ulrik snowspire | district 10

Life has a funny way of working out.

For example: I used to be a pretty messed up kid. Angry at the world for being left behind by a family I never knew – and, look, for all I know they could have been drugged up junkies and I would have been worse off there in the long run, but try telling that to a confused kid who feels like nobody in the world cares about him.

But years go by, and perspective changes. Fast forward to eighteen and there’s a meaning to the word family that doesn’t quite fit with the conventional definition they taught us in Sex Ed. There’s a different type of bond that can only be cultivated from growing up in a castle with the same bunch of kids – brothers and sisters; more than friends. Cut off from the rest of the world, where we make up our own meanings to the words within it. I know what the word happy means to me, and that’s what I am: here, now.

Or, jump back in time, try telling the kid who’s two feet shorter than everyone else in the third grade that he’s going to be the tallest in his cohort in two years’ time. Sounds pretty great, right? Wrong. Like, I thought being tall was supposed to be a turn-on? Turns out all it gets you is aching muscles and a memory of the worst fucking growing pains known to man – puberty was a real bitch to me. On top of that, for all the changes my body went through, it wasn’t enough to outgrow a pair of shitty lungs. Thank fuck for Nurse Kim and her magic medicine; she works around the clock to keep me breathing. She’s basically the reason I’m still alive, sticking by my side when I was just a kid who couldn’t stomach any of the stronger pills without puking my guts back up. We’ve got my routine down-pat now, though:

Every morning I wake to a vibrant landscape in a never-ending, snow-capped winter. But I know the colours aren’t real. Nurse Kim told me it’s something to do with the side effects of my medications – an “artificial brightening if I go too long without supplementary regulation of my bodily functions”, or something along those lines. So I let myself enjoy the glamour – just for a minute. Then I take my tablets, stuff a puffer or two into my pant pockets, and make my way to the breakfast hall.

The day goes on. Reality bleeds in. Classes blur together, someone cracks a joke and I smile on cue. The hard ground below me transforms into the sponginess of foam mats in a gymnasium. I lose track of time. I try to remember how to breathe.

By nightfall, the world has mellowed out – some days more than others, where the pastels more closely resemble greys. But I guess that’s just the nature of chronic illness, and the fatigue to go along with it. I probably don’t help my cause by working so hard in the gym. The tumbling, the flying, the flipping; throwing my body around a room, just to turn around and contort it in seven other impossible ways. But ever since Yusif left, the reality of adoption seems closer than ever. Headmaster Walters has always given us a clear goal to work for and kept no illusions about how to achieve it. So that’s exactly what I plan to do. Plus, there’s something to be said for the sense of accomplishment I get when I finish a routine with both my lungs still in one piece.

(We don’t talk about the bad days.)

The constancy of winter chills my bones; my heart struggles to pump enough blood through my shivering veins, and all the while something molten hums away in the background. A buzz, a drilling in my skull, like I’m supposed to remember something about myself. But I’m too far away from the big picture, separated from the rest of the world. Classmates are kept at arms-length, ‘cause being too close feels like participating in a competition I’ll always lose. But sometimes I miss the simplicity of our younger days, when we rallied against the universe together with nothing but smiles on our tiny, frostbitten faces. I keep smiling now, in the late years of my youth, to keep the memory alive. To keep friendly acquaintances. To be liked. To keep the world close enough without being suffocated by it.