Frost
Marianna Baer
Leena Thomas’s senior year at boarding school starts with a cruel shock: Frost House, the cozy Victorian dorm where she and her best friends live, has been assigned an unexpected roommate—eccentric Celeste Lazar.
As classes get under way, strange happenings begin to bedevil Frost House: frames falling off walls, doors locking themselves, furniture toppling over. Celeste blames the housemates, convinced they want to scare her into leaving. And although Leena strives to be the peacekeeper, soon the eerie happenings in the dorm, an intense romance between Leena and Celeste’s brother, David, and the reawakening of childhood fears all push Leena to take increasingly desperate measures to feel safe. But does the threat lie with her new roommate, within Leena’s own mind… or in Frost House itself?
From debut author Marianna Baer, Frost is a stunning and surprising tale of suspense that will have readers on the edge of their seats
Marianna Baer
FROST
For my mother, with love
PART ONE
Chapter 1
BEFORE I LIVED THERE, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary. It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples. Hidden enough that I didn’t even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard. I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member’s house. Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings; this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor. The kind of place a family would live. The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves: Come inside, come inside….
When I realized that the house was actually a tiny dorm, that my friends and I could be that family for our final semesters, I knew I’d discovered our school’s very own Shangri-La. I couldn’t escape the reality of senior year at ultracompetitive Barcroft, but at least my home life could be a fantasy.
Over the summer I kept thinking what good luck it was I’d stumbled upon Frost House that day. If I’d believed in anything more mystical than textbook facts back then, I might have wondered if it had been fate. I have no idea, now, if fate exists. But I do know one thing about the day I found Frost House:
Good luck had nothing to do with it.
The afternoon we moved in, a late-August storm turned the surrounding leaves into a rain-whipped, electric-green frenzy. Frost House waited in their midst. A little old lady.
“Isn’t she sweet?” I said to Abby as I eased my car up the narrow driveway, branches scraping the windows on either side of us.
“Sweet?” Abby said. “Maybe a couple hundred years ago.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of shabby chic?” I turned off the engine of my equally ancient Volvo station wagon. The windshield wipers died; Frost House melted into a blur. Abby and I glanced back at the carful of stuff we had to unload.
“Let’s register first,” I said. “I’ll just check if Viv is here, in case she wants to ride over with us.” I also couldn’t wait to see my room. I’d been picturing how to decorate it for weeks—my nightly fall-asleep ritual on the pullout couch at my dad’s.
Shielding myself with an armload of cotton tapestries, I splashed up a brick path to the side door. Unlocked, luckily. I stood in the snug entryway, smelled the fresh paint fumes, and wiped the rain off my glasses. Music—The Black Keys—pulsed in the humid air. I called Viv’s name up the staircase in front of me, then realized the bass vibrations were coming from a suite of rooms on the ground floor, tucked in the rear. Strange. Abby’s and Viv’s bedrooms were upstairs. I was the only one living back there for the next few months.
I passed through the common room—pausing to appreciate the glistening, milk-white walls; the comfortable couch and armchair; the mini-fridge and microwave—and down a short hall, music getting louder with every step: Let me be your everlasting light…. On the right, my bedroom door gaped wide. Cardboard boxes, duffels, and garbage bags littered the floor. Piles of colorful clothes covered one of the beds, which was made up with a silky violet quilt and sunshine yellow pillows.
Classic Viv. She’d obviously mixed up our room assignments.
Sensing movement on the other side of an open closet door. I laid my tapestries on the second, unmade bed. The pounding bass line camouflaged my footsteps as I crept around boxes and bags toward my unsuspecting housemate. I waited for a moment in a spot where we still couldn’t see each other, only the thickness of the door between us now, and then sprang—
“Boo!”
“Jesus!” A guy spun around. Something fell from his raised hands. I reached out, caught it. Owww. A sharp corner of the poster-sized frame had stabbed my palm.
“What the hell?” The guy—dark hair; olive, freckled skin; about my age—took the frame from me and set it on the floor. “Are you crazy?”
“Sorry,” I said, my palm throbbing but not cut. “I thought you were—”
“Wait a minute.” He edged past me and turned off the speakers. The air took a second to recover. “Thought I was what?” he said. “In need of a heart attack?”
For a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. Then he smiled, brows raised above his heavy-lidded, intensely blue eyes. Whoever he was, he didn’t go to school here. I’d have noticed.
“No,” I said. “Thought you were someone else.” Duh, Leena.
Now he laughed and rested his hands on his hips. “I figured. I’m Celeste’s brother. David. I transferred to Barcroft this year.”
Celeste. I knew only one—Celeste Lazar, the eccentric art star of our senior class. After he said it, I recognized the delicate lines of her face mirrored more roughly in his: wide forehead, curved cheekbones, firm chin. His nose was more prominent than hers—high-bridged, Roman.
“Oh. Cool,” I said as if he’d explained anything pertinent. “I’m Leena. And, unless I am crazy, this is my room.”
David’s smile faltered.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said quickly. “The campus is confusing. I can drive your stuff to the right dorm.”
