Marianna Baer - Frost

“Maybe they ran out of water?” I suggested.

She shook the vase a little, then dumped it in the trash. A stream of water poured out along with the flowers. “Oh, well,” she said. “An untimely frost, I guess.”

“What?” I thought I’d misunderstood.

“ Romeo and Juliet ?” she said. “Juliet’s death. It’s compared to an ‘untimely frost’ that kills flowers in their prime.” She stared at me as if this was supposed to make sense. “This is Frost House, right?” she continued. “Must be in the air.”

“Frost? ” I repeated.

Celeste’s gaze shifted to my tulips. “On this side of the room, at least,” she said.

A chill prickled across my neck, even though I didn’t understand what she was trying to say. Obviously, frost wasn’t what had killed those flowers. With anyone else, I would have assumed they were completely kidding.

But something in her expression told me she didn’t quite think it was funny.

An hour and a half later, I turned over my last page of notes on the podium in front of me. Finally, the end was in sight.

“So, to sum up,” I said, looking out at the rows of faces, “the peer-counseling program is all about students supporting one another. We know how hard it is to make the transition, to deal with the pressures of school. Don’t feel bad asking for help. And, I promise, we have an amazing group of students working with us. You’d be lucky to talk to any of them.

“Are there any questions before my cohead, Toby, tells you about the training program?”

I hoped my speech hadn’t been too boring. Despite taking the pill, I’d felt too nervous to make eye contact while speaking, so I hadn’t noticed how many of the new students had been surreptitiously (or unsurreptitiously) texting or playing video games.

“Yes?” I said to a small girl in the front.

“Uh, so … I …” Her voice was shaky. “No, never mind. Forget it.”

“Sure?” I said. “There are no dumb questions.”

She nodded, and I made a mental note to ask her privately, after the meeting. Maybe it was something she didn’t want to say in front of a room of strangers.

“Anyone else?”

I searched the audience for hands. Then I saw David. He sat in the last row, out of place in the room of mostly freshmen. Our eyes met. Fuck-buddy . The word flashed like a neon sign over his head.

“Okay, so …” I ruffled through my speech notes and willed my blush to go away. “I guess that’s it then. Here’s Toby.”

I shielded my face from the strong sun as I stood talking to Dean Shepherd on the path leading from the auditorium to the main quad, keenly aware of the fact that David hadn’t passed by us yet.

“You haven’t mentioned your college visits,” Dean Shepherd said. “How did they go?”

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t have a first choice, yet. Maybe Wesleyan, or Columbia. But they’re both super long shots.” Whenever I talked about colleges, the air I was breathing felt a little thinner. It seemed impossible that I’d choose the right place, even more impossible that the right place would choose me. And most of the money in my college fund had been spent on Barcroft.

“It’s worth a try,” the dean said. “Michael used to teach at Wesleyan. You’ll have to come to dinner soon and meet him.”

“You’re still seeing him?” I said. “That’s great.”

At the edge of my vision, I sensed people approaching. I snuck a look—it was David and some girl—then kept my eyes on the dean as she told me about her boyfriend.

“Hi, David,” she said when he reached us, alone. “Settling in okay?”

I made my mind a blank slate, ignored that neon sign over his head. Or at least I tried.

“Pretty much, thanks,” he said, then turned to me. “Actually, I just wondered if you were going back to the dorm now?”

I moistened my lips. “After lunch, I am.” Was he looking at me with more than friendly interest? It was hard to tell; his eyes had such a natural intensity. In the end, probably better if he wasn’t. I might not be strong enough to resist.

“Could you give this to my sister?” he said. “I’d bring it myself, but I have another orientation thing and I know I’ll just end up forgetting.” He handed me a small white envelope, then added, “Assuming you haven’t kicked her out already, that is.”

An image of her holding the dead tulips flashed in my mind. “Not yet,” I joked back. Folding the envelope into my bag, I could tell it contained a key.

“David,” the dean said. “I spoke to Harry Weintraub and he’s ready to meet with you whenever. You have his number and email?”

“I do,” David said. “Thanks.”

“Seems like a nice young man,” Dean Shepherd said as he walked away.

I watched his retreating figure—the broad shoulders, the defined calf muscles—and noticed he had a bounce in his walk, not the usual too-cool saunter of a good-looking guy. “Nice young man. Is that a euphemism for hot as hell?” I asked the dean.

She laughed.

“And what was that about Dr. Weintraub?” I said. He was a teacher and well-known mathematician. I’d wanted him for Calculus, but he was taking a couple of years off. “Isn’t he still on leave?”

“Official y, yes. But he agreed to work with David on an independent study.”

So math was David’s thing? He must have been pretty brilliant for Dr. Weintraub to make a special point of working with him. I wondered what spoons had to do with it….

“David told me,” I said. “You know, about their father.”

The dean nodded. “It wasn’t my place. But I’m glad he did. And Celeste arrived this morning?”

“Yup.”

“How was that?” she asked, putting an arm around my shoulders.

“Well,” I said, “it’s going to be an interesting semester.”

“You know what Edith Wharton said?” the dean replied. “She said, ‘I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made life interesting.’ Maybe the same applies for roommates.”

I supposed that was the best way to look at it. If I anticipated an interesting—if odd—semester with Celeste, someone so different from me and my friends, and saw it as a chance to get to know her better, then I wouldn’t be disappointed. Still, I held on to the hope that didn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t also be easy.

MY MOTHER CALLED WHEN I WAS on my way back to Frost House after lunch. I wasn’t in the mood for a long conversation, but picked up anyway because I knew she’d keep calling until she reached me. I hadn’t talked to her since arriving at school, had only sent her and my father brief messages saying I’d gotten here safely. My father had written back: “Remember to get car inspected. Visit soon. Dad.” My mother was higher maintenance.

I walked down Highland Street, giving her a brief summary of the weekend.

“What kind of interesting?” she said when I used the word to describe Celeste again. “Medieval castle? Skyscraper?”

Matching up people with architecture: our family version of “If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

The perfect answer came as I turned into the Frost House driveway.

“Casa Batlló,” I said. Casa Batlló—an outrageous apartment building in Barcelona with colorful, mosaic walls that seem to ripple, balconies that look like enormous skulls, a ceiling that swirls like a whirlpool. Disconcerting, but beautiful.

“You were scared to death of Casa Batlló,” my mother said. “Do you need me to call that Dean of Students woman, honey? I don’t want you living with some girl you’re scared—”