Perhaps the only feeling better than being warm is to warm up after you have been freezing. To put wet feet up against a radiator or near the fireplace, to snuggle under a fluffy blanket after long walk in the snow, to wrap cold hands around the cup of steaming tea when first, unexpected frost finds you unprepared & bites mercilessly.

    Tom could only imagine the last of those comforting sensations when he was reading about it or watching people doing it. For an unknown reason, from the day he started existing, his tiny hands were cold. Cold to the point of hurting anybody who he touched. His mother used to tell everybody how a doctor did not believe her when she complained about shivering rushes of chill in her stomach during pregnancy. Now everybody could see that she was not a lunatic, that the baby was a cause of it. While she might be normal, her son certainly was not.

    It is difficult to be different in nearly every circumstances. Trying to deal with it in a town of roughly five hundred inhabitants – difficult does not even start to describe it. Once little Tom ceased to be a novelty for adults, it was time for a kindergarten. His condition was well known to all the children who, from day one, called him Tommy Coldhand & his true surname was not to be used ever again. Not that it was particularly creative nickname, though it was unarguably self-explanatory & on point. Days spent in school mixed with those in various hospitals up to third grade. After that, Tom’s parents discouraged by lack of diagnosis & son’s growing resentment for mittens & gloves, gave up.

     Schoolmates were not explicitly hostile towards the boy, though never inviting, so he got the message. He was afraid to play with others anyway after giving a frostbite to a colleague during the game of tag. It was not like anybody could catch it from him & besides hands, the rest of him was perfectly orderly – still, keeping aside was sparing a lot of stress to everybody. Tom tried to pretend to be a superhero but found none potentially positive ways of using his ‘power’, so it became clear it was not a power after all but a weakness.

    The cold was getting more severe while Tom was growing older. Growing was also his resentment for little, suffocating town, for being known as cold-handed freak to everybody, for primitive jokes involving word ‘touching’ in many variations that only teenagers can come up with, the pitying looks & more often eye-rolls from his family as if they wanted to tell him ‘Oh, come now, get over it already’. Like if it was a whim or a prank. 

    September 1st, last year of school, a girl joined his class. Any new kid in town (and there were not many) has been greeted with enthusiasm. Anybody who could stir up the monotony of a young social group was more than welcomed. And so Eve made her entrance to the new world on already good terms but then she won everybody all over with her smile, self-confidence, long golden hair and sparkly brown eyes. She was like a beam of sunshine – Tom thought & felt deeply uncomfortable with that comparison.

     One day after school she chased him down the street, shamed him for being the only one not talking to her yet & fired:

     – So, tell me, if you’d lick your hand, would your tongue stick to it?

     Tom found himself startled but it was clear that she meant no harm & teased him more than tried to be mean. Besides, the joke amused him a bit.

    During next couple of weeks their walks from school became daily occurrence & in the middle of October, Eve took Tom’s hand into hers like it was nothing. She did not seem to get hurt nor to be afraid. But Tom certainly was – for the first time in his life, he felt warmth on his hand. He could not say a word. Eve put her other hand on his cheek for just a moment, yet long enough for him to feel burning heat. Maybe they would never be able to heal themselves entirely but at least they could give each other helping, soothing hand.