“They didn’t tell you?” he said.
“Tell me what?”
“Man, I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.” He ran his hand through his short hair and shifted his weight to his other foot. “Celeste broke her leg.”
“Oh? That sucks.” A cold tingle began in my fingertips. There could be no happy reason I needed to know this.
“Yeah, her room was supposed to be on the third floor of some other dorm. So they decided that since your roommate is away for the semester, and your room is on the ground floor …”
The blood drained to my feet. “So Celeste is living here?” I said, sitting on the closest bed.
“Well, yeah. For one semester. But it’s not like they’re kicking you out.”
I nodded and concentrated on an acid-green, zebra-striped silk dress lying next to me. How could I have thought this stuff belonged to Viv? Or to a guy?
“Try to contain your excitement,” David said.
“I’m just surprised.” I forced myself to look at him and attempted a smile. “Where is she?”
“She had a thing at the hospital today. She’ll be here tomorrow. It’s a bad break. Really messed up the bone.”
“What happened?”
He hesitated. “She fell off the roof.”
“God.” An image of Celeste crumpled on the ground flashed in my mind.
“Trying to get one of these birds’ nests she’s been collecting,” David explained, answering my unspoken question. He didn’t sound quite sure about it, though, and I wondered if there was more to the story. Knowing
Celeste, there probably was.
A muffled ringtone came from over by the door. “Speak of the devil,” he said. “She can always tell when I’m talking about her.” He pulled a cell out of a backpack and disappeared into the hallway. “Hey. Everything okay?” was the only thing I heard before his footsteps receded into the common room.
I stared out a window. Branches drooped and swayed under the heavy rain.
Celeste Lazar. Living here.
A vise squeezed my chest. The same feeling I’d gotten before every chem lab last year, only tighter.
We’d been partners. The mood of the period depended entirely on what was going on in Celeste’s life that week—always a new, convoluted drama: a fight, a hookup, trouble with a teacher…. I’d spend the seventy-five minutes listening to her stories while trying to keep her distraction from causing some sort of fiery accident with the Bunsen burner and chemicals. To make it worse, I was never sure what Celeste actually thought of me. One day, she brought me a gift to thank me for advice I’d given her: a chocolate-chili cupcake from the best bakery downtown. As we walked out of class, me happily holding the box with my exotic treat inside, I asked about her plans for the weekend. “None of your damn business,” she’d snapped. Just like that, I’d become some random, nosy stranger.
And now we were roommates? I’d chosen Frost House to escape any drama.
Leaves swam together in my watery vision, melding into a solid plane.
A crash shook the silence.
I turned. The print David had leaned next to the closet had tipped over. I moved from the bed and picked it up. It was framed with Plexiglas, so hadn’t broken. I studied the image for the first time: a close-up of Celeste’s face—a self-portrait, I assumed. She was lying in dirt, eyes glassy, lips slightly parted, hair fanned out. A beetle—a big beetle—wrapped in and trailing a thin white satin ribbon walked across her forehead. The ribbon wound its way down and into Celeste’s mouth.
Ugh. I rested the frame back on the floor, leaning it so the image faced the wall.
Before I could move away, though, a chill reached out from the mostly empty walk-in closet. It felt good on my hot cheeks. Not harsh and spiky, like air-conditioning, but soft, as if the door led to a deep, cool basement. I took a step inside the shadowy space, lifted my hair and let the chill skim the back of my neck, closed my eyes and breathed in. A fragrant scent—woody, musky, fermented—filled my lungs. In a strange way, the scent appealed to me, warmed me inside as the cool air stroked my skin. I imagined stepping further into the darkness and closing the door, leaving behind this unexpected new reality.
“Did something break?” David said.
I let my hair fal . “No.” I faced him and placed a hand on the closet’s doorframe. “This is mine.”
“What?”
“This closet. It’s mine. Not your sister’s.” The words shot out, sharp and unplanned.
David frowned slightly. “The other closet’s across the hall. With Celeste’s leg, I figured she should have this one.”
I scanned the room, even though I knew he was right. “Oh. Sorry,” I said, taking my hand off. “I forgot this was the only one in here.”
What had possessed me to be so rude? “Of course she should have it,” I added.
As I said it, though, a word echoed in my head. Mine.
Chapter 2
I HURRIED TO THE CAR and slid into the driver’s seat, rainwater beading around me on the crackled pleather upholstery. Abby had turned the rearview mirror to face her. She stared up at it and flicked a mascara brush across her lashes. Her warped copy of the play Buried Child lay spread-eagled on the dash.
“What took you so long?” she asked, glancing over at me. “I ran through all of my lines while you were in there.”
“Can you grab an ibuprofen from the glove compartment?” I massaged the bridge of my nose.
“What? More shabby than chic?”
“No.” I waited until she handed me the orange tablet, washed it down with a swig of flat soda followed by a cherry Life Saver, and told her about the addition to our Frost House family.
“Hold on,” she said. “Celeste is Green Beret Girl, right?”
I nodded.
“Isn’t she completely nuts? She’s the one who burned all
José’s clothes last year!”
