Freeze Tag

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Somewhere from the distant past she heard Lannie say, “You’ll be sorry, Meghan Moore.” Something in Meghan Moore quivered like a rabbit as the fox’s jaws close on its leg.

  “You want a reminder, Meghan Moore?” said Lannie Anveill. “Fine. Tomorrow. You will be reminded.”

  Meghan’s knees were weak. She could remember that, too. That moment when her body failed her.

  Lannie turned and walked away, vanishing in the high school crowds with the same ease she used to vanish on Dark Fern Lane.

  Meghan forced a giggle. When she took West’s hand, hers was sweaty. I always hated it when Lannie joined the neighborhood, thought Meghan. The last thing I want her to join is us. She has no right.

  West said, “Didn’t she sound like the voice of doom?”

  Meghan dropped her voice an octave. “You will be reminded.”

  They actually laughed.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS A GOOD morning. One of the best.

  In geometry Meghan learned the new formula right away and her mind glittered with pleasure. There was nothing like mastering math to make you feel like a genius.

  In history, usually so dusty and remote, the teacher read an exciting passage from an old, old journal. Meghan’s skin prickled, imagining how it had been back then.

  “Why is history important?” said the teacher. His voice was soft, uttering a sentence he wanted the students to carry through life. “Because … if you forget history, you are doomed to repeat it.”

  Where did I just hear that word? thought Meghan. You don’t hear it very often. How dark it is. A word for death and eternal sorrow.

  “Doomed,” repeated the teacher softly.

  But I have no history, Meghan thought. So I am not doomed to repeat anything.

  In Spanish, Meghan was required to read a passage aloud. For the first time ever in foreign language class, her tongue knew how to sound. She felt a wild surge of triumph, and yearned to speak with somebody Spanish.

  She could hardly wait for lunch, to tell West.

  Sometimes school frightened Meghan. Sometimes she failed, or it failed her. Sometimes it puzzled her or left her behind.

  But this was not one of those days.

  She burned with excitement. She savored the feel, even the taste of the new Spanish syllables. She planned the phrases she would use to describe the new knowledge.

  She danced down the hallway to where they always met, at the drinking fountain.

  He was there already, smiling.

  Oh, how she loved him! He was West, wide and handsome and fascinating and wonderful, and most of all, hers.

  For years she had averted her eyes from any boy she liked. All through middle school, the more she liked a boy, the less able she was to look at him.

  But she could look at West. Soak him up. Like a flower facing the sun.

  He started talking first. “Guess what.”

  “What?” They saved things for each other; tiny tales of success to hand each other at lunch, and after school, and on the phone.

  “We had a quiz in physics. Guess what I got.” West was shining.

  He wanted to be an engineer and design cars. He loved anything to do with motors or movement. “A hundred,” guessed Meghan.

  “Yes!” West hugged her with his pride. “I raised the curve,” he bragged.

  “Yeah, you toad,” said another kid from physics. He punched West cheerfully. “I was the next highest,” he confided to Meghan. “I got eighty-nine.”

  “Congratulations,” said Meghan. West’s hand on her waist was opening and closing, going nowhere and yet exploring. She loved being possessed like that — the proof of his clasp like a bracelet: this is mine, it stays here.

  “You want to get in the sandwich line or the hot line?” asked West.

  They checked out other people’s trays. The hot plate was unrecognizable. It was brown and it had gravy, and that was all you could be sure of.

  “Sandwiches,” said Meghan.

  “Sandwiches,” agreed West.

  They laughed and wanted to kiss in front of everybody, but didn’t. Still, it was in their eyes and in the way they walked.

  “Guess what,” said Meghan.

  “You got a hundred in Spanish.”

  “We didn’t have a quiz. But listen to me talk. I’m going to knock your socks off with my accent.”

  “I’m ready,” said West. He tugged his pant legs up so they could watch when his socks came off. Meghan giggled.

  Somebody screamed.

