Freeze Tag

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Love my neighbor.

  Well, I have two neighbors here, thought Meghan Moore. Lannie and West.

  Does this mean I have to love Lannie? That means I have to love Evil. Because Lannie is evil. She’s a poison seeping from an abandoned tank into the water supply, and no one notices until all the children on the street have cancer. How can I love that?

  I’ve always loved West. I’ve loved him all my life, and especially this year, and what do I have to show for it?

  A cold heart in somebody else’s hands.

  Show mercy and act justly.

  Show mercy to whom? Lannie’s future victims? Lannie? Myself?

  And what is justice? To do what West wants? End Lannie Anveill?

  She had come for answers, and the history teacher seemed to think that they had been given to her. The history teacher smiled happily as she packed her briefcase with papers to correct that night.

  To Meghan it did not feel like an answer. It felt like more questions.

  She left the school. The sun still shone. The square of gold was still at her feet. But she knew nothing.

  Least of all what to do next.

  Chapter 13

  THE SUN SET AND the snow began. Clouds as thick as continents rolled in, bleak and bruised. From out of those dark pain-ridden whirls came snow so white it stretched credulity. Nothing could be that white. That pure. That perfect.

  Winter deepened in one brief afternoon.

  Dark Fern Lane had never seen so much snow. It drifted thigh deep. Tires on the road surface made a whole new sound: scrunching and crunching in treads.

  It was a Friday. The rules of school nights were suspended.

  But not one child frolicked in the snow. Not one family had turned on a porch light or a garage light, and come out to roll a snowman in the dark. Not one snowball had been formed, not one snowfort built, not one angel made. No one had plucked the icicles from the porch overhang and pretended to be a unicorn. No one had gathered a plateful of the best and whitest snow, and poured hot maple syrup on it to make instant candy.

  For another generation, yard games were over.

  Those children who had been frozen like laundry — they remembered.

  They had been aware, inside their motionless bodies and their unblinking eyes. They had known. They had felt Lannie’s fingertips.

  They were staying inside.

  They would always stay inside.

  Only Meghan went out into the snow, and only then because she had seen West in his mother’s car stop for Lannie and drive away with her. Drive carefully, she had thought after the vanishing car. Don’t do anything bad. Come home safe!

  She waded through wonderful drifts, snow as deep as company on Thanksgiving.

  “Meggie-Megs!” said Tuesday delightedly. “Come on in! It’s freezing out there! You are so brave! Brown and I are hibernating till spring.”

  Meghan joined Brown and Tuesday in the family room. “Are your parents home?”

  “Nope. They’ve taken up square dancing. Isn’t that hysterical? You should see them. Dad’s wearing cowboy shirts and a bowler and Mom’s wearing a red calico skirt with ruffles.”

  Meghan wished she had seen them. It sounded so cute. She smiled, thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Trevor.

  “It’s good that they’re gone,” said Tuesday briskly. “We have things to decide.”

  Brown nodded. He sat up on the edge of the couch. Whatever they were going to decide could not be done slouching. “First,” said Brown, “how much does West actually like her?”

  Here we go again, thought Meghan. There’s no getting away from Lannie Anveill.

  “When West kisses Lannie, it looks real,” said Brown. “Is he an actor? Or does he love her?”

  “He started as an actor,” said Tuesday, “but I think it became real. That’s a danger with playing games so hard and so well. You forget it’s a game. It gets into your bloodstream.” Tuesday stood up. “Microwave popcorn anybody? Cheese or plain buttered?”

  “Plain buttered,” said Brown. “It’s not only a game, but Lannie has beaten him at it. He’s getting to be as sick and twisted as she is.”

  Tuesday brought out the popcorn. Their six hands went into the bowl together. They sat close to share. Food helps a person think.

  “I have to believe,” said Meghan, munching, “that good is stronger than evil. That somehow this will work out all right.”

  “It won’t,” said Tuesday.

  “I saw Jason,” said Brown. He crammed more popcorn into his mouth.

  “Well, there’s no helping him now,” said Tuesday. “And probably no helping West either. We have to look out for ourselves.”

