Solid As A Rock

I hate snow.

Not in the way most people hate the inconvenience of shoveling their driveways or the sting of icy wind slicing through their scarves. Not in the way someone groans when their morning commute is slowed to a crawl or when their favorite shoes soak through, leaving their socks clammy and cold. No, my hatred runs deeper than that—bone-deep, marrow-deep, settling into the cracks of my ribs like frost that never thaws.

Most people love snow. They welcome it, yearn for it even. Their faces light up the moment the first flakes begin to fall, delicate as whispers, like the world itself is speaking some long-forgotten lullaby. Snow is magical to them, a crystalline promise of laughter, snowball fights, sledding, hot chocolate, and rosy cheeks. It’s pure. It’s soft. It blankets the world in an illusion of peace, quieting everything beneath its frozen touch.

But snow lies.

It’s not pure. It’s not soft. And it is anything but peaceful.

To me, snow is heavy. It isn’t weightless, isn’t gentle. It presses down, smothering, relentless, a cold so thick it claws its way into your chest and stays there, pulsing with an icy rhythm. Snow buries—it doesn’t blanket. It doesn’t make things disappear. It preserves them, traps them beneath layers of frozen stillness where they cannot decay, cannot move, cannot breathe.

The first snow came today.

I knew it before I even opened my eyes. The air in the room was different, sharper, the faint light leaking through the curtains tinged with that sickly glow that only happens when snow coats the ground. For a moment, I let myself lie there in bed, staring at the ceiling, heart thudding slow and heavy in my chest.

Then I made myself look.

I pulled back the curtain with shaking fingers, the fabric colder than it had any right to be. And there it was—soft white flakes tumbling lazily from the sky, spinning and spiraling as if mocking me with their innocence. The world outside was already coated in an untouched layer of white, the kind that children can’t resist throwing themselves into, their laughter ringing out as they ruin the pristine surface with snow angels and footprints.

I stood there, gripping the windowsill like it was the only thing tethering me to reality, staring at the scene beyond the glass. My neighbors’ kids were already out there, their bright coats and hats clashing against the muted landscape. They shrieked and laughed, pushing each other down and flinging snow into the air like confetti. Their joy was tangible, infectious, but it didn’t reach me. It never does.

Because to me, snow isn’t joy. It isn’t innocence or magic or nostalgia. It’s suffocating. It’s drowning.

Snow means death.

It means him.

I turned away from the window before the memories could claw their way up from where I’d buried them, shoving them back into the dark corners of my mind where they belonged. But it didn’t matter. It never does. Snow has a way of dragging everything out of hiding, no matter how deep you’ve buried it.

I hate snow.

But I hate ice more.

And skating. God, do I hate skating.

My friends never understand why I always have an excuse ready when they ask me to join them at the rink. They think I’m clumsy or shy, that I don’t want to embarrass myself by falling on the ice. They don’t know that I haven’t set foot on a frozen lake in years—not since that day.

The day I let my brother die.

You see, ice is like snow. It lies. It’s cruel, deceptive, and it doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t care who you are or what you love. It will crack beneath your feet just the same.

I used to love it, you know. Ice skating. I loved the way the air felt colder on the lake, sharper against my cheeks as my skates glided over the surface. I loved the sound of blades cutting through ice, the way it echoed into the winter air. It made me feel free, weightless, like I could outrun anything.

Until I couldn’t.

Now, the thought of it sends a shiver crawling down my spine. Not the good kind—the kind that tightens your throat and pricks at your skin like needles. The kind that reminds you you’re not free, not weightless. You’re heavy. And no matter how far you run, you can’t escape what’s already inside you.

I should have known better. I should have seen it coming.

But I didn’t.

I replay it constantly, like a film strip spliced together wrong—frames skipping, blurring, jerking back and forth. It’s never the same, not exactly. My memory twists and mutates, warping with every replay until I can’t tell what’s real and what my mind has stitched together in its endless, merciless looping.

Sometimes, I see his hand. Pale and trembling, his fingers claw at the underside of the ice, so close that I think I could touch them if I just reached out far enough. I watch them scrape and slip, leaving faint streaks on the frost-glazed surface before they vanish into the black water below.

Other times, I see his face—distorted, ghostlike, a pale smudge beneath the icy veneer. His eyes are wide, wild, filled with terror that pierces straight into my soul. His mouth opens and closes in desperate, frantic motions, trying to scream, trying to speak. I can’t hear him. The water swallows every sound, muting his cries, but I feel them. I feel the words clawing at my chest, pressing into me, suffocating me.