  Of course, the cafeteria was always noisy. People yelled, laughed, talked, gossiped, burped, scraped chairs, and dropped dishes. A scream was not extraordinary.

  But this was a scream of terror.

  It was the kind of scream that grabbed at the roots of your heart, and wrenched the air out of your lungs, and made you want your back against a wall.

  Five hundred students went silent, breath caught, looking for the source of the terrible scream. Eyes sped around the room like paired animals, seeking the terror.

  Meghan had a queer slicing memory, like a knife, a knife dripping with blood, and somehow it was mixed with Tuesday, and grass, and darkness, and childhood.

  The last time I heard a scream like that … thought Meghan.

  But she could not quite remember the last time she had heard a scream like that.

  West sucked in his breath. Her hand was on his back and she felt his ribs and chest expand, and felt them stay expanded, as if holding onto his lungs would keep him alive. As if there were danger of not being alive.

  Toppled on the floor, like a statue knocked over by a vandal, was a girl. One leg remained raised and off it, a long skirt hung like drapery.

  “She fainted,” said somebody.

  “Give her air.”

  “Call an ambulance.”

  Teachers and cafeteria workers rushed over to help.

  The girl was stiff.

  “She’s … sort of … frozen,” said the cafeteria monitor, backing away, as if it were a virus, and would leap free of the fallen girl and attack the rest.

  People touched the frozen girl with a single extended finger, and then pulled back, afraid, even wiping their hands off on their trousers.

  The air swirled around Meghan Moore and West Trevor.

  Old air. The air of their childhoods.

  Memory.

  The quiet of the night came back, and the softness of the summer, and the deepness of the horror.

  Meghan remembered the morning glory by the steps, whose bright blue flowers had slid into their green envelopes, saving its glory for dawn. Meghan had always wondered what morning glories knew that people did not.

  She remembered the lawnmower and the scent of the cut grass, the setting sun and the thickness of dusk.

  She remembered the calm explanatory voice. It’s Freeze Tag. So I froze her.

  “Who is it, does anybody know?” said the teachers.

  “Jessica,” said somebody else.

  The school had at least fifty girls named Jessica. Meghan did not know if this was a Jessica she knew, or a stranger Jessica.

  Meghan moved slowly, dizzily, forward. The fallen girl was still and solid. Her skin did not seem tan with summer, but icy blue with winter. Her hair stuck out from her head without regard to gravity, as if carved from ice. Her shoulders did not rise and fall with the filling of lungs.

  “She is frozen,” whispered a horrified adult.

  I didn’t run fast enough, thought Meghan. Lannie hated me.

  She remembered Lannie’s fingers, burring into her soul. She remembered being frozen. It didn’t hurt. And I wasn’t afraid, either, thought Meghan. I was just suspended. Perhaps hibernation is like that. Bears survive the winter, don’t they? They just turn down the heat until spring.

  But a human would not live till spring.

  “It must be a seizure,” said a teacher, voice trembling. He tried to move her into a sitting position, but the body did not bend. It was sic
keningly stiff, as if she had died yesterday and gone into rigor mortis. “Call an ambulance!”

  The girl’s leg stayed high in the air, like a gymnast’s photograph.

  West had had to say please. West had had to beg.

  Lannie had said, You must always like me best.

  And West repeated like a little boy learning a little lesson, I will always like you best.

  He never thought of Lannie again, let alone liked her best, Meghan realized. He liked cars best, and football best, and then finally he liked me best.

  West set the lunch tray down, his face pale, upper lip fringed with sweat. “I remember,” he said. His voice was vacant.

  Meghan was afraid to look around. What if she met Lannie’s eyes? Those terrible bleached eyes could illuminate a dark yard, like headlights of a car. Perhaps Lannie could freeze you with her eyes.

  West murmured, “She’s over by the windows.”

  Meghan forced herself to look over by the windows.

  Lannie stood alone, her little wispy frame very still. As Meghan had soaked up the sunshine of West’s greeting, Lannie soaked up the darkness of Jessica’s freezing. Her smile was tender. Her head was tilted to the side, an artist admiring her exhibit.

