My eyes flickered down to the lifeless form below me. A cat, probably. Snow had started to clump around it, bundling around slushy water from where its warm body melted it. I stood idly by. Watching. The blood looked frozen now, frosted over with sparkles of white and pale cracks embedded inside. I bent down to investigate. My knees creaked as I dropped onto the gravel of the beaten-up road, feet shuffling against the highway. Reaching over, I prodded its back leg once, twice, then three times. Stone cold. The skidded remains were mostly frozen and hard, its fur coarse and matted with icicles of blood. The ears of the mangled cat stuck out like cones from its head, its body completely flattened save for a tail and leg. 

Swallowing down a strange sense of slight disgust, I reached out and glided my fingers over the solid blood. I lifted them to my eyes. Clean. I grinned with satisfaction and stood up, brushing my hands against my jeans and turning towards the forest. 

“Hey, Liam!” A bothersome voice called. “Wait up!” I bit the inside of my cheek and glared at the snow beneath me before turning around. Never a peaceful moment, huh?

Blonde hair, blue jacket… oh, Crispin. He was a little far away, maybe about a hundred yards or so. He stopped running to lean over his knees, panting, and then to wave at me. I watched amusedly from the curb. He looked back up and jogged over, stopping where the highway met the field.

Crispin was annoying, but we were friends regardless.

We’d always been close, ever since first grade. There’d been this whole fiasco when our teacher had told us to clean out the class hamster cage, and then handed us a roll of paper towels and a half-empty jug of bleach. The hamster died. But the hamster’s death made way for our friendship… in some kind of fucked up way.

“What?” I sighed, breathing out a cotton ball of fog. He opened his mouth, eyes shifting to my mom’s SUV, then to the animal, and then back up to me. He closed his gaping mouth hole and furrowed his eyebrows.

“D’jyou kill that cat?” He nodded to the brown and red stain on the road. 

“Hell yeah. I hit it with my car, the blood is frozen now.” I smiled.

“God, you need therapy,” He looked grossed out. “Blood’s frozen? How long have you been here?”

“Um, an hour. What time is it?” I asked.

“About four thirty. You missed school, what happened?” 

I could always get away with skipping. Unlike Crispin, I wasn’t loud and obnoxious all the time. If the teachers didn’t forget about me, they usually just let it slide. None of the teachers ever took attendance anyway. Crispin always found a way to make a scene, being the class clown. Always begging God for attention.

He got it, anyways. Whether it be because of his looks or his humorous and carefree disposition. It’s all fake, though. 

I bit my lip.

“My mom took us to the hospital, to see my dad,” I lied quickly. “Can you shovel this thing into the forest for me? I don’t want to touch it.” 

“Yeah, uh, sure. Got a shovel? I’m not actually going to touch it either.” He waved his hands to emphasize his point, making some kind of “no way!” motion with them. I stepped back as he walked over to me.

“I think there’s one inside the car.” I turned to the right and stalked stiffly over to the white SUV. Popping up the trunk, I looked around before grabbing a dulled shovel. I tossed it over to Crispin and slammed the trunk shut. He had trotted over close to me and yelped in shock as I closed it half an inch away from his face, shovel flinging onto the ground.

“Bro, chill,” I glared at him from the side. He laughed and quickly grabbed the tool from the roadside. It’d been quiet, flakes of ice crusting the surface of the ground. Cars were too frightened of the frozen ground. People opted to stay home or walk to their destinations.  

The shovel was old and worn, ashwood handle grayed with dirt and blade rusted over. We should’ve gotten a new one, but we didn’t need one after my dad got sick, and especially after he died. Mom never bothered to do yard work and my flimsy beanpole arms weren’t strong enough to actually use one. Replacing it wouldn’t make sense. Crispin glanced back at me and then shoved the head of the spade into the fleshy remains. 

There was a slight crack of the ice around it. He paused to squint in repulsion and rub his temples. I watched curiously, tapping the toe of my sneakers onto the road. 

“Hurry up.” 

He ignored me, taking his sweet old time to scrape the crumbled remains of the… creature up into the shovel. I rolled my eyes and groaned loudly, leaning against the car as I waited.

My eyes zeroed in on a smear of red crusted into the road, mouth wrinkled into a grimace. 

