Marianna Baer - Frost

it. Only if you feel comfortable.”

Gazing at me with those eyes, he could have asked me to do

just about anything and I would have agreed.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“And . . . the moratorium. It’s only one semester, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “One semester.”

Suddenly, that sounded very, very long.

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Chapter 15

I MADE IT BACK TO FROST HOUSE with forty seconds to

spare before sign-in, sweaty and breathing hard after running the

whole way from Prescott carrying the bag of laundry. As I

scribbled my name on the sheet, I noticed that Whip had signed

out only fifteen minutes ago. Not a development I’d be reporting

back to David.

I wasn’t quite ready to be inside, and definitely didn’t feel

like dealing with Celeste, so I dropped her laundry bag in the

common room and sat out on the porch in one of the Adirondack

chairs. I stared up at the sky over the trees and tried to bring

myself back to the roof. I didn’t want to worry, right now, about

anything that had been said. I just wanted to remember the

feeling of my side pressed against his. The warmth and solidity of

his arm, his torso, his thigh . . . The unmistakable reaction inside

me and on my skin. How could something so passive—just sitting

there next to another body—feel so good in so many different

ways? A sense of complete safety combined with that giddy

flitter-flutter that thrummed all the way to my toe tips.

“Someone there?” Ms. Martin called from her front

doorway.

“It’s me, Leena,” I called back. “Sorry. I’m here on the porch.”

She padded around the corner, wrapped in a bathrobe. “I

wanted to make sure it was one of you girls.”

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“Just me,” I said, standing. “But I’m going in now.”

I went inside, and when I tried to open the bedroom door

was surprised to find it was still locked. I got out my key and slid it

in the lock, pushed the door—

“Leena?” Celeste’s voice called out from somewhere. Not

the bedroom.

“Yeah?” I said, turning around.

“Can you . . . can you come in here?” She was in the

bathroom. Probably taking one of her frequent nighttime baths.

Figuring she had forgotten something—she had a hard time

getting out of the tub, and was always needing me to bring her a

razor or towel or something else—I tossed her laundry bag in our

room and went in. She was sitting in the bath, a thin layer of

bubbles covering the surface of the water. Her cast was propped

up on her special bath stool, in its plastic bag. Her other leg was

bent, her arms wrapped around it. There was something not quite

right about her face. Her jaw muscles were tense, her skin paler

than usual. She looked like she might be trembling.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She shifted positions slightly to show me: a bright red mark

seared the back of her left upper arm. I knelt quickly by the tub. It

was a burn. The size of a baby’s fist. Not blistered, but still

obviously painful.

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“What happened?” I asked.

“I . . . I was sitting here while the water was running,” she

said. “And I guess . . . I guess I bumped against the faucet. I don’t

remember. It happened so quickly, and then it hurt so much.”

“That’s from the faucet?” I said. “The water must have been

so hot.”

She shook her head. “I was trying to cool the bath down.

Only the cold water was turned on.”

“You must have turned the wrong handle.”

“I didn’t.” Then she said it again, louder. “I didn’t. I know

which handle I turned. This wasn’t my fault.”

The faucet couldn’t have burned her if it was running cold

water, obviously, but there was no point in me fighting with her.

What mattered was her burn.

“Let’s drain the bath,” I said. “And then you need to hold

your arm under a stream of cool water. I’ll cover the faucet with a

facecloth.” As I did, I found that the metal wasn’t hot at all. The

bathwater wasn’t especially hot either. How long had she been

sitting here? I didn’t ask, just handed her towels to wrap over her

legs and her shoulders, so she’d warm up. Her whole body was

shaking. “You should take Tylenol for the pain,” I said. For once,

she didn’t say no to my suggestion of medication. I left her for a

moment and went back into the bedroom.

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After getting a couple of pills from my stash, I happened to

notice that Celeste’s beetle photo wasn’t hanging in its usual

spot. This wasn’t so strange; for some reason, ever since that first

day, the frame had been prone to falling off the nail. But this

time, I didn’t see it on the bed where it usually landed either.

