When Winter Met Summer Ch. 3

Anna sat down at the lunch table and a giant sigh escaped her lips. Her first day at a new school and she was already setting herself up as the same klutz she had been at her old school. Thanks to Elsa, she had been able to get to class on time, granted her arms were still stiff from holding the blonde so tightly, but that was the only good thing that had happened so far. As soon as she got to class, she stumbled over her own two feet and ended up being caught by the teacher. She had backed up shyly and quickly shuffled over to the only empty desk in the classroom where she gracelessly sat half on and half off of the seat and stumbled onto the floor.

That was just first period. Third period had gone by decently enough; after all, what trouble could she get into in the Art room? Fourth period had also been fairly simple, minus the fact that she spilled a vinegar solution all over her lab partner and causing a Bunsen burner to nearly set off a fire alarm.

Second period, however, had been the worst. She had no idea why she was still required to take a physical education class. She didn’t have to take one last semester when she was at Corona High, but that was there and this was Arendelle High where they apparently expected their students to be in good shape.

The gym teacher had been merciless. He made them all run a full mile just as a warm up; she hadn’t gotten three-fourths of the way when he finally called her over to where the group was listening to the instructions for the next objective. Next he had them all climb the rope, and she had felt her insides turn to mush at the mention of rope.

Yes, the rope, her old nemesis. She had failed many times at climbing that accursed braiding of strange material in elementary and middle school, so she was not looking forward to having to do it in high school. What was worse was that she had to climb after the fattest kid in the class. The rope had been covered in disgusting sweat, which already made her weak grip even less stable. She had gotten maybe a fourth of the way before plummeting down to earth, landing on five people as she collided with the mat.

Finally, there was the obstacle course. She had been required to hit a ball off of a stick with a plastic bat, do twenty push-ups, run three laps around the gym while jumping over hurdles, and do something called “kareoka” with a partner down the gym and back. She had no idea what kareoka was, but she saw a pair of students demonstrate it and she immediately hated it. She could barely run sideways as it was. There was no way she was going to be able to run sideways while holding hands with someone in front of her and alternate her steps to match her partner.

However, there had been some kind of mercy placed upon her. It was like God himself, as much as he was obviously enjoying her torment, decided that she had been through enough. She never thought she could be so happy.

There was a mountain standing in front of her in line. He had jet black hair and spoke in incomplete sentences. A lot of the other students were making fun of him because of it, even though he was the teacher’s assistant. He had wound up the plastic bat and cracked the ball right into the teacher’s head, sending the man to the hospital in an ambulance.

The boy, Marshmallow is what most of the senior class seemed to call him from what she had heard, had cried for a solid twenty minutes while apologizing in broken sentences with the deepest voice she had ever heard. Everyone in her class started picking on him then. They threw dodge balls at him and started calling him names. Anna had heard enough within the first minute of the abuse and stood between the class and the sniffling upper classman.

No one had taken her seriously at first, but when she pelted one of the baseballs at the leader of the group and hit him square in the crotch they backed off. Three years of softball had taught her something useful. One, balls were deadly weapons, and two, she had perfect aim.

She had initially thought that the leader of the onslaught had been cute. His name was Hans and he had dreamy eyes and red hair that put her strawberry locks to shame. He even had some strange facial hair growing just at the bottom of his sideburns. But once he had gotten the whole class, minus Anna, to turn on the upper classman, all fondness she had for the boy instantly went out the window.

After the whole ordeal was over, she had gone over to the boy still sniffling on the floor and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I know what you did was an accident. Don’t be sad.”

The boy had looked up at her then. He had the most child-like, crystal blue eyes she had ever seen. She could have easily drowned the boy in hugs in that moment just for how adorable he was.

After wiping his eyes, Marshmallow stood up, towering nearly two heads over the sixteen year old. “You stop bad students from hurting me?” he gruffed in his lower than bass voice.

Anna smiled and nodded. “Of course I did! I can’t let people bully one of my friends, can I?”

Marshmallow beamed a child-like smile at her and wrapped her in a bone crushing hug. “Friend!”

The strawberry blonde could feel her lungs in the back of her throat as her intestines somehow managed to sink lower in her gut. She struggled to breathe as she gently patted the mountainous boy’s shoulder. “Strangling…Marshmallow, you’re….crushing…friend…”

Okay, so maybe two good things happened to her that morning. First, she met an absolutely gorgeous girl who she could tell was going to be her friend. Second, she made a friend out of the lovable lug of a senior.

Ever since gym class, Marshmallow had followed Anna everywhere. He walked and listened to her vent to him about how crummy her morning had been, minus the Elsa incident, as she made her way to her locker to grab her backpack. He would reply in one or two word sentences and try to tell her something in broken speech.