  West mumbled something unintelligible. He shoved both hands deep into his jeans’ pockets.

  He was separating himself from Meghan, and from the disaster, and even from the future.

  Meghan stared at those wrists, at those pockets, and saw a different West: a West who did not want to face this. A West who was going to stand very still and hope it all went away.

  She was aware of a deep disappointment in West. His broad shoulders and his fine mind did not match his strength of soul.

  It was a thought too terrible to allow. Meghan knocked it away.

  Lannie slid between them, materializing as completely and silently as a chemistry experiment. Meghan’s body jerked with fear. Lannie was so close, Meghan flinched. Don’t touch me!

  She gave Lannie another inch and Lannie smiled into the air, but did not bother to look at Meghan. She did not bother with greetings or small talk either. She never had. “We are going out now, West,” she said firmly. As if West were a lottery ticket, and Lannie wanted to buy in.

  West jammed his hands deeper into the pockets.

  “This is your fault, anyway,” Lannie said. “You should have discussed this last night, after I talked to you. I warned you this would happen.”

  Meghan was afraid, and fear made her stupid, and stupidity made her rude. “Lannie,” she said sharply, “we had better things to talk about than you.”

  In the short space of time before Lannie retaliated, Meghan saw that Lannie actually experienced emotion. It had hurt Lannie’s feelings that West and Meghan had not talked about her last night. Lannie looked up at West with a kind of grief and sorrow.

  Lannie knew nothing of love. Yet she ached for it; all the world ached for love. Somehow Lannie could not understand why she couldn’t just take West and walk off with him. Sort of like shoplifting a lipstick.

  In the distance came the peculiar rise and fall of an ambulance siren, as harsh and upsetting as chalk on a blackboard.

  “Lannie,” said Meghan, “undo her. Jessica didn’t do anything to you.”

  The revolving lights on top of the ambulance cast on-and-off rainbows through the slanted cafeteria windows. When a backboard was slid under Jessica, the body remained stiff and splayed.

  “Get out of here, Meghan,” said Lannie calmly. “West is mine now.”

  She’s in love with him, thought Meghan. She always has been. How could I have forgotten that? We marched our love up and down Dark Fern Lane, showing off for the world. We forgot that Lannie is part of our world. “You can’t do that to Jessica,” said Meghan softly. “Undo her.”

  “It isn’t a true demonstration if I undo her,” said Lannie. “You would relax. You must never relax around me, Meghan. Now go away. West is mine.”

  “Lannie,” hissed West, “what did Jessica do to deserve that?”

  “She didn’t do anything.”

  “You can’t go around freezing people!” said West.

  “Of course I can,” said Lannie, with the annoyed air of one having to point out the obvious. “Now if this was not enough for you, I’ll do another.”

  “No!”

  “Actually,” said Lannie, “I could freeze lots of people. They would close the school down. They would think they had a weird epidemic.”

  “I would tell them what you were doing,” said West.

  Lannie put her thin little arm around his big waist. She hugged him affectionately. “Would they believe it?” she said, smiling.

  Across the silent frightened room a teacher said, “It must be some kind of virus. One of those new diseases. Like Legionnaire’s Disease.”

  “Unfreeze her, Lannie!” hissed Meghan.

  “No. Come on, West. We’re eating together.”

  West actually took a step with her. Actually picked up the lunch tray on which his and Meghan’s sandwiches lay.

  “Let’s talk about this,” said Meghan quickly.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. West promised to like me forever, and forever is here.”

  Forever is here.

  The words strapped Meghan down. Lannie would have West for eternity, while Meghan would go to school alone and grow up and move away.

  “Actually I think I promised to like you best,” said West.

  “That, too,” said Lannie happily.

  “Undo Jessica!” shouted Meghan.

  The cafeteria turned to stare in their direction.

  Lannie shook her head gently, disassociating herself and West from Meghan’s crazy behavior.

