{"id":2813,"date":"2015-06-02T02:34:23","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T02:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=2813"},"modified":"2015-06-02T02:34:23","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T02:34:23","slug":"winter-break-by-nana-k-adjei-brenyah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/winter-break-by-nana-k-adjei-brenyah\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Break by Nana K. Adjei-Brenyah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"woods\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Winter Break<\/h1>\n

by Nana K. Adjei-Brenyah<\/p>\n

I was home on break. Freezing rain came and went. The cold, however, crossed its arms and chained itself to everything.<\/p>\n

She was a friend from high school. I\u2019d changed since, I thought. She crossed my mind when I thought about my inadequacies. My thinking was, if I can be who I was at the University here, then the power belonged to me and not the environment.<\/p>\n

In a text, she asked me how much time she had before I was close. I called her to say I was already there.<\/p>\n

The rain looked mean and jagged from inside the car. I leaned over to pop the passenger side door open.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d she smiled. She gave me the kind of hug you give in car.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong time no see!\u201d she said. She pulled her hood back and assessed the soaked arms of her jacket.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo long,\u201d I said. \u201cHow have you been?\u201d We drove off.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been good. It\u2019s been alright. You know.\u201d She said she was planning on transferring out of the community college next semester, she wasn\u2019t sure where to.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou seem to be living the life up there though,\u201d she said, a friendly accusation, \u201cI\u2019ve seen some pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything looks better on Facebook,\u201d I said, \u201cWe don\u2019t take pictures of the nights we stay in studying.\u201d She laughed a little. \u201cBut it\u2019s pretty fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI bet,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you wanna \u2013 \u201dSuddenly sliding, the trunk of the car punched into the middle of the street. We sat in horizontal weightlessness and waited for a final crush. No painted lines can save you. I kept slamming the brake thinking, \u201cNot yet! Not yet!\u201d Fear scalded our blood black. I imagined our bodies flying, hurtling, jerking, rattling and scraping their way to a cold, gory sanctuary just for us. We slid and sledged on the road for about four entire seconds before traction swooped in to save us. We stopped. That moment, for one second, we saw clearly and loved ourselves and everything around us. I drove to the curb and parked. I could see her brown eyes in the light of an approaching car. They reflected our terrible mortalities, hers and mine. The oncoming car slowed as it approached, as if considering assisting us. It speed off before reaching a full stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you okay?\u201d I asked, like my words could change anything if they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fine,\u201d she said, like we aren\u2019t all balloon people.<\/p>\n

I got out and checked all the tires. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow,\u201d I said, when I was back in the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201c she said.<\/p>\n

Nothing could match the feeling of being on the ice, so we got snacks from the Mobile, and I took her back home. I waited until she got in before I pulled off. I drove home, slowly. I thought, it is the environment, not me. I\u2019d known the power wasn\u2019t mine from the moment she\u2019d sat in the car.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is currently working towards his MFA at Syracuse University. He is the winner of Broken Pencil’s 2013 Writer’s Deathmatch and his work has been featured in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Gravel Online Journal and Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was home on break. Freezing rain came and went. The cold, however, crossed its arms and chained itself to everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[273,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-short","category-short-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2815,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2813\/revisions\/2815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}