Unknown. Marble Statue Group of the Three Graces. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Coldest Day

By Stacey Gordon

Just before lunch, the PA crackles to life. The other students in Tessa’s World History class stop their discussions and freeze. The principal clears her throat through the speaker. 

“Attention students. Due to today’s extreme temperatures, which are expected to continue dropping, the entire district will cancel classes for the rest of today. All students should proceed in an orderly…”

Kids slam their books closed, roar and hoot, toss papers into the air. They gather their bags to escape before the principal changes her mind. 

“Class, please,” Ms. Stuart hollers. “You’re being positively bacchanalian.” 

Tessa smiles appreciatively at her favorite teacher’s use of the vocab word and joins the exodus into the packed hallway. She wades through the crowd until she finds Dorian, tall and soft-bodied, rumpled in a Pearl Jam t-shirt and an oversized flannel. He’s flattened against his locker with a trumpet case tucked between his high-top Chuck Taylors. Dorian grins at her and rubs the back of his head, which he always does, she’s noticed, when he’s self-conscious. 

“Dope,” he says. 

“Totally dope.” She stands next to him. The combination lock of the neighboring locker juts into her back. She feels the warmth of his body and detects a waft of patchouli. “So what are you doing now?”

“I guess I’m going home. Too cold to do anything else.” He glances at her. “What about you?”

She started rehearsing the question as soon as she heard the PA scratch into action. “My mom’s at work, and I live too far to walk home. Maybe I could come to your house for the afternoon?”

Dorian’s reactions catwalk across his face: a tumble of surprise, mincing uncertainty, then a bold sashay of epiphany as his brain catches up. She breathes again, the worry of rejection behind her. 

“Yeah, that’s cool.” 

They fold into the stream of high schoolers flowing toward the exit. Mr. Handler, the math teacher, directs traffic at the door. “If you’re walking home, please do not stop anywhere along the way,” he drones with a drill-sergeant timbre. 

Across the crowd Tessa spots her friend Marie, who drops her jaw and bugs her eyes when she sees who Tessa’s walking with. She laughs and flashes Marie a covert peace sign. 

As they squeeze out the door, Evan Trout appears from nowhere and falls into formation on the other side of Dorian. The three of them descend the front steps shoulder to shoulder. 

The whole school knows Evan and Dorian have been best friends since kindergarten. Even now that they’re fifteen and categorically different—Evan sharp-edged and abrasive compared to Dorian’s soft-spoken goofiness—they remain inseparable. Tessa, who knows only girl cliques with their compartments and labels and impenetrable boundaries, will never understand this.  

They spill out onto the sidewalk and turn in the direction of Dorian’s house. The midday sky is a papery white. It’s so cold outside it feels airless. Tessa’s chest aches as if her lungs have deflated. She pulls her scarf over her mouth and exhales to make her breath warm and wet against the wool.  

Her hastily devised plan included slipping her gloved hand into Dorian’s and pressing against him on the walk home. It’s so cold, she would murmur into him. The precedent for this has already been established. A month ago she squeezed into a bus seat with him on the ride home from the band competition, and he grasped her hand in the dark. Since then she’s waited for him to ask her out formally, but he only smiles shyly at her across rooms. The burden is on Tessa to make the next move.

“Bro, did you see Wolf’s new board?” Evan says to Dorian. “He did a fucking epic switch crook with it at the park this morning, it was insane, dude.” And they’re off, slipping into the effortless banter they’ve been perfecting for a decade. A grooved path they’ve carved for themselves that only the two of them can travel on. 

They walk two more blocks, the boys chattering the whole time, before it dawns on Tessa that Evan is coming with them to Dorian’s house. Her stomach flip-flops. Evan Trout talks in obscure cultural references, quotes movies and songs she doesn’t know, and shuts down conversations with acerbic counterarguments. Tessa can’t compete with him. 

She fights the instinct to clam up and draw inward for safety and elbows her way into the conversation. “I can’t believe they let us out of school because of the cold!”

Evan leans forward and stares at her. 

“This is Michigan,” she continues. “We barely even cancel school when it snows.”

