Frost

by Marianna Baer

  No mystery there. “Freak out. Accuse Abby. Get even more paranoid.”

  “So she’d get scared? Would anything constructive come from it?”

  I imagined Celeste reacting and didn’t see it leading anywhere good. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, so that solves that. You don’t tell Celeste.” Her hands went back to their rhythmic motions.

  “But maybe we should be reporting it, to the dean or something?”

  “It’s not like they’re going to fingerprint the frame and windowsills to figure it out.” Kate paused for a moment, her thick, black brows lowered. “You’re sure someone would have had to come in through a window? It seems so … unlikely.”

  “The door was definitely locked,” I said. “And only me, Celeste, and David have keys.”

  “David has a key?” she said, leaning forward. “You don’t think he—”

  “No!” I said immediately. “Not to mention, he was with me.” A thought—David’s lateness to meet me at his dorm—flickered through my mind. But I forced it out. There was absolutely no way.

  “Okay.” Kate sat back again. “So, about telling the dean or whoever. I don’t think you should. They wouldn’t investigate; all they’d do is ask Celeste who doesn’t like her. And we know the answer to that.”

  “Abby.”

  “Right. Now—”

  “Kate, you don’t think there’s any chance she’d have done this stuff, do you?” I asked in a quieter voice. I knew the answer, just needed to hear her say it.

  “Abby?” She screwed up her face, annoyed. “Please. I can’t believe you’d even ask me that. Now, let’s take option two, which, from all you told me, is much more likely.”

  Option two: Celeste threw the photo herself.

  Kate continued, “If that’s the case, you’ve actually done all you can do. You already asked her what happened to the photo. If she did it herself and pretended not to know about it, maybe she was just embarrassed. In any case, there’s some reason she didn’t want to tell you, so …” She shrugged. “What else can you do?”

  I sat for a moment and processed what Kate had said. Basically, she was saying that no matter what happened to the photo, I should let it go.

  “But … I feel like I should be doing something,” I said. “Take some sort of action. I don’t want to feel like there’s all this bad stuff going on in my room and I’m just sitting here all la-di-da.”

  Kate stared down at her mandala for a minute. “Well, you can’t keep Celeste out. But you could lock the windows, too, I guess. With the doors and the windows locked, if it’s someone else, they won’t be able to get in.”

  I nodded. Lock the windows. I could do that.

  “You knew she’d be like this,” Kate added. “You told me right from the beginning, it’s always something. So maybe you need to just let her have her little dramas. You’re not your sister’s keeper. Or David’s sister’s keeper. Sit tight and ignore it as much as possible until I come flying home to you.”

  “You have no idea how much I wish for that day,” I said.

  We talked for a little while about other stuff, and then Kate had to go. Before she logged off, she said, “Oh, and Leena? Would you just jump David’s bones already?”

  She was gone before I could respond.

  On Mondays, I had a free period after Calculus and would help carry Celeste’s books to Rel-Phil. That afternoon, as we walked across the quad, the sky was blue and the air was knife-pleat crisp. Barcroft looked like a picture in a prep-school catalogue, students everywhere, lounging on the expansive lawn, playing Frisbee, taking their time getting to their next classes.

  I felt so much better after talking to Kate. She was so logical and unflappable. I was going to take precautions—locking the windows and doors—but otherwise, it was out of my hands. I still felt angry that it was happening in my home, but at least I didn’t feel the weight of solving everything.

  “Good day for KSM,” Celeste said. Kill, Screw, or Marry. Whenever we saw a group of three people—sitting together, walking together, whatever—we each had to pick one to kill, one to sleep with, and one to marry.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Students sat in clusters all over the wide marble steps of the chapel as we walked past. We’d just KSM’ed a group of freshmen when a new threesome sat down: Simone Dzama, Mr. Bartholomew, an English teacher, and David. My heart did a nervous jump at the sight of him; my body had a flashback to how it had felt on the roof.

  “Exempt,” I said immediately.

  “No one’s exempt,” she said. “You know the rules.”

  “Come on, Celeste.”

  “Don’t be so uptight.” She stopped walking. “I’ll even go first. It’s an easy one. Kill Simone, marry Mr. Bart, screw David.”

  I looked at her with a grimace.

  “What?” she said. “I’m not going to kill or marry my own brother.”

  She was trying to shock me. I should have been used to it by now. “Okay,” I said, “Kill Mr. Bart, sleep with Simone, marry David.”

  “If that’s your plan, you better hurry up.” Celeste gestured with her chin toward the steps. “You’ll be out of luck on both counts.”

  Simone had a hand on David’s shoulder and was laughing, her long legs—with striped knee socks and bare thighs—stretched out in front of her. David stared, apparently mesmerized. A lump settled in my stomach.

  “So, what’s up with you and Whip?” I asked, turning away. Because of the distraction of her burn and the photo, I’d never asked her last night.

  “He looks surprisingly good in body paint,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “So, you had fun?”

  “Jesus, Leena.” Celeste glared at me. “David’s obviously already using you to do his dirty work.”

