Frozen Beauty

by Lexa Hillyer

  Our one class together.

  And now that I’m here, well . . . it hasn’t gone great so far.

  Allow me to recap for you:

  Mrs. Gluckman comes into the classroom, and I’m pretending to stare at my phone. Patrick rolls in a minute late and sits down behind me, as always. My neck is basically burning under his gaze, but when I turn around he’s like, doing math in his notebook and doesn’t notice.

  I swivel back quickly and pull out my diary and act like I’m furiously taking notes, like I’m a normal human being and not LOSING. MY. MIND.

  Then, somewhere around the section on parabolas, I feel a TAP on my shoulder.

  He’s never tapped my shoulder before.

  So I turn around again, and mouth “What?”

  Then he handed me this note. A tiny folded thing from his notebook.

  All it says is: my b.

  Okaaaay. Now what? My body is basically on fire. I’m trying to figure out what the right response is . . . nbd? No, that would be untrue. Sorry I froze?

  Ugh, too pathetic.

  How about: I liked it.

  Clearly I’m not admitting that.

  Okay, here it is:

  Well, it was a slow day anyway.

  I just turned around and gave him the note.

  Zomg. He’s handing me back another one.

  Okay, hang on, it says:

  not for me. ☺

  All right now I can’t stop grinning, because that is so cute.

  Uh-oh. Mrs. Gluckman is staring at me GTG!!!!!!!

  “I assume if you’re enjoying the lesson that much, Miss Malloy, you’ll be happy to share your focus coordinates with the rest of the class.” Mrs. Gluckman was eyeing her sternly over the top of her glasses.

  Lilly’s smile disappeared.

  And when the bell rang, Patrick shot out of there.

  Great.

  The rest of the week continued in an awkward blur.

  Kit was being mysterious and elusive and pretending not to be, Mel was obsessing over what Dusty and his friends thought of her, and Patrick passed occasional notes to Lilly in math class, all of which were basically indecipherable and noncommittal in every way.

  Meanwhile, Lilly was trying really hard not to worry about Dar: the bags under her eyes seemed deeper and darker than ever, and she refused to say anything about the Halloween party or why she was crying in the bathroom.

  On Wednesday, she cornered Dar alone after school. Mel was going over to Dusty’s to do homework, so Lilly met Dar at her locker and waited while she opened it to exchange her books before leaving.

  “Do you want to come over?” Lilly asked. “Boyd can probably give us a ride home.”

  “I have to meet, um . . . I have stuff to do.” Dar grabbed a stapled paper from the top shelf and a little folded note came flying out after it, but she snatched the note midair and shoved it back into the locker. Then she furtively stuffed the paper into her bag like it was contraband, not looking at Lilly.

  “Okaaaay. I just feel like we never hang out anymore.” She stared at her friend. Dar was definitely being cagey, but why?

  “We just hung out on Saturday,” Dar pointed out. She finished gathering the rest of her things, and they walked toward the snack machines at the end of the hall.

  “True,” Lilly said, popping a dollar into the machine and clicking the button next to Diet Dr Pepper. “About that . . .” She cracked it open with a hiss and offered Dar the first sip.

  To her relief, Dar took it. “Look, I’m really sorry I was such a disaster,” she said, after slurping a few sips and passing it back. “I’m sure it was embarrassing. I drank too much of that punch—it was stronger than I thought, especially on an empty stomach.”

  “Come on. You don’t have to apologize, it wasn’t a big deal. I mean it was . . . I mean, I was worried, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I don’t think anyone else noticed. Especially since Boyd kind of stole all the attention.”

  Dar snorted, shaking her head. “I’m so glad he punched Fred, I just wish he’d punched him in something other than the face.”

  “Ew.”

  Dar rolled her eyes and Lilly experienced a bit of relief. Maybe everything was normal. Maybe everything was okay.

  By now the hallway had cleared out and they were alone, standing with their backs against the wall and their feet jutted out slightly in front of them, not far from the art room.