  The popcorn stuck in Meghan’s throat.

  “So the question here is,” said Brown, rubbing a popcorn against the side of the bowl to slick up extra butter and salt, “how do we end Lannie?”

  The cold seeped into Meghan’s heart again. Yet another sweet Trevor suggesting that Lannie should be “ended.”

  “Could she freeze herself?” asked Tuesday. “Could we play Freeze Tag and somehow she freezes herself?”

  Brown shook his head. “If that could happen, she’d have frozen herself when she brushed her hair or put on lipstick.”

  “I’m thirsty,” said Tuesday. “Meggie-Megs, you want Coke, Dr. Pepper, cider, hot chocolate, raspberry ginger ale, or milk?”

  This was too big a decision to be executed from the family room. The three of them went into the kitchen to inspect the actual containers. Once she had seen the bottles, Meghan knew she needed water first, to wash down the salt and butter, and then she could concentrate on the hot chocolate. “Do you have marshmallows?” she said.

  “It comes with them. See?”

  Meghan saw. She would ask her mother to get that kind. “I could offer myself,” said Meghan. “I could say: Here. Freeze me. I am yours. Do not hurt other people who are not involved.”

  “Lannie’d just freeze you and leave you,” said Brown, “and go on to her next victim. You wouldn’t accomplish anything by that except to join Jennifer or Jacqueline or whoever she is on the hospital ward.”

  “I thought Lannie unfroze her.”

  “That was a while ago. There’s been another one.”

  “What did Jennifer or Jacqueline do to Lannie?”

  “Wasn’t friendly, I guess.”

  “I know,” said Tuesday. “We could lock her away.”

  “You own a jail, maybe?” said Brown. He shrugged and gave up. He found the remote and turned on the television. This was Brown’s only answer to all difficulties.

  Homework too hard? Watch TV.

  Family too annoying? Watch TV.

  Lannie too scary? Watch TV.

  It had very little to do with the history teacher’s answer to all difficulties. Mercy and justice.

  Tuesday and Meghan watched helplessly. It’s difficult to have a television on and not get sucked in. How remote, how impossible the family on the TV screen seemed. How could they laugh so hard and so often?

  We used to laugh like that, thought Meghan. Back before we knew all about Lannie Anveill.

  Beneath her feet she felt the rising and slamming of the automatic garage door, rarely used. She heard the growl of a car engine and its abrupt cessation. She heard a door slam. West is here, she thought.

  She heard a second door slam.

  “Lannie’s with him,” said Tuesday.

  Brown turned up the television volume. It might have been a weapon or camouflage. He was wrapped in a canned laugh track, safe even from Lannie Anveill.

  Feet hit the stairs, and up through the raised ranch came West and Lannie.

  Meghan’s grandmother had had an awful saying of which she was very fond: Speak of the devil, and he appears.

  They had spoken of Lannie, and she had appeared.

  No one said hello.

  Brown did not look up from the television. Tuesday did not look up from the popcorn. West did not look up from his shoes. Meghan
practiced locking her fingers together.

  Lannie chuckled.

  It was such an inappropriate sound that Meghan did look up. She caught Lannie unaware. Lannie was nervous.

  Because we don’t like her! thought Meghan, astonished to see this flicker of humanness. Lannie wants to be popular like anybody else. We’re afraid of her and we don’t want her around and it makes her nervous!

  Lannie and West dropped onto the couch opposite Meghan and Tuesday. It’s good they have two sofas, thought Meghan. It would be tricky to have to sit next to each other.

  “Turn that down,” said Lannie.

  Brown did not pretend he couldn’t hear her. He notched the volume down, and he didn’t play around, taking it slowly and being infuriating. He didn’t want to see that finger of hers moving toward him.

  The people on television giggled and sparred and chatted but you could not quite hear them; they might suddenly have become ghosts whose presence was only fractional.

  Lannie smiled.

  West looked away.

  “Popcorn?” said Tuesday brightly.

  “We ate,” said West.

