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“Elsa…”
“For the last time, no.” Elsa didn’t even bother to look up from the geometry book she was reading. “I won’t do it.”
Anna huffed. “Oh, come on! It’s for a good cause!”
Elsa rolled her eyes. “And what cause would that be?”
Anna bounced onto her bed and pointed out the window of the dorm room the sisters shared. Students hurried to and fro across the quad beneath like mice as the bell above the chapel chimed noon. A couple of people broke into flat out sprints as the peals echoed over the campus. Obviously Anna wasn’t the only one who was going to be late to class today if something wasn’t done fast. “The students of course!”
Elsa just snuggled deeper into the blanket cocoon she’d made on top of her own bed, and clicked open a pen to jot down a couple of notes in the spiral resting on one knee. “The students would be better off if they just went to class like they were supposed to.”
It was Anna’s turn to roll her eyes. Of course Elsa would feel that way. Thinking hard, Anna decided to try a different tactic. “What about the professors? Don’t they deserve a break from grading papers and stuff?”
“They get the same breaks the students do, and they have TAs to help them.” Elsa reasoned. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. “Speaking of papers, don’t you have one due for that physiology class of yours in like…” She checked the clock again, “twelve minutes? Did you finish it yet?”
Anna reached over her bed and carefully shut the laptop on her desk hiding the half-written paper from view. “Of course I finished it. Why wouldn’t I have finished it?”
Elsa just gave her a look.
“Your lack of faith wounds me.” Anna deadpanned. Flopping on upside down on her comforter, she placed a hand dramatically across her face. “The vicious cycle of homework torments this pitiful soul! If only someone could save me from this endless wasteland of papercuts and aching skulls!”
“If you stopped worrying about finding creative ways to avoid getting your work done I’m sure you’d have far fewer headaches.” Elsa remarked. Closing her textbook, she picked up another thick volume from the orderly stack by her side. This one, ironically enough, was about Glaciology, something Anna was pretty sure her sister knew more about than anyone else on the planet.
“Come on Elsa, it’s even November and everything!” Anna begged. “Look!” She held up her phone and waved the temperature reading in her sister’s direction. “See it’s forty outside! Which is like four degrees celsius if you prefer metric, which you do for some unknown reason, and that’s factoid I know because I actually do study for your information!”
“Four is not zero, Anna.”
“But it’s close enough that no one would notice!”
Elsa sighed. Holding up a hand that gleamed with cold blue light, she spun a snowflake out of thin air. It danced over her palm in a pattern only she could see. “I’m pretty sure people would notice.” Elsa made a fist and the snowflake melted away.
Anna snorted. “Well, yeah, I guess they would notice, but not you know notice , if you catch my drift. Heh, drift.”
“Somehow I do, and I don’t know how I feel about it.” Elsa’s mouth quirked into a half-smile.
Anna rolled off her bed with a thump, and wiggled across the floor like a worm.
“What are you doing?”
Grinning up at her sister, Anna tugged at the edge of her blanket cocoon. “Worming my way into your heart.”
“Oh my god, Anna.” Elsa rolled her eyes again in exasperation, but she couldn’t do anything about the grin that spread across her face.
Seeing her sister’s resolve beginning to crack, Anna decided to push just a little bit harder. And she knew just where Elsa’s icy facade was the thinnest.
“Elsa?”
Elsa’s eyes widened. “No.”
“Do you…”
“Don’t you say it!”
“Wanna build…”
“Anna!”
“A snowman ?” Anna crooned up at Elsa with those teal puppy-eyes turn on full force.
Elsa caved.
Outside the clear blue sky turned grey, storm clouds forming out of thin air over the sleepy college town. The students on the quad shivered in the sudden temperature drop, but the discomfort was soon forgotten as the first fat flakes began to fall. Later the whole thing would be heralded by the local news as a freak snowsquall. They’d blame their technology for failing to predict it, and call it one of nature’s mysteries. The tabloids would speculate on wilder causes, like aliens, strange planet alignments, or ancient curses.
But for the students, there was only one thing about the storm that mattered. And it certainly wasn’t the cause who was running down one of the dorm halls with a massive snowball floating over her head, a laughing redhead fleeing before her.
It was that single phrase, sung from the hearts of students who looked out their windows with childlike glee as the world turned white.
SNOW DAY!