  “So,” Lilly said, drawing up her courage. “I saw you kiss Toma. During the game.” She said it quietly—almost a whisper—but still she could see Dar tense up.

  “Yeah, it was just a game.” Dar shrugged, not making eye contact.

  “Is that all? I’m just asking.”

  Dar shrugged again. “What do you want me to say? I mean, I enjoyed it. If that’s what you were wondering.”

  “Oh,” Lilly said, trying to find the right words. “I just meant . . . did that have anything to do with why you were crying in the bathroom later?”

  Dar shook her head, more to herself than for Lilly’s sake. “Lilly. I kissed a girl. I’m trying to figure things out. I have no idea what Toma thought of it and I’m not sure I even care. It’s not really about that. And yeah, I had too much to drink. I was crying because I was throwing up at stupid Allison Riley’s stupid mansion. That’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  Dar turned to her and gave her a quick hug. “And thanks again for getting me home. Really. I owe you.”

  Then she walked away.

  I owe you? Since when did they talk that way to each other? Friends didn’t owe each other anything. Friends just expected each other to be there. Friends just were there.

  And they told each other everything they were feeling.

  Didn’t they?

  Standing alone in the hallway, a crazy sensation overcame Lilly. She looked around covertly, to make sure there were no stray teachers or administrators wandering the halls.

  Then she walked hurriedly back down the hall.

  Back toward Dar’s locker.

  When she got there, she punched in the code from memory and the door swung open with its customary squeak.

  Lilly looked quickly over her shoulder again before fumbling through a few random items—a half-used pack of gum, a purple pen, lip gloss, and an old apple that was starting to get soft. She found the tiny note she was looking for.

  It looked an awful lot like the notes Patrick had been passing her in geometry.

  She unfolded it.

  Next time call my cell, it said, in his now-recognizable scrawl. And there was a phone number.

  Lilly stood there in shock, her hand trembling.

  Patrick was leaving notes . . . for Dar.

  And Dar had Patrick’s number.

  Getting all the way out to the Donovans’ wasn’t that hard. She told Boyd she was hanging out with Jenny Albot and Toma Ramirez, then asked Mrs. Albot for a ride into town, then took the trail through the arboretum—it was less than a mile that way.

  She’d tried calling the cell number in the note a couple times, but no one answered, and she’d been too nervous to leave a message.

  Still, Lilly was beginning to regret coming at all as she stood shivering on the Donovans’ porch. The front of the old white clapboard house was in more disrepair than she’d realized. Dried leaves skittered across the front yard in the cold November wind like small animals scurrying for shelter.

  In the time it took to get here, she’d had a chance to think long and hard about that note in Dar’s locker. It could have meant anything. Dar certainly wasn’t interested in Patrick—she wasn’t into boys, period; she’d told Lilly that. Even though she had been acting strangely, that didn’t prove anything specific. Or if something was going on between them, then it just proved Patrick didn’t kiss Lilly because he wanted to—he kissed her to trick her, to distract her, maybe.

  She wished he’d picked up the phone. Then again, dealing with it in person actually seemed better—mayb
e she’d at least be able to figure out if he was lying or telling the truth.

  Now, well . . . she had come all this way.

  And, after all, it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go. Mel was with Dusty. Dar was off being secretive. Tessa was studying AP Bio like her life depended on it, Kit was probably working her volunteer route again, and Boyd, well, she felt weird about spending any more time alone with Boyd, now that she knew his secret.

  She rang the bell again.

  No one answered.

  She was just lifting her fist to knock on the front door when she heard a crackling sound, like someone approaching her from behind, through the leaves.

  “Psst.”

  She gasped and swiveled around, her heart racing all of a sudden.

  Patrick was standing there in the corner of the yard, holding a rake with the handle side touching the ground, prongs in the air. His blue eyes were shaded by his dark hair. He was wearing his army-green jacket—the same one he’d lent her at the dance. Outside the dance. She wondered if it was his only coat. It wasn’t warm enough for this weather.

