only getting worse and she had one more corner of the Internet to visit: Facebook.
She skipped pass the Buzzfeed quizzes and the spring break photos on the streets of Barcelona to the self-congratulatory post, which, she was sure, would garner at least two hundred likes.
I deserve this.
She hit the post button and leaned back on her chair as her news feed updated.
F***.
This headache.
But there was Patrick Feener, her cousin who had given her a short, simple sweater last year for her birthday.
And there was Monica Levin, who she knew from church and who liked to fear flowery dresses and was just so, so damn gorgeous all the time.
And there was Sarah Fields. Since they were five years old. And they had worked on a science fair project together and grew plants. Where did she live now?
And Scott Andrews. That guy who always stared at her when she was clearing her thoughts on an unseasonably warm December day.
Jimmy Feldstein. Patrick Theil. Waseem Hassani. Sammie James. Graham Pyle. Madison King and Katelyn Casey. All and more liking her post.
She imagined them, sitting at their computers, like her, and drinking their Starbucks, remembering her as a million persons. As a fourth-grader, looking like Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. As a freshman who won the lottery to meet the Panthers player. As a b****.
F***.
The pain reminded her of the tetanus shot she received in sixth grade, when the dead virus flowed through her blood stream like an electrical current and caused her to shutter onto the floor of the doctor’s office.
Why do talk to yourself?
Talk to some real people.
Madison.
When she closed her eyes, the pain slowed and ebbed. What was she seeing? The pastels of orange and yellow, of forgotten desert sun rises from Arizona when she was eight.
That sunset puzzle.
Where was Morroco even?
In the dessert?
And so she swiveled her feet and pondered for a second what it must be like for those people, marooned on the beaches of Morroco right now, staring up at a sky with the faint wisp on the cloud passing goodbye.
I’ll finish it tomorrow.