Then there are the times when he’s not there at all.

In those memories, there’s only the ice. That jagged, gaping hole, dark and endless, like a wound carved into the heart of winter itself. The water churns beneath it, cold and slick and alive, beckoning, calling. I stare at it for what feels like hours, waiting for him to resurface, waiting for his hand, his face, his scream—but nothing comes. Just the wind howling across the frozen expanse, the trees groaning under the weight of snow, and the deafening emptiness of a world without him in it.

But the worst version? The one that haunts me long after I’ve forced my eyes open, gasping for air like I’ve been the one drowning? That’s the version where I see myself.

I’m on the shore. Just standing there. Watching.

In that version, I don’t run to the hole. I don’t throw myself down to claw at the ice or scream his name until my throat tears. I don’t even move. I’m just there—a dark, frozen silhouette, framed by the falling snow. My arms hang limp at my sides, my breath misting the air in shallow puffs, my shadow stretched long and strange against the unbroken whiteness behind me.

He’s sinking, and I’m standing.

In that memory, I don’t even try.

Sometimes, I tell myself that version isn’t real. That it’s just my guilt playing tricks on me, warping what happened into something worse than it was. But other times… other times, I wonder. I wonder if my mind is trying to tell me something, trying to unravel the truth from the tangle of fear and grief and cold.

What if that’s what really happened?

What if I didn’t do anything? What if I stood there, paralyzed, while he slipped into the dark?

I think about the cold. The way it seeps into your bones, slows your body down, turns your thoughts sluggish and heavy like wet cement. Maybe that’s what it was—shock, frostbite of the mind, freezing me in place. But no matter how many times I tell myself that, it doesn’t feel like enough.

Because the truth is, I don’t remember moving.

Not then. Not after.

All I remember is the snow falling, silent and endless, erasing everything.

And the hole in the ice, black and empty, waiting to swallow me whole.

I was seventeen. Jake was nineteen. My older brother, my tormentor, my hero. He was everything I wasn’t—brave, wild, reckless. Always daring, always laughing, always pushing me to keep up. Jake was the kind of guy everyone liked, the kind who could walk into a room and make it his without even trying. He didn’t just live; he consumed life. I hated him for that. And I loved him for it, too.

That winter, the lake froze early. The frost clung to the windows like spiderwebs, the world outside suffocating beneath layers of white and silence. Jake had this idea—like he always did. Stupid and impulsive and impossible to say no to. He stumbled in late that night, drunk on cheap beer and adrenaline, his cheeks red from the cold, and grabbed my arm, dragging me off the couch where I was trying to ignore him.

“C’mon, Ethan.”, he slurred, his grin sharp, cutting. “Let’s check out the lake. I bet it’s solid as a rock.”

I told him no. At least, I think I did. The memory is hazy, fragmented, like an old photograph that’s been torn and pieced back together wrong. Maybe I told him no, maybe I tried to fight him off, or maybe I didn’t even bother. Saying no to Jake was like shouting into a storm—pointless, exhausting.

“Scaredy-cat.”, he taunted, his voice sing-song, dragging out the words. “What’s the worst that could happen, huh? You might actually grow a spine? Might actually have fun for once?”

He laughed when I didn’t respond. That laugh—it always grated on me, needled at something deep inside. It made me feel small, insignificant. Weak. I hated that laugh, but more than anything, I hated how much I cared about what he thought.

So, I went.

The lake was beautiful that night, the kind of beautiful that shouldn’t exist. It was too still, too perfect. The moon hung high, cold and white, casting the ice in an unnatural glow. The stars reflected on its surface like a second sky, so clear and sharp they almost seemed more real than the one above. The air was so cold it felt alive, biting at my lungs, my face, my fingertips. Jake didn’t care. He never cared.

He stepped onto the ice first, his boots crunching faintly. I remember that sound. It echoes in my head sometimes—sharp, rhythmic, fading as he walked farther out.

“See?”, he called, his voice carrying across the empty expanse. “Solid as a rock!”

I hesitated at the edge, the tips of my boots just brushing the ice. The lake groaned beneath him, a low, guttural sound that seemed to come from deep within its frozen heart. It wasn’t a warning, not yet. Just a whisper, a murmur.

“Come on, Ethan!”, Jake’s voice echoed again, louder this time, more impatient.

I didn’t want to. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to stay where I was, to turn around, to go back. But then I heard it—his voice in my head, the teasing, the ridicule, the words that had always cut deeper than they should have.

