Stealing Snow Read Free Page B

like this. I was so close to melting. So close to forgiveness. But I thought back to the day when she and Dr. Harris had made the decision that changed my life.
    “I’ve talked it over with Dr. Harris, and we’re in agreement on this,” she had said, sitting across from me in the same chair she was in today. “We think that it’s best for you and Bale to be kept separate.” She had made the decision so easily, like she was insisting on making me wear a helmet for riding my bike, not taking away the love of my life.
    I had gotten angry too many times to count, and I felt it again now, the anger bubbling to the surface, but Happy did its job for once and tamped it down. I focused on the mittens in my lap.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “You’re so welcome!” Mom clapped her hands. To her, my not throwing the mittens across the room meant that the gift was a success. When she smiled wide enough, I could see the faint white mark on her cheek pinch. It was the only imperfect thing about her, and it was because of me on the day everything changed. She’d been reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , and I had taken it literally and tried to walk through the looking glass with my best friend. But I didn’t remember that day at all.
    I learned from my dad that Becky, the girl I pulled through the mirror, and her family sued us, and we had settled. I never saw her again. But I still wondered about her. My scars had faded over the years, but they were still there, reminding me of how and why this all began. I wondered if Becky was out in the world with her scars, too.
    When I first got to the institute, I thought that it was a punishment, a time-out for bad behavior. I sometimes wondered if my parents had just accepted Dr. Harris’s diagnosis that day or if they knew when they dropped me off at Whittaker that it was forever.
    Mom chatted on about Dad and the house, a place I had not seen in eleven years and couldn’t care less about. And a dad who came every other month and on holidays. She must have noticed I was being distant, though, because she suddenly said, “Honey, I know you think that you and Bale are Romeo and Juliet, but this will pass.”
    I felt my anger notch up a bit, but my fingers started tapping against the leg of my pants and I swallowed down the rage. Momgently removed the box that the mittens were nestled in and put it on the nailed-down coffee table. She studied me as she leaned back into her seat and re-crossed her legs.
    “You think it’s love, but it’s not. I know what it’s like to feel passion and think that you can change someone.”
    I perked up despite myself. Mom wasn’t talking about me anymore. She was talking about herself.
    “You tried to change Dad?” I asked. My mom was my mom, but my father was a different story. He was a stranger. Dad could barely handle seeing his crazy daughter on a bimonthly basis. Most of the time I had trouble understanding why they were even together, let alone imagining what Mom had tried to change about him.
    “Not Dad,” she countered, her voice a little faraway as if she were lost in a memory.
    I never thought of Mom being with anyone else.
    “The point is you can’t change Bale. He’s sick, honey. He broke your wrist and that will never be okay.”
    I closed my eyes, and my fingers tapped against my legs, almost of their own volition. I was getting angrier and itched to sketch something. I needed to calm down, or I would get thrown in solitary.
    “When they called me to tell me that he had broken your wrist, I was so scared. Bale’s not well.” Mom’s eyes filled with tears. She reached out and put her hands over mine, stopping my finger taps entirely.
    “Does that apply to me, too?” I asked pointedly.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, if Bale can’t get better, that means I can’t, either. Right?”
    “That’s not what I meant,” Mom faltered. Her lips formed a thin, tight worry line.
    “But it’s what you think.”
    “It’s