Grace Thomasin, the most ruthless of the girls, gazed at me from across the table. "Why do you hold your pencil like that?" She motioned to her own elegant position, silver nail polish sparkling in the fluorescent lights. I looked at my fist squeezing the pencil in the middle.

The girls were laughing, and I felt angry acid burning in my stomach. In the span of a few seconds, I became lightheaded, not seeing clearly, and all at once, I imagined I was on a sidewalk. My mother had frightened me once, saying, "Liyah, you can't cross the road without seeing white lines. It means cars aren't looking for you and you could get hit." I saw myself walking on that sidewalk, then swerving to the left and into the street, where a car's horn blared and its headlights blinked furiously. I was a bullfighter, and this was my bull. My nails dug into my palms as I took out my sword and hurled it at the bull. It shattered the glass of the right headlight.

The day I was sent away was the day after my birthday. The last thing my mother said to me was that this was where I was going to freeze in hell because Florida's heat wasn't enough to burn the evil out of me.

So I moved into my long-lost father's one-story, washed-out yellow house on the edge of town in the middle of Alaska. I'd been here for three months. The sparse amount of palm trees dotting the gray and green landscape had been replaced by black spruce trees and a never-ending bank of snow.

It was ten thirty in the morning and the sun had just peeked above the distant mountains. Josephine, Dad's girlfriend, had had a difficult night with the baby and returned to bed. Ty, Josephine's older son, was forbidden to be with me without supervision.

I was alone in the living room, my sleeping bag rolled up on the couch. The heater crackled against the wall and a collage of frost climbed up the edge of the window.

My fingers were dancing on the top of the heater, the stream of warmth flooding into my face. It wasn't the wet heat like Florida had; it was dryer. Down the hall, I heard the hinges of a door squeak. I turned.

A small hand curled around the edge of the wall as Ty snuck a look at me. He was a small, skinny kid. The only baby teeth he had lost by nine years old were his top two front ones, and his adult teeth were so big he couldn't close his mouth.

"What do you want?" I asked. His glasses made his eyes seem larger than they actually were.

"Wanna go outside? I started building an igloo."

I grinned and we tiptoed to the corner by the door, where all our snow gear was piled high like the mountains surrounding the valley. Ty's gear was all blue, but I was a rainbow of hand-me-downs: the purple snow pants from the teenager next door, the red jacket given to me by Josephine's father. The gloves and hat were my dad's, both too big. The cords on the mittens were pulled tight, squeezing my wrists. I wore Josephine's boots; she had tiny feet. They almost fit me.

Ty opened the wooden door silently, then pushed the screen away. We were suited up like we were going to space, like we were going to walk on the moon.

Ty led me to the front yard, a barrier of snow blocking the igloo from the driveway. He waved to some other kids across the street. We were the only ones brave enough to face this kind of cold, the kind that nibbles on naked skin like the mosquitos from Florida.

Ty pressed his back against a snow-covered car, pushing off of it and accelerating before leaping halfway up the snow pile and rolling down to the other side. I did the same, determined to land higher than he did. I ran and jumped, my hands gripping the imprints his hands left behind, some snow falling onto the driveway. We weren't supposed to mess up the driveway that my dad had plowed the day before.

The igloo was halfway done, the blocks getting smaller and smaller as the hemisphere grew. Ty handed me a blue brickmaker. I had a faded red one back in Florida, used to make barriers out of sand to protect us from waves.

Ty showed me how to get to the good snow. The powdery layer on top wouldn't stick, but the dense, moist snow further down would, kind of like the beach. He wouldn't let me touch the actual igloo. So I just handed him the bricks and he placed them carefully to create the continuous slanted spiral. We worked in silence. Ty's usually colorless cheeks were red as chili peppers from the cold.

A woman walked past with a dog and shouted. She said to listen to our bodies and go inside when we're too cold - beware of frostbite.

When it was done, Ty invited me inside. I followed him through the small hole, snow lodging between the end of my coat sleeves and gloves as I crawled on all fours.

"How do you know that this won't fall on us?" I asked, settling myself near the opening. "I learned it in Scouts. If you're stranded in the wilderness and a storm is coming, make an igloo."

Ty pulled off his glove, stuffing his hand in his pocket, searching for something. His hand emerged with a red lighter. Then the cigarettes.

"I stole it from Mom's drawer. You ever had one?" Ty bit his lip with his crooked front teeth. "Yeah. Loads." My mom always said my eyes revealed my lies, so I squinted at him, a challenge. He pressed the button and a flame turned the ceiling yellow. "Is it true, what Mom says you did? Why you're here?"

"Yes."

"She says I shouldn't be around you ‘cause you're dangerous. That true?"

"What do you think?"

