Marianna Baer - Frost

ignoring me?

I was about to give up when I heard the groan of a door

being pushed open. David appeared, carrying a navy-blue laundry

bag Santa style, sweaty and apologizing. “I had stuff in the dryer,”

he said, leading me down the hall to his house counselor’s

apartment. “And I realized that if I got it now, I could have you

bring Celeste her clothes. Took longer than I thought. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, not mad, just relieved.

148

Prescott has none of the hominess of Frost House, and none

of the stateliness of the larger brick dorms. Walking with David to

his room after getting parietals, I cringed at the cinder-block

walls, the fluorescent lighting, and the nubby brownish-orange

carpeting spread everywhere like a fungus.

“Home, sweet home,” David said, pushing open the door to a

second-floor single.

I guess I’d expected his aesthetic to be more like Celeste’s;

the lack of decoration in his room surprised me. His comforter

was plain black, his sheets and pillowcase light gray with white

stripes. He’d hung nothing on the beige walls except a bulletin

board, and the fungus carpeting had spread in here, too. Built-in

plywood furniture gave the room even more of an institutional

feel.

I’d have had no idea David even lived here if it weren’t for

the photos on the bulletin board: the same snapshot Celeste had

of the two of them on the beach with their father, and one of

David wrestling on a lawn with three young boys. There was also

a large one of a smiling, long-faced woman hugging an enormous

black dog. Otherwise the board was covered with notebook paper

with ungainly mathematical equations using symbols I’d never

even seen before.

I handed David the cupcake and a paper napkin, and didn’t

say what I was thinking—that I’d kill myself if I had to live in a

room like this.

149

“Thanks a lot,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.” He sat

on the bed and began unwrapping the tinfoil.

I didn’t know where to sit or what to do with myself—David’s

desk chair had a pile of books on it and I wasn’t about to plop

right next to him on the bed.

Then I noticed a cardboard box on the floor with a bunch of

silvery stuff inside. Spoons.

“Hey!” I gestured at the box. “Can I look?”

“Sure,” David said through a bite of cupcake.

I picked it up and rested it on the desk, then began taking the

spoons out and laying them next to each other. They were

satisfyingly weighty, and all had the same handle design—a

loop—but the bowl part was different. There were a few with

different-size holes in the middle, one shaped like a small ladle,

one with an inverted V-rest on the handle. . . . They looked

handcrafted, but not in a bad way—like someone had put care

into them.

“These are so cool,” I said. “Why are they all packed away?”

“You want me to bring them to Commons?” he asked.

“You should have used one at dinner tonight,” I said, smiling.

He finished chewing and wiped his mouth. “Great cake. Your

lasagna, too. I’ll have to reciprocate sometime. I make killer Pad

Thai.”

150

“You cook?”

“Last year, when I was home, my mom was working a lot, so I

cooked all our family meals.” He tossed the aluminum foil in the

trash and picked up his laundry bag. “Until my dad stopped eating

anything I’d made, of course.”

Oh, right. I hadn’t thought about that since he’d first told us,

the day we met. Now, knowing how much he cared about his

family, it seemed that much more awful—his father thinking he

was trying to poison him. Something inside me crumpled,

imagining how David must have felt.

“All my paying jobs have been in restaurant kitchens,” he

continued as he dumped the laundry on his bed and began

sorting it into two piles. “Next year, I might just work at this place

in New York where I know the owner, make some money.”

“Are you applying to schools this year? And then deferring?”

I realized that in all our conversations, we’d never talked about

his college plans.

“I don’t think so. It’s . . .” He kept his eyes on the laundry.

“It’s complicated. There’s this professor I want to study with, but

I’m not sure I want to go to school full-time, do all the required

classes, you know. And the stuff with Pembroke won’t help me

getting in.”

“What happened there?” I asked, since he’d brought it up.

151

“I plagiarized on a paper,” he said. “Stupid. I’d fallen really

far behind because I was going home all the time. And I’d been

caught before for something else, so I got booted.”

