Marianna Baer - Frost

I hung up, took off my glasses, and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids to try and make it stop. But the tears were too strong for that. I lifted off Cubby’s head. My fingers fumbled with the baggies of pills. I set aside ones I didn’t want. Found the one I did.

“Everything is ruined,” I whispered even though there was no need to be quiet anymore.

You’re here now , she said. It’s okay .

“But Cameron …. I’ve ruined his life . And Viv’ll never forgive me.”

Shhh … You don’t need her .

I wanted to believe what I was telling myself. Wanted to believe I’d be all right. But I knew it wasn’t true. Of course I needed my friends. They were … everything.

Bit by bit, a calm settled over my body. My tears stopped, and I slept. A deep sleep, not the sleep of someone who’s worried she might have lost three of the most important people in her life.

The sleep of someone who knows she’s come home.

I SLEPT IN THE CLOSET UNTIL surprisingly late the next morning. When I stood up, my limbs and spine hurt as if I’d spent the night digging a deep hole; my head ached so much I was ready to jump in the hole and be buried. I immediately took a couple of Tylenol. As the pills scraped their way down my dry throat, the events of the night before came back with more clarity, making my stomach hurt, too—the kind of ache that no medicine could help. I grabbed a clean towel and shuffled into the hallway. Celeste was just locking the door to the little room, dressed to go outside in a short, plaid wool cape, miniskirt, and the green beret. As if everything was perfectly normal.

“Hey,” I said.

She turned to face me. Dark hollows shadowed her eyes, her skin was dull, lips chapped—aside from her pulled-together outfit, she looked as bad as I felt. I’d thought I was going to have trouble controlling my anger, but much of it drained away.

“What happened?” I said. “We were really worried.”

“I took the Fung Wah Bus to Boston,” she said. “Bummer with my leg, but only fifteen dollars.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” I leaned my back against the wall. “Why didn’t you talk to us before leaving? You do realize we’re all going to disciplinary committee because of this?” Silence. “Cameron might get kicked out.” Saying those words made me want to vomit.

“You weren’t in the room. How was I going to talk to you?” she said, scratching inside the top of her cast.

“Was it because of me and David?”

“Because it turned out you’re a slut like the rest of them?”

“Excuse me?” I said, standing up straight again. “Not that it’s any of your business, but nothing much happened.”

“Of course it’s my business. He’s my brother.”

“Exactly,” I snapped. “He’s your brother , not your boyfriend or husband. You get pissed when he asks about your romantic life.”

She didn’t respond, just resumed scratching. How could she be so cavalier about this?

“Look,” I said, trying to retain some sort of composure. I couldn’t stand any more fighting. “David and I are going to be hanging out, like you’ve wanted all semester. So I need to know why you’re so upset. I mean, you out-and-out told me you wanted us to get together. Is it …” I didn’t quite know how to ask if she was jealous without implying she was in love with her own brother. “Are you concerned he won’t have as much time for you?”

Scratch, scratch, scratch. She didn’t look up as she spoke. “Of course not. I already told you I wanted David to have a girlfriend so he’d get off my back.”

“Okay, well …” I couldn’t force her to admit to it. And what good would it do, anyway? At this point, I wasn’t going to break up with David to make her feel better. “Dean Shepherd is really worried about you. She wants to know what’s going on. Why you came back early and everything. And why you moved out of the big room.”

That got Celeste’s attention. “I told her why,” she said.

“Because you don’t like all the windows? She didn’t buy it. Well, she didn’t buy that you’d have come back early from New York to do it.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Just that maybe you’d been uncomfortable that David and I were together.”

Celeste’s mouth dropped open. “What, like I wanted him for myself?”

“No! Not like that,” I said. “It was the only reason I could think of.”

“You didn’t tell her about … you know, the stuff I told you before, did you?”

“No.” I hugged the folded towel closer to my body. “But Celeste, if that’s why you switched rooms, if you’re really still having those strange thoughts—that someone’s … watching you, or trying to mess with you—maybe we should tell someone.”

She shook her head. “You promised you wouldn’t. You can’t . I told you how bad it would be for me. And I told you I felt better the next day. That was just a bad night, before I realized the cat had done it. I blew it all out of proportion. You promised, Leena.”

“I know. But things change.”

“You know what’s changed?” she said. “I slept last night. Comfortably. I told you I didn’t like those windows the very first day. And then with all the other weird stuff that happened … Can’t you see why I freaked out in there? Now I don’t have to worry.”

Her exhausted appearance didn’t match this version of events. “Are you sure?” I said. “Why is your comforter in the trash?”

A flicker of something—fear? panic?—passed across her face. “David didn’t take it yet?” she said. “It got wet and mildewy while we were gone. Rain through the windows. He has to wash it.”

“The windows were shut,” I said. I’d locked them all before we left.

“They leaked,” she said. “A welcome-back present from the house.”

Enough to get her bed that wet? “Was someone in our room while we were gone?” I asked.

“No,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “No one. Look, I switched rooms to give you some privacy and because I can’t sleep over there. What’s the big deal? You don’t mind, do you? Why would you mind? It’s better for both of us.”

“I guess,” I said. And, truthfully, having my own room was the one good thing that had come from this mess. “But the way you did it …”

“I shouldn’t have come back early,” she said. “I’m impulsive. You know that. And, okay, maybe I wasn’t expecting things with you and David to move that fast. I thought you— Whatever. It’s not important. I shouldn’t have left. And I’m sorry. But I’m fine. This new room arrangement is going to fix everything.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

I shut myself in the bathroom and stood under the shower and made a decision. Celeste had been very clear, again—if something was wrong, she didn’t want me interfering. She wanted her own room, her separate life. And that’s what I’d wanted right from the beginning, wasn’t it? The less I knew, the less I had to keep from David. She hadn’t shown any concern for the rest of us when she’d come back from New York like that, no matter what her reason. So, fine. Our own rooms. Our own lives.

I spent most of the day with David, a large part of it lying on his bed as he tried to distract me from worrying about Abby and Viv and the disciplinary committee. We listened to almost everything on his iPod—from James Brown to Eminem; he described in detail the gourmet meal he wanted to cook for me one day soon; he tried to explain the math he was doing (all I really understood was that it was called topology and had something to do with a donut and a coffee cup being the same thing); he told me stories about better times with their father. All of this interspersed with sweetly intense bouts of kissing. He was obviously trying to distract himself, too, from worrying about Celeste, because by midafternoon he’d asked me “how I’d thought she seemed” one too many times.