Fifteen degrees below zero. That is the temperature where human skin freezes in minutes.
I did not feel the cold yet—just the copper taste of blood in my mouth as my father, Marcus, dragged me to the back door. He threw me onto the patio ice like a bag of garbage.
“Get out, thief!” he screamed, his voice cracking the arctic silence. “You are dead to me!”
The heavy oak door slammed shut. The deadbolt clicked.
I looked up at the living room window. My brother Cameron was standing there, holding a warm mug of cocoa. He smiled at me. He knew I did not steal the vintage Rolex.
But as the wind cut through my thin shirt, I realized this was not just a punishment. In Anchorage, Alaska, without a coat, this was an execution.
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Banging on the door was not an option. Screaming for my mother—who was working a double shift at the hospital—was a waste of precious oxygen.
I knew the physics of my situation immediately. The house was locked. My coat was inside. The temperature was -15. If I stayed on the patio hoping for mercy, hypothermia would set in within twenty minutes.
I had to move.
My best friend Kayla lived two miles away. In the summer, that is a twenty-minute jog. Tonight, it was a marathon through the seventh circle of hell.
I started walking. Running was dangerous. Running makes you sweat, and sweat freezes.
I kept my arms wrapped tight around my chest to hold my broken ribs together. Every breath was a shard of glass in my lungs. The wind cut through my thin cotton shirt like it wasn’t even there.
I focused on the streetlights. Just make it to the next pole, then the next.
I dissociated from my body. I became a machine.
Left foot. Right foot.
Do not stop.
Stopping is dying.
I do not remember arriving at Kayla’s house. I remember the porch light—a blurry halo in the dark. I remember falling against the doorframe because my hands were too numb to make a fist to knock.
Then warmth. Noise. Kayla’s dad lifting me off the floor.
Then blackness.
I woke up the next morning on a strange sofa. The air smelled like antiseptic and coffee. My mother, Cynthia, was sitting in a chair across from me. She was still in her scrubs from the ER. She looked exhausted, gray-faced, like she had aged ten years in a single night.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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