"I don't believe it. Mom's scared of a lot of things that she shouldn't be." Ty's glassy eyes held the flame as he pressed the end of a cigarette to it. Josephine is scared of closing the bedroom door. I notice that it's always left slightly open. She fears the missionaries that sometimes come by. I've seen the pulse in her neck speed up when she opens the door and sees them on the other side of the glass screen. Most of all, she's afraid of girls. Babies, children, teenagers, she's incredibly uncomfortable around any girl under eighteen. She can barely stand me in the house.

I wanted to tell him that my mother was afraid of things with such ferocity that it made her fears illegitimate, but I kept my mouth shut.

The cigarette in Ty's mouth wasn't lighting. "They're a little wet," he admitted. I motioned for him to hand me one. He placed the lighter and another cigarette in the palm of my mitten. In my bare hand, the cigarette was wet to the touch.

"They're too wet."

Ty shrugged. "It's fine. Right?"

"Another day."

"Right."

Instead, we dug a small hole to hold the lighter upright and made animal shapes out of our hands as the light danced across the snow.

The last time we'd all been together was when I was seven before my parents signed the divorce papers and my dad left for Alaska. My mom, my dad, and I went camping. That night, I couldn't sleep. There was no night light in the tent and all the sounds surrounding us were so foreign, so wild. When I couldn't sleep, we played this game. All three of us, making shadow puppets in the white glow of the flashlight against the green tent. My dad was the best at it. He could make rabbits and goats and swans.

It was all of a sudden hot in this igloo. I could feel wet strands of hair sticking to my forehead under my borrowed hat.

"I'll be right back," I told Ty as I exited his creation, relieved as freezing air hit my face. I climbed over the snow barrier and slid down, my bottom landing on the icy concrete. I pushed the door handle down, but it was locked. Ty had forgotten to turn the latch before we'd gone outside.

So I scrambled back over the snow, seeing the igloo, seeing the tent. I tried to run through the snow to climb over the back gate, but I sank with every step, the seemingly serene blanket of snow devouring my lower leg. I crawled over the chain-linked gate. The snow was so high, the fence was barely visible. It, too, had been eaten by the snow.

I walked around the house to see Josephine in monochrome gray sweats, leaning against the yellow paneling by the back door, baby monitor resting on the picnic table. She stared at me as she exhaled a flurry of smoke, the cigarette burning between her fingers.

Josephine had the potential to be beautiful. She had round blue eyes and dark blond hair that reached her elbows. There were small shadows under her cheekbones. But she'd let herself go after the baby, started smoking again and left off all her makeup. She didn't go to work which was her plan, even though she was on maternity leave.

She stared at me as she tapped the cigarette, the ash swirling to the ground like falling snow. "Is Ty still out there?" Josephine asked.

"He's in the igloo. Are you mad?"

"I've learned to pick my battles." She was blocking the door with her flip-flop. I watched as she took another drag from her cigarette. "Don't ever start smoking. You'll never stop." She exhaled like an angry dragon.

A cooing sound accompanied by some static broke our silence. Josephine stared at the baby monitor, questioning whether to go in. "Don't have kids before you're married. It's messy."

"It still didn't work out for me, did it?"

Josephine's lips pursed into a smile as the baby began to howl on the monitor. She dropped her cigarette and stamped on it with her flip-flop. Then she shrugged. "I guess not."

Then she slipped inside, careful not to let any warm air out. I listened to her comfort the baby on the monitor that was still on the table. The wails subsided and he gurgled happily. I blinked. My eyelashes had frozen together.

My dad came home from work three hours after the sun had set. Ty and I were watching cartoons, Popeye, to be exact. It was Ty's favorite; Popeye inspired him to eat spinach so he would get strong.

As soon as Josephine saw my dad through the hole in the wall - which Josephine called the kitchen pass-through - she placed a stack of tinfoil boxes into the oven, watching them in the light. My dad put a hand on both of our heads, patting a hello and picking up the baby on his way to the table.

"Liyah, Ty, dinner." Josephine walked to the dining table, resting the hot tinfoil against her chest. Ty and I sat beside each other, across from my dad and Josephine. Dinner tonight was spaghetti. Mine only came with one meatball.

"Jack, how was work?" Josephine asked, biting a spaghetti string in half.

"Tuned up some snow machines today. I wondered when they were finally gonna come in with all this snow."

Josephine turned to me. "You ever been snowmachining, Liyah?"

"Nuh-uh."

Ty frowned. "Never?"

"We don't get snow in Florida."

Ty finished chewing. "Can we go out tomorrow, Jack?"

My dad nods while Josephine stares at her food. "That sounds fun, doesn't it?"

