"I need to know …" I called after her, my voice cracking under the weight of the fears that I'd been carrying for weeks. "I need to be ready."
"I'm sorry, Cameron. It's not something…I'm sorry." She took a step. The voices of the seventh graders faded away as they turned the corner—disappeared from sight.
I turned to stare out the windows, watched the first flakes of winter start to fall and blow across the grounds. In a few hours, everything would be covered, as if the earth itself were pulling on its best disguise.
"Perhaps in the spring." Buckingham's voice cut through the drafty corridor, chasing after me like a strong wind. I turned to look at her. "Yes," she said again, and for a split second—nothing more—she looked like an old woman. The hallway felt like time itself, and Patricia Buckingham and I were standing at opposite ends—her looking back on all she'd seen, me wondering what lay ahead.
Then Professor Buckingham nodded once more and said softly, "Perhaps in the spring."
I watched her disappear down that long corridor while outside the sky turned gray and the ground turned white and winter settled in.
Zach's jacket was in my arms, so I put it around my shoulders. It hung there, heavy and warm, and the cold seemed a little farther away. As I put my hands in the pockets, I felt something brush against my fingers. I pulled out a small piece of Evapopaper and studied the handwriting I'd seen twice before:
Have fun in London
-Z
And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come—it always does. So I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.