  “You’re a virus, Lannie,” said Meghan.

  Lannie had had enough of her. “And you’re frozen, Meghan,” said Lannie, reaching out.

  Chapter 3

  WEST JERKED LANNIE BACKWARD. Her finger missed Meghan by a molecule’s width. Lannie’s hand trembled, stuck out into the air, touching nothing. The finger pointed evilly on, as if it could freeze by invisible waves. But it could not. Meghan could move and breathe.

  Not easily. Fear tightened her up. Her stomach was cinched in, her ribs were rigid, her ankles were stiff. Meghan managed a single half step away. It was not enough. A river between them would not have been enough.

  She was going to freeze me! thought Meghan. She was tired of me and that was the answer.

  After a long time, she wrenched her eyes off that shivering fingertip — was it shivering because it delivered a freeze? shivering because it was still straining forward? — and looked at West.

  How large West was, how slight Lannie looked against him. She was as insubstantial as a tissue, and yet he had to struggle to hold her. West seemed both stunned and certain. Of what was he certain? Meghan did not know. She was certain of nothing now. She did not see if she could ever be certain again.

  What weapon was this — this threat Lannie could carry out?

  How would any of them behave normally ever again, when that finger could …

  “I like you best, Lannie,” said West. His voice was calm. It was even friendly. It did not sound like a lie. Anybody listening would have thought that West Trevor did, indeed, like Lannie best.

  Meghan was no longer stiff with fear but limp with shock. Was West acting? If so, he was a brilliant actor. Or was he impressed? Memory returned to Meghan Moore. I’m impressed, Lannie, he had said that evening on the grass.

  Power is impressive, she thought. But he has to like me best!

  “We’ll have lunch over by the windows, Lannie,” said West in his firm adult voice. “And on our way over, Lannie,” he said, giving an order, sounding like a parent, “you’ll brush against Jessica. It’ll count. It’ll undo it. The ambulance won’t have to take her. Right?”

  Lannie pulled her lips together in a little girl’s pout.

  How strange she looked. A moment ago Lannie had been as
ancient as evil, as timeless as cruelty. Now she was a little girl, lip stuck out because she had to do something she didn’t feel like doing.

  “I mean it, Lannie,” said West. “I can’t hang out with you if you’re going to freeze people.”

  Meghan suppressed an hysterical desire to laugh.

  “Okay, fine,” said Lannie irritably. She snuggled herself up against West and walked so close to him she might have been standing on his shoes to walk, the way Brown used to love to do with his big brother when he was about three.

  It was good that everybody in the cafeteria was so absorbed by Jessica’s condition. Nobody saw the amazing combination of Lannie and West.

  Actually, thought Meghan, a combination of Lannie and anyone at all would be amazing. She’s always alone. Everybody’s afraid of her.

  Meghan’s hair prickled.

  Why? Why were they afraid? What experiences had other people in here had with Lannie Anveill? What had happened off Dark Fern Lane?

  Meghan closed her eyes, blotting out her imagination, and in those few brief moments, West and Lannie brushed by the stretcher just as it was sliding out the cafeteria door and toward the waiting, open ambulance.

  Jessica tried to sit up on the swaying stretcher, miraculously regaining consciousness and muscle.

  “Oh, thank God!” cried the teachers.

  Lannie smiled, accepting this description of herself.

  Lannie and West really did sit together for lunch. They even talked, and faced each other, and handed each other napkins. West actually seemed to listen to Lannie, and when it was his turn, he seemed to be telling her important things, things worth focusing on.

  Meghan could not seem to function. She could not figure out whether to sit alone, or find an old friend, or hide in the girls’ room, or go back to class early.

  My perfect day, thought Meghan Moore. My wonderful classes, my fluent Spanish, my lovely, lovely West.

  Meghan hurt somewhere inside. How could West be so easy about this? How could he saunter across the cafeteria, relax with that terrible hand so close to him — touching him, even?