When the digital numbers of the clock blinked to one in the morning, I slid out of my sleeping bag and slowly walked into the kitchen. I grabbed a cup and filled it with water, gulping until it was empty. I placed the glass in the sink and turned around to see the dark yellow glow of a flashlight.

"Couldn't sleep, either, huh?" I recognized Josephine's voice.

"No."

Josephine sat at the dining table. "Do you know anything about snowmachining?"

"No. But I'll learn tomorrow, right?"

"Did you know it's been in your family for a long time?" she said, her face illuminated by the flashlight as if she were telling a ghost story. "You've had snow machining family members for three generations. They competed in the Iron Dog. Do you know what that is?"

"No."

"The longest snow machine race in the world, right here in Alaska."

"Did Dad compete?"

"With my brother."

"They didn't win?"

"They didn't finish. They crashed and my brother got hurt in the head. I'm just telling you to be careful. It's not that easy. Don't do anything stupid." Josephine switched off the flashlight and returned to her bedroom.

The rest of the night, I dreamt of going on a trip into the Alaska wilderness and forgetting to pack clothes, food, and water. I dreamt of falling off a snow machine and getting hurt in the head like Josephine's brother. I dreamt of stepping off the sidewalk, breaking from my mother's hand, and throwing the pencil that landed in Grace Thomasin's eye.

Josephine made some eggs for breakfast before my dad, Ty, and I suited up. Outside, a small green snow machine was already running. My dad set a helmet on Ty's shoulders. He climbed on and guided the snow machine down the driveway and into the street.

The neighborhood road was not plowed, making it the perfect, flat cradle to practice snow machining. I ran after Ty as he turned into position.

"To the edge of the woods and back, Ty!" my dad called after him as he accelerated down the street.

"Now," my dad began. "When Ty gets back, you'll climb on the machine and hold both hands on the grips to steer. On the right side, you've got a lever for the brakes and on the left you've got the throttle for accelerating. This is pretty easy terrain, but there is a bend up there where some mailboxes are. Don't forget to steer, okay? There's Ty now."

From the front, the machine looked like a giant grasshopper. The headlight winked at us as Ty slowed to a stop.

"Good ride, bud?" my dad shouted.

Ty stepped off the machine and took off the helmet. "Pretty good. The snow's a bit powdery, though."

He handed me the helmet with a smile, his buck teeth poking his bottom lip. I slipped the helmet over my head and swung a leg over the machine, the engine humming beneath me.

"Just like you're riding a bike, okay?" My dad patted me on the back and pushed me as I pressed the throttle.

I eased forward, the motor roaring, laughing at my ineptitude. I pushed the throttle harder, the houses becoming a blur of colors. I pushed even harder. The icy wind began stabbing the exposed skin between my scarf and the helmet. Looking behind me, the silhouettes of Ty and my dad were getting smaller behind a sheen of snow blowing out behind me.

I lifted the helmet's visor, my eyes tearing from the cold. I smiled, imagining I was an osprey, gliding above the Atlantic Ocean. This is what it felt like to be free. Free from Florida, from my mother. Free from Josephine and the boys and my dad. Free from what I did.

Up ahead was the corner my dad was talking about. The gray mailboxes stood out against the snow. I turned the handlebars. Just like riding a bike. I wasn't changing direction. I turned harder, more forcefully, creating a harsher angle. Then I was skidding, telling myself to release the throttle, but I was back in Florida, watching the palm trees whiz by in the back of my mother's car as she told me she couldn't handle me anymore, that I was determined to make her life difficult and miserable. That Alaska would numb the evil in me and, over time, become a fossil in a thick layer of permafrost. The only company she had now in that home in the middle of the trailer park were her cartons of wine and classic films playing on that 1999 Sony television over and over again. I was grinning at this thought as I finally let go of the throttle and punched the brake with my left fingers, flying over the handlebars toward the mailboxes. The helmet, too big, slid over my head as I hurtled towards the ground. The osprey had glimpsed the shadow of a fish.

My knee hit the steel edge of the mailboxes. My nose hit an ice chunk in the seemingly fluffy cloud of snow. I was winded as I lifted my head, my heartbeat too fast for my breaths to catch up. My knee felt like it had split like an exploded watermelon. One of my oversized gloves had been lost in the snow. The machine was fine, idling parallel to the road.

Something was tickling the edge of my nose. I wiped my gloveless hand across, smudging the two streams of red traveling toward my mouth. My mind flashed to Grace Thomasin's blood, her shocked silence.

If my mother were here now, I would ask her if she was satisfied, if the evil had been knocked out of me, draining from me like the blood from my nose. She'd probably scour the Internet for more information before answering.

Clucking my tongue to the beat of my throbbing knee, I laid my head on my gloved hand and waited for my dad to realize I wasn't coming back.