“Are you delusional?” Evan retorts. “Do you know how cold it’s supposed to be today?”

“Twelve below zero.” She heard it on the radio in her mom’s car this morning. 

“Have you ever heard of hypothermia? Your whole body shuts down from the cold. Your major organs go into hibernation. You go to sleep and never wake up.”

“I know what hypothermia is.”

“Some shitty little first-grader goes wandering off after school and winds up dead on the playground? That’s the nightmare scenario. The school district isn’t going to risk a lawsuit. They gotta cover that ass.” 

Evan likes to remind people that his father is a lawyer—the county district attorney, in fact. In classes she shares with him, he brings up legal arguments frequently in discussions and out-argues anyone willing to debate him. 

“Whatever, I’ll take it,” Dorian says. “I was gonna fail the Bio quiz today, so I’m pumped.” He grins sheepishly at Tessa. She smiles back at him with intensity, radiating meaning with every muscle.

They turn onto Cedar, a neighborhood of distinguished homes lined with mature trees that canopy the street in the summer. Today, the bare branches are crystalline, adorned with frozen droplets dangling like dainty earrings. 

Tessa has made Marie drive past Dorian’s house many times on Friday and Saturday nights. She found the address under his father’s name in the phone book. They cruise past slowly to catch every detail. The girls note which windows have lights on and guess which one might be Dorian’s. 

As they approach it now, she pretends not to know the vast English Tudor, with its stately brick and brown-striped stucco that reminds Tessa of the iced cookies her mother used to buy. She feigns indifference as they enter the foyer. Acts like stepping into a castle-like house with a marble bust of a nude woman on the entryway table is something she does every day. 

Evan charges ahead of them, kicks off his shoes, and throws his coat on the floor. The house is silent, glacial, and dark, opaque drapes drawn against the daylight. Tessa trails Dorian and mimics him as he steps out of his own shoes and hangs his coat and hat on a wrought-iron coatrack.

In the hallway, Dorian stops to turn on the heat. Lukewarm air blasts from a ceiling vent as he twists the dial. His fine, shoulder-length blond hair quivers in the breeze. Tessa moves closer to him, her fingers itching to reach up and touch it. 

But Dorian misses the cue. He turns and walks on down the hall. 

***

The refrigerator door is already open in the kitchen. Evan retreats from behind it with an armful of food. He drops lunchmeat and cheese onto the counter. 

“Your mom made her lasagna, dude, she knew I was coming.” His voice reverberates through the empty house. He plunks a baking dish on the counter and pulls back its foil cover. “Fuck yeah, Cynthia.”

“I think she wanted to serve that for dinner tonight.” Still, Dorian watches without objecting as Evan scoops a double helping of the pasta onto a plate and sticks it in the microwave.

Dorian opens a cabinet and hands Tessa a loaf of bread. As they unwrap ingredients, Evan takes his plate of food and wanders out of the kitchen. 

Tessa watches Dorian as he unscrews a jar of mayo. He dips a knife into it, humming a Red Hot Chili Peppers song to himself. She mentally steps through each distinctive move required to lean across the counter and sensually sandwich his hands with hers. But uncertainty holds her back.

 “Oh bro, you didn’t tell me you got Deadfall 3!” Evan yells from another room. 

“Yeah, I wanted to delay the ass-kicking I’m gonna give you. Cuz I know how humiliating that’s gonna be.” Dorian flashes a kind, bashful smile at Tessa across the kitchen island, making her tingle. She smiles back. 

Evan appears at the doorway and catches the exchange. “What’s funny?”

“You’re funny,” Dorian says.

Evan jumps on his back and wraps his arm around his chest. They pound on each other and rub each other’s heads. This easy wrestling seems as natural to boys as breathing, as effortless as standing still. Tessa wonders if they’re even conscious they’re doing it. Her jealousy rears at the physicality Dorian shares with Evan, when she can’t even figure out how to touch him.

“Well come on, then, dope,” Evan says, yanking Dorian’s arm. “Let the ass-kicking begin.” 

Dorian glances at Tessa. “You know, I think playing video games might be rude to our guest.” 