  Out of nowhere, she had a rush of emotion, something like sympathy and sadness and a crazy dose of hormones, all mixed together to create this strange desire to kiss him again.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She swallowed. “I. Sorry. Um. I tried to call first, but . . .”

  “My phone’s inside,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “So what did you need?” He shifted his weight, like he was eager to get back to whatever he’d been doing before she arrived.

  “I need to, um. I need to talk. To you, that is.”

  He paused for a second, just looking at her. “Come on,” he said at last, nodding slightly to the side.

  So she followed him around the yard to the back of the house, which was much darker than the front, shaded on two sides by trees from the arboretum—their small cul-de-sac basically bottomed out at the park. Which sounded nice in theory, but it was sort of desolate.

  Lilly wrapped her arms around herself and gritted her teeth. “Can we go inside? It’s too cold out here.”

  “Sure, but we should go in the back so we don’t bother my aunt and uncle.”

  “Are they really your aunt and uncle?”

  “Great. Great-uncle. Et cetera.” He held the back door open for her, then made sure it closed quietly behind her before leading her up a creaky set of stairs.

  When she entered his room, she once again wondered if coming here was a mistake. First of all, she was in a guy’s bedroom. And no one even knew she was here.

  Anything could happen.

  Second of all, it was Patrick’s bedroom, and just standing in the doorway, smelling the cedary, citrusy boy scent of his stuff, was making her go slightly stiff and brain-dead. It struck her that she really didn’t know him at all. Not even a little.

  Not like Boyd, whose favorite everything she could list in a second: favorite ice cream, salted caramel; favorite movie, Ghostbusters; favorite board game, this epically long one that involved settlers and wheat and coal and stuff.

  What did Patrick do for fun? For that matter, what did Patrick do not for fun? She simply had no idea.

  Of course, other guys she’d kissed, like Rohan Reddy, never told her their favorite board game or movie either. But somehow they seemed like they’d be easy to guess.

  “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t. What was this, the fifth-grade fall social?

  He shrugged, taking off his jacket and throwing it over the edge of the bed. “Not really a dessert person.”

  Oh.

  He half sat, half leaned on a windowsill—probably because there was nowhere else to sit in here other than the bed. The room was tiny. “Is that why you came here? To find out about my culinary preferences?”

  “No, that’s not it.” I came here to find out about your romantic preferences, actually, she wanted to say. Instead, she cleared her throat, wishing there were a chair. Standing was just making this more awkward. “I came here to find out what’s going on between you and Darcy.”

  He folded his arms over his chest, which had the effect of making his biceps look bigger. “Honestly, I’m not trying to be a dick, but that’s not really your business.”

  “Yes, it is!” How was it that he always had this ability to make her feel vulnerable and soft one second, then furious and annoyed the next? “She’s my friend and something’s wrong, and she won’t tell me what it is, but I know you’re involved somehow. Are you . . . are you, like, secretly dating or something?”

  He laughed. She didn’t know what to make of that. “Why would Darcy date me? Isn’t she gay?”

  Lilly’s jaw dropped open. “How . . . how did you—did she tell you that?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I just have good intuition.” Her jaw must have been practically on the floor, because he laughed again. “Chill out, she told me.”

  “But she hasn’t told anyone.” Lilly felt dizzy, as if he’d just told her the world wasn’t round after all, and wasn’t rotating through space but falling fast—down down down—like an elevator whose cables had snapped.

  “Look, she told me she was overwhelmed lately and that her dad is always calling her to give her grief about her grades, which is ironic since her mom is mostly just concerned about her lack of dating life and what the neighbors think. I just put two and two together. I’m right, though, aren’t I?”

  “Well, that’s not the point,” Lilly replied, still trying to recover from her surprise. “If you’re not dating, then why did you leave your cell phone number in her locker? And what were you doing in her locker on the night of homecoming—because I know now that I did see you closing her locker. Are you a drug dealer or something?” As she said it, she realized it had to be true—there could be no other explanation. And now Dar was caught up in some sort of horrible substance-abuse cycle about which Lilly knew nothing. Poor Dar!

