This morning’s weather report took me back. I remember the last time three feet of snow was supposed to suffocate the earth.

It was January 16th , last year. I was out, alone with my father’s Fiero and a bottle of flavoured vodka, sweet, inebriating strawberry. I’d had an awful Christmas; my parents and siblings had a colossal argument about nothing serious at all. I was wearing the sweater my mother had knitted for me, hideous pool of black and red swimming around the terrifying image of Krampus. I shuddered whenever I saw myself wearing it.

I had driven to Walmart to waste my Christmas money on spicy crisps, lemonade, Sour Patch Kids and a reduced Yule Log. I threw them all into the back of the trunk when I got out, that’s where I found the vodka, the pink label drew me in with a sweet song. I found myself carrying it into the driver’s seat.

I opened the bottle, waved it across my nostrils and put it up to my chapped lips. The strawberry taste flowed from my tongue to my throat like a river, it tipped out of my throat to my gut as if a waterfall. I shuddered. “Never again” I said to myself, I never talk out loud.

I drove uneasily on the way home; the road was framed by naked trees scrambling for modesty in the snow. I made a wrong turn. I was supposed to go right. I hit the brakes, put the car in reverse and rolled back gently. The hairs on my neck shot up when I heard the THUD.

I tipped out of the car immediately after opening the door. I brushed the snow off my knees and the palms of my hands. I begrudgingly moved towards the rear of the car, breathing as clumsily as I was stumbling. Brown, probably leather boots, black denim jeans, knees obscured by a bright green coat with fur on the neck, a small stream of blood seeping into her neat, blonde bun. “OH MY! OH F***! NO!” She was probably a very nice, very pretty person who’d have run to help me if she had knocked me down.

I force the guilt down my throat. It didn’t matter what she was, at that moment, she was a prison sentence for me. I was old enough to be held accountable for being an irresponsible driver, but too young to drink vodka. I would get into trouble with the law, then with my parents, then with the news and finally, random strangers would make harsh judgments about my unfortunate accident. I couldn’t let that happen.

I spasmed my head left and right frantically. I found a hollowed-out log, if I dragged the body into there, when the extra three feet of snow fell at 10pm as expected, she’d be embalmed by a thick layer of freezing security. She’d be hidden, never found until the snow eventually thawed. I dragged her by the frayed ankles of her leather boots, and sweating the freezing air, I stuffed her into the log, forcing her further back.

I smoothed the snow over with my un-gloved and bloodied hands. Then, leapt back into my car. I wiped the blood clean off both my hands, dragging the tissue over each finger individually, with the motion of wiping a table, back and forth. Back. I drove out in reverse and made a right turn when I got back onto the road.

The three feet of snow fell earlier than expected at 8pm. I remember seeing sheets of snow falling out of the sky and thinking that getting away with my mistake would be easy. It was. But getting past the guilt wasn’t.

They found her body in April. Her name was Alice Marks and she was a PHD student. They eventually declared it a hit and run and ceased the investigation. When it reached the news, we spoke about it once or twice at the dinner table. I was surprisingly good at keeping my secret.

I had forgotten to think about it as fervently as I used to until this morning. I saw what the weather reporter was wearing: a green sweater dress, red barrettes clinging to the loose hairs falling from her blonde messy bun.

Barrettes became blood. Clouded images of stuffing Miss Mark into a tree seeped into my eyes. I can’t go out this winter.