Towering

was no way for her to know because she was not there. But I did not say it. I would argue sometime when I was not hiding twenty feet of hair beneath my covers. Today was a day to be sweet, not cross. “Can you bring it tomorrow? Or come back later?”
    She never came twice in one day, but I thought perhaps this one time, she might.
    “I get so lonely here, especially when I am sick.”
    She smiled, so I added, “And can you bring me some items as well?”
    “What is it you want, my dear?”
    I had thought a great deal about this, about a list of items, a long list, to mask my real request.
    “My art supplies are dwindling. I need some paper and paints, watercolors and acrylics.” She had replaced my paints quite recently, but I hoped she would not notice their nearly full condition in the dark. “Oh, and scissors.”
    “Scissors?”
    I breathed in. “The snowflakes. I have been watching them from my window. They are so pretty, and when they sometimes land so I can see them on the glass, they have shapes, all sorts of shapes like faceted stars. I thought, perhaps, I could cut shapes like snowflakes and hang them from the ceiling, to bring the outside in.”
    “You wouldn’t . . . hurt yourself, would you?”
    “Of course not. I just want to create something beautiful. Please.”
    “Very well. I will bring them.”
    “Oh, and I’d need some string to hang them.”
    “Very well. I’ll go now to get them. Do you want me to brush your hair before I leave?”
    “It will hurt my head. I braided it anyway.” I gestured toward my hair, which had already grown another foot since I’d last braided it. “I don’t feel well enough to sit up.”
    “I will bring some tea as well.”
    By the time she returned, my hair had grown my body length yet again, and I had braided it twice more. She brought the chicken soup, and I allowed her to spoon it between my lips even though I was dying for her to leave. She loved to pretend I was an infant.
    After she left, I did not cut my hair. I knew she would not be back until at least the next morning, maybe later. So I waited, braiding and rebraiding my hair, watching it inch away from my scalp. By morning, it stretched across the room and back. I braided it and waited, cutting snowflake shapes too, dozens of them, to make true my lie about why I needed the scissors.
    When the sun was high in the sky, my braid reached the ground when dangled out the window. It was sufficient. I tied my hair on both sides with the string Mama had brought, then cut it carefully, the scissors nearly scratching my scalp. Then, I coiled up the braid and stuffed it under my bed.
    Oddly, once I cut it, it did not grow so backbreakingly fast again. When Mama arrived, it reached my chest, no more. A little shorter than normal. I hoped she would not notice. I also hoped she would not look under my bed, for if she did, she would see the rope I had begun to make. There was only one purpose for a rope, and she would know it.
    I began to cut more snowflakes. I was getting quite good at it, folding the paper over and over into a thick square, then cutting borders and boxes and diamonds to make it resemble the snowflakes on the windowsill. But this time, my hand slipped and the scissors’ sharp blade sliced into my fingertip. I gave a cry and felt tears spring to my eyes. A drop of red blood stained the white snowflake. I wiped a tear.
    And then, the strangest thing happened. When I examined my finger again, it wasn’t bleeding at all.
    It wasn’t that the blood had been staunched. Rather, it was as if it had never bled. But when I looked at the snowflake, it was still stained red.
    Obviously, it hadn’t been a bad cut. I was just being a baby.
    But when I put my finger into my mouth, the metallic taste of blood that wasn’t there still lingered.

Wyatt
    I fell asleep with the diary in my hand. When I woke in the morning, the clouds were white and so thick they looked like drifted snow. That was how my head felt too, and I wondered if I was drunk. Had I imagined the singing in the night? The light?
    I started to pick up the diary again, to see what had happened. But then, I heard Mrs. Greenwood in the hall outside and stowed the notebook under my mattress.
    “I thought maybe we could go to a movie tonight,” she said when I opened the door.
    “There’s a movie theater around here?” It didn’t seem like there was much of anything here.
    But she nodded. “In Chestertown. It’s a bit south of