They seemed to always see each other between classes after that. Well, more she saw him and had to jump over the sea of students for him to see her. Finally when it came time for lunch she had jumped on his back and he gave her a piggyback ride all the way to the cafeteria, through the lunch line, kneeling down so she could punch in her code while he held their trays, and over to the table where he apparently sat with his two other friends he had yet to mention. She had slid down his massive back like a little girl down a slide and collapsed in one of the chairs.

That was her morning. Now she was sitting with a giant at one of the senior tables in the cafeteria, and she felt so cool! She was the only sophomore in the whole school who even got along with any of the seniors, much less sat with them.

She and Marshmallow were eating happily, grumbling at each other through mouthfuls of food, when a skinnier boy who was far shorter than the giant sitting across from her suddenly jumped out from behind the goliath.

“Marshmallow,” he exclaimed. “How’s it going, bro? How’s the grub today?” He set his tray down to Anna’s left and froze.

Anna felt an uneasy feeling settle in the pit of her stomach. This guy must have been another senior. What if he wanted her to leave the table? Where would she go? She had somehow managed to make an enemy out of her whole class in the first half of the day. She would have to sit by herself like some social outcast!

Just as the freckled sophomore was contemplating how to get out of this mess, the skinnier boy with black hair and equally dark eyes smiled and shouted happily. “Hi! I’m Olaf and I like warm hugs!” He pulled the confused girl into a vice grip hug.

“H-Hi, Olaf,” Anna managed to breathe after she was released from the older boy’s death grip. “I’m Anna.”

Olaf’s eyes shimmered. “Oh! You’re the new girl who put five people in the infirmary during second period!”

Anna flushed bright red. Word sure got around quick at Arendelle High. She hadn’t expected the tales of her screw-ups to spread until tomorrow.

“Yeah,” Olaf continued, “you’re also the girl who stood up for my little brother!”

The strawberry blonde’s eyes widened. “Wait, what? Your little brother? How old are you?”

Olaf laughed a high pitched chortle. “I’ll be eighteen in four months.” He pointed to Marshmallow. “We both will. We’re twins, just not identical twins. I was born first, and he came second.”

“O-Oh! That makes complete sense!” Anna laughed. It didn’t actually make a lot of sense, but it was an explanation nonetheless.

“Yeah!” Olaf exclaimed excitedly. “And Elsa’s birthday is next week! You should totally come with us to celebrate! I’m sure she would love to have you there!”

That was the first time in her life that Anna had ever done a spit-take. Milk spewed from her mouth and nose as she coughed. “E-Elsa?”

Olaf nodded vigorously. His expression suddenly dropped. “Oh, wait; don’t tell me you don’t know who Elsa is. Oh, no! Don’t tell me you’re listening to what everyone on campus is saying about her! Look, don’t listen to what everyone else says. She’s not an Ice Queen! She’s one of the nicest, warmest people ever! Only second to her older sister, but hey she had to learn somewhere, am I right?”

Anna nodded. She had heard the rumors about Elsa all day. People often called her cold and emotionless. Even her own cousin, Kristoff, a senior at Arendelle High, looked like he had just soiled his pants when he saw her and Elsa get off of the “Icemobile” as the student body called it. He had even made it his point to find her after their first class to completely gush.

“Holy SHIT! That was Elsa Winter! The Ice Queen of Arendelle High! How the Hell did you manage to get a ride on her snowmobile! Wait, how did you two even meet? Was she actually smiling? I had no idea she was even capable of human emotions! Hey, if you guys end up being friends, do you think you could talk her into letting me take her sled for a ride? That thing’s a BEAST!”

She had almost slammed her locker door into the larger, older, blonde haired boy’s face because he was so close to her. It was irritating that so many people gave Elsa such a bad rap. She really was nice, a little distant and slightly awkward when it came to her emotions and other people from what she could tell from that morning, but really kind and sweet.

The pigtailed girl had told her older cousin just that, and that if he wanted to ride Elsa’s snowmobile he would have to ask her himself. He had made some remark about how she would probably freeze him solid if he even went up to talk to her face-to-face. The sophomore had intentionally closed her locker door on Kristoff’s baggy, black vest in order to leave him behind while she walked to her next class.

“I’ve met Elsa,” Anna said without thinking. “I think she’s really cool! You know, not in like the Ice Queen frozen heart cool, but in the totally awesomely amazing cool!”

“Geez, you’d think you had a crush on a girl you just met,” a light hearted voice teased.
Anna spun around and smiled. “Kristoff!” She jumped up and hugged her big, lovable cousin around the neck. He wasn’t anywhere near as large as Marshmallow, but he was still very large for a boy. He was just as lovable as Marshmallow too. He often reminded the young ginger of his golden retriever, Sven. So, for years she had called him her big, fluffy golden retriever; the fact that he had bushy blonde hair and scratched behind his ear like a dog didn’t help him either.

