Thin Ice

The lake wasn’t supposed to be frozen yet.

That’s the first thing. It was early fall, leaves still pretending to be green, air only barely biting. Nobody had posted a “safe to skate” notice, no red flags, no bored guy in a parka with a drill measuring thickness. Just me, my headphones, and a sheet of ice that looked like someone had laid a piece of glass over the water overnight.

I only walked down there to clear my head: breakup brain, work brain, all the usual noise. I wanted trees and ducks and maybe one dramatic sigh for personal use. Instead, I got this mirror.

From the shore, the ice looked thin enough to snap if you breathed wrong. But it didn’t creak. Didn’t cloud. Just sat there, flat and dark, reflecting clouds that weren’t even above us.

Yeah. That was the second thing.

Over the lake, the real sky was the usual mix of blue and gray, some streaky cirrus trying their best. In the ice, though, different clouds drifted. Big, bright summer billows. I recognized one immediately, with a weird punch to the gut.

It looked exactly like the one from the day at the amusement park. The day we got sunburned and shared one of those funnel cakes that tastes like regret and sugar. I think I could taste powdered sugar again as I gazed at the reflection.

I told myself I was being dramatic. I’m good at that. But when I took a step closer, the “reflection” shifted, and there we were down there—tiny, moving figures on a too-bright day. Me. Her. The stupid funnel cake.

“Okay, no,” I whispered. “Absolutely not.”

I should’ve left. Obviously. Instead, I toed the edge of the ice like a raccoon considering a bad idea. It felt cold, sure, but solid. My weight didn’t crack it. It didn’t even complain.

Someone behind me cleared their throat.

I jumped so hard I nearly tested the whole “thin ice” thing with my face. An old man stood a few feet away, hands in his coat pockets, looking at the lake like it had personally offended him.

“First time?” he asked.

“With… what, exactly?” I said.

He nodded at the ice. “She’s early this year.”

“‘She,’” I repeated, because when strangers' gender weather, you pay attention.

“The lake,” he said. “The ice. “Whatever name makes staying easier for you.”

“I wasn’t staying,” I said—lie first, truth hiding.

He smiled without teeth. “Nobody ever is.”

He walked right past me onto the ice.

No hesitation. No flailing. Just boots on glass, steady as a kitchen floor. The ice held. It didn’t even groan.

“I wouldn’t—” I started.

He waved a hand. “You’ll be fine if you stick to your own.”

“My own what?”

“Tracks,” he said.

There were no tracks. Just clear, black ice with those wrong clouds drifting underneath. But as I squinted, I started seeing… trails. Faint, glimmering paths across the surface, like something had skated there once and left a memory instead of a scratch.

They weren’t random, either. Some curved in big, looping arcs. Some zigzagged. One came right up to where I stood and stopped, like it was waiting.

“Whose… tracks are these?” I asked.

“Yours,” he said. “And mine. And everyone else who’s been stupid enough to walk their memories instead of just thinking about them.”

“That is not comforting.”

“Was not meant to be.”

I tested the closest path with one foot. Ice. Solid. No crack, no drop, no dramatic plunge. Just a slight give, like standing on a very stubborn trampoline.

So I stepped.

Cold pushes up—through boots, around ankles—both halves held.

Breath leaves as a white puff, even though the air isn’t truly cold.

Under my feet, the summer amusement park wavers—soft ripple, then sudden sharpness. I watched my younger self laugh with my mouth full of fried dough and watched her swipe sugar off the tip of my nose. I hadn’t thought about that part in years, only the fight on the drive home about nothing, the silence that came after.

From up here, though, the fight didn’t exist. Just the light. Just the stupid, soft moment.

I took another step. The scene changed.

Now it was a kitchen. My mother’s. Mine on paper now—the house, the deed, and the signatures all say so.

In my head, though, it’s still hers.

She stands at the sink—back toward me—humming, tuneless and soft. I knew this day. I knew what I would say in ten seconds. I’m moving out. I knew the way her shoulders would stiffen. The way she’d keep rinsing a plate even though it was already clean.

On the ice, she turned before I spoke. She looked straight up at me.

I stumbled. The surface wobbled, but didn’t break.

“Careful,” the old man called, from some path to my right. “She hears you if you watch too long.”

“She who?” I shot back, voice too high.

“The part that doesn’t let go,” he said.

Not helpful. But accurate.

I kept walking. Every step, a new scene. Some were nice. Some weren’t. The time I cheated on an exam—no one caught me; the grade did.

The time my dad missed my concert, I smiled, nodded, and pretended it was fine, while my chest didn’t.

The time I hung up on a friend who needed me—because my show was on, and I chose the noise over the person.

It turns out memory is less curated than you think when you don’t control the slideshow.

“Can I… change any of this?” I asked, after a while.

“Nope,” the old man said. He was just a dark shape on the far side now, pacing his own path. “Different ice for that.”

“What’s this one for, then?”

“Seeing what you’re actually standing on,” he said. “Before it cracks.”

The path under me narrowed. Other paths were crisscrossing near mine, glowing with other people’s lives. I could feel the pull to step off mine and onto one of theirs. Just for a second. Just to peek.

“If you step onto someone else’s,” the old man said, like he’d read my mind, “you fall through.”

“Through to where?”

He gave a shrug. “Depends whose?”

A memory surfaced that wasn’t mine. Her—my ex—sitting on a beach with someone else, laughing that same funnel-cake laugh. The ice under that scene shimmered, beautiful and inviting and absolutely not mine.

I stepped back onto my own track.

My chest hurt. My eyes stung. My boots felt too tight. But my path held.

“How do you get off?” I asked.

“You stop walking,” he said. “Or the season changes. Whichever comes first.”

Hilarious.

I do not know how long I stayed out there. Time’s weird on that lake. The light never really shifted, but my shadows did. Eventually, my path curved back toward shore, the way a child’s drawing finally comes full circle because they’re out of paper.

My last step was onto muddy ground. The ice behind me went dark. Just… water again. Nothing special. Ducks. Leaves. No miniature amusement parks. No kitchen ghosts.

The old man stepped off on his side, coat flapping. He looked lighter somehow. Less hunched.

“See?” he said. “Told you you’d be fine.”

“That’s debatable,” I said. My heart was still trying to do jazz.

He grinned. “You remember differently now. That’s enough.”

“Will it… be back?” I asked, nodding at the now-normal lake.

“When you’re walking wrong again,” he said. “Or when she feels like it. She’s not a bus schedule.”

He shuffled off toward the path, humming something that might have been a song or just triumph.

I stood there a long time, watching the water like it might glitch back into glass. It didn’t.

The next day, I called my mother. I messaged the friend I’d hung up on and apologized without a joke attached. I didn’t text my ex. That path wasn’t mine anymore.

Winter came properly, eventually. The town posted official “safe to skate” signs. Kids in puffy jackets zipped around on normal, human ice. I stayed away.

However, occasionally I see my reflection in the surface when I pass by at dusk. Just for a second. Just enough to see that the glass underneath me now is thinner in a different way.

Less to hide. More to stand on.