Marianna Baer - Frost

BEFORE I LIVED THERE, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary. It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples. Hidden enough that I didn’t even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard. I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member’s house. Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings; this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor. The kind of place a family would live. The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves: Come inside, come inside….

When I realized that the house was actually a tiny dorm, that my friends and I could be that family for our final semesters, I knew I’d discovered our school’s very own Shangri-La. I couldn’t escape the reality of senior year at ultracompetitive Barcroft, but at least my home life could be a fantasy.

Over the summer I kept thinking what good luck it was I’d stumbled upon Frost House that day. If I’d believed in anything more mystical than textbook facts back then, I might have wondered if it had been fate. I have no idea, now, if fate exists. But I do know one thing about the day I found Frost House:

Good luck had nothing to do with it.

The afternoon we moved in, a late-August storm turned the surrounding leaves into a rain-whipped, electric-green frenzy. Frost House waited in their midst. A little old lady.

“Isn’t she sweet?” I said to Abby as I eased my car up the narrow driveway, branches scraping the windows on either side of us.

“Sweet?” Abby said. “Maybe a couple hundred years ago.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of shabby chic?” I turned off the engine of my equally ancient Volvo station wagon. The windshield wipers died; Frost House melted into a blur. Abby and I glanced back at the carful of stuff we had to unload.

“Let’s register first,” I said. “I’ll just check if Viv is here, in case she wants to ride over with us.” I also couldn’t wait to see my room. I’d been picturing how to decorate it for weeks—my nightly fall-asleep ritual on the pullout couch at my dad’s.

Shielding myself with an armload of cotton tapestries, I splashed up a brick path to the side door. Unlocked, luckily. I stood in the snug entryway, smelled the fresh paint fumes, and wiped the rain off my glasses. Music—The Black Keys—pulsed in the humid air. I called Viv’s name up the staircase in front of me, then realized the bass vibrations were coming from a suite of rooms on the ground floor, tucked in the rear. Strange. Abby’s and Viv’s bedrooms were upstairs. I was the only one living back there for the next few months.

I passed through the common room—pausing to appreciate the glistening, milk-white walls; the comfortable couch and armchair; the mini-fridge and microwave—and down a short hall, music getting louder with every step: Let me be your everlasting light …. On the right, my bedroom door gaped wide. Cardboard boxes, duffels, and garbage bags littered the floor. Piles of colorful clothes covered one of the beds, which was made up with a silky violet quilt and sunshine yellow pillows.

Classic Viv. She’d obviously mixed up our room assignments.

Sensing movement on the other side of an open closet door. I laid my tapestries on the second, unmade bed. The pounding bass line camouflaged my footsteps as I crept around boxes and bags toward my unsuspecting housemate. I waited for a moment in a spot where we still couldn’t see each other, only the thickness of the door between us now, and then sprang—

“Boo!”

“Jesus!” A guy spun around. Something fell from his raised hands. I reached out, caught it. Owww. A sharp corner of the poster-sized frame had stabbed my palm.

“What the hell?” The guy—dark hair; olive, freckled skin; about my age—took the frame from me and set it on the floor. “Are you crazy?”

“Sorry,” I said, my palm throbbing but not cut. “I thought you were—”

“Wait a minute.” He edged past me and turned off the speakers. The air took a second to recover. “Thought I was what?” he said. “In need of a heart attack?”

For a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. Then he smiled, brows raised above his heavy-lidded, intensely blue eyes. Whoever he was, he didn’t go to school here. I’d have noticed.

“No,” I said. “Thought you were someone else.” Duh, Leena.

Now he laughed and rested his hands on his hips. “I figured. I’m Celeste’s brother. David. I transferred to Barcroft this year.”

Celeste. I knew only one—Celeste Lazar, the eccentric art star of our senior class. After he said it, I recognized the delicate lines of her face mirrored more roughly in his: wide forehead, curved cheekbones, firm chin. His nose was more prominent than hers—high-bridged, Roman.

“Oh. Cool,” I said as if he’d explained anything pertinent. “I’m Leena. And, unless I am crazy, this is my room.”

David’s smile faltered.

“Don’t feel bad,” I said quickly. “The campus is confusing. I can drive your stuff to the right dorm.”

“They didn’t tell you?” he said.

“Tell me what?”

“Man, I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.” He ran his hand through his short hair and shifted his weight to his other foot. “Celeste broke her leg.”

“Oh? That sucks.” A cold tingle began in my fingertips. There could be no happy reason I needed to know this.

“Yeah, her room was supposed to be on the third floor of some other dorm. So they decided that since your roommate is away for the semester, and your room is on the ground floor …”

The blood drained to my feet. “So Celeste is living here?” I said, sitting on the closest bed.

“Well, yeah. For one semester. But it’s not like they’re kicking you out.”

I nodded and concentrated on an acid-green, zebra-striped silk dress lying next to me. How could I have thought this stuff belonged to Viv? Or to a guy?

“Try to contain your excitement,” David said.

“I’m just surprised.” I forced myself to look at him and attempted a smile. “Where is she?”

“She had a thing at the hospital today. She’ll be here tomorrow. It’s a bad break. Really messed up the bone.”

“What happened?”

He hesitated. “She fell off the roof.”

“God.” An image of Celeste crumpled on the ground flashed in my mind.

“Trying to get one of these birds’ nests she’s been collecting,” David explained, answering my unspoken question. He didn’t sound quite sure about it, though, and I wondered if there was more to the story. Knowing Celeste, there probably was.

A muffled ringtone came from over by the door. “Speak of the devil,” he said. “She can always tell when I’m talking about her.” He pulled a cell out of a backpack and disappeared into the hallway. “Hey. Everything okay?” was the only thing I heard before his footsteps receded into the common room.

I stared out a window. Branches drooped and swayed under the heavy rain.

Celeste Lazar. Living here.

A vise squeezed my chest. The same feeling I’d gotten before every chem lab last year, only tighter.

We’d been partners. The mood of the period depended entirely on what was going on in Celeste’s life that week—always a new, convoluted drama: a fight, a hookup, trouble with a teacher…. I’d spend the seventy-five minutes listening to her stories while trying to keep her distraction from causing some sort of fiery accident with the Bunsen burner and chemicals. To make it worse, I was never sure what Celeste actually thought of me. One day, she brought me a gift to thank me for advice I’d given her: a chocolate-chili cupcake from the best bakery downtown. As we walked out of class, me happily holding the box with my exotic treat inside, I asked about her plans for the weekend. “None of your damn business,” she’d snapped. Just like that, I’d become some random, nosy stranger.