“Are you going to be nice now?” the younger girl asked sternly. An adorable furrow of her eyebrows caused the older boy to laugh.

“Yes, yes, and I’m sorry,” Kristoff apologized. “I was just so shocked to see the Ice Qu-…Elsa actually show some emotion that it threw me for a loop.” The golden haired boy turned to the two boys at the table. “Hey, Olaf, hey Marshmallow, what’s up?”

Olaf waved excitedly as Marshmallow smiled through a mouthful of food. “Hey, Kristoff, how’s it going, man? I haven’t talked to you in a while! We were just talking to Anna about Elsa’s birthday party next week. You want to come too?”

Kristoff grimaced slightly. “Sorry, I…uh…I have something else going on-”

“He would love to!” Anna interrupted.

The large blonde suddenly grabbed his little cousin by the arm and turned her so that they were facing away from the twins. “What are you doing, Anna?” he whispered heatedly. “I don’t want to go to the Ice Queen’s birthday party. No one does! Those two,” he pointed to Olaf and Marshmallow over his shoulder, “are literally her only friends in the whole school. No one even gives them the time of day either!”

Anna glared at her cousin. “What is up with you? Those three are so nice and caring, and yet you’re treating them like they have the plague! Come on! The fact that Elsa, Olaf, and Marshmallow only have each other as friends just means that I’m going to be their friend even more. You can either join me, or try to explain to all your super cool varsity sports buddies why your little cousin is hanging out with the Ice Queen and her lackeys.”

Kristoff stared at his younger cousin’s mischievous smirk in complete shock. She had him pinned against the wall. He was the captain of the football team, the wrestling team, and the track team. If he hung out with the Ice Queen on her birthday, he would almost immediately be thrown to the dogs if someone found out. If people found out that his little cousin was hanging around the icy trio by herself, he could only imagine the rumors that would go around about his precious little cousin. There was no way he could deal with the guilt of having Anna’s name dragged through the mud like that. At least he had a reputation to help hold him up already, she didn’t.

A disgruntled grunt escaped his lips as the blonde pulled his hair.

Anna leaned in even closer. “Who knows? Maybe if you go to the party, she might just let you drive that beautiful sled of hers.”

She knew this was a complete lie. The snowmobile belonged to Elsa’s sister for one, and she had no idea how she took to strangers driving her machines. But she knew her cousin had a bad itch when it came to driving snowmobiles. He was the regional snowmobile racing champion. Trophies littered his room. If this didn’t seal the deal, nothing would.

Kristoff’s eyes widened as the beautiful fantasy of him ripping through the snowmobile trails on the Ice Queen’s BearCat from the Arctic Cat distributor caused him to visibly drool all over his chin. It was one of the most powerful universal snowmobiles. A sled like that was more than he could ever afford, and if he could afford it he could put the money towards something more important, as his parents put it.

The blonde boy took a deep breath and turned to smile at Olaf awkwardly. “Actually, you know what? I completely forgot that my thing isn’t for another two weeks, as my kind and loving little cousin reminded me. I would love to join all of you at Elsa’s birthday party.”

Olaf, Marshmallow, and Anna all squealed happily. Kristoff could already feel his social status declining, but he had to do it. This was his one chance to have the opportunity to drive that amazing sled. And if it made Anna happy, who was he to deny her?

“What’s everyone squealing about?” an inquisitive, yet oddly cold voice asked.

Everyone turned towards the sultry voice only to see the Ice Queen herself standing by the table with one hand on her hip and the other holding a lunch box.

A warm, tingling feeling suddenly spread throughout Anna’s body as she saw the girl who had almost hit her with a snowmobile that morning. God, she was even more beautiful now that she wasn’t covered in winter clothing! She was wearing a light blue, denim long-sleeved shirt that had the sleeves rolled up to her elbows with a form fitting turquoise shirt underneath, and her legs were clad in a pair of gray skinny jeans that disappeared into a pair of durable, black winter boots. The strawberry blonde couldn’t help but eye up the curves that the new outfit revealed, and she noticed that she really liked these curves.

“Elsa!” Olaf leapt over the table and pulled the icy girl into a hug. “Good news! Kristoff and his cousin, Anna, said they’d come to your birthday party next week! Have you met Anna? She’s new here!”

At the mention of Anna’s name, Elsa blushed slightly and her Ice Queen mask immediately melted. Her gaze passed over the small group until she saw the familiar, freckled face from this morning. A soft smile coveted her lips and she hugged Olaf back.

“We’ve already met, Olaf,” the platinum blonde informed in a royal tone of voice. She cast a quick look over at Anna and the red head felt as though she was about to faint. Did the so called Ice Queen of Arendelle High even know what kind of face she was giving her, or what it was doing to her?