  But Patrick just scoffed. “I hear Jay Kolbry’s your guy for that sort of thing,” he said with a smirk. “Here, Lilly, sit down,” he urged, standing up and drawing her by the shoulders toward the bed. The sheets were striped flannel, rumpled at the sides. “Take off your coat. Relax for a second, okay?”

  She sat down.

  “Do you really want to know why I left that note? I’ve been doing her homework. Not all of it, just writing a few papers here and there. We both figured it was easier to do drop-offs like that than risk being seen hanging out in public. I pretty much assumed she didn’t want to be seen near me since I’m a social pariah at Devil’s Lake, but whatever. So she gave me her locker combo. No big deal.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, sitting back down on the window ledge. “Easy cash. It’s what I used to do back in my old school. On the sly, of course. Wouldn’t want the jocks getting wind of the fact that I have a brain or anything.”

  “No, I meant, why would Dar pay you to do her homework? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I can’t answer that. We have gym together. She saw me writing a paper at the back of the weight room. I think she’s just . . . stressed lately. That’s what she told me. I figured it wasn’t my business to pry.”

  “So you’re definitely not selling her drugs.” She ventured a small smile.

  “Nope.” He smiled back.

  “And you’re not . . . you don’t like her. In that way.”

  He shook his head. “Are we all cleared up here?”

  “Not exactly,” she said slowly. “I still want to know something. I want to know . . . why you kissed me last weekend. At the store.”

  She could swear he was blushing, which gave her some satisfaction. “I’m really sorry about that, I swear,” he said, shaking his head. “I have no idea what came over me.”

  “Yeah. That was weird.”

  “I was totally out of line. I promise you I’ll never do anything like that again.”

&nbs
p; “Oh. Okay. Yeah. Um, thanks.”

  “I don’t want you to think I don’t respect you. I mean, I don’t really know you very well, but I do. Respect you. So, I didn’t want you to think that.”

  Lilly’s breathing was shallow, and she felt like she was talking on autopilot. “All right. I, um, respect you, too.”

  “Cool.”

  “Cool.” She shifted her weight, and his bed creaked beneath her. “I guess I should probably call for a ride home or something.”

  “Do you—”

  “What?”

  “No, nothing, never mind.”

  “No, what?”

  “Oh, I was just going to say, do you want to stay for dinner? My aunt—my great-aunt—makes really good lasagna. Great lasagna. Sorry, bad pun.”

  “You’re inviting me to dinner?”

  “No, no, forget it.” He looked over his shoulder briefly, like the trees outside might be listening.

  “Wait, so now you’re disinviting me to dinner?”

  He turned back to her with an awkward laugh. “I mean, you can stay, if you want. Dinner probably won’t be for another hour.”

  “Do you want me to stay?” she asked, her voice coming out thin. She cleared her throat again. The air up there must’ve been really dry.

  “Well . . . the truth is, you might be a little bit too distracting.” He gestured to a couple of textbooks that were open on the floor next to the bed. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “What, like writing other people’s papers for a living?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Lilly sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re just like my sisters. And Boyd.”

  “What do you mean? I’m not like that guy. I don’t trust him.”

  Lilly raised an eyebrow at Patrick. “You don’t even know him.”

  Patrick folded his arms. “He’s sort of possessive of all of you.”

  “He’s like a brother to us,” Lilly said, feeling weird about it, as though her giddy romp through Allison Riley’s house not even a full week ago must read across her face like a glaring sign.

  “I don’t buy that,” Patrick said, moving from the window ledge to the bed and sitting down next to her. He leaned toward her slightly. “Are you in love with him or something?” Then, smug with his guess, he folded his arms and leaned back against his propped-up pillow, so that he was facing her, one knee pulled up in front of him and the other foot on the ground.