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Title Page

Dedication

This book is for my parents,

who love me when I fall as much as they love me when I fly.

And for the grandmas, obviously.

Last Christmas

A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 7: The Girl on the Bridge
(Christmas Eve, 11:22 p.m.)

Uploaded: February 4, 2022

Snow days are a special kind of magic.

When I was a kid, snow days meant freedom from the stress of school and from the debilitating social anxiety I felt there. On a snow day, I could wander outside and make friends as easily as packing a snowball between my gloved palms.

In college at Ohio State, snow days meant freedom from my rigorous study schedule, when my best friend, Meredith, would burst into my dorm at one in the morning so we could go sledding in South Oval on trays stolen from the dining hall.

And in Portland, a snow day seemed to mean freedom from everything.

My boots sink into nearly a foot of snow as I step onto the Burnside Bridge. The boundaries of the city had blurred over the course of the day, and now nothing is contained to its usual place. Grass, sidewalk, and street have all become one smooth, fluid thing—a world that looks sugar-spun and impossibly sweet. Up ahead, a couple cross-country-skis across the bridge while their portable speaker blares “White Christmas,” and behind me a group of twentysomethings is having a snowball fight in the middle of the road, and beside me, a woman slips, grumbles, and curses, “Fuck the snow!” at a rather loud volume.

“Is it the snow we should be blaming?” I ask calmly. “Or your shoes?”

“The snow,” she answers, clomping her boots deliberately with each step. “These boots are magnificent.”

I gesture to the boots in question. “They do seem like they were selected more for aesthetics than utility, though. Like your coat.”

She stops stomping through the snow and looks up. “Wait. What’s wrong with my coat?”

She’s wearing one of those brown Carhartt jackets so popular among a certain demographic back in Ohio and an entirely different demographic here in Portland. Hers isn’t even zipped, so her flannel is exposed beneath, tucked into her light-wash jeans.

It’s an aesthetic, all right.

“It’s a very nice coat,” I reassure her. “Not exactly practical for snow, though, is it?”

“In my defense, it hardly ever snows here.”

“Yet when you left your house this morning, you knew snow was in the forecast.”