Evan stares at Dorian for a couple of chilly beats, then turns to Tessa. “I didn’t realize you were staying.”

She musters courage and flashes him a sweet smile. “Baby, it’s cold outside.”

***

Before anyone else can make a suggestion, Evan shoves Monty Python and the Holy Grail into the DVD player and starts narrating the absurd opening credits. “Why not try a holiday in Sweden this year!” he shouts in a mock-Nordic accent.  

Tessa’s dad owns the whole collection of Monty Python movies and skits on VHS. She’s seen this movie easily a dozen times and could go toe to toe with Evan quoting dialog if she felt like it. She doesn’t.

She unfurls an afghan folded on the arm of the sofa and seats herself on the furthest-left cushion. She lays half the blanket on the cushion beside her and waits for Dorian to slide in beside her while Evan obsesses over the movie.

Dorian misses the hint. He flops on the opposite end of the sofa. Tessa’s hopes sink. Is he truly this clueless, or has she misread his intentions all along? 

From his crouch in front of the TV, Evan looks around at them. He takes in their positions, her strategically placed afghan and visible disappointment. She watches his face as the pieces fit together. Then he springs up, stalks over, and plants himself onto the middle cushion. 

The three of them watch together in silence until the witch trial scene. 

“We’ve got a witch!” Evan cries suddenly, parroting the dialog. Tessa jumps. He notices and smirks.

“A witch! A witch! May we burn her?”

***

She sits stock-still for the next half hour, growing more annoyed at how Dorian and Evan laugh on cue and trade punchlines. She can hear the hum of the furnace, but the temperature in the dark family room seems to continue dropping. Even under the afghan her fingers and toes are becoming stiff and frigid.

She stands up abruptly. “Where’s your bathroom?”

The boys gape up at her. Before he can hide it, Dorian’s face registers surprise. Did he forget she was even here?

“Turn left out of the door, end of the hall.” He watches her as she crosses the room.

Along the hallway she passes a formal dining room furnished with antiques, a wood-paneled den, and a narrow bedroom with no pictures on the wall, which must be for guests. The house is unnervingly still and musty-smelling. 

Whenever she drives by these stately old homes where the town’s most elite live, Tessa’s mom always remarks at how high their heating bills must be. “You couldn’t pay me enough to live in one of those drafty old claptraps,” she always says. But she still slows down to peer up at them when she passes.

The toilet seat in the bathroom is ice-cold. Tessa lets out a little yip when she sits down. After she’s done and washes her hands she splashes water on her face and stares at herself in the mirror. In spite of her plain face and dull brown hair, Tessa sometimes catches herself believing someone could find her attractive. When she feels this potential, as she does whenever she catches Dorian watching her, she accentuates her best features: she dials up her smile, which sometimes fetches her compliments, and tries to make her green eyes, which her friends claim to be jealous of, bigger. 

Right now, though, she isn’t sure any of that will make a difference.

Suddenly, more than anything, Tessa wants to go home. The day has turned bleak and exhausting. She’s repelled by this frosty, uninviting house. She wants to curl up on the cushy sofa in her warm, tiny tract home on the edge of town and wait for her mom to bring out hot canned soup on TV trays.  

Given the weather emergency, she hopes her mom can leave work early to pick her up. Tessa quietly opens the bathroom door and tiptoes back down the hall, checking each room for a phone. She saw one in the kitchen earlier, but the boys will hear her if she uses it. 

She pads up a flight of carpeted steps and finds an extension phone on a small hallway table. She pulls it on its long cord into the nearest bedroom. Blue, pin-striped wallpaper and several Star Wars posters cover the walls. A corner shelf displays intricate spaceship and airplane models. Tessa recognizes their class algebra book on the desk, along with the black notebook covered in skateboard stickers she sees Dorian using in class. 

So Marie was right in her guess—that this front bedroom where they often see a blueish light glowing late on Saturday nights belongs to Dorian. 

Tessa lifts the phone receiver and hears only hollow silence, no dial tone. She checks the connection and pushes the switch hook a couple of times, but the line is dead. 

She crosses to the window and looks out onto the street. Trees and power lines are encased in ice. The neighboring houses sit lifeless and dark. The daylight has begun to fade into a drowsy blue. Tessa begins to feel uneasy. Trapped. 

