In the morning, my head was inside hat and hood. Pulled drawstrings, I saw nothing but one window: frozen on the outside and foggy on the inside. Everything between the world and window appeared alien. I sat there, rumbling in my boxers, long johns, and waterproof kakis, watching the shadow parade until an artificial voice called out my stop.

The bus doors opened to winter. I stumbled into the procession of jackets marching between snow banks. The cold wind forced my chin to my neck. I did not trust my legs– I trusted the pair of black boots ahead of me. I shuffled when they shuffled. I high-stepped when they high-stepped. Together, we trekked over ice patches and snow mounds until I crunched parking lot road salt. Then I regained leg control and lifted my chin towards the light above the school’s front doors.

Inside, I freed my head from hat and hood. Life returned to full screen. Down low there were stained puddles and soggy papers. Up top there was hat hair. All around was a mix of chatter and coughs and locker doors clanking, screeching, and banging. Andrew slapped my back as I took off my jacket. My first words were gargled by morning mucus. He complained about the Raptors’ loss until the class bell interrupted.

I sat in the front row of class. Cindy sat beside me. Andrew sat behind me. I slid my homework to the right corner of the desk so Andrew could copy over my shoulder. Mr. Fontaine walked in and sat at his desk. Cindy and I said hello to him then raised our hands. He picked mine first. During homework check, I answered three questions. Cindy also answered three. I would’ve beaten her if Andrew hadn’t raised his hand and used my fucking answer.

Later, when Mr. Fontaine was writing questions on the board, Andrew passed me an empty tic-tac-toe grid on a crumpled scrap paper. I put it to the side and quickly answered the comprehension questions in my notebook. However, I didn’t slide my notebook to the right side of my desk for Andrew. When Mr. Fontaine asked him for an answer, he got it painfully wrong. Mr. Fontaine shamed him. Then the class giggled as Andrew stumbled through an out-loud reading of Le Petit Prince. When he was done, I checked a square on the tic-tac-toe grid and handed it to him. During the next two periods, I repeatedly beat Andrew at tic-tac-toe and answered more questions than Cindy.

As Science homework was written on the board, Andrew tapped me then pointed to the clock. There were 5 minutes left in class. Pencils quietly returned to their cases. Everyone sat up straight. The class rhythm—questions, answers, explanations, reading out loud, note-taking—was quickly evaporating. I nervously waited for the crescendo of closing books, bag zips, and shuffling desks to surrender Mr. Dyer. As soon as he said the “OK” in “OK, you guys can go”, I launched out of my seat, tucking my books under my armpits, and joined the flood. I pushed behind Andrew from front door to locker. Then I spun around my lock combination on instinct, barely looking at the numbers.

My head went into a hat after I shoved in my books. I pulled out my jacket. While walking down the hallway, I slid into my sleeves and unscrunched my gloves. Andrew went to the staircase, where Vlad and Ideen were waiting. We jumped down the steps and Andrew opened the door with the sign that said, “EMERGENCY FIRE EXIT. ALARM WILL SOUND.”

The alarm did not sound. Andrew yelled, “Let’s run to The Cliff!” As I followed him, the mid-day snow stung my eyes. Things got so blurry, Andrew, Vlad, and Ideen seemed like red, blue, and black smudges on a blank canvas. I closed my eyes to the sounds of feet cracking and crunching, nylon swiping and squeaking, and lungs forcing breath in and out of mucus-lined airways. I snorted then spat out. After checking that the phlegm missed my pants, I found that my eyes burned less. By the time I sat down on the edge of The Cliff, the world had buffered to a higher resolution.

The Cliff was not actually a cliff. It was just a grass hill. We had named it “The Cliff” because it was steep and seemed to hang over the city. We sat down on its edge and chewed our lunches. With no water, I used snow to wash down the pita bread in my throat.

From The Cliff, Toronto was big and dangerous. The leafless trees looked spiky. House roofs were about to collapse under leftover snowstorm. The CN tower was a giant middle finger. Cars slid through slush and I didn’t think they could stop if they needed to. As I looked out, Andrew popped in my vision. Then he ruffled in his jacket and pulled out two garbage bags.

“We’ll take turns,” he said.

I looked at Vlad and Ideen. The school had banned tobogganing at lunchtime for days like this, when the snow was coated with ice. The morning announcement said that students could get injured. They said rule breakers would get suspensions.

We watched in silence as Andrew spread out his garbage bag and backed up. Then he ran forward to the edge of the cliff and belly flopped onto the bag. His yells surfed against the wind. He looked like a blue Skittle rolling down a white blanket. Andrew, who went to church Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, was screaming, “Jesus!” as he headed towards a ramp. He did nothing to slow down and whipped off the jump, hung in the air, then crashed back onto the garbage bag, gliding the rest of the way in a heap. He lay motionless at the bottom for a couple of seconds then popped back up with two thumbs up and yelled, “C’MON!”

Vlad and Ideen shook their heads then walked back to the school, but I had to be better than Andrew. I grabbed the garbage bag and went down the hill headfirst. The wind filled my ears. The bumpy slope jutted into my stomach. I tucked in my body, held my breath, flew off the jump, and then crashed back to earth on my hip. Clutching the garbage bag, I was spinning out when a blue figure appeared. It was Andrew, who speared my body as if I was a fish that he could hand to Lord Jesus himself. I latched onto him and we wrestled all the way down the hill. I put a knee into his back. He put a boot into my stomach. I shoved his face into the ground. He mashed snow into my eyes. We didn’t stop until we reached the bottom. Bruised and tired, I lay on my back without my hat, looking at the dirty white sky. After a little, I turned to Andrew and we laughed through mucus heaves.

We went up and down for the rest of lunch. I let my mind and body go wherever the hill took it. This stopped when the bell echoed across the field. Running back with ice in my hair, I saw the school and it looked absurd. It looked like a grey block that didn’t belong to the landscape.

The front doors swung open then closed like a guillotine. We shouldered our way inside with the rest of the students. I squeaked through the hallways and put my jacket away. My sweater was soaked in puberty sweat. As I headed for class, Andrew called me to his locker.

“You need this,” he said and sprayed me with a can of Axe Phoenix.

We walked into class together. I passed Cindy, who was sitting at the front, and headed to the back. I picked at a dried nosebleed while the slush between my boots creases puddled under my desk. Andrew rested his elbow next to a foggy window. He cracked it open when Mrs. Kaleithes began the lesson. Cindy’s hand went up and down and she answered most questions. After three, she twisted back to look at me, but my hand was on my chin, and I was watching the fog disappear from the window.