I wasn’t sure why this made the hairs on the back of my neck

prickle, but it did.

“Leena?” Celeste called.

“One second,” I called back. “Just finding the Tylenol.”

I quickly scanned the room and spotted the photo lying

awkwardly on the floor across from Celeste’s bed. With growing

apprehension, I walked over and picked it up. The photo itself was

fine. But one corner of the black frame had chipped badly,

revealing the lighter wood underneath the paint. Following an

instinct, I checked the wall. About two feet up from where the

photo had been lying, there was a black mark on the white

surface, where the corner must have hit.

The frame hadn’t been placed on the floor.

It had been thrown.

My body stiffened. What had gone on here while I was with

David?

“Leena?” Celeste called again.

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I set the frame on her bed, then returned to the bathroom

and handed Celeste the Tylenol and a glass of water from the

sink, an anxious thumping in my chest. “What happened to your

photo?” I asked carefully.

“Huh?” She took the pills and handed me back the glass.

“The beetle photo.”

“Did it fall again?” she said. “Can you grab my robe?”

“You weren’t in there when it . . . fell?” I said, letting her use

my arm for stability as she climbed out of the tub.

“No.” She slipped her right arm into her silk robe and held

the fabric closed in front, then twisted to look at her burn. “Do I

need to bandage this or something?”

“I’ll do it.”

I got supplies from my first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet,

my thoughts spinning. If Celeste really didn’t know what I was

talking about, did that mean someone had snuck in our bedroom

and thrown her photo while she was in the bath, or with Whip,

and she just hadn’t found it yet?

After applying antibiotic ointment to her burn, I tore off a

piece of tape and affixed gauze across it. She’d seemed so

vulnerable: sitting in the tub, all skinny and trembling. How would

she react if she knew that while she’d been in there, someone

had done that to her artwork? Would she accuse Abby because of

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the way they’d been sniping at dinner? I bit my cheeks and

wondered if maybe . . . maybe it would be better if I didn’t tell her

at all. At least, not now, while she was already shaky.

“There,” I said, smoothing down the final piece of tape. “It’s

not actually that bad, I don’t think. Just hurts.”

“Thanks,” she said.

I was on my way out when she added, “Leena? Don’t tell

David about this.”

For a minute I thought she meant about the photo. But, no.

Her burn. “Okay,” I said, not seeing any reason he needed to

know.

I shut the bedroom door behind me and sat on the bed with

the photo in my hands, studying the damage. Then—pulse racing,

knowing Celeste was right across the hall—I rummaged through

my bag for a black Sharpie and began coloring in the chipped area

on the frame. At first, the color was too brownish, but after a few

layers it built up to black. If I looked closely, I could tell there was

a variation in the surface; once it was hanging I thought it would

be okay, especially if she didn’t know to be looking for it.

After I was finished, I couldn’t even entertain the idea of

doing the homework I had left from the weekend. I went straight

to bed. As I lay there in the dark, all I could think about was who

would have done that to Celeste. The door had been locked; they

would have had to climb through a window to get in. They would

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have had to break in to our bedroom— my bedroom. Picturing it, I

couldn’t ignore the anger beginning to burn at the center of my

chest.

This wasn’t how Frost House was supposed to be. None of

it—the tension at the dinner, worrying about what was

happening here in the room. It was supposed to be a sanctuary.

I brought Cubby onto my chest, wishing again, like I had with

the vase, that she could tell me what she’d seen. If I didn’t know

what had happened, how could I know what to do to make it safe

again? I concentrated very hard on her eyes, trying to see the

answer.

It will never be safe while she’s here. Cubby’s voice was

inside my head, quiet.

“It’s not her fault,” I told myself.

Everything is her fault. She has to go.