  So they sat, waiting for Lannie to leave, waiting for the torture to be over. But this was Lannie, of course, who enjoyed torture, and so she was not going to leave.

  “Oh!” said Brown suddenly.

  They all looked at him.

  He sparkled, the way you do when you’ve just had a brilliant idea. “Lannie!” said Brown.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “I know what! Why don’t you and I go out?” he said. “I’d be a great date. And that way, Meghan could still be with West.”

  Meghan was so touched she wanted to weep. Brown was offering himself in exchange.

  Lannie hooted with laughter. “You?” she said. “You’re a little boy! You’re eleven years old! Get a life! You’re so pathetic, Brown.”

  “You’re the one who’s pathetic! You know perfectly well, nobody would ever date you because he wanted to!” shouted Brown. “You have to threaten them with freezing to get them to sit in the same room with you. You have to keep Jason in the car to scare everybody to death just in order to get a ride to school!”

  “West promised to like me best,” said Lannie defensively, “and he does. So there.”

  “He does not!” screamed Tuesday. “He hates you! He loves Meghan!”

  I cannot bear it, thought Meghan. I cannot go on like this. I will have to give up. I will have to have another life, with other friends.

  Meghan looked at the three Trevors as if for the last time. She thought of school and all the people she knew there — thought of scrounging among them like a bag lady, hoping to find a discarded friend for herself. She thought: I’m a sophomore and I have nobody. I have to start all over.

  “Do you really love Meghan?” Lannie asked West in a deathly cold voice. She held her hands away from her sides, like a police officer whose holster and stick make him walk funny. But Lannie didn’t need a holster nor a stick. Just a fingertip.

  “Of course not,” said West. He put his arms around Lannie. She vanished in his embrace, as small as a kindergartner. Then he kissed her hair.

  “How romantic,” said Brown. “Must be like kissing a bale of hay.”

  West did not respond to this. Nor did he even glance at Meghan, whose hair he had once loved to touch. Is he protecting me? wondered Meghan. Or has he forgotten me? I can’t tell. I don’t know.

  “Go home and get warmer clothes, Lannie,” said West. “We’ll go ice skating. It’s Friday. The rink’s open till midnight.”

  Lannie said shyly, flirtatiously, “I’m not very good.”

  West smiled. “I’ll hold you up.”

  Meghan’s heart broke.

  Did anybody ever want to hear anything else? I’ll hold you up. It’s what we all want, thought Meghan. Somebody to catch us when we’re afraid of falling.

  Oh how I want him back! I want West Trevor! We held each other up. We were a pair. A perfect pair.

  Meghan was weary. I’m going home, she thought. There’s no point in coming back here. I have to stay away and start over. By myself.

  Silently and seemingly without motion, Lannie eased herself out of the Trevor house. Lannie’s vanishing always gave Meghan the shivers.

  From across the room West said, “Never touch me again, Meghan.”

  She thought she would fall over. He didn’t have to say that! He could leave it alone, without stabbing her with those words!

  “Lannie knows we’re meeting,” West said tonelessly. “She gave me her power. If I touch anybody other than Lannie, they’ll freeze.”

  West left to get the car out again, get Lannie again, go hopelessly on with his half-life again.

  Brown watched his brother leave.

  Tuesday watched her brother leave.

  But Meghan could not bear to look at the West she would never again have, and so she watched Tuesday.

  A strange flicker crossed her best friend’s face.

  An expression both calculating and cruel.

  Meghan had to look away, and when she looked back, the expression was gone, and Meghan convinced herself she had never seen it. Tuesday — sweet Tuesday of summer nights and pink lemonade — would not look like that.

  It was the face of a cold heart.

  A frozen soul.

  Chapter 14

  SNOW FELL FOR DAYS.

  They had never experienced such weather. The sky would not change, would not back off, would not turn clear and blue. Endlessly, the sky dumped snow down upon them. School was canceled because the snowplows could not keep up with the amazing amounts of snow. After a while there was no place for the plows to push the snow, and the roads became narrower, flanked by mountain ranges of previously shoveled snow.

