She took my hand, leading me out from the cover and onto the ground. I lay beside her as the flakes tumbled down, piling up around the outline of our bodies.

    "If you could give one line to the world," she said, "what would it be?"

    "I don't know. That's a hard question."

    "Come on, if someone handed you a megaphone, and it could reach every person in the world, what would you say?"

    My mind was blank. I hadn't ever been asked that before.

    On the other side of the street, her friends had emerged from the car. Some of them danced and spun around aimlessly while others threw handfuls of snowy powder into the air.

    "You know what I would say," she said. "I would say that when you love people, you make them human. I once heard Maya Angelou say that forgiveness restores humanity. It breathes life back into what is damaged. That's what I'd want the whole world to know: how to love."

    The snow continued to fall, but it seemed to be gentler as it kissed our faces and the ground next to us. I closed my eyes and thought about her question. I couldn't stop thinking about her friends and how unbridled they were in their enjoyment of the snow. And that's when it hit me. I said, "I think I would say that we were meant to be free."

    She turned her head toward me.

    "I like that," she whispered, "I like that a lot."