  My face flushed. “He worries about you.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s the goddamn problem.” She turned toward the steps and called, “Hey! David!” He looked in our direction and she beckoned him over. Crap. What was she planning?

  David said something to Simone then grabbed his bag and walked over.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “You guys are annoying me,” Celeste said, gesturing at the two of us. “That’s what’s up. All this delay. illy-dally, twiddle-twoddle. It’s annoying.”

  The flush in my cheeks flared hotter. “Celeste—”

  “No. Wait a minute.” She reached into her bag I was holding, brought out a bunch of papers, and began shuffling through them. “I don’t know what the holdup is, but … here. A catalyst.” She separated out a sheet of white paper. David reached for it but she hid it behind her back and turned to me. “The other day, David brought me papers he’d picked up for me at the office,” she said. “But a couple of his own things were mixed in the pile.” Now she held out the sheet for us to see.

  The syllabus for David’s English class.

  “So?” I said.

  Celeste turned the paper over.

  On the back, David had done a bunch of doodles: a remarkably realistic eye, a glass of water, a cartoon cat … My immediate thought was, Wow. David can draw. A split second later, though, my brain made sense of the largest doodle on the page. An elaborate graphic version of a name—in black ballpoint pen, a name turned into an almost Celtic twisty-turny hedge of intertwined, swooping strokes.

  Leena.

  My breath stopped.

  David grabbed the paper from Celeste. “What the hell?” he said, shoving it in his bag. “Who cares?”

  “Yeah,” I said, recovering enough to jump to his defense. “So he doodles. Big deal.”

  Celeste snorted. “Anyone who has ever been in love knows the primal urge to doodle the loved one’s name.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” David said, shaking his head. “I’m outta here.”

  “It’s just a name on a piece of paper,” I added, to assure him I wasn’t making a big deal out of it.

  David wa
lked away without looking again at either one of us.

  “I’m doing this for your own good,” she called after him. “Don’t you want to actually live life, instead of just thinking about it? Instead of focusing on everyone else?”

  David didn’t turn around, just held up a hand giving Celeste the finger. People on the path had stopped and were staring.

  “Thanks for ruining a nice friendship,” I said as his figure receded.

  “He’ll get over it.”

  We started walking again. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t making her carry her own bag after that little episode. And I couldn’t believe that instead of just being angry, some of what I felt coursing through my body was actually excitement. I didn’t want to let her know that, though.

  “Has it occurred to you that if something were going to happen between me and your brother, it should happen at its own pace?” I said.

  “No,” she said plainly.

  I shifted her bag on my shoulder. “Well, has it occurred to you that if something were going to happen, the fact that you are so suspiciously, overly gung-ho about it would give someone like me second thoughts?”

  “Huh.” She seemed to consider this. “No.”

  “It is a little weird,” I said. “Your insistence. Just tell me—why do you want us to get together so bad? Do you have some ulterior motive?”

  She stopped walking and looked at me. “Okay. Yes, actually, I do.”

  Of course. I raised my eyebrows.

  “I want you to get him off my back,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I want him to have someone he can take care of so he’ll stop spending every free minute wondering who I’m hooking up with or whether I’m losing my mind or whether I took a crap yesterday. Is that so weird? I have enough to worry about without worrying about him worrying about me.”

  Her voice and face made it clear she was telling the truth. I didn’t quite know how to respond.

  “I just know,” she added, “that if he had the right girlfriend, not just some fling, he’d be the best boyfriend ever. It’s not like I randomly picked you. I really, honestly think you’d be great for him. Don’t you think he’d be great for you?”

  I stared at her some more, at the almost pleading look in her eyes. “You sound like you’re trying to sell your used car,” I said finally, laughing a little.

  “Leena,” she said, smiling now, too. “I promise, he runs really, really well.”

  As I walked away, after leaving Celeste at the religion building, I found myself unable to contain a huge smile. Celeste’s reason for wanting us to get together wasn’t that weird. And despite feeling bad about David’s embarrassment, I couldn’t help feeling a giddy jolt of excitement when I thought about what had happened on the quad. I actually broke out into a skip.

  For once, I wasn’t the one doing the elaborate name doodles. They were being done about me.

  David called me that evening. “So, that was awkward,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, hugging a pillow to me, “you could say that.”

  “Sorry she’s such an ass,” he said. “I wasn’t mad at you when I walked off like that. I just couldn’t believe her. Of course, I should have acted like I didn’t care. That would have been much better. She’s like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. She really is.”

  “I know.”

  “And, you know, that wasn’t—”

  “Don’t even worry,” I said. “I doodle all the time. Totally random stuff.”

  “Because I respect the moratorium,” he said. “So I wouldn’t ever, you know, ask you to compromise that. Even in my fantasies.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, smiling, because the way he said it was insinuating just the opposite.

  “The seriousness of the moratorium must be respected,” he went on. “Celeste wasn’t aware of it, I guess.”

  “I guess not,” I said. And I closed my eyes and hugged the pillow tighter, and dared to think that something good—something very good—might have come from rooming with Celeste Lazar.

