I scoop a handful, form a ball, then lob it…
It lands on her shoulder with a soft thump.
She freezes, then turns…slowly.
Her fingers brush the mark on her jacket, then curl into a fist. Her eyes narrow.
“Oh, it’son,” she says, dead quiet.
She scoops and throws in one swift motion. But her aim needs work. The snowball sails a good meter to my left… and nails Silas right in the chest.
Everything goes silent.
He looks down at the splatter on his coat. Then he looks at Naomi. Then at me.
"So that's how it's gonna be," he says, his voice a low growl.
He crouches and starts packing snow with the focus of someone assembling a weapon.
“Wait!” I shout. “It was me! I started it!”
“And we’re going to finish it,” he says. “Pack rules, Felix. An attack on one—”
“Is an attack on all,” Liam finishes, already forming his own snowball.
Naomi’s eyes go wide. “Okay, hold on, three against one is absolutely—”
A snowball cuts her off mid-protest.
“Article 4, subsection 2, hostile environment!” she yelps, diving behind an overturned sled. “This is textbook ganging up!”
“No article 4 whatever!” Silas calls back, absolutely living his best life. “This is war.”
We annihilate her. She tries valiantly to build a quick wall next to the sled, but it’s more “sad mound” than “defensible structure.” She’s laughing too hard to aim; one throw misses Liam by what has to be twenty feet.
“Geneva Convention!” she shouts desperately.
"This ain't Switzerland!” Silas yells, pegging her in the shoulder.
She crawls back to the sled and pops up from behind it, hair escaping her hat, cheeks bright pink, eyes shining. She looks so offensively pretty that something in my chest does a weird, tight squeeze.
So, obviously, I hurl a snowball directly into Silas’s face.
The silence is deafening. Snowflakes drift down. Naomi is frozen in place, her jaw on the ground.
"TRAITOR!" Silas roars.
“Strategic alliance shift,” I correct, diving behind her sad little fort. “I’m not getting dragged to war crimes court with you.”
“You have a death wish,” Liam calls, laughing.
“Let’s get them, counselor,” I say, bumping Naomi’s shoulder.
She grins, feral. “With pleasure.”
We pop up together and absolutely nail them, Liam in the arm, Silas in the ribs.
What follows is a full-on two-on-two snow war. Silas has an arm like a cannon. Liam keeps trying to flank us. But Naomi and I have chemistry. And by chemistry, I mean she uses me as bait while occasionally landing lucky shots.