A confused look suddenly dawned Elsa’s features. “Wait, party? I don’t remember ever saying I was having a birthday party.”

“Well, DUH!” Olaf teased; his tongue was hanging from his mouth as he gave the dumbest expression he could. “Marshmallow and I were going to throw one for you! Don’t worry, though. We’re not going to have it until after your celebrate with your sister. We know just how important it is for you two to celebrate each other’s birthdays with each other.”

Elsa stared at the floor sadly for a minute before she quickly composed herself and turned her attention to Anna and Kristoff. “And you two are going along with this?” She focused on the blonde boy to her left and her icy demeanor built up around her. “I was under the impression everyone on the football team was either afraid of me, or hated my guts. Aren’t they the ones who completely trash my property every Halloween? Why would the varsity captain want to attend my birthday party?”

Anna’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head and she spun to stare at Kristoff. The whole football team trashed Elsa’s property every Halloween? No, that couldn’t be right. Her cousin was kind and sweet, like an overgrown golden retriever. He wouldn’t do something so mean. Would he?

A bead of sweat rolled down Kristoff’s neck as he stared into the Ice Queen’s icy glare. He could feel his lungs filling with ice the longer he stared, but unfortunately what she had said was true. Every year he and the team would go to the Winter-Wolf’s house and trash everything they could find in the yard, but a few of them, himself included, would always go back the next day and offer to help clean up. It wasn’t because they felt bad about Elsa cleaning up, but they did feel bad about making her sister, Ceili, clean the mess they made.

It also didn’t help that the older sister was a complete bombshell. Elsa was very beautiful too, almost as attractive as her sister, but she just didn’t have the same warm personality her sister had. That was what sold Ceili to more people than the Ice Queen standing in front of him.

The blonde glanced at his little cousin out of the corner of his eye and immediately wished he hadn’t. The look on Anna’s face was one of complete shock and disappointment. He could just read the question in her eyes.

“You wouldn’t do something that horrible, would you? You’re supposed to be the nice guy. She’s just talking about the rest of the team, right? Not you?”

Kristoff swallowed hard and chuckled awkwardly in an attempt to keep good spirits up. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. I guess I want to try and make up for not being able to reel in my team this year when they tried to trash your place. I’m their captain. I should set an example and try to make amends.”

Elsa looked the jock over from head to toe and back again. She didn’t believe a word he had said, especially since she had personally seen him break a window on her car this last Halloween. If it weren’t for the fact that Anna looked as though she was about to burst into tears, she would have called him out on it. But the thought of seeing such an innocent, joyful girl being heartbroken because her view of her cousin was just shattered caused the Ice Queen to feel an uncomfortable twist in her heart.

“Well,” the platinum blonde began, “I suppose you are not as bad as the rest of your team. You have been the one to lead a few of the players back to my house the next day to help clean up. I can at least say that I am thankful for that, so I would be honored if you and Anna would come to this so-called party Olaf and Marshmallow are planning. It would be a good chance for me to change my appearance towards the school as well.”

The football player sighed heavily as a great weight was lifted from his shoulders. Anna had immediately squealed and jumped up and down while hugging Olaf, Marshmallow was laughing while clapping his hands, and Elsa, Kristoff noticed, was actually smiling as she watched the strawberry blonde and the stick figure with black hair start planning things for next week. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have thought that the Ice Queen actually looked…attractive.

Kristoff had been so engrossed in his own silly idea of Elsa, the mistress of ice and snow, being attractive that he had not noticed said girl slowly move closer to him. It was only after he felt their shoulders touch that he realized just how close they were. A fiery red blush immediately painted his face.

“Keep this in mind,” Elsa warned coldly. “If I catch you or any of your other jock followers on my property like that again, you’ll be having more than just a few wolves running after you.”

Kristoff felt his blood run cold. She had seen them? Not only that, but she had sent those giant dogs of her sister’s after them. A familiar stinging sensation spread through his right thigh where one of the dogs had nipped him.

“I could have mentioned how the wrestling team and the track team also tend to pull “pranks” on my house every year,” the Ice Queen continued, “but I didn’t want your little cousin’s opinion of you to completely shatter into a million pieces. From the way she looks at you, I can tell she thinks very highly of you, so I suggest you try a little harder to keep your lackeys away from my home. Am I clear?”

Sweat was building on the athlete’s brow. He swallowed the lump in his throat and grunted a bitter response. “Crystal clear, Ice Queen.”

Elsa’s eyes held the slightest bit of sadness at the only too familiar nickname that everyone used to mock and berate her, but the look was short lived. She patted the varsity captain’s shoulder gently and smiled with fake warmth. “Good,” she sat down at the table next to Anna and Marshmallow.