A shriek of laughter rises from downstairs. A gust of wind rattles the bedroom window, a hint of it slipping in around the edges. Tessa returns to Dorian’s bed, slides under the comforter, and pulls it up over her nose. She only means to stay for a minute or two, just to warm up, but cocooning in Dorian’s bed scintillates her, feels illicit and dangerous. She breathes in the herbal and cottony traces of him.

She studies the room from here. The bulletin board above Dorian’s desk is jumbled with ticket stubs and hand-drawn concert flyers. Among these keepsakes are several photos of him with Evan. A few from when they were small, wearing superhero costumes and swim trunks at the beach. One more recent, of the two boys posing in front of a roller coaster. 

Tessa likes Dorian a lot. In the way of women, she knows she’s supposed to indulge him, embracing the people and things that bring him joy. She’s not sure where she’s learned this. She watched her mother do it, first with Tessa’s father and later with boyfriends; her grandma with her grandpa; the endlessly patient TV sitcom wives do it with their troublesome husbands. As if a man’s natural happiness is so hard-won, a woman must make it her life’s work to clear away obstacles to it. 

Because she likes Dorian, she’s meant to be grateful for Evan, the enduring presence who enriches Dorian’s life. 

But she can’t muster gratitude, or even a little charity. She can only feel resentment. And the certainty of despair: no matter how close she’s able to get to Dorian, she’ll never know him in the unknowable way Evan always will.

***

The creak of a floorboard startles her awake. She sits up with a gasp. A figure stands in the doorway, in the near-dark. It’s not Dorian. 

“What are you doing?” 

She laughs a little, her head fuzzy with sleep. “I came up to use the phone.”

“You’re in his bed.” 

Evan steps forward and turns on the desk lamp, casting shadowy light. He turns to her, his eyes glossy, menacing beads. 

“The phones are dead. I was calling for a ride. I got cold.” She sounds nonsensical. Her facts are scrambled.  

“You disappeared. Did you not like the movie?”  

“It’s one of my dad’s favorite movies. I used to watch it with him all the time, when he still lived with us.”

He studies her, then sits on the edge of the bed. 

“I don’t see you together.”

“What?”

“You and Dorian. I know you like him. That you’re here to put the moves on him. He told me what happened on the bus.”

“The moves?” She laughs again, covering up her humiliation. It shouldn’t shock her that Dorian confided in Evan, but she’s mortified to learn he knows. Did they laugh about it together? Did Dorian downplay the incident, or neglect to mention he touched her first?

“You’re never going to work together,” Evan says. His face softens and darkens slightly. He seems almost sad.

“Why do you think that?” 

She braces herself to hear him say the thing she already knows. How could you be so presumptuous to believe he could ever like you? 

Evan cocks his head. “You’re too smart for him.” 

She sputters in disbelief. Tears spring to her eyes. She’s confused, frustrated. But also relieved. She hates that it matters to her. That Evan Trout thinks she’s smart. 

“I know you’re quiet and shy, like him, but once you get comfortable with him, you’ll move past that. You’re too smart and quick for him. You’ll outgrow him, fast. You’re going to break his heart.”

Tessa stares at him. “So people shouldn’t get together because they might break up someday?”

“Sooner than someday, I’d say.”

“You’re crazy. And awful. You’re a jealous and awful friend.”

“I’m protecting Dorian.”

“You’re insulting him,” she says. “You just called him dumb.”

“No I didn’t. I just said you’re smarter. You are. It doesn’t matter to me. There’s more to friendship than intelligence. But it will matter to you. I can tell.”

Evan stands up. He barely blinks as he looks at her.

“Does Dorian know you’re up here?” she asks. 

“Dorian doesn’t know you’re up here. It’d be pretty embarrassing if he found you in his bed.” Evan snaps off the desk lamp and leaves Tessa behind in the dark.