“Something else?”

“Illegal parietals,” he said, completely matter-of-fact, then

looked over at me. “So, what’s the deal with this Whip guy? Has

he been over to the dorm before?”

“Not that I know of.” I turned back to the spoons, trying not

to wonder about the girl he’d gotten busted with. “I assume he’s

just there to work on the project.”

“It was pretty obvious he wasn’t just there to work on the

project.”

David was right, of course. And I understood why he’d been

upset at dinner—he didn’t want his little sister’s sex life shoved in

his face. But, in the end, wasn’t whatever Celeste wanted to do

with Whip her own business?

“Whip’s not such a bad guy,” I said. “Unless it bothers you

that he’s part of the old-boys’ club. I think every male in his family

has gone to Barcroft and then Yale.” One of the spoons had some

sort of dirt on it. I wiped it with my shirt.

“Celeste tends to have really bad judgment when it comes to

guys,” David said.

152

“Most of my friends have bad judgment when it comes to

guys. Except for Viv.” I looked over at David and noticed he was

tossing a pair of Celeste’s lacy underwear into her pile of clean

clothes. For a brief second it freaked me out, but what else was

he going to do? Of course, he washed her underwear when he did

her laundry.

“It’s different with Celeste,” David said. “Her decisions

are . . . self-destructive. Look at that guy she picked this summer.”

He shoved the pile of her clothes into a bag and set it on the floor.

“She never listens to me about guys. But maybe . . . maybe you

could say something.”

“About Whip? What would I say?”

“You’re the peer counselor,” he said. “I’m sure you can think

of something.”

“Yeah, but in peer counseling, people come to me,” I said,

feeling a little uncomfortable. “Honestly, I’d feel weird saying

something without having noticed anything bad going on.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I get that.” And then, without

explanation, he grabbed his jacket and keys off the desk and said,

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Go?” Back to Frost House?

He held the door open and herded me with a nod of his

head. I followed him to the far end of the hallway and up two

flights of a dim, concrete staircase until we reached a big metal

153

door with a sign that said EMERGENCY ONLY. ALARM WILL

SOUND on it. Between WILL and SOUND someone had drawn a

line leading to the scrawled word Not. And, sure enough, as David

pushed the door open, no siren blared. He led me out onto the

flat, expansive roof, the sky opening up above us. Dark and starry.

“Wow,” I said, stating the obvious. “It’s beautiful up here.”

He crossed over to a rectangular raised area, about the size

of a small bench, then sat and patted the spot next to him. We

barely fit on it together, so I had to sit with my body pressed

against his. For a few minutes we were both quiet, staring up at

the stars. I felt the crisp night air sneaking around my neck, and

the heat off of David’s body seeping into mine, smelled the mulch

of fall and his spicy scent.

Eventually, he was the one to break the silence. “I thought

going to school with her was going to be great,” he said. “But . . .

in some ways, it was easier to be apart. Because I can’t always

make everything okay for her. And even though I know that, I

can’t help trying.”

“You’re such a good brother,” I said, melting a little at how

vulnerable he sounded. “She’s lucky.”

He gave a brief laugh. “Don’t think she’d agree.”

“She would.”

154

“You know . . .” He shifted forward, leaning his elbows on his

knees, and turned his face toward me. “I’ve been feeling kind of

bad about something.”

“What?”

“The other week, I didn’t mean to say your parents aren’t

good parents, or anything like that. I think I was, well, being kind

of protective of you.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering that he had sounded judgmental

about them. “That’s okay.”

“No it’s not. I’m not your brother.”

“I wish you were,” I said.

“You do?” He didn’t attempt to hide the surprise in his voice.

“Growing up I was always happy it was just me and my

parents,” I explained. “But maybe the divorce wouldn’t have felt

so much like a total . . . destruction of the family if I had siblings.”

