Marianna Baer - Frost

“In this weather?” I said, then turned to Viv. “Is Annika around? Maybe she’s seen her.”

“Nope. Saturday night and Sunday she has off.”

David and I decided to look through the house. It didn’t take us long to figure out she wasn’t here—unless she was hiding, which, I hoped, was beyond even Celeste. The whole thing was giving me a flashback to the bar last night. Maybe we were going to find her sitting in an alley behind the house, smoking with Whip.

“What should we do?” I asked David, annoyed that this was how we were spending our morning. “Walk around the neighborhood and look in cafés and stuff?”

“I think we should wait for her here,” he said. “If we go out and she comes back, she won’t be able to get in the house.”

I went to my bedroom to grab a sweater. As I did, I checked around to see if I could tell what type of clothes Celeste had worn, in case that told us anything. I quickly realized I should have thought to check earlier.

Everything was gone.

All she’d left was a piece of paper folded over one of the hangers in the closet with a scrawled note: Back to Barcroft. Sorry, took the dress with me.

“She’s what?” David said, placing his glass of orange juice down without taking a sip.

“Gone,” I said in disbelief. “Back to school.”

“What? Why?” Viv said, collecting dishes to be washed. “She seemed okay last night. Was she upset or something?”

“I have no idea.” I thudded down in a chair.

David picked up his cell, sent a message. Called, left a voice mail telling her to call back immediately.

“Do you think she took the train?” I said. “Or bus? I mean, what a hassle with her bag, and her cast. What do you think we should do?”

“She’s a big girl,” Abby said, looking at us over the top of the Style section. “Can’t we assume she knows what she’s doing?”

No one said anything. The last thing I wanted was to spend another minute worrying about her, but it was just so strange.

“Since it’s bad weather,” Abby continued, “I think we should go to that movie. It starts in twenty-five minutes. But the theater’s a quick walk, right, Viv?” She folded up the newspaper with loud snapping noises.

“Yeah. Ten minutes,” Viv said.

“And we can go to that museum you read about after,” Abby said.

I looked at David, could read in his face right away that he didn’t feel right going out without hearing from his sister. I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on a movie either.

“You guys go,” I said. “David and I will stay here. We can meet you later at the museum, okay?”

Abby pushed her chair back and stood up. “Whatever. Hope you have fun.”

Despite the fact that it was the afternoon after our first kiss and first night together, our time alone was not at all cozy or romantic. We spent most of it staring at David’s phone. I attempted the Times crossword puzzle but had trouble concentrating well enough to make a dent in the clues.

I was trying to remember who wrote the short story “The Lottery,” seven letters, when the phone finally rang. But it wasn’t David’s; it was mine. And it wasn’t Celeste.

“Leena?” Dean Shepherd said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“That’s okay,” I said, surprised. “What’s up?”

“Sorry if there’s noise around me,” she said. “I’m in the parking lot at Whole Foods—dinner party tonight. But I just got a strange message. Apparently, a maintenance worker was called over to Frost House to help a student with something. And since no students are supposed to be there …”

A maintenance worker? “Uh, I guess that’s something to do with Celeste,” I said.

“Celeste?”

“You know how we all came to New York, to Viv’s house?” I said. “Well, Celeste has sort of, well, she left early.”

“What?” A car honked near her as she spoke. “Why?”

I ran my finger along the side of the place mat, feeling David’s eyes on me. The only possibility we’d come up with was that Celeste was having some overblown reaction to us getting together. I couldn’t exactly tell that to the dean. “It’s kind of a misunderstanding,” I said. “I’m not quite sure why. She left early this morning.”

“And came all the way back to Barcroft? Alone? On crutches?”

“I guess.” It sounded so ridiculous. I didn’t blame the dean for being confused.

“Did Viv’s parents take her to the train station, or something?”

“No. I mean, we don’t really know.”

“Well, I don’t quite understand, Leena, and don’t have time to talk about it right now. But I’ll go to Frost House on my way home from running errands and see what’s going on. In the meantime, please have one of Viv’s parents call me.”

I could have lied. I could have told her they were out, or whatever. But I didn’t. At the moment, it didn’t strike me as that big a deal. Dean Shepherd loved me. She trusted me. And Celeste was the issue at hand.

“They’re actually not around,” I said. “They got this last-minute trip deal to Paris so they went. But Viv’s housekeeper is here, or was here, I mean, yesterday, and took great care of us.”

“They aren’t there?” she said.

“No.”

I could hear a sigh of annoyance. “I’ll call you back after I’ve been to Frost House. In the meantime, you and whoever is with you—Vivian and Abigail and whoever else—are going to pack up and drive right back here.”

Drive back to Barcroft? Today? That’s when I realized the mistake I’d made. My stomach turned inside out.

I slumped against the back of my chair. “Abby is going to kill me. K-I-L-L, kill me. Now that Dean Shepherd knows that our chaperones aren’t here, she’s making us come back to school. She sounded really pissed. We’re seniors. I didn’t think she’d care. And everyone knows chaperone letters are bullshit.”

“What’s going on with Celeste?” David asked.

I explained about the maintenance worker being called to the dorm. “I shouldn’t have told her,” I said, then rested my cheek on the cool table. “I am so dead.”

I was in my room folding clothes into my duffel when my phone rang again.

“I found Celeste,” Dean Shepherd said. “She was the one who called maintenance. I can’t discuss anything now, Leena, but please come find me at home the minute you arrive back on campus. I need to talk to you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry about the thing with Viv’s par—”

“It’s not about that,” she said.

“It’s not?” I rested my full bag on the floor.

“No,” she said. “I want you to tell me what has been going on in this house.”

DAVID AND I HIT A TRAFFIC JAM on I-91. The kind of jam that even in the best of circumstances would make me want to get out of the car, slam the door, and walk.

With the mood I was in, I thought I might literally explode. Having to spend one more minute than necessary trapped in the car, helpless. No chance to make anything better. Just a relentless cycling in my head of all the ways this was beyond bad. And I kept picturing Viv and Abby and Cameron stuck in the traffic, too. I couldn’t stand it. I wished I hadn’t left Cubby—with all of my pills—at Frost House.

“What?” Viv had said in a whisper when I called to tell her what had happened with Dean Shepherd. “You’re saying we have to leave? Today?”

“I know it sucks,” I said. “Why are you whispering?”

“We’re at that museum—the Museum of Sex,” Viv said. “Can you believe there’s a Museum of Sex? Anyway, I don’t want Abby to hear. She’s going to have a fit.”

“Tell her and Cameron how sorry I am. At least we got a couple days in the city.”