Marianna Baer - Frost

sickness in my gut radiated out.

I lowered my arm.

Your body won’t let you leave. It knows what you need.

Another pill.

Maybe that would help. Something for energy. This house

always knew what I needed, from the beginning. Hadn’t it? I

slipped another in my mouth. My eyes shut. I lifted my arm again

and tried to reach up. Too tired. The alarm blared. He wouldn’t

really have done that, would he? Why would he do it now? I was

so confused.

Footsteps thudded nearby, shook the house.

“Leena?” A voice called from far, far away.

I tried to reach for the door. Gravity’s cold nails trapped my

arms on the floor. Tried again. Nothing. Now it wasn’t just trying

to move that was hard, it was trying to breathe. Bricks, walls

tumbled on top of me. Pressed me down. Down toward the earth.

Squeezing my chest.

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A surge ripped through me, vomited through my listless

body. The burn. The stink. I had to get out.

Out there are people who don’t want you, the walls

whispered. In here is where you belong.

Was that true? It felt true, inside my bones. My poor, tired

bones. Inside my poor, sick gut. But somehow . . .

“Leena?” The door trembled, the knob wiggled back and

forth. “Leena, are you in there?” The door wasn’t locked; still,

they couldn’t open it. I knew they wouldn’t be able to. Just like

David hadn’t been able to, that day so many weeks ago.

They don’t want you. None of them. Her voice filled the

space. Could they hear her, outside the door? Look what you’ve

let them do to you. There’s nowhere for you to go.

“That’s not how it is,” I said back. “Things happen. You can’t

stop things from happening.”

Yes, you can. In here.

My arm. Would. Not. Move.

I’ll protect you, she cooed. You can’t do it yourself. You’re too weak. That’s why you came in here. You knew it the first time you

saw the house. You knew you needed it.

“Someone’s out there. Looking for me.”

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You’ve never been strong enough, she said. If you were

strong, you wouldn’t have been with David. Admit it, Leena.

I’d tried not to be with him, but it hadn’t worked. That was

true. And now look.

Now you know he never loved you. And you’re too weak to

take the pain.

“He did love me.”

Weak, stupid Leena. I told you not to be with him. But you

couldn’t resist. You couldn’t stop yourself from needing.

“No. I chose. I wasn’t weak.” Shudders rippled through me.

Another surge of vomit.

It’s okay, Leena. I know. I know you aren’t strong enough. But

I love you anyway.

“Leena?” More thumping. “Are you okay? Leena, let us know

if you’re in there. Please. We don’t know if it’s a fire drill, or what,

but we have to get out. Why won’t you come out?”

Admit it, she hissed. You’ll never be okay. Not out there.

David was right. You’re the sick one.

“No,” I whispered.

This voice—Cubby, the closet, the walls—it wasn’t me.

Wasn’t from any place inside of me.

You ’re the sick one.

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Thumping. “Leena, please!”

Nothing emerged from my mouth because someone held my

tongue, pressed it back into my throat so I couldn’t speak,

couldn’t breathe. I began to gag. I tilted my gaze to the floor, to

my arms. Visualized raising them up. But I couldn’t. Only one

hand. One hand moved. Lifting it was like lifting the whole house.

I reached up with my last bit of energy, reached up with that one

hand and scratched at the door. My fingernails scraped against

the wood. Once, twice.

“Did you hear that?” someone outside said.

Scratched once more. All I had in me.

I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, except for the voice. Stay with

me, she cooed, over and over . I’m the only one who wants you.

After I reached the heaviest place, so heavy I thought my body

was being obliterated, I felt a release, a lightness. Like when

you’ve held your arms against a doorframe and then walk out and

they fly up. I flew up. Up and out and high and wide and all over

and circling and spreading. And no more containment. Just me,

energy, spreading into wood and plaster and brick and floating in

the air and filling the space. An angel after all. No more body

keeping me tied down. The body was still there, I just wasn’t in it.

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Chapter 41

SUN-STREAMS POURED IN from the arched window. Dust

particles shimmered in the pathway.

“Would it sound really weird,” I asked Viv, my eyes shifting

away from the light, “if I told you that part of me . . . part of me

didn’t come back?”

“Didn’t come back?” she said.

“You know, after the paramedics got to me.”

Viv reloaded the nail polish brush and stroked the pearly

white liquid over my left thumbnail. She’d come down to see me

at my dad’s condo. “Well, it kind of makes sense,” she said. “I

mean, we have this life-force energy, right? Who’s to say that

some of yours wasn’t released when your body thought it was the

end. Like a leak in an inflatable raft that’s then patched up. Right?

The air that escapes never comes back.”

“Exactly,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I just . . . I

feel like I left something behind. I never would have believed that,

before. I mean, it sounds so stupid. It’s the kind of kooky thinking

I’d have made fun of.”

The springs of the sofa bed creaked as Viv shifted her weight.

“I suppose,” she said, “a lot was different before.”

Before.

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Before, I knew so many things. About David and Celeste.

About myself. About real and unreal. I built a fort out of all of

these things I knew.

That day in Frost House, the fort collapsed.

Afterward, I searched back through the semester, trying to

find new facts to build with. But just as I was ready to nail one

down, it would disintegrate in my hands.

Information came to me slowly.

All I grasped at first was that I’d nearly died from a

combination of the pills I’d taken and carbon monoxide poisoning.

I spent two nights in the hospital: a blur of confusion, the stink of

vomit and disinfectant, throat scraped raw, tubes running in and

out of my body, fragments of sleep cut short by needles, the

claustrophobia of the oxygen chamber, doctors with charts,

nurses with implements, and my parents sitting next to me with

looks on their faces that said, How did this happen? as much as

they said, “We love you.”