So, I stepped forward.

What happened after that… it’s hard to say. I remember flashes, fragments, but when I try to hold onto them, they slip away, like trying to grab water with my bare hands.

I think he was running. Laughing, maybe. His boots skidding against the ice in wide, clumsy arcs. I can still see the grin on his face, that cocky, reckless grin that made you want to hit him and follow him all at once.

Then, the sound.

A crack. Sharp, sudden, splitting the air like a gunshot.

I remember him freezing mid-step. His grin faltered, then vanished. His head snapped toward me, and for the first time in my life, I saw fear in his eyes.

“Jake.”, I think I said. Or maybe I screamed it. Maybe I didn’t say anything at all.

And then he was gone.

The water swallowed him so fast, it didn’t seem real. One moment, he was there, larger than life, and the next, he was nothing. Just a jagged hole in the ice, black and gaping.

I know I moved. I must have. I think I dropped to my knees, crawling toward the hole, the ice groaning beneath me with every shift of my weight. I think I saw him beneath the surface, his arms thrashing, his face a pale, distorted smear in the dark water.

But the details blur.

Sometimes I remember reaching out, my fingers brushing the edge of the ice. I remember him looking at me, his eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing in frantic, soundless pleas. ‘Help me’.

Other times, I remember standing on the shore, watching from a safe distance, my feet frozen to the ground. I see myself, motionless, useless, a shadow against the snow.

Which memory is real?

I don’t know. I can’t know. My mind plays tricks on me, warps the truth into something unrecognizable. Maybe it’s trying to protect me. Or maybe it’s punishing me.

The only thing I know for sure is that he didn’t come back.

The ice closed over him, slow and deliberate, as if the lake was swallowing him whole. The silence after was suffocating, absolute. I don’t remember standing up. I don’t remember walking back. I don’t even remember how I got home.

But sometimes, in my dreams, I hear the ice cracking. I hear the water churning, the low, mournful groan of the lake as it claimed him. And I see him—just beneath the surface, his hand reaching for me, his eyes full of something I can’t name.

And I wonder…

Did I let him die?

They never found his body.

The police were baffled. They said it was the current, that the water had carried him too far beneath the ice to recover. They speculated that the thaw had broken up the surface enough to drag him deeper, far beyond where the ice had cracked. They called it a tragic accident, just another story of a winter gone wrong, of a moment of recklessness that cost a life.

They said they’d search again when the weather warmed, but they never did. The search was called off after a few weeks. They chalked it up to bad luck. Nature, they said, had taken him—nothing more, nothing less.

No one ever questioned me.

They didn’t need to.

I was the quiet brother. The one who stayed home, kept to himself. The one who wasn’t as adventurous as Jake, who didn’t chase thrills or take risks. The one who’d always been the “good kid”, the one who would never do anything wrong. No one doubted me. Why would they?

I told them he fell. I told them I tried to save him but couldn’t. I told them the ice had broken, and he went under too fast. That it happened in a blink, before I could do anything. They believed me. Why wouldn’t they?

The story was easy enough. It fit the narrative. A tragic accident. A lost life. The kind of thing that happens every year, something no one can stop. People moved on quickly, as people do. They whispered their condolences, said things like “I’m sorry for your loss”, and left me alone with my guilt.

But that’s the thing about guilt—it has a way of settling inside you, of festering until it becomes something darker, something you can’t shake off.

I thought I would feel relief once it was over, once the search was done and the questions stopped coming. I thought that when they closed the case, I could let it go, pretend it never happened. But I couldn’t.

I didn’t want to.

The truth is, I wanted him gone. I wanted him to drown. I wanted the world to stop spinning in his favor, for him to finally fall from that pedestal I’d never been able to reach. I wanted him to feel fear the way I had—deep, gut-wrenching fear. The kind of fear that makes you freeze, makes you stand still when everything inside you is screaming at you to act.

But I didn’t act.

I don’t even know if I could have. Maybe the truth is I froze, just like I had when I saw him slipping beneath the ice. But the truth feels too ugly to admit, too raw to bear. I try to push it away, bury it deep under layers of time and distance, but it’s always there. Always hovering at the edges of my thoughts, crawling beneath the surface like something that won’t stay dead.

I didn’t jump in after him. I didn’t try to save him.

I don’t recall making the decision. I don’t remember consciously choosing to stand back. It just… happened.

