An Apple for the Creature

All around her was cold, empty night.

—

The stars appeared above her, blinking into existence one at a time until the universe was once again filled with their twinkling light. Callie felt the cold wetness of snow engulfing her, her breath racing in and out of her lungs in feverish bursts as she tried to collect herself.

“Are you okay there? You hit the ground really, really hard.”

Dragging her eyes away from the night sky, Callie saw a pale-faced young woman in a bubblegum pink wool hat and scarf standing above her, cascading blond curls of hair poufing out around her face like lemon cotton candy. Her cornflower blue eyes were filled with concern, her powdery-rose lips turning down at the corners while she considered the image of Callie lying like a bag of discarded refuse in the chilly slush of a snowbank.

“I think I’m okay,” Callie said, sitting up slowly so all the blood in her head didn’t rush out in a flood, leaving her woozy. “Where am I?”

“What did she say?” another voice chimed in and Callie turned around to see its owner, a tall brunette with a turned-up nose that bore a thick spackling of freckles across its bridge. She was standing on the far side of the snowbank wearing a dark blue hoodie pulled taut over her head and tied tightly at the base of her throat in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

The blond girl shook her head, looking up at the brunette quizzically.

“She wanted to know where she was,” she replied, wrinkling her pretty nose.

“How hard did she hit her head?” the brunette asked.

“I’m fine. My head is fine. I’m just freezing my ass off,” Callie interjected, wishing she’d had the forethought to put on a snowsuit instead of the light blue wrap dress she’d shimmied into that morning. “And when the hell did it start snowing?”

“Um, are you kidding?” the blonde said. “It’s been snow central for like three months.”

Callie tried to stand up, holding on to the blonde for support as she struggled not to slip in the slush, her very inappropriate footwear—a pair of Jimmy Choo peep-toe pumps—making it hard for her to keep her balance.

“That’s not true,” Callie said, letting the blonde’s arm go as she managed to finally right herself. “There was no snow on the ground when I got here earlier tonight.”

September had been unseasonably warm for the East Coast, with highs in the sixties and seventies, so this bit about snow being on the ground for the past three months was pure bunk. Besides, there’d been no hint of snow in the air when she’d arrived at class, let alone was it possible for that much snow to have fallen in the hour since she’d—

Callie paused mid-thought as she realized that no matter where she set her eyeballs, there were no modular classrooms anywhere in her vicinity. In fact, no classrooms or administration buildings or gyms or anything else that might evoke the grounds of an elementary school.

“Okay, where the hell am I?”

The blonde blinked.

“You’re in Queens, New York.”

The brunette nodded her agreement.

“But that’s not possible. Where is PS 181?”

“What’s a PS 181?” the blonde asked curiously.

Exasperated, Callie sighed.

“It’s an elementary school where I was taking—”

She paused, realizing she’d almost divulged more information than she’d intended to.

“—um, an adult education class.”

The two young women gave her a funny look. Then the brunette, who was proving to be far more officious than the blonde, said, “Agatha, I’m gonna go over by that tree and I want you to tell me what you sense.”

“All right, Happy, I’ll give it the old college try, but you’re gonna have to stand pretty far away,” Agatha replied, pointing to a copse of trees that was about a hundred feet from where they were standing. “Probably over there to start with.”

Happy—Callie had a hard time associating the name with the serious-looking brunette—nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as she left the confines of the sidewalk and began the slow trudge through the snow toward the trees. The blonde, Agatha, gave Callie a honey-sweet smile and reached out, taking one of Callie’s frozen hands in between her own warmer ones.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Agatha seemed to be concentrating on the physical connection between them, but it didn’t appear she was having much luck.

“Still too close,” she murmured under her breath just as Happy arrived at the predetermined spot.

“Keep going?” Happy called out from beneath the wide shadow of the tree line.

“Yep, keep going!” Agatha replied, eyes still closed, pink mouth in a firm line.

Callie watched as Happy shook her head, then turned around and started crunching through the snow again, passing the snow-topped pines and heading farther out into the woods.

Woods? What woods were there in Jamaica, New York? The place was a veritable concrete jungle—Starbucks and bodegas on every corner, houses and apartments taking up whole city blocks. Yet, as far as the eye could see, she found nothing but trees and a thin line of a freshly cleared road beside the snow-covered sidewalk they were standing on.