  My favorite part of books and movies is almost always the “before.” The beginning, before whatever upends the characters’ lives has happened— before she knows he’s a vampire, before the spaceship arrives … And for me, the next week or so had that same sort of feeling. I knew, almost for sure, that something was going to happen with me and David. I wasn’t sure when—maybe not immediately; I hadn’t shed my stress about how much work lay ahead of me this semester. But still, the air was filled with the thrill of possibility.

  Every time we talked—not about anything serious, just the usual conversations about classes and homework and stuff—there seemed to be a little more physical contact. But nothing to push us over that line. Nothing that meant I actually had to deal with the complications of the situation. Just … the beautiful before.

  And as for what had happened with Celeste’s photo, well,

  Kate had reassured me as much as anyone could have. Not that I forgot about it, of course. I was vigilant about locking the windows and doors whenever I left. But I’d pretty much decided that her theory was correct: Celeste had thrown the photo herself, and had been too embarrassed to let me know. And all I could do was sit tight and wait for the semester to be over.

  Chapter 17

  “ BUT HOW DO YOU MANAGE EVERYTHING-” I said to Marika, my co-counselor. “I mean, how do you have time for all your work, plus this, plus soccer, college stuff, and a girlfriend? It seems … impossible.”

  I’d decided to take advantage of a lull in activity at the peer-counseling office and had been asking Marika’s opinion about my “friend’s” dilemma—to get involved in a relationship or not—while she practiced yoga poses on the carpet.

  “I don’t know,” Marika said as she balanced in tree, arms stretched over her head. “I don’t really think about it. It all just happens.” She looked at me as if I might have a brain deficiency. “You do realize a lot of people have relationships while living full and productive lives?”

  “But what would you do if Susanna dumped you, right before midterms or something?”

  The door to the office flew open. Abby breezed in and dropped her bag on the floor. “I need help.” She placed the back of her hand on her forehead in a swoon.

  “I’ll take this one,” I said.

  Abby followed me into one of the two small, private rooms adjoining the main one.

  “I have to warn you,” I said as we settled into the plush purple armchairs, “I may not be qualified to treat mental disturbances as deep as yours.”

  “That’s understandable,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you the plan for New York.” She kicked off her shoes and drew her legs up. “You still have an honor-roll day left, right?”

  I nodded. “Two.” Barcroft has the ironic policy of awarding honor-roll students with two days the next semester that they can officially take off of classes.

  “Cool. So, we’re going to beat the traffic by driving down on Thursday night,” Abby said. “We’ll have an extra day in the city. And the best thing is that Viv’s mom got us tickets to the new play where Nate Warren does this whole scene naked, on Friday night, so this way we could be there in time for that. Nate Warren naked, in the same room as us! Can you believe it? I am so psyched. Beyond psyched. It’ll be the best trip ever. Can I have a Life Saver?”

  I fished a pack out of my pocket and handed it to her. “The thing is,” I said, “I’m supposed to drive David and Celeste, and David obviously doesn’t have honor-roll days—he wasn’t even here last semester. I don’t know about Celeste.”

  “So?” Abby said. “They can find another way down. We’re giving them a free place to stay, isn’t that enough? I mean, why are they even coming? Don’t they know Viv was just being polite?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “What’s there to think about?” Abby said. “I’m not going to let your perverse sense of obligation get in the way of you having a good t
ime. Nate Warren, Leen!” She had stood up and was mock-shaking me by the shoulders. “Nay-kid!”

  Her face was so serious that I had to laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll let them find another way.”

  Days went by, though, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell David or Celeste. I didn’t know why not driving them felt like such a big deal. It wasn’t. But at the same time, I worried that they’d take it as a definite statement about not wanting them there. Abby wanted me to make that statement, obviously. She didn’t know what was going on with me and David. My own fault, for being too chicken to tell her.

  The dilemma wrapped itself up into a constant knot in my gut. I needed to get it over with. Finally, one day I ran into Celeste on my way home from dinner and steeled myself to do it. But the whole way back to the dorm she was talking excitedly about a guest artist who had come to her portfolio class and had loved her work, and I couldn’t get a word in at all.

  When we entered Frost House the loud clangs of the radiator filled the common room.

  “Thank God the heat is finally on,” Celeste said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I spoke to maintenance about it. The way to do it is talk to them in person, instead of just submitting a work order.”

  We reached the bedroom. I fumbled in my pocket for my room key. Just tell her.

  “Celeste …” I turned the key and pushed open the door. “I don’t want—”

  I froze. Scattered debris covered an area of the bedroom floor stretching from Celeste’s closet more than halfway across the room. “What the hell?” I flipped on the overhead light. Twigs, twine, dried grass, dirty ribbons. Nests. Or what used to be nests. I took a few careful steps. The closet door was wide open. Inside, a cardboard box on the high shelf lay with its top facing front, flaps agape. More remnants from the nests were below the box, caught among Celeste’s dresses and skirts.

  Celeste hadn’t moved from the doorway. Her face was pale, mouth small.

  “The box must have tipped over,” I said. My heart hammered.

  “And this happened how?”