Frost - Marianna Baer

window when he asked, “Is this a good spot?” He was holding the

frame up in the only free wall space, at the end of Celeste’s bed.

“And do you mind if I hang it? I wouldn’t want it on my wall if I

were you.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “That’s perfect.” Perfect because it

wouldn’t be very visible from my side of the room. I didn’t feel so

strongly that I’d tell David not to hang it, but I definitely didn’t

need “Dead Celeste the Bug Charmer” to be the last thing I saw

before falling asleep at night.

“Can you mark the spot for the nail?” he said.

I stepped off the chair and crossed to where he stood, then

had to lean next to him—just touching—to make a dot at the

center of the top of the frame. His smell of coffee and warm boy

skin filled my lungs and melted through my limbs.

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David suddenly shifted to look behind us.

“What?” I said, stepping back, looking, too.

“Thought I heard someone,” he said. “I think I know why

Celeste feels like she’s being watched in here.” He gestured over

at my bed, where Cubby sat with her wide owl eyes directed right

at us.

“Oh,” I said, smiling. “Yeah. You’ve got to watch what you do

in front of her. She’s all-knowing.”

We went back to our respective tasks. I drilled holes in the

first window frame, then got my screwdriver and one of the new

brackets.

“Is all this—making bookshelves, carpentry stuff,” David said

after finishing hammering, “something you’d do? Like your dad?”

“Not professionally.” I twisted a screw around, around,

around. . . . “I love buildings because of him, though. I was always

convinced I wanted to be an architect.”

“But?”

“Now I’m thinking I might want to do something that’s more

people-oriented. Social work, maybe. Or teaching. Or . . . I got

really into my psych class last year, so maybe psychiatry.”

“You’d be a great teacher.”

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I looked over at him. The photo was hanging and he’d started

measuring windows again. “How would you know?”

“Both my parents are teachers,” he said. “My mom’s a

professor. My dad taught middle school. I can spot a good one a

mile away. And I saw you give that presentation, remember?”

“Oh, right.” I brushed a loose section of hair behind my ear,

almost stabbing myself in the eye with the screwdriver. “Well, the

good thing about teaching is that I feel like I can major in lots of

things and go into it. But if I want to be an architect or a

psychiatrist, it’s more . . . complicated. I feel like I’d have to

decide soon.”

“You’d want to go to med school?” he said.

“So I could write prescriptions. I know therapy helps, too.

Obviously, it’s hugely important. But so much of everything is

chemical.”

I began turning the next the screw into the window frame.

“Like schizoaffective disorder. Therapy can only do so much,

right? It’s all about neuroscience and”—I almost said genetics—

“and biology.” The wood splintered, the bracket broke off and

clattered to the floor. “Damn.”

“It’s not like science has done anything great for my dad,” he

said as I stepped off the chair and scanned the floor for hardware.

“Jesus. I don’t know if he’s better when he’s on or off his meds.

Well, no. That’s not true. But he’s bad in different ways.”

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“But new drugs are coming out all the time.” I bent over to

grab the bracket and screw, then stood and faced David.

“Eventually, you know, in the future, mental illness won’t even

exist. Not in our lifetime, I guess. But eventually.”

“I think we’ll just make new problems as we fix the ones we

have.”

“You and Celeste aren’t big on medication, are you?” I still

couldn’t understand why she’d choose insomnia over Tylenol PM.

“I guess we’re kind of cynical.” David said. “We’ve gotten our

hopes up too many times. But, I mean, of course if something

happened to her, or to me, I’d be happy there were options.”

“Do you . . . is that . . . is it something you guys talk about?

You know, the possibility . . . ?”

He nodded. “We have a pact.”

“A pact?”

“Sometimes, when people first get sick, they know

something’s wrong but are scared to talk about it. Celeste and I

have a pact so if one of us ever starts . . . I don’t know, worrying

about thoughts we’re having, we’ll tell the other one.”

He sounded sweet, but kind of naïve, until he added, “Of

course, there’s not much I could do to help her, at that point. But

at least I could keep her from doing something, you know,

desperate.” He paused. “My dad has. A couple times.”

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“I don’t blame him.” After I said it, I realized how awful it

must have sounded. “I mean, stuff must be so difficult for him.”

“Not everything,” David said in a flat voice.

“I tried, in eighth grade,” I said. “And I’m sure my life wasn’t

nearly as hard.”

The words hit the air before I could stop them.

“I didn’t really try,” I added quickly. Had I just compared my

immature stupidity with his father’s serious mental illness? “I

took a bunch of pills,” I said, “but I threw them up. I didn’t almost

die, or anything. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made that connection.

It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“Sounds like a big deal,” he said. “What happened?”

“Well,” I started, my heart suddenly pounding. Why had I

mentioned this? “Like I said, I think stuff can be really . . .

physically based. My body was going through hormonal changes,

my chemistry was all screwed up, and my parents were getting a

divorce and I just kind of lost it.”

“The divorce was messy?”

“No,” I said. “They didn’t even use lawyers.”

“So—”

“They were making me decide if I wanted to stay in

Cambridge with my dad or move to LA with my mom.”

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“As a thirteen-year-old?” he said. “Of course you were upset.

Nothing to do with hormones.”

“People’s parents get divorced every day,” I said, “and it

doesn’t make them want to kill themselves. I mean, my parents

both wanted me. I got much better after I was on antidepressants

for a bit.”

“Who did you pick?”

I wiped my forehead and rested my hands on my hips.

“Neither. I was close to both of them and didn’t want to . . . you

know, choose one over the other. So in ninth grade, I came here.

Some vacations I go to LA, some I go to Cambridge. Sometimes I

go to Abby’s family.”

“That’s kind of sad,” David said.

“It’s not,” I said. “It was the perfect solution. During the

school year, my friends are my family.”

“There’s a big difference between friends and family.”

“Thank God,” I said. “Friends you can choose .”

I smiled, but instead of smiling back, David’s expression

hardened like cement. So did his voice. “I’d choose my dad and

Celeste,” he said. “Over anyone. And I always will.”

“Oh. Of course.” Blood rushed up my neck and flooded my

cheeks. “I didn’t mean that. I was talking about myself, about my

own family. Not about yours.”

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It took a couple of seconds for his face to soften. “Sorry,” he

said. “I just assumed.”