“Oh,” he said and, then after a pause, added, “but you don’t

really want me as a brother, right? Because, no offense, I don’t

really want you as a sister.”

His words sent a rush of warmth through my veins. I stared

down at my feet and smiled. “No, I guess not.”

“You guess not?” He nudged me.

155

“Well, it’d be kind of like having a bodyguard,” I said.

“Someone to save me from men in whale pants.”

“Oh, God,” David said in an amused voice. “If it makes you

feel any better, she’s just as harsh about my choices.”

I reached down and scratched one of my calves, and made

myself ask the question I wasn’t sure I wanted answered. “Did

you, um, did you have a girlfriend at Pembroke? The one you got

busted with?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

“I never had a girlfriend so much as, well . . . friends who

were girls.” He gave an exaggerated cough.

“Oh. Why? Were you making self-destructive decisions?” I

said, ignoring the queasy sensation in my stomach. Of course a

guy as good-looking as him was a player.

David laughed. “Maybe. I didn’t give it too much thought at

the time. Just did what I wanted to do.”

I could imagine Jake or Theo saying the same thing about

how they’d treated me, and was considering asking David

whether the girls had appreciated his selfishness when he said, “I

wouldn’t be that way now, though,” in a new, more serious tone

of voice.

“Oh?” I said.

156

“Definitely not.” He sounded so sure.

“That’s . . . that’s cool.”

“What about you?” he said.

“What about me?”

“Where do you stand with the whole boyfriend thing?” Was I

imagining it, or had he somehow found a way to press even closer

to me? Having a conversation when I was near enough to share

his breath was kind of difficult. The distraction of the pulsing and

fluttering in my body . . .

I adjusted my glasses, swallowed. “I went out with a couple

different guys, freshman and sophomore year. Now, this

semester at least, I kind of don’t want to deal. I have so much else

to think about. I know that sounds lame, but . . .”

“So, that’s it? You’re just . . . not interested?”

Wait, did he mean in general, or in him?

“I . . .” Breathe normally. Speak normally. “This fall, I’ve put a

moratorium on dating. I’m so stressed-out about colleges, and

keeping my grades up, and everything. I’m going to reassess after

break.”

“A moratorium?” he said.

“Yeah.” I nodded, feeling like an idiot.

157

“That’s too bad,” he said. Or, at least, that’s what I thought

he said, but my blood was rushing so loudly in my ears I wasn’t

quite sure. If it is what he said, why was it too bad? Because of

him? Because it meant we couldn’t be together?

“So do you really think Celeste and I should go to New York

with you guys?” he said, interrupting my spontaneous

combustion. “What if she and Abby end up killing each other?”

Given my own fear about the dynamics on the trip, I was

surprised by my immediate response. “You should definitely

come,” I said. “You can ride down with me. It’d be much more

comfortable for Celeste than the bus.”

“I’ve seen your car,” he said. “Can it make it to New York?”

“Didn’t you hear Viv?” I said. “I can tie a cherry stem in a

knot with my tongue and fix my car.”

“Simultaneously?” he asked.

I laughed, then checked the time on my phone and

immediately jumped to my feet. “I didn’t realize how late it was. I

have to go.”

After stopping back by his room to pick up Celeste’s laundry,

David walked me downstairs to the front entrance of the dorm. A

group of senior guys were playing Nerf basketball in the common

room.

158

“Hey, Leena,” Matt Halpern said. “Pretty late for parietals,

isn’t it?”

“She came earlier, dude, so now she’s going,” one of the

other guys said. They snorted and jostled one another. I couldn’t

look at David’s face.

“Thanks again for the cake,” he said as he opened the door.

He was positioned so I had to pass just inches from him to get

out. I didn’t want to go outside, but those stupid guys could see

us standing there.

“Leena?” he said.

The planes of his face were sharp and strong in the harsh

fluorescent light, but his voice was soft. “Yeah?”

“I understand it’s an awkward situation, but if you can think

of anything to say to Celeste, about that guy, I’d really appreciate