Frost - Marianna Baer

separate thoughts. Eventually, Viv looked over from where she

was drawing a half circle on September 9. Probably noting the

stage of the moon. “So,” she said, “Cam gave me some good

news. It turns out Jake and Eliza broke up.”

I flinched, causing Abby to get polish on my skin. “Why is that

good news?”

75

“You guys left stuff in limbo,” Viv said. “Maybe you can see

where it goes again.”

Was she kidding? “It wasn’t left in limbo. He ditched me for

Eliza.”

“Not because he didn’t like you,” Viv said. “He didn’t know

how into him you were.”

“The hooking up didn’t clue him in?” I snapped, more harshly

than I meant.

Viv began fiddling with one of her dangly earrings. “Sorry,”

she said. “I thought . . . I don’t know. I guess I got excited because

he’s friends with Cam and it would be so perfect. I wasn’t

thinking. Sorry.”

I bit my cheeks and stared down at the rhythmic movement

of the brush. “It’s not just about Jake,” I said. “I’ve told you, the

last thing I need this semester is a relationship drama. I don’t

want to have anything to do with anyone until after my

applications are in and I’ve kept my grades up. Do you know how

crazy my schedule is?”

“You always make some excuse, Leen,” Viv said gently.

“Yeah,” Abby said. “Last year you found the stupidest

reasons not to get together with anyone.”

“I didn’t like anyone last year,” I said. “Spare me the lecture,

okay?”

76

“Fine,” Abby sighed, and then went on to talk about Ponytail

Guy, her new crush.

It annoyed me when she and Viv made it seem like my

reluctance to get involved was a problem. They were the ones

who’d had to scrape me off the floor at the end of sophomore

year, after Jake McCormick, and freshman year, after Theo

Fletcher.

With both Jake and Theo, I’d assumed that hooking up

meant something more was happening between us—maybe not

the first time we got together, but after that, definitely. I got all

stupid excited: going totally out of my way to run into them at

Commons or between classes, doodling our entwined initials, and

writing the boy’s name in fancy letters on the side of my class

notes. But both times, the old saying about the danger of

assumptions had proved true. Jake moved on to Eliza without

even thinking he needed to tell me, and Theo moved on to the

rest of the freshman class.

Looking back on it now, I knew that I’d been partly to blame.

I hadn’t said what I wanted, or asked what they wanted, just

skipped along in my own little bubble of deluded happiness. But I

still felt the burn of humiliation when I remembered how easily

and thoroughly I’d been devastated back then. I wished I were the

type of person who could casually hook up. I wasn’t, though, no

matter how much I loved kissing and fooling around. (At least

what I’d tried—free rein for my hands; boys’ hands just up top.)

77

And this semester, with my tough classes and college

applications, I couldn’t afford any emotional turmoil. Friendship,

flirting—that was fine. It’s not like I wanted to live in a convent.

But that was as far as I’d go. I had the rest of my life for kissing.

Abby finished my nails and moved onto Viv’s, and as the

night went on, the pauses between our comments got longer and

my eyelids grew heavier. I kept thinking about my bed and how

well I’d slept last night. Eventual y, I struggled to my feet. I had to

face Molecular Biology at eight a.m. That was what I needed to

concentrate on this semester—my classes.

I kept my steps on the stairs and down the hall careful and

quiet, assuming Celeste was long asleep. I found her in bed with

the covers pulled all the way over her face. It was a warm, late

summer night. Was she one of those really skinny people who are

always cold? I hoped I wasn’t going to discover she had an eating

disorder. One of the things that had stressed me out about the

bigger dorms was sharing the bathroom with bulimics. Because of

the peer-counseling thing, I usually got roped into confronting

them. There’s an unspoken agreement at Barcroft: whenever

possible, don’t involve faculty.

With all of the windows, our bedroom wasn’t ink dark, so

much as grainy, charcoal gray. I could see Celeste’s closet door

gaping open again, which made me think of her comment at the

dorm meeting—her insistence about the horrible smell. I tiptoed

over and breathed in through my nose. It still smelled good to me.

78

I waited a few minutes, letting the scent bring me that feeling I’d

had earlier. Warmth, comfort. Definitely a memory. What was it?

My old cedar chest? No. I leaned farther in, inhaled once more,

and shivered slightly. If the scent had been more perfume-like, I

would have guessed that it reminded me of the way my mother

smelled when I was a baby. The feeling was that essential.

Something made me turn my head. Celeste was propped up

on her elbows, staring at me.

“Oh.” I snatched my hand off the door. “I didn’t know you

were awake.”

“They won’t let me sleep.”

They, meaning us? “I’m so sorry. We tried to be quiet.” She

couldn’t have heard what we were saying, could she? I walked

quickly over to my bed.

“Not you guys,” she said. “Them.” She flailed a skinny arm at

the windows. “The trees, the moonlight. I told you, there are too

many windows here. And there’s this, like, constant breeze

prickling my skin, touching me. It’s creepy. You slept here last

night. Didn’t it bother you?”

“Actually, I fell asleep right away. Should I shut the windows

a bit, so it’s not as breezy?”

“No. That nasty smell from the closet took over the whole

room. It was making me gag.”

79

“Do you want some Tylenol PM?”

“I don’t take drugs.” She said it like I’d offered her crack.

“Okay. Well, I’ll get some new shades, if that’ll help. If we put

in a work order, they won’t get around to it until graduation.”

“Can you do something about the closet, too?” she said.

“You must have noticed the smell, standing over there.”

“I think it’s just the wood,” I said, turning on the small lamp

by my bed and finding my basket of toiletries. “Smells kind of old

and musty. I don’t mind it at all, but I grew up in an old house.”

“There’s old, and then there’s dead.”

I glanced back at the closet. She couldn’t be talking about the

same smell I was. “Did you store all your bugs and bones and stuff

in there? Maybe it’s them.”

“Those do not smell. Anyway, you said you didn’t want them

in the bedroom. I put them across the hall. I’m telling you, Leena,

there’s something in here. Something weird and gross. And unless

the boys who lived here left behind a corpse, it has nothing to do

with them.”

With that, she lay down and pulled the sheet back over her

head. In a case of utterly perfect timing, a breeze swept through

the room at the same time and the closet door slammed shut

with a bang.

80

Celeste sat up straight. “Why did you do that?” she asked

me, alarmed.

“I didn’t,” I said. “It blew shut.”

“Blew shut?”

She stared at the closet as if she couldn’t quite grasp the