Stealing Snow Read Free Page A

about my mother, but I just shrugged again. Around me the hallway was growing cloudy, but the colors were more vivid than before. My footsteps felt lighter. My Happy dose was working.
    “Well, you’ll have to. Maybe not today. But soon,” Vern said.
    “Why?” I bit back—unapologetic.
    “Because you only have about three people in the universe to talk to, Snow. And technically Dr. Harris and I are paid to.”
    I looked sharply at her. She laughed.
    “You know you’re my favorite, Hannibal Yardley.”
    That was my nickname because of the biting. She named me after a character who had a penchant for killing and cannibalism in a violent movie we weren’t allowed to see. Coming from anyone else, the nickname would have elicited a toothier response and a bit of blood. But from Vern, I took it and kept on walking.

3
    As we turned the corner to the visitors’ lounge, I could see the tapestries and high-backed, overstuffed armchairs where the asylum patients met with their parents once a month. It looked like a drawing room from one of those public television period dramas that Vern liked to watch. Only at Whittaker, the lamps were nailed down to the floor and tea was served lukewarm in paper cups for safety.
    Mom was looking at her phone when the guard buzzed us through the double doors. She put it away quickly as if it were contraband. She didn’t like to remind me of the things I didn’t and couldn’t have. We did not have cell phones at Whittaker. We had an ancient cordless phone in the common room that was monitored by the orderlies. Mom stood up and hugged me when I approached, wrapping me in her arms. She smelled of cinnamon and lemon, probably from her morning tea.
    I didn’t hug her back.
    Behind me, the door clicked shut. Vern was giving us privacy, although the big mirror on the wall betrayed the fact that we were always being watched.
    “You look happy today, Snow,” Mom said, running her fingers through my hair as we sat down across from each other.
    Ora Yardley was perfect and beautiful in every way. So much so that every time I saw her, I wondered how we could be from the same DNA. She had the same blond hair as me, which she inexplicably decided to dye auburn, and she had a perky nose that would make a cartoon princess jealous. Today she wore a sleeveless pale-pink sweater dress that skimmed over her curves and showed off her pale porcelain skin. Still, her eyes were my eyes: brown and deep. Her lips were my lips: full, with a tendency toward pouting. But hers were constantly, politely, upturned at the corners while mine went the other way.
    Mom continued to stroke my hair. Like Vern, she said it had gone white from the medication I was given at Whittaker. But the way I remember it, my first streaks showed up the day after I walked through the mirror—before the doctors had figured out what drugs to give me. I remember looking in the mirror when I woke up in my new room and there they were.
    “Honey, I wish you’d just let me do something about it,” Mom tried again.
    I pushed her hand away. “I like them.”
    “Honey,” she began again, but she stopped when I pulled away completely.
    “I brought you something.” She smiled, giggling a little as shereached beneath her chair and pulled out a box. It was plain white and unwrapped, and had likely been searched before I got there. The ribbon was the tiniest bit askew, which was odd, because my mother was all about perfection. But I tore into the bow all the same. Not because the box was pretty, but because it was from my mom. Because it was new. Nothing was new at Whittaker.
    Inside the box was a pair of pale-blue mittens. They looked homemade.
    “Winter is coming soon,” Mom said. “I wanted you to have something new for your walks with Vern.”
    Mom’s smile deepened with the apparent hope that she had picked the right gift. Something to make everything better. Something to bridge the gap between us. Some part of me leaned into her at times