"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Things with the Same Name" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

was right, but we don't ever air our dirty linen in public in my family, so I asked her questions
instead.
Maybe the woman was like my sister Sarah, looked at me and saw Boy, Man, whatever, and
thought of some Boy or Man she hated. All I did was ask her if she was married, and what
kind of man her husband was. What did he do? Did she like her in-laws? Did they have
kids?

Guess she didn't want to talk about it.

She asked me a question too. What was my name?
"Charlie," I said.

She stopped the car and told me to get out.

"But тАФ " I looked at all the snow bucketing down out of the sky. I couldn't remember the last
house or driveway we had passed. All I could see was a smothering of snow and the dim
dark shapes of trees beside the road.
"Get out. Just get out," she said, and she didn't sound anything like Doris Day. Her voice
was low and angry, the way Mom's had been right before I left the house. "Get out of my
car."

I got out of the car, and she drove off, snow spinning out from under her rear tires, car
slipping on the road, straightening, zooming off, following its headlights and leaving pale
snowy darkness behind.

I knew there was nothing the direction we had been coming from тАФ I'd been in her car a
couple hours' worth of slip-and-slide snowblanket nothing already тАФ so I walked on the way
we had been heading, and found a lot more nothing. Okay, there was snow, trees, and
snowy road. That was it.

I trudged until the snow sneaked into my shirt and soaked my socks and froze again, till
snow mixed with my hair and froze into a hat. I trudged until I couldn't feel my fingers or my
toes, and my face felt frozen hard.
I walked a lot, but I couldn't tell how far because everything looked the same. I walked until I
was too tired and cold to do anything but sit down. Then I sat. Then I couldn't get up again.
Kept thinking I should stand, but couldn't get up the gumption.
Finally I lay down on the snow beside the road. By that point I couldn't feel much of anything.
It was like going to sleep, only colder.

When I woke up, the snow had made a blanket over me, covering my face, even. I sat up.
Suddenly I was looking at that snowy sky above, but there was no feel or sound of snow
moving off me. I looked down and saw that everything of me from the waist down was still
under the snow.

I leaned to the side. Didn't disturb the snow at all.
This puzzled me for a minute. Then I went into complete and total panic, jumpy as a cat on a
griddle.
I leapt to my feet.

I was standing on top of fresh snow without making a dent.