“Hey!” Crispin shouted, snapping me up from my daze. “Liam! Where d’you want me to bury this thing?” He asked, bloodied shovel trailing in the snow behind him. He’d walked into the snowy off-road field ahead, stopping a few feet in once he noticed I wasn't following.

His blonde hair was speckled with fluffy clouds of white and waved in the breeze. I smiled and walked over, the corners of my mouth falling back down as I realized I had been smiling. Can’t let him think I get happy, or whatever. Gotta keep up that apathetic reputation I have.

Not that he would care.

“Let’s put it in the snow over there. Like, all the way over there.” I motioned to a lone tree in the middle of the sea of white, waving it in a tight circle. “The snow won’t be gone for a while.” Perks of living in a ski town, huh? It was early December and the snow didn’t usually melt until around May, or more likely, June. He nodded and turned back around, ready to start making his way to the tree and-

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted, jumping a hundred feet into the air and twisting around. A red pick-up truck had sped past us, swerving dangerously on the yellow dots of the road. It jerked harshly to the right before straightening out and fading into the cluster of trees ahead.

I heard Crispin sigh and look over his shoulder. He shook his head.

“Dude. It’s just a car. Calm yourself.” Ah, yes, Crispin, the great All-Knowing and All-Powerful and amazing- of course it was a car! One that had almost run me over! Did he think I was blind? I took a breath, calming myself down. 

Crispin doesn’t like getting yelled at, even as a joke, so I pinched my nails into the palm of my hand and grit my teeth to keep myself from screaming. 

I’d rather not get into a fight with him, I only had a small cluster of friends. He’d always been kind of absent though, and we ignored each other in school. Product of his insecurity and status as a “popular jock,” or whatever, and my standing as the weird creepy kid who probably had a hit list. He had so many friends, too, and it had always been a mystery to me why he’d stuck around for so long. But I valued him and I wouldn’t want to piss him off.

“I-I know, okay? God. Let’s just, ugh, uh, put it somewhere. I don’t care. Hurry up.” I stomped a few feet ahead of him, catching up quickly and then stopping after a few seconds. “Are you coming, or what?”

He scoffed, hitching the shovel between the crooks of his arms. So dramatic. The entirety of the cat had surprisingly fit into the shovel. I’m pretty sure that most of its torso was on the tires of my mom’s car, but I’d rather not think about that. 

We started walking again, him keeping a steady pace behind me.

“You know,” he started. “If you ever did any real sports, you wouldn’t be such a noodle and could’ve done this yourself.”

“Come on, grow up. I could do it myself, but you do everything I say,” I retorted, stumbling backward over the snow as I spun in a circle to smirk at him. He glared childishly at me and I chuckled, twirling back to face the other way. So sensitive, too. 

“Also, track is a sport. Shut up,” I added quickly.

We reached the tree quickly. I knelt down and pawed out some snow, easily digging about a foot down before Crispin got all the way over. A big storm had hit a day or two ago, and this part of Colorado always got a ton of snow. 

I smoothed a loose strand of dark hair back into my bangs, fingers stiff from the temperature. My hands made contact with the snow once again, and I instantly regretted not wearing gloves. The knuckles and tips of my fingers were so painfully pink against the stark white and burned whenever they touched anything. I winced at the pain, rubbing my hands together quickly to keep a straight face.

Eventually, Cripsin caught up with me. He flung the mess of fur and limbs into the hole I’d made and then turned around to close his eyes and press his forehead with a finger. I used the edge of the shovel he’d dropped to nudge the tail into the pit. I pushed some snow over it, gently packing it down gently with my numb hands. Crispin turned back around once I had covered the body, groaning gently. He bent over to grab the shovel, thudding it against the snow to rub flecks of blood and asphalt off it. I watched, then stood up.

“Alright. Let’s get out of here,” I stated, turning and retracing my steps through the snow.

He perked up and padded behind me. Snow had started to fall again, twinkling over us and getting caught in our jackets. I brushed some out of my hair and stepped onto the black pavement. The car was unlocked, and I walked around to get into the driver’s seat.

Crispin climbed in to the right of me. He lived on the same street as me; it was kind of expected.

“Who said I’d drive you home?” I asked playfully.

“What, I can’t get a ride? Even after I scraped up your roadkill?”

“Screw you. Fine.”

He snickered, and I turned the car around, driving towards town. It was getting late and the sun was starting to set. Looking out from the car windows, I took a breath.