The sky was blue. The ground, a blinding white. Small bare gray ornamental trees lined the devilstrip between the sidewalk and the road, sticking up like leafless sticks. The roads were black and slushy. When Laws found a long stretch of ice on the sidewalk, he would jump forward and skid as far as he could in his hightop leather shoes with their tractionless soles.
A girl caught up with him. Helen, in fifth grade. She was a year younger. "Are you walking home?" she asked.
"Yep."
"Me too," she said.
They walked. They heard water running along the gutters in the street, underneath clods of slush. The sidewalks had frozen and melted and frozen again. Sometimes they were frozen on top with a puddle underneath. Laws stepped on one and the ice broke through. He took off a mitten, carefully lifted up a big sheet of ice, and tossed it into the street like a frisbee. It shattered as it hit. Helen tried the same thing with the next iced-over puddle. The ice broke as she held it, leaving a little piece in her hand and the big slab falling in the snow.
"You're Stacy's sister right?" asked Laws. Stacy was a quiet girl in sixth grade, like Laws.
"Yes! Stacy is my sister," said Helen.
They kept walking. They passed nice houses, then mansions, with fancy stone walls. Sometimes the ice had turned to slush, been walked on, then the footprints froze leaving a very rough surface. It was uneven, but it didn't slip.
"Think it will be spring soon?" asked Laws.
"Don't know," said Helen.
"Last year it seemed like spring," said Laws, "and all the apple trees bloomed, then it got cold again and all the blossoms died, and there weren't many apples."
"That's sad," said Helen.
They walked.
Poking through the snow were some crocus. They first spot of spring were those purple and yellow flowers bursting through the still-melting snow. A little area around them was melted, like they generated their own heat.
"Apple trees are wimps," said Laws. "Crocus aren't. They're tough."
"Ungh!" said Helen, doing a muscle-building pose. "I say it's spring, and I'm not takin' no as an answer!"
"Ungh!" said Laws, laughing. "Hey Mr. Winter, you stick around here, I'ma gonna beat you up!"
"Ungh!"
"Ungh!"
Laws kicked a snowbank. "I'm a crocus and this snow's gotta go! Ungh!"
"Ungh!" said Helen, kicking a snowbank. They laughed, kicking snowbanks, then kept walking.
"My house is this way," said Helen, turning down a sidestreet.
"I've got a long way to go," said Laws. He continued on. Hey, he thought, I'll be able to say I talked to someone today. Mother always asks about that.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "The first spot of spring was the flower bursting through still-melting snow."