The vacation would have been a welcome relief.  I needed the tropics to cool me off, to warm me up.  We would have played in waterfalls.  I had planned that my life married to Jon would begin shortly after we graduated – I couldn’t wait to get out of our high school and our small town where anyone’s business is everyone’s business.  I didn't want to waste any time.  We would be together.  Someday.  But not yet. 

There was the last time we were together, and I still remember it as though I was watching it through the mirror on the front windshield, all the while being caressed by silver, with whispery singing in my ears. 

We were the only vehicle for miles - the only life for miles.  Winter’s stillness surrounded our serene lake playground. 

I screamed as my hands clutched at the shoulder strap that prevented me from flying into the white nothingness that expanded in front of the Jeep window. 

It was a nice car – or was it called a truck?  I didn't know, didn’t care.  It was tan and had crimson upholstered interior, a CD player, DVD player, navigation system, power windows, steering, and seats (the self-heating variety), driver and passenger side climate controls, sun roof, extra tires, and sweet rims.  A trio of tiny silver bells dangled from the rearview mirror.  I had just given them to Jon – my Jonny (he’d made me call him Jon lately) – as a Christmas gift.  When we turned too sharply they would let out a sweet tinkling sound, like far off singing.  Jon had just bought the Jeep, and we had chosen that day to break it in.  It was a nice day.  The weather was right for a little off-roading. 

I panicked – my body didn’t know which way to strain as we spun faster and faster.  The air seemed to thicken, turned to plasma, and it was hard for me to breathe.  My hearing was muffled, as though I were nose-deep in a bathtub full of water.  My lungs filled with damp, mossy heaviness.

I liked Jon a lot, and I was working him over to go on another real date with me.  As longstanding friends, it was difficult to know whether or not we were spoiling a great relationship, but I was willing to take that chance.  I was willing to take lots of chances with him by my side.  But this Jon scared me a little.  He was so absorbed, so involved with the ride that he forgot about me. 

We spun around, tires slipping to gain traction on the frozen lake beneath us as diamond chips shot up from our tires, splintering against the front windshield as we whipped one of the biggest shitties I had ever seen in my entire life.  Or wanted to for that matter. 

Terror splintered through my ribcage as Jonny went back for more.  It was like a drug to him; the adrenaline rush blinded him to my whitening knuckles on the center console, and to our safety. 

He let the wheel go so the car could straighten itself out, and we came to a dead stop. 

I saw the nearly translucent sheet at the same moment as Jonny did, and I knew what to expect.  It was truly beautiful: one of the sights that made me believe in miracles.  It filled out and became an eternity for the eye.  I don't know what it was doing there – pure silk doesn't grow on lakes, or anywhere else for that matter – and with all the fish houses from earlier that winter, the ice should not have been nearly so pristine.  It was calm, thick like a shallow bowl of half and half – creamy and smooth.  It started to snow.  The fat flakes came down, slow as they do in those decorative globes filled with water, a glorious winter scene, and snowflakes seemingly as large as cotton balls.  When spring came, I would miss the snow. 

We started slow, gained momentum, barreled onto that beautiful plane, and started into the last turn.  My eyes were shut tight and I was oblivious to all sound save the singing of the bells, but I noticed when something changed.  I pried my eyes open.  We were still heading sideways, but with an additional dimension of motion.  My side tipped towards the ice below, Jon was up in the air.  I looked out my window to see the gaping mouth coming for me.  The bells sparkled in the corner of my vision.  It was waiting to consume me. 

Jon had his door open and was reaching for me, he would save me.  I saw his eyes, and I knew then that he loved me.  Everything was slow and I couldn't move; it was like a dream.  The silence roared in my ears, louder than any noise that I had ever heard in my entire life.  I heard it in death.  I looked to see what held me back.  The belt.  The one that was supposed to save my life, red as my blood, wouldn't let me go.  So I fought with it.  I looked up to plead with Jonny; I needed him.  But he was gone.  A flushing waterfall took his place – a tropical vacation with flowers and people dancing in the spray.  The vacation I had dreamed for me and Jon. 

But this was different.  Very different.

The water was cold; it was so cold.  The belt finally let me go and I jumped out Jonny's door, grabbing the bells.  I was in a different world.  Its blackness dulled all sense, except for the cold.  I looked around me to see the Jeep falling slowly, as if it, too, were a snowflake in the globe.  I was cold. 

The bells, their chain tightly in my grip, dangled in the water as I shied from this black world around me, towards the white glass ceiling that had replaced the sky.  I pushed and pushed, but it would not give.  I was freezing. 

I found bubbles floating up, responding to a reversal of gravity, buoyancy, in the same manner that the Jeep had sunk far below – the way snowflakes fall when a Christmas globe is turned upside down.  I could be a snowflake, too.  I was numb.

I remember breathing.  When I concentrated, I discovered that I could breathe in this thick air, and life was really no different from that in the world above.  But it was lonelier. 

The chain slips from my hands bells float away in the dark currents of the Underwater 

I pull myself up through cracks in ice Jon is standing. He just stands. I wait.

*

The emptiness surrounded Jon.  The invisible and silent soul watching could never know his torment.  Slowly, his leg muscles gave way and he slumped to his knees where he watched the snowflakes cover the cracks in the settled ice.  He had liked her, he had loved her, he had killed her.  His best friend.  He stood, stared, bled, cried, mourned, screamed, waited, died. 

*

Glass surrounds the small globe where the miniature figure of a boy kneels alone on the middle of an empty, frozen lake; the Jeep and the girl are nowhere in sight.  Barely visible is a signpost reading 'Thin Ice', from which 3 silver bells dangle.  A little girl with big curls of a reflecting silvery blonde, a tan striped jacket with red lining, and red painted fingernails takes their world into her small hands.  Peering through the ice, she looks for the Jeep and her lost sister.  Melancholy breathes out her sleeve as she uses it to wipe smudges off their glass sky.  She tips it upside down so that all the snowflakes fall toward her shoes, exposing the faint cracks in the ice, and carefully twists the spindle that lays hidden beneath their lake as she imagines the moments that changed everything.  She sets it right side up on the plane of her tiny hands as the music starts.  It plays The Carol of the Bells, and her sweet small voice fills the air around her with a distant sounding hum, like that of the wind on a hollow winter day. 

Erin Schoep writes, "I am from Montevideo, Minnesota, and am a 4th year creative writing student at SMSU.  It's the fifth post-secondary institution I've attended in under four years (and about the billionth major in as long). One of my favorite hobbies is writing music.  I've found that writing is the only medium in which I can mix intellectual academia and creativity to my satisfaction.  Writing is about exploring, and when you explore, you can always feel wonder."