***

Walking home will take an hour. She tiptoes down to the dark foyer, slips on her boots, and shuts the door silently behind her before putting on her coat, hat, and gloves. She guesses it’s almost five o’clock. Darkness has taken over the day and streetlights are fading on. Their soft glow illuminates the sheen of ice covering everything: sidewalks, fence posts, telephone poles. Petrified tree branches crackle above her head as she begins to walk. 

The cold feels like an implosion. It’s sucked all life out of the air around her. The skin on her face stings like it’s been slapped, hard, then instantly loses all sensation. Tessa nervously wraps her scarf around the bottom of her face three times and pulls her hood down over her eyes. 

Several years later, home from college for the holidays, Tessa will run into Dorian at the Backchannel Bar. Her delight in seeing him will override any leftover resentment from long ago. They’ll both abandon the friends they’ve come with and sit on barstools for three hours talking. It will be the most they’ve spoken to each other since that record-shattering cold night. Tessa will admire how much he’s changed, growing leaner and more self-assured, though she’ll note how he’ll still rub the back of his head in an expression of residual shyness. 

Later that night, she will lie in Dorian’s childhood bed with him underneath the same Empire Strikes Back poster she’ll remember from when she was last there. He will run his fingers through her now-short, now-blond hair, stare into her eyes, and touch the frostbite scar on her cheekbone. In the dim lamplight, she’ll see tears in his eyes.

“You just vanished that day,” he will whisper to her. “The phone lines were down. We didn’t have a car. I had no idea where you’d gone. Evan told me you probably went to Marie’s house.” 

Tessa will then relay the story of that night to him. How scared she became as she grew sleepier and more breathless. How she lost hope after turning onto the commercial street leading out of town and discovered the strip malls darkened from a power outage and the road empty of traffic. Believing in her muddled state the world might be ending. 

Dorian will already have heard the official ending to this story. A police officer spotted Tessa in his headlights. She was sitting on a bus bench, nearly unconscious. He took her to the hospital, where her mother, pale and speechless with fear, stormed into her exam room in the ER. (The officer happened to be the father of one of their classmates, so the news firebombed the school’s gossip circuit by the next morning. When Tessa returned to school weeks later, her classmates couldn’t stop staring at her. The girl who’d almost died on the coldest day of the century.)

“But why did you leave in the first place?” Dorian will ask. 

She’ll glance over at his desk, now empty of textbooks and papers. The bulletin board above it will be bare now. 

“What you and Evan had, it excluded everyone else. There was no way to break in. It was almost like I was competition to him. And he intended to win, like he always did with everyone.”

Confusion will mingle with sadness in his face. “Did Evan do something to you? Is that why you left?”

“It was obvious he didn’t want me there,” she’ll say carefully. She’ll never convey what Evan said to her, for fear of hurting Dorian’s feelings. 

“But I invited you. It was my house.”

“You didn’t exactly act like you wanted me there either.”

Dorian’s expression will devolve into pathos, a concerted frown and sad-puppy eyes. And Tessa will surreptitiously check the clock. Rehashing all this, after all the experiences and successes that have replaced her teenage insecurities and self-doubt, will begin to irritate her.  

“Do you ever talk to Evan?” she’ll ask, already knowing the answer. The same small-town gossip circuit will have caught up with Tessa at college with the news: Evan Trout left town and cut off communications with his friends and family. 

“No one hears from him anymore.”

“Do you know if he’s okay? Is he still alive?” 

“He sends his mom a Christmas card.” Dorian will turn onto his back and stare up at his ceiling. “You’re right, you know. Evan always won. I always let him win. I saw how he was shutting you out that day, and I let it happen. That was how it always was with us, ever since we were kids.” 

He’ll start to confide in her. Over the next hour he’ll share his stories, rife with grief and resentment, about how Evan hurt, manipulated, and ultimately abandoned him.   

Tessa will feel sorry for him. But by midnight she’ll make an excuse—an early breakfast date with a friend tomorrow—and leave Dorian’s frosty house. She’ll drive across town on dark and empty streets, remembering her walk home on the same route. She’ll dispatch atonement to her fifteen-year-old self, the smart but self-loathing girl who almost died from heartbreak and hopelessness on the coldest night. 

“He may have seemed cruel,” she’ll tell herself. “But Evan was right about everything all along.”