  Brown didn’t mind. He was the kind of person who could watch a million hours of television and then watch a million more. He just sat there with the TV on, staring. Tuesday had a “kitchen attack” and suddenly made real sugar cookies which she cut out in hearts and decorated with red glaze or chocolate chips.

  Tuesday called Meghan to see if she had any other cookie cutters because Tuesday had a lot more cookie dough and no more shapes.

  Meghan’s mother had once been given a collection of cookie cutters. They were still in the original box, lying on the original white tissue.

  So much for finding new friends, thought Meghan. She put on her layers of protection against the winter and stormed her way to the Trevors’ with her collection. She and Tuesday rolled out dough on the kitchen counter and argued whether — in February — they could properly use the Christmas tree or the Santa.

  There was a knock at the front door.

  Tuesday went to get it. Meghan took the opportunity to snitch a long thin slice of raw dough. Meghan loved raw cookie dough.

  “Hi,” said Lannie at the door. Like a normal person. A regular greeting and everything.

  Meghan pressed herself into the corner of the kitchen, where she would be invisible if Lannie came up the stairs.

  “Hi, Lannie,” said Tuesday.

  “Is West here?”

  “Not yet. He went out to get a part for his truck. He’s going to work on it today.”

  West hasn’t looked at his truck in ages, thought Meghan. Strange how a person’s only sister sees so little. You would think Tuesday would know that West is so caught between Lannie and real life that rusted trucks and stalled engines have slipped his mind. But no, she thinks he’s still down there every day, working on the Chevy.

  “Why don’t you wait for West in the truck?” said Tuesday.

  It’s awfully cold out, thought Meghan. I’m not sure that Lannie should be … what am I doing?

  Meghan shook off her thoughts.

  I’m trying to protect Lannie’s health? I don’t mind if Lannie catches cold. I hope Lannie gets such a bad cold she’s home for a year!

  “West will be back in a while and you know the first thing he’ll do is run d
own there to look at his truck,” said Tuesday.

  From her corner Meghan looked out the kitchen window. There was only one, and it was a small dark square above the sink. Mrs. Trevor was trying to grow little plants on that window, but they didn’t get enough sun, and all she had were thin bottles of water and sad little cuttings of fading greens. There had been no sunset because the sun had never been visible. The dark sky had simply grown darker, and now, in the hour before supper, the darkness had a fullness to it, as if it had finally consumed everything in its path and was ready for a nap.

  Tuesday went on and on about the truck.

  After a while, Brown woke from his television coma and joined Tuesday in the little entry between the stairs. “Here,” he said, “I’ll put on the backyard light for you.” He hit the switch that turned on the light at the bottom of the deck stairs which led up to the kitchen door. Now the snow sparkled.

  Barely, way down the sloping yard, Meghan could see the mounded tops of a row of cedars that had grown up near the truck. You could not quite see down as low as the truck. The white spires of the cedars marked the spot.

  How peacefully the snow lay. Snow covers all ugliness, thought Meghan.

  Tuesday coaxed Lannie around the house. Tuesday even went with her partway, although Tuesday had neither coat nor boots on. “He’ll be there soon,” Tuesday said twice.

  Lannie waded down the sloping yard, past the snow covered vines and hedges and underbrush. Meghan turned off the kitchen lights so that Lannie would not see her, illuminated next to the cookie dough. She could hardly see Lannie. In fact, Lannie’s shadow was clearer than the real Lannie.

  Lannie’s little body, forcing itself against the high drifts and packed snow, dipped down and disappeared from sight.

  Meghan pulled the shade over the kitchen window before she turned the light back on.

  “Now let’s set the table,” said Tuesday briskly. “Mom’s exhausted from her new job. I’ve promised to do dinner twice a week. She cut a seafood recipe out of Family Circle. Doesn’t this look yummy? You chop the onions and sauté them, and I’ll start the biscuits.”

  “What does sauté mean?” said Meghan uneasily. She was not familiar with kitchens. Her own family had take-out, or fixed meals that involved heating rather than recipes, like steak and baked potatoes.