daughter’s room to shut off her alarm so she could sleep in.
It was almost eleven when Ginette woke up. And she panicked a little when she saw the time and hopped out of bed and stumbled into the hall trying to figure out why she had slept so late.
“Mom?” she called.
“Oh! I was just about to wake you, sweetie!”
“What’s—”
“Snow day!” Ginette’s mom raised her arms in the air, fists clenched, as if she had won something.
Ginette looked out the window and saw all the snow and smiled. Snow days are unexpected gifts of free time and fun. A snow day on a Friday is even better, because it makes for a three-day weekend.
“I’m gonna go check in on Mémé,” continued Ginette’s mom. Mémé was Ginette’s grandmother. “And then I’ll probably head in to work, if the roads are good.” Ginette’s mom was a server up at the Snowmobile Club, which would have plenty of business on a snow day. And she went on to tell Ginette not to eat crap and lay around all day, and Ginette rolled her eyes a little and said she wouldn’t. And then her mom said she wanted her to shovel the roof and the driveway and a path to the propane tank—and to ask Pete if maybe he could help her. And Ginette said she would even though she didn’t want to shovel, because that would eat into the free time the snow day had given her. And it wouldn’t exactly be fun.
“And then you and Pete can go over to Mémé’s and help her shovel out,” suggested Ginette’s mom. And she grabbed her coat and her bag and headed out.
And Ginette made herself some Life cereal for breakfast. With chocolate milk. Which her mom would definitely think was crap. And then she watched a little bit of a game show and some of a soap opera, because that’s what she did when she was home sick or when it was a snow day.
And then she called Pete and asked him if he’d come over and help with all the shoveling she had to do.
About an hour later, Ginette and Pete were shoveling off the flat roof of Ginette’s mobile home.
And then they shoveled her driveway and a path to the propane tank so Mr. Pelletier could deliver more gas so Ginette and her mom could stay warm.
And then they went over to Mémé’s and shoveled her driveway and cleared a path to her garage. And they brought in five bags of wood pellets from the garage so Mémé would have enough fuel for the week to keep her house warm.
And then Mémé fed Ginette and Pete a late lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup. And they all wondered if a late lunch should be called dunch or linner. And decided that linner was more accurate, since a late breakfast was called brunch—but also decided that dunch was much funnier.
After dunch—or linner—they went over to Pete’s and shoveled out the mailbox at the end of his driveway. And shoveled a path to the oil fill so Mr. Pelletier could deliver his heating oil, too.
And then they went tubing on the hill behind Pete’s house.
And then they made pizza with Pete’s mom and dad. And ate it for dinner.
And then they played chess.
And Ginette won. And Pete sulked a little.
And then Pete’s mom asked them what they were going to do their science projects on, which were due on Monday.
Pete had chosen to do his on map projections. And no one quite knew what map projections were, so he explained, “The Earth is a globe, right?”
And everyone said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, and when you try to represent its three-dimensional surface in two dimensions, it creates distortions. Like, if you draw a map on an orange, say, with a marker, and then peel it and flatten it out, the images at the ‘poles’ get distorted—they get bigger. Which is why Canada and Russia and Greenland look so giant on maps. So I’m gonna talk about that.”
Pete’s dad fake-yawned and groaned, “Snoozefest,” and he grabbed his son and gave him a noogie to let him know he was kidding and everyone laughed and Pete’s mom said, “Guess somebody’s gotta think about … maps.” And then she asked Ginette what she was going to do her presentation on, and Ginette said, “The northern lights.” And Ginette’s mom said, “Ooh!” And Ginette explained that the northern lights appear when massive storms on the sun shoot streams of tiny charged particles