Alana McMullen

Braving the cold

For a long time, Abby thought summer was the best season. Abby used to play really, really hard. She’d play so hard that the soles of her feet turned black and pitted with asphalt, toenails brown with dirt, legs yellow and bruised and green with grass-stains. There was a time every summer when the neighbourhood kids would be drunk on lemonade, living as dirty forest children, playing catch-and-release with whatever small animals or housecats let them get close enough to hold them. Their mouths would be red and wet with berries that they hoped weren’t poisonous. Abby would play when the dew was still on the grass in the morning until it returned at night. She would play until the darkness descended and the trees around her would give up their sunny mossy secrets for a darker, scarier presence, wilder than even her.