Catherine steered clumsily around the curve and felt herself slipping to one side, but she managed to stay on as they swung onto the downward path. The runners rushed over the glazed snow, and she felt herself still slipping to one side as they took the second curve and came to the fork. She turned sharply to the left, rocking the sled and feeling a boot drag against the snowbank. She jerked to the right, and suddenly they were rushing at the right bank; Catherine braced herself, but somehow they were back on the path. Half on and half off, they rushed past the wild cherry and came to an abrupt stop in the high snow. Catherine fell off. “Damn.” She burst into laughter, lying on her back in the snow. The sky was dark, radiant blue. The moon was so bright that it seemed lit from within. It reminded her of the eye of a great cat. The night was a dark blue cat with a mad moon eye. Snow burned on her cheeks and a soft powder of snow stirred in the air about her. She could feel a coil of hair on her snow-wet cheek. She stretched out her arms and began moving them back and forth in the snow, as if she were giving semaphore signals. Peter stared down at her. “You’d better get up, Cath. What are you doing?” “Snow-angels. Didn’t you ever do that as a kid?” He stared down at her and she burst out laughing. “Oh, Peter, you look so bewildered!” She stood up, dusting off snow.

They trudged uphill, Peter’s buckled boots jangling.

The second time it went much better: Catherine took the first curve smoothly, swung effortlessly onto the left fork, steered past the wild cherry, and never once felt herself slipping. She drove into their tracks beside the blurred snow-angel, and brought them to a stop five feet beyond their first mark.

She was exhilarated as they walked uphill. “Isn’t there something festive about snow? Festive and solemn. I can’t explain it. Oh, I can. It’s festive because it turns everything into odd shapes, and solemn because it’s white, like nurses, and hushed, and very smooth and formal, like a linen tablecloth.”

Peter laughed. “That’s wild. Have you got your scores back yet?”

“Not yet. Brad got 787 in Math.”

“Well, he can always join the Army.”

“He had to break the news gently to his mother. I hear Sonia got an 800 in posture.”

Peter burst into loud, nervous laughter.