“Someone there?” Ms. Martin called from her front doorway.
“It’s me, Leena,” I called back. “Sorry. I’m here on the porch.”
She padded around the corner, wrapped in a bathrobe. “I wanted to make sure it was one of you girls.”
“Just me,” I said, standing. “But I’m going in now.”
I went inside, and when I tried to open the bedroom door was surprised to find it was still locked. I got out my key and slid it in the lock, pushed the door—
“Leena?” Celeste’s voice called out from somewhere. Not the bedroom.
“Yeah?” I said, turning around.
“Can you … can you come in here?” She was in the bathroom. Probably taking one of her frequent nighttime baths.
Figuring she had forgotten something—she had a hard time getting out of the tub, and was always needing me to bring her a razor or towel or something else—I tossed her laundry bag in our room and went in. She was sitting in the bath, a thin layer of bubbles covering the surface of the water. Her cast was propped up on her special bath stool, in its plastic bag. Her other leg was bent, her arms wrapped around it. There was something not quite right about her face. Her jaw muscles were tense, her skin paler than usual. She looked like she might be trembling.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She shifted positions slightly to show me: a bright red mark seared the back of her left upper arm. I knelt quickly by the tub. It was a burn. The size of a baby’s fist. Not blistered, but still obviously painful.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I … I was sitting here while the water was running,” she said. “And I guess … I guess I bumped against the faucet. I don’t remember. It happened so quickly, and then it hurt so much.”
“That’s from the faucet?” I said. “The water must have been so hot.”
She shook her head. “I was trying to cool the bath down. Only the cold water was turned on.”
“You must have turned the wrong handle.”
“I didn’t.” Then she said it again, louder. “I didn’t. I know which handle I turned. This wasn’t my fault.”
The faucet couldn’t have burned her if it was running cold water, obviously, but there was no point in me fighting with her. What mattered was her burn.
“Let’s drain the bath,” I said. “And then you need to hold your arm under a stream of cool water. I’ll cover the faucet with a facecloth.” As I did, I found that the metal wasn’t hot at all. The bathwater wasn’t especially hot either. How long had she been sitting here? I didn’t ask, just handed her towels to wrap over her legs and her shoulders, so she’d warm up. Her whole body was shaking. “You should take Tylenol for the pain,” I said. For once, she didn’t say no to my suggestion of medication. I left her for a moment and went back into the bedroom.
After getting a couple of pills from my stash, I happened to notice that Celeste’s beetle photo wasn’t hanging in its usual spot. This wasn’t so strange; for some reason, ever since that first day, the frame had been prone to falling off the nail. But this time, I didn’t see it on the bed where it usually landed either.
I wasn’t sure why this made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, but it did.
“Leena?” Celeste called.
“One second,” I called back. “Just finding the Tylenol.”
I quickly scanned the room and spotted the photo lying awkwardly on the floor across from Celeste’s bed. With growing apprehension, I walked over and picked it up. The photo itself was fine. But one corner of the black frame had chipped badly, revealing the lighter wood underneath the paint. Following an instinct, I checked the wall. About two feet up from where the photo had been lying, there was a black mark on the white surface, where the corner must have hit.
The frame hadn’t been placed on the floor.
It had been thrown.
My body stiffened. What had gone on here while I was with David?
“Leena?” Celeste called again.
I set the frame on her bed, then returned to the bathroom and handed Celeste the Tylenol and a glass of water from the sink, an anxious thumping in my chest. “What happened to your photo?” I asked carefully.
“Huh?” She took the pills and handed me back the glass.
“The beetle photo.”
“Did it fall again?” she said. “Can you grab my robe?”
“You weren’t in there when it … fell?” I said, letting her use my arm for stability as she climbed out of the tub.
“No.” She slipped her right arm into her silk robe and held the fabric closed in front, then twisted to look at her burn. “Do I need to bandage this or something?”
“I’ll do it.”
I got supplies from my first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet, my thoughts spinning. If Celeste really didn’t know what I was talking about, did that mean someone had snuck in our bedroom and thrown her photo while she was in the bath, or with Whip, and she just hadn’t found it yet?
After applying antibiotic ointment to her burn, I tore off a piece of tape and affixed gauze across it. She’d seemed so vulnerable: sitting in the tub, all skinny and trembling. How would she react if she knew that while she’d been in there, someone had done that to her artwork? Would she accuse Abby because of the way they’d been sniping at dinner? I bit my cheeks and wondered if maybe … maybe it would be better if I didn’t tell her at all. At least, not now, while she was already shaky.
“There,” I said, smoothing down the final piece of tape. “It’s not actually that bad, I don’t think. Just hurts.”
“Thanks,” she said.
I was on my way out when she added, “Leena? Don’t tell David about this.”
For a minute I thought she meant about the photo. But, no. Her burn. “Okay,” I said, not seeing any reason he needed to know.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and sat on the bed with the photo in my hands, studying the damage. Then—pulse racing, knowing Celeste was right across the hall—I rummaged through my bag for a black Sharpie and began coloring in the chipped area on the frame. At first, the color was too brownish, but after a few layers it built up to black. If I looked closely, I could tell there was a variation in the surface; once it was hanging I thought it would be okay, especially if she didn’t know to be looking for it.
After I was finished, I couldn’t even entertain the idea of doing the homework I had left from the weekend. I went straight to bed. As I lay there in the dark, all I could think about was who would have done that to Celeste. The door had been locked; they would have had to climb through a window to get in. They would have had to break in to our bedroom— my bedroom. Picturing it, I couldn’t ignore the anger beginning to burn at the center of my chest.
This wasn’t how Frost House was supposed to be. None of it—the tension at the dinner, worrying about what was happening here in the room. It was supposed to be a sanctuary.
I brought Cubby onto my chest, wishing again, like I had with the vase, that she could tell me what she’d seen. If I didn’t know what had happened, how could I know what to do to make it safe again? I concentrated very hard on her eyes, trying to see the answer.
It will never be safe while she’s here . Cubby’s voice was inside my head, quiet.
“It’s not her fault,” I told myself.
Everything is her fault. She has to go.
I looked through the dark at Celeste’s side of the room: her hat collection, her flamboyant wardrobe, the beetle photo … and I wondered. One thing I knew was that she needed to be the center of attention. Was it possible that she was doing this all herself, so she would be the center of attention in the dorm? Was that what I was trying to tell myself, by saying it was all her fault? Maybe she’d ripped her own skirt, broken the vase, thrown her own photograph. And just pretended to be the scared victim.
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