Where Bugs Go In The Winter

There are ants tickling my feet.

That's impossible, Timmy says. It's winter time and you're wearing shoes. I ask him where all the bugs go in the wintertime and he says he doesn't know. 

Maybe they're in my shoes! I say, and he laughs. I laugh too. 

We are lying in snow that is white and fluffy like powdered sugar. 

Why aren't there any clouds today? He asks me; as if I have all the answers to everything. 

Maybe it's too cold, I say. Maybe all the precipitation's gone from the sky and now we're laying in it. 

Pop told me once that the angels go bowling in the clouds, and when it rains the angels are crying. He said that when it snows, it's just that the angels' tears are freezing. See, my Pop likes to believe in heaven; he likes to think that's where I'll go soon and that I'll wait for him there. Timmy's Pop believes in heaven too, but not Timmy. Timmy doesn't believe in anything. 

Timmy just says maybe: maybe it's just too cold today, and we are quiet. 

When I close my eyes he says my name, like he's scared. He says Grace, Grace, don't fall asleep. He says if we fall asleep we might freeze to death and no one will find us until we're all sorts of rainbow colors. I'm not s'posed to be outside anyway.

The tip of our noses and fingers and toes, he says, will be black like the nighttime sky without the stars and light pollution. 

I think they'll be black like the cancers growing inside of me. 

The rest of us, he says, will be blue. But not blue like the sky without cotton-ball clouds. He says I will be blue like the dead people on crime television shows. 

I ask him if it hurts to die; as if he has all the answers to everything. 

He says no.