Not that I blamed them for wondering. I was wondering the

same thing.

Everyone wanted an explanation. But how could I explain?

So I kept most of what happened to myself, only saying enough to

assure the hospital psychiatrist I wasn’t suicidal and didn’t need

admission into the psych ward. When I took the pills, my thought

process had supposedly been compromised by the carbon

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monoxide, so they believed I’d just been confused about how

many pills I’d taken. I agreed to outpatient therapy.

To my parents’ credit, they didn’t push. And they tried to do

what they could. At one point, I woke to my mother standing next

to my bed, a tentative smile on her face, hands behind her back.

“I found something that might make you feel a bit better,”

she said. She laid Cubby on my pillow. “Your old friend.”

“Oh.” I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat as I turned

my face away. “Thanks. But you can get rid of it.”

Viv came for a quick visit the day after I was discharged.

“What’s happened since I left?” I said. “I feel like I’ve been

gone for years.”

She told me about the chaos of that afternoon. Apparently, a

crowd of students gathered outside the dorm and rumors spread

across campus the minute the fire department and paramedics

arrived, so many trucks that all of Highland Street was blocked

off. Dean Shepherd moved them all out of Frost House—Viv and

Abby to Dee Hall, Celeste to Revere Hall.

“Celeste is still at school?” I said, shocked. I hadn’t dreamed

that I’d told the dean about her, had I?

Viv’s blank look reminded me she didn’t know the whole

story. I gave her a condensed version: Celeste’s fear that Frost

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House was haunted, my meeting with the dean, David’s anger and

his plan to save her—

“Wait,” Viv interrupted. “What did David have to do with the

carbon monoxide leak?”

“He caused it,” I said. “By doing something to the furnace.

That was his plan to get Celeste moved out.”

Viv shook her head. “That’s impossible. The leak had been

going on for a long time.”

Now it was my turn to look blank.

“The alarm nearest your room was screwed up,” she said. “It

wasn’t calibrated right, or whatever. So it was only when the

carbon monoxide reached upstairs that an alarm went off. You

guys had been breathing it for . . . well, they don’t know how long.

Hard to say with windows being opened, stuff like that. Didn’t

anyone tell you this?”

Did they? “I don’t know,” I said. “I just remember when they

found out the carbon monoxide was from the furnace. The stuff

at the hospital is kind of a big blur.”

“They still don’t really know if it was from the furnace,” she

said. “I don’t quite get it, but there was some problem and they

couldn’t tell. But we all had to get tested for CO poisoning, and

Celeste had to get oxygen therapy. David had nothing to do with

it.”

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Until that moment, I’d thought David had left me in the

dorm, knowing I would get sick from the carbon monoxide leak

he’d caused. I hadn’t thought he’d wanted me dead—he wouldn’t

have known that I’d shut myself up in the closet with my pills. But

still . . . I’d used it as an excuse to believe I was better off without

him. Better off without a guy who would ever do something like

that.

But now?

Before this all happened, I think I would have forced myself

to forget about it, to ignore the fact that I wanted to see him.

Anything to avoid the risk of further rejection.

Now, though, I realized that reaching out to David or not

reaching out—it was going to hurt either way.

I allowed myself to be a bit of a coward and send a message

instead of call, so when he agreed to come visit, I couldn’t sense

his tone of voice.

The day he was coming, my body was so twitchy I felt like I

was walking around with my finger stuck in a socket. I tried a

deep-breathing technique my therapist taught me. A Valium

would have worked better. I knew I shouldn’t think that way—

didn’t want to think that way—but it was a hard habit to break.

Finally, the doorbell buzzed.

We stared at each other, awkward. His face was paler,

drawn—more like his sister than ever. After a moment, I stepped

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forward and hugged him. My cheek pressed into the satiny puff of

his down jacket. We stood like that, quiet, for a long time. I loved

being this close to him, no matter what had happened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Leena.”

“Me too.”

A muffled cough came from inside my dad’s room. We broke

apart.

“He’s giving us space,” I whispered. “I’ll introduce you later.”

David nodded. “You look good,” he said, running his fingers

down my hair. “Are you . . . okay?”

“Pretty much.”

“So.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Celeste is

actually . . . She wanted to see you, too. She’s at the coffee place,

on the corner. I’m supposed to call her when she can come, if

that’s okay.”

“Of course,” I said. “Viv told me she’s still at school. They let

her stay?” I began leading him into the kitchen where I’d set out

all our tea choices during my nervous morning.

“Yeah,” he said. “Once everything came out, and they

realized she was sick, you know, everyone decided she could stay.

Thank God.”

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“Wait, so, she is sick?” I said, turning from the electric kettle,

confused.

“From the carbon monoxide.”

“Right, but . . . that’s it? Nothing worse?”

“No!” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I

thought you knew all this. It was the carbon monoxide making her

sick. Haven’t you read what it can do? Insomnia, delusions, weird

physical sensations. Along with Celeste’s imagination, and Whip’s

story about the house. The perfect storm, I guess.”

“So, that’s why she thought the house was haunted?” I

asked.

“The whole thing is pretty crazy. Here we were thinking Frost

House was out to get her, and, in a way, it was.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize she’d been affected so severely.” I

tried to process this information while pouring hot water into our

mugs. “Choose whichever tea you want,” I said, and then, after

putting chamomile into my own mug, “What about the weird

things that happened in our room, though? The vase, the

nests . . . Carbon monoxide doesn’t explain any of that.”

“Probably the cat,” he said with a slight shrug.

“Really?”

He stopped dunking his tea bag. “Are you still worried she