I never learned how to ski or snowboard.  My snowmen and angels have always been mediocre.  Despite how Elsa from Frozen feels, the cold does bother me.  When I was younger I use to go sledding with my younger brother, but I could never stay outside for long.  I’ve always hate the way the snow feels against my sensitive skin, and my nose gets so red people mistake me for Rudolph.  My snow pants never fit me quite right, and my winter coats were always 2 sizes too small.  During the winter of my junior year in High School I was going through a pretty drastic change.  Everyone, mostly my parents, were pressuring me to look at colleges and take SATS.  My ideas about who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to do with my mediocre life was changing.  I found my mind constantly racing, and with all the snow we got that winter, I also found myself cooped up in my room contemplating everything and anything. 

My best friend at the time was also going through an early life crisis, and we were having very different thoughts about our futures outside of our hometown.  Contrary to my feelings about winter, Grace loved the season of white roads and red noses.   She was from a family of avid skiers.  Her New Hampshire home served as a place of retreat, and her winter happy family would go up there every time new snow fell.  That being said, and me not being a skier, we saw each other a lot less in the winter.  Despite my complete hatred fort the snow and cold, I wanted to try skiing, for Grace.  That’s what best friends do, right?  I figured that if I learned how to ski we cold spend more time together.  Especially since out relationship, along with our thoughts and ideas, was drastically changing.  The texting fight that we had the previous spring, that almost ended our friendship, was still on our minds.  Nothing would change the fact that we actually had a pretty significant fight.  Although, I don’t really care to consider it a “real” fight because no words were actually said face to face.  Aside from that, we were trying to rebuild something that we hoped we would never lose.  So when I saw signs around the school for a ski club that met every Tuesday for 6 weeks, I thought “what a great thing for us to do to reconnect!” 

Junior year Grace and I didn’t have any classes together, and seldom said hi in passing.  This did not help what we were trying to salvage of our not-so-best-friendship.  We still commutated through text message, and that’s how we decided to join ski club.  My severe lack of ski skills and Grace’s need to fly down the mountain at 100 miles per hour made it difficult to enjoy each other’s company.  I felt bad, like I was holding her back.  I in no way wanted her to be my teacher.  Our friend Charlie did the club also.  He snowboarded and could do jumps and tricks.  I basically looked like dumbo next to him.  Unlike dumbo I would not have a marvelous turnaround and I would forever be less of a skier than Grace. 

Now, Grace’s mom and me never saw eye to eye.  Your best friends mom is suppose to be like your second mom, right?  Well to put it in plane terms, I felt about Grace’s mom that same way I felt about winter.  Her views on life were completely different than mine, and she didn’t seam to care that I was her daughters’ best friend, because she felt the need to constantly challenge me.  She was well aware of our failing friendship, and honestly didn’t seam to care.

I have had many friends through my 18 years of mediocre snowman making, but Grace and me were better friends than anyone.  She was the sister I never had, and we spent every moment we could together.  She lived a few streets down from me and there was a path through some woods that connected our humble homes.  People thought we were actually sisters, and boy did it feel like it.  Until the snow fell my junior year, that’s when she really started to feel more like a distant cousin that I was forced to be nice to.  Ski club started and even 3 weeks into it I just couldn’t get the hang of it.  Besides the fact that me and Grace barley talked in school, I found that ski club was not for me.  As much as I wanted to like it, the snow still bothered my skin and my nose still got redder than I would have liked it.  Also I kept falling down, and almost peed myself like 4 times.  Soon enough Grace and me went from talking everyday to 3 times a week.  Then, slowly but surely, it got down to one day a week.  That day was Tuesday, ski club day.  Imagine this, not talking or seeing someone you use to be dangerously close with for a whole week. The one-day you do talk you only pretend to enjoy your time together.  That was the thing, it seamed that we almost resented each other.  We no longer made eye contact in the hallway, and we never texted.  When Tuesday would come around I would drag my equipment to school and sit in my classes all day dreading seeing Grace later.  Ski club became a chore, that my mom paid almost 300 hundred dollars for.  The fake smiles were bigger than the snow piles in my driveway.  And the tone of voice went from “I still want to be friends with you,” to, “I can’t wait to get away from you.”  My heart became as cold as the -10 degree wind, and I was constantly worried that I would see my not-so-best-friend out side of my chore. 
    
The not talking to each other thing kept up, and after the 6 long weeks of ski club it became almost natural.  It was the weirdest thing ever.  It was like having a pet hermit crab but then when it came out of its shell it was actually snail.  Something like that.  The brutal winter continued, and so did the unbearable silence.  It was hard to explain to my mom why I never hung out with Grace anymore.  It went something like this-
    

“Honey, why haven’t you hung out with Grace recently?”
     “We don’t really talk anymore mom.”
     “Oh, dear, why is that?
     “It’s complicated, we are growing apart I guess.”
     “Well why? What happened?’

She would continue with why this and why that.  She slipped in some “you should text her,” and, “maybe I will call her mom and talk to her.”  She didn’t understand, but moms never seam to, right?

The winter finally came to an end, and it’s seamed as if our friendship did too.  I would still see Grace at school, we had become very good at the “lets ignore each other” game.  There was still snow on the ground, and I still couldn’t ski.  Grace and I had been friends for 6 years, and not once had she invited me to her New Hampshire house.