I looked through the dark at Celeste’s side of the room: her

hat collection, her flamboyant wardrobe, the beetle photo . . .

and I wondered. One thing I knew was that she needed to be the

center of attention. Was it possible that she was doing this all

herself, so she would be the center of attention in the dorm? Was

that what I was trying to tell myself, by saying it was all her fault?

Maybe she’d ripped her own skirt, broken the vase, thrown her

own photograph. And just pretended to be the scared victim.

Well, if she had, then hanging the photo back up and

ignoring it was the best thing I could have done.

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Chapter 16

THE NEXT MORNING, I pretended to be asleep when Viv

came to get me for breakfast. I absolutely shouldn’t have missed

bio—especially not an unexcused absence—but the only, only

place I wanted to be was in my room. It was going to be one of

those shockingly bright fall days, and the early sun shone in

through the trees, filling the whole space with warmth. I liked

knowing that if I was here, the room was safe. No one could come

in except those rays of sunlight.

I lay curled up on my side with my comforter piled on top of

me and tried to think about yesterday’s events without getting

worked up. I needed to talk to someone about what was going

on. But who? Not David, or Abby, or Dean Shepherd. Viv was a

possibility, but she hated keeping secrets, and I’d have to ask her

not to tell anyone. I was even considering my mother, when I had

another idea. Trying not to get my hopes up, I looked at the clock

and calculated. . . . Yes, it should be the perfect time. Without

another thought, I opened my laptop and checked to see if she

was online, then called.

I almost cried when Kate appeared on my screen, all the way

from Moscow, wearing her favorite Violent Femmes T-shirt and

playing with her ever-present wire mandala. Viv and Abby and I

had talked to her occasionally as a group, but it was hard because

of the time difference, and because she wasn’t online often.

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“Leena Thomas,” she said with a smile. “You look like hell.”

The minute I started talking, it all rushed out in a waterfall of

words, everything that had happened with Celeste and Abby and

David from the beginning of the semester, so many things—I

realized now—that I’d been keeping to myself.

Kate listened and nodded and kept up a steady rhythm with

her hands, flipping the three-dimensional wire form into different

geometric shapes. I could tell she was thinking hard because of

how quickly her hands moved.

“It seems to me,” she said, “from thousands of miles away,

that you’re tangling a lot of things all together. I don’t actually

think there’s anything you need to be worrying about.”

“Really?” I said.

“The one thing you need to make a decision about is

whether to tell anyone about the photograph, right?”

The weight of all the worries I had made it seem much more

complicated than that, but I supposed that was the only actual

decision to be made. “Right,” I said.

“Okay, I’m trusting that you can really tell it hit the wall hard

enough to have been thrown. So, in that case, either . . . one.”

She stopped playing with the mandala and held up a finger.

“Someone snuck in the room and threw it to be mean to Celeste.

Or two—” Another finger. “Celeste threw it herself, for God

knows what reason. Right?”

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“I guess.”

“You don’t sound sure,” she said. “Those are the only options

I see. Unless you think a ghost did it or something.” She smiled.

“Don’t go all Viv on me,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Okay,” Kate said. “So let’s say we know it’s option one.

Someone was mean to Celeste. The question is, should you tell

her? How would she react if you did?”

No mystery there. “Freak out. Accuse Abby. Get even more

paranoid.”

“So she’d get scared? Would anything constructive come

from it?”

I imagined Celeste reacting and didn’t see it leading

anywhere good. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Okay, so that solves that. You don’t tell Celeste.” Her hands

went back to their rhythmic motions.

“But maybe we should be reporting it, to the dean or

something?”

“It’s not like they’re going to fingerprint the frame and

windowsills to figure it out.” Kate paused for a moment, her thick,

black brows lowered. “You’re sure someone would have had to

come in through a window? It seems so . . . unlikely.”

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“The door was definitely locked,” I said. “And only me,

Celeste, and David have keys.”

“David has a key?” she said, leaning forward. “You don’t