But then I remember his face. The way his eyes locked onto mine, wide with panic. I see it so clearly now—how desperate he looked, how his hands reached for me like he thought I could help him. How I stood there, watching, as he sank deeper, as the light in his eyes faded.

I still wonder if he knew. If he realized that I could have done something, that I could have saved him if I had just reached out. Did he see it in my eyes too? Did he see that I wasn’t going to try?

I didn’t want to be the weak one. Not with him. Not with anyone. And I told myself, over and over, that it was out of my hands. That it was the ice, the water, the current. That there was nothing I could have done.

But sometimes, in the dead of night, when I’m alone and the house is silent, I hear his voice again. Low, muffled, distant.

‘Help me’.

I can’t tell if it’s something I actually heard, or if it’s just the echo of my own guilt twisting my thoughts, making me believe I can still hear him. But it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. The weight is there, and I can’t shake it off.

I didn’t tell anyone the truth. No one will ever know what really happened that night. And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe I’d rather live with the lie than face the reality of it.

Sometimes, I think I see him.

Not in the way you’d expect, not as some ghost that drifts through walls or lingers in the corners of rooms. No, it’s more subtle than that. It’s in the way the shadows move when I’m alone. In the flicker of light that catches the surface of the ice just right, making it look like something is shifting beneath it. Sometimes, it’s in the cracks, the way the ice seems to fracture and break under its own weight, like it’s holding onto something just below the surface. And other times, it’s in the spaces between the snowflakes, like his presence is woven into every flake that falls from the sky.

I can’t escape him.

There’s a mirror in the hallway that I can’t stand to look at. I avoid it at all costs, but sometimes, I pass by it on my way to the kitchen, or when I’m too lost in my own thoughts. Every time I do, I see him instead of me. I see him there, in the glass, his face pale and distorted, his eyes wide and glassy, like the last image he must have seen before he sank beneath the water. It’s not the face I remember. It’s something else—warped, twisted, like the ice itself had stretched his features into something unrecognizable.

His reflection haunts me. It’s not the way he was before, laughing, alive, full of life. No, it’s the way he must have looked in those final moments, when he realized it was too late. The way his eyes must have searched mine, looking for help that never came. The way his fingers must have scraped against the ice, desperately trying to hold on.

He’s always watching. Always waiting.

His eyes are cold now. Empty. Like the lake that took him, like the dark water that swallowed him whole. There are nights when I wake up, shivering, and I feel it—his gaze, heavy and unrelenting, staring at me from the dark. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still feel the weight of it, pressing down on me, suffocating me.

And sometimes, I swear he speaks to me. Not in words, not in the way people do, but in other ways. In whispers, in the creak of the ice as it shifts beneath the weight of time, in the howl of the wind that screams through the trees. It’s always the same, always the same name.

My name.

Sometimes, I hear it clearly, like a breath against my ear, soft and slow. Other times, it’s faint, a murmur on the edge of my mind, just out of reach. But it’s always there, always calling me, asking me why. Why didn’t I help him? Why did I just stand there? Why didn’t I jump in after him?

I never answer.

I can’t.

Because I know the truth.

And so does he.

He knows what I did. What I didn’t do. I can feel it in the silence, in the air, in the cold. He knows I let him die, and now he’s here. Always here, watching, waiting, reminding me.

Sometimes, I think that if I could just apologize, if I could just say the words, maybe it would stop. Maybe he would leave me alone. Maybe I could go back to being normal, back to the way things were before the lake, before the ice.

But I can’t. I can’t say the words. Because I don’t deserve forgiveness. I never did.

He knows it too.

The truth hangs between us like the frozen air before a storm—heavy, thick, suffocating. It’s there in every whisper, in every gust of wind that rattles the windows. It’s in the snow that falls, endless and cold, as if the world itself is holding its breath, waiting for me to face what I’ve done.

And every time I look in the mirror, every time I feel the chill in the air, I know: he’ll never stop haunting me. He’ll never stop asking why.

Because it wasn’t the ice that took him. It wasn’t the water.

It was me.

I never left. Not really. I thought I could bury it all, hide it under the snow, pretend it was a memory that could fade with time. But the truth is, I never stopped watching him sink. I never stopped letting him drown.

Now, I feel him everywhere. In the falling snow, in the cold spaces between the silence, in the shadows that stretch too long in the dark. Always there, always waiting. Watching me, waiting for me to sink just like he did.

And one day, when the ice cracks open again, I won’t be able to run. Because it wasn’t just his life that was taken that night.

It was mine too.

And now, I belong to the lake.