Chapter Three
The Accident
Rhea sat down at her dressing table with a heavy sigh. Her mother had asked her repeatedly to write down everything that had happened to her that day, but until now she hadn’t been brave enough. She picked up her pencil.
My name is Rhea Donner and I am 6¾ years old. Last November it was really snowing and every time it snows my mum and dad take me sledging in the woods. There’s a really big hill everyone goes to and we had spent a few hours there having fun together. When we all started to get cold we decided to go home to have a hot chocolate. On the way home I was walking behind mum and dad when I noticed something bright, ice blue shining through the trees. Without thinking, I walked towards it and saw a beautiful blue snowflake hanging in the air in the middle of the clearing. It was beautiful, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. I had to touch it. I took off my glove without taking my eyes off of the snowflake. I touched it. The last thing I remember was feeling a freezing cold sensation rushing through my body and then everything went black.
I woke up in my bed a few hours later. Mum and Dad said they had searched for me for ages before they found me unconscious in the clearing. They said they saw no blue snowflake. All that night I shivered as if I had a fever but my skin was freezing cold to the touch. The next day my parents took me to the doctors but they could find nothing wrong with me. After a few days at home we all decided I should go back to school and try to get on with my life.
I love school and I always try really hard to do my best but after what happened in the woods I found it very hard to write as my hands are always very stiff with the cold. On the day the accident happened we were writing out our favourite poems in our best handwriting. I was struggling and had thrown away two pieces of paper already as I couldn’t get my handwriting right. On my third attempt I was almost finished when, as someone walked past our table, they accidentally knocked my arm and I watched as the pen drew a long, dark line right through my poem. I didn’t look up. I didn’t move. I just stared at the ruined piece of work and, instead of “feeling my blood boiling”, I felt my blood freezing. It took me a few minutes to realise that the classroom had gone silent. When I finally looked up I saw that my whole entire classroom was covered in a thin sheen of hard, blue ice; the same blue as the snowflake. All the children and the teachers were staring at me. My chair and the area just around me were the only place not covered in the ice. The children were ushered out of the classroom but the frightened looking teachers and I was taken to Miss Brindley’s office and my parents were called.
That was the last time I saw my friends.
Rhea put down her pen and looked at the clock. It was now 7pm. She was exhausted; her eyes stung and her fingers hurt. It was snowing in the room again. She laid her head on the table and before long had drifted into a cold, lonely sleep.
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