“Not all his clothes,” I said, remembering the story that had been the talk of campus for a few days. “Just his boxers.”
“Whatever.” Abby waved her hand dismissively. “And, you know, it doesn’t even matter if she’s crazy. They can’t just give you a random roommate senior year. It’s not right.”
I turned on the engine. As the windshield wipers brought Frost House back into focus, an elongated shape moved past a downstairs window. David, I assumed. I rubbed the almost invisible mark on my palm. He probably thought I was a selfish jerk after that closet incident. But I couldn’t help having been unnerved by his news. The administration shouldn’t just go around changing rooming assignments.
Like Abby said, it wasn’t right.
Before backing into the road, I readjusted the rearview mirror. I met my own gaze, and my eyes stared back with a controlled confidence the rest of my body didn’t feel.
“I’ll talk to Dean Shepherd,” I said. Then, in a stronger voice, “I’m sure she’ll understand.”
The registration room in Grove Hall swarmed with people. I hugged, kissed, and how-was-your-summered my way to the R–Z line at the check-in table. “Our last first-day-of-Barcroft ever,” Whip Windham said as we waited for our information packets, echoing the predictable, clichéd thought I’d been having ever since I woke up that morning.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying not to be maudlin. We still have a whole year.”
“Dude.” Whip raised one eyebrow—his signature look. “I meant it as a good thing. A friggin’ awesome thing.”
Oh. Of course.
Sometimes I forgot that most people were actually anxious to graduate. I understood the feeling in general, but didn’t quite get their “good riddance” fervor. While there were things about Barcroft I was sure none of us would miss—curfew, off-campus restrictions, tofu schnitzel at the dining hall—most of us would go to college, so it’s not like we’d be free of classes or teachers or Sisyphean mountains of homework.
Maybe, I thought as I stared at the sunburned back of Whip’s neck, maybe the difference between me and him was how ingrained I felt here. My parents had just gotten a divorce when I arrived in ninth grade. And although they liked to say it was amicable—neither of them had cheated and they’d used a mediator instead of lawyers—it had hit our lives like a wrecking ball. I’d had to build a new life; Barcroft was the foundation. Of course I was worried about leaving.
“Leena Thomas,” I said when I reached the guy handing out manila envelopes. I took mine and slid out the multicolored sheets of paper. My housing assignment form had a note in familiar, flowing handwriting: Hello, L! Please call or stop by and see me ASAP. Looking forward, NS.
NS—Nancy Shepherd: Dean of Students, faculty advisor to the peer-counseling program I’d started, my mentor. I’d been looking forward to seeing her, too. I wanted to hear about her summer camping trip, which had involved an encounter with a “feroshus beer,” according to my postcard from her seven-year-old daughter, who I babysat during the school year.
Now, though, instead of asking about that (Budweiser? Corona?), I had to start the semester by bothering her about Celeste.
Shaking off the thought, I slipped my registration papers back in the envelope, stood up straighter, and searched the crowd for Abby’s walnut-brown curls. A shriek rattled my eardrums.
“Leena-bo-beena!” Vivian Parker-White loped toward me, all long limbs and flowery skirt and skin tanned from weeks in Greece.
“I’ve missed you!” I said, my smile buried in a rain-wet mass of coconut shampoo smell as we hugged.
“No,” she said, “I’ve missed you!” I squeezed even
tighter, trying to make up for months of only virtual communication. Boarding school had spoiled me—I was used to having my friends around me all the time.
As Viv and I broke away from our hug, Abby materialized next to us. She bounced up and down. “Can we show now, since we’re all together? We don’t have to wait till we’re back at the dorm, do we?”
“I almost forgot,” I said. “Here, though?” A couple of sophomore boys stood right next to us. One of them grinned when our eyes met, as if he knew I was considering unbuttoning my cutoffs.
“No chance,” Viv said. “Mine’s not for public viewing.”
“Come on.” Abby grabbed our hands. She pulled us through the registration room, into a black granite hallway, and down a set of polished concrete stairs, chattering about her horrible class schedule and the “Green Beret disaster.”
“It’s not a disaster,” I said, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it. I’d go see the dean in a bit. Now, I just wanted to enjoy this moment, wanted to see if my guesses were right—an Aries symbol for Viv, and a butterfly for Abby. At the end of last semester, we’d made a pact to get tattoos over the summer and had forbidden further discussion about it until the moment of revelation.
Abby pushed open the door to the girls’ bathroom.
“Who goes first?” Viv asked.
“Me,” Abby said.
Doing a mock striptease move, she lowered the right strap of her tank top. Two hollow-eyed faces stared up from her shoulder blade. A comedy/tragedy drama-mask thing. One face smiling, one frowning, the expressions exaggerated almost to the point of dementia.
“Ooh, I love it,” I said. “Really well drawn.”
“Exdese,” Viv agreed, using the dorky word for excellent we’d made up freshman year. “And very appropriate, of course.”
“It’ll be even more appropriate if you become bipolar,” I pointed out.
“Ha, ha.” Abby flicked me on the arm. “Who’s next?”
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