Marianna Baer - Frost

I made my mind a blank slate, ignored that neon sign over his

head. Or at least I tried.

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“Pretty much, thanks,” he said, then turned to me. “Actually,

I just wondered if you were going back to the dorm now?”

I moistened my lips. “After lunch, I am.” Was he looking at

me with more than friendly interest? It was hard to tell; his eyes

had such a natural intensity. In the end, probably better if he

wasn’t. I might not be strong enough to resist.

“Could you give this to my sister?” he said. “I’d bring it

myself, but I have another orientation thing and I know I’ll just

end up forgetting.” He handed me a small white envelope, then

added, “Assuming you haven’t kicked her out already, that is.”

An image of her holding the dead tulips flashed in my mind.

“Not yet,” I joked back. Folding the envelope into my bag, I could

tell it contained a key.

“David,” the dean said. “I spoke to Harry Weintraub and he’s

ready to meet with you whenever. You have his number and

email?”

“I do,” David said. “Thanks.”

“Seems like a nice young man,” Dean Shepherd said as he

walked away.

I watched his retreating figure—the broad shoulders, the

defined calf muscles—and noticed he had a bounce in his walk,

not the usual too-cool saunter of a good-looking guy. “Nice young

man. Is that a euphemism for hot as hell?” I asked the dean.

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She laughed.

“And what was that about Dr. Weintraub?” I said. He was a

teacher and well-known mathematician. I’d wanted him for

Calculus, but he was taking a couple of years off. “Isn’t he still on

leave?”

“Official y, yes. But he agreed to work with David on an

independent study.”

So math was David’s thing? He must have been pretty

brilliant for Dr. Weintraub to make a special point of working with

him. I wondered what spoons had to do with it. . . .

“David told me,” I said. “You know, about their father.”

The dean nodded. “It wasn’t my place. But I’m glad he did.

And Celeste arrived this morning?”

“Yup.”

“How was that?” she asked, putting an arm around my

shoulders.

“Well,” I said, “it’s going to be an interesting semester.”

“You know what Edith Wharton said?” the dean replied. “She

said, ‘I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I

should want someone who made life interesting.’ Maybe the

same applies for roommates.”

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I supposed that was the best way to look at it. If I anticipated

an interesting—if odd—semester with Celeste, someone so

different from me and my friends, and saw it as a chance to get to

know her better, then I wouldn’t be disappointed. Still, I held on

to the hope that didn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t also be easy.

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Chapter 7

MY MOTHER CALLED WHEN I WAS on my way back to

Frost House after lunch. I wasn’t in the mood for a long

conversation, but picked up anyway because I knew she’d keep

calling until she reached me. I hadn’t talked to her since arriving

at school, had only sent her and my father brief messages saying

I’d gotten here safely. My father had written back: “Remember to

get car inspected. Visit soon. Dad.” My mother was higher

maintenance.

I walked down Highland Street, giving her a brief summary of

the weekend.

“What kind of interesting?” she said when I used the word to

describe Celeste again. “Medieval castle? Skyscraper?”

Matching up people with architecture: our family version of

“If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

The perfect answer came as I turned into the Frost House

driveway.

“Casa Batlló,” I said. Casa Batlló—an outrageous apartment

building in Barcelona with colorful, mosaic walls that seem to

ripple, balconies that look like enormous skulls, a ceiling that

swirls like a whirlpool. Disconcerting, but beautiful.

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“You were scared to death of Casa Batlló,” my mother said.

“Do you need me to call that Dean of Students woman, honey? I

don’t want you living with some girl you’re scared—”

“Mom,” I interrupted. “I was only six when we went to

Barcelona.” Gravel pressed into the thin soles of my sandals.

“Everything is fine here. I have to go, okay?” It bothered me when

she tried to get involved in things about my life she didn’t

understand, things I could take care of myself.

If she wanted to be a part of it all, she shouldn’t have moved

across the country.

Ignoring my comment about needing to go, she began to tell

me about an article on a new kind of yoga that she was going to

email me. “Apparently, it’s much better for managing stress than

the kind I’ve been doing,” she said. “If there’s a studio near

Barcroft that offers it, I’d be happy to pay for you to take classes.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, heading down the hall to my room. “Sounds

great.”

As I set my bag on the floor in the bedroom, I registered

something strange on my bed. My mother’s voice chirped on as I

moved closer. Sheets of newspaper covered with rows of small,

dark . . . what? I moved closer. Bugs?

“Sorry, have to go,” I said. I hung up without waiting for her

response and stared.

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Cockroaches. Dead. At least a hundred. Shiny brown with

spindly legs. On my bed.

A roar filled my ears.

“Celeste!”

There were dead cockroaches.

On my bed.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the carcasses. Some as big as two

inches long. Legs and antennae and slippery-looking abdomens. A

battlefield. I shivered violently, as if all those tiny legs were

crawling on my skin, scrabbling up my arms and my spine and my

neck.

This was not interesting. It was repulsive.

“Celeste!” I yelled again.

I heard the flush of the toilet. Celeste came thumping in.

“I know, I know. Sorry,” she said in a blasé voice. “I needed

to see if they all arrived okay.”

“Take them off,” I said. The angry roar in my ears was so loud

I was sure she could hear it, too. “Take them off my bed. Now!”

“Okay. Let me just get their box.” She hopped over and

grabbed a shoe box off her dresser.

“Why do you even . . . why do you even have them? This is so

disgusting.”

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“For a photo project. It’s taken me a really long time to get

enough of them. You can’t just buy them anywhere.”

“Really, really disgusting,” I said. “And why didn’t you put

them on your bed?”

She gave me a look as if I were the crazy person. “No room.”

I glanced over. Celeste’s bed was covered with ten or so

small birds’ nests and what appeared to be an assortment of little

bones. God, I wished Dean Shepherd were here to see this—what

she was asking of me. David, too, for that matter.

“I’m going to go out for a little while,” I said, not knowing

where I’d go, just knowing that I couldn’t be here with her.

“When I get back, there will be no dead things in the bedroom. I

don’t care what you do with them. I just don’t want them in my

bedroom.”

“Fine. Sorry, I didn’t know you had a phobia.”

“It’s not a phobia!” I said. “It’s perfectly normal! This is not

the sort of stuff that should be in my bedroom! Especially not on

my bed!”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” she said. “I get the point.

But it’s not like you haven’t touched my stuff, too.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Unless David tried on my skirt,” she said.

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Her skirt? My heart started thumping. How could she . . . ?

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” She put the shoe box

down again and hopped over to the closet. She tugged at the

doorknob, jiggled it, pulled. “This stupid door won’t let me in. It

keeps sticking.”

“The wood’s probably swollen.” I went over and turned the

knob. The door opened easily.

As Celeste reached inside, I had the irrational hope that she

was going to bring out a skirt I’d never seen before, a skirt I hadn’t

touched. But her hand emerged with the pink, bustled one. She

held it out so I could see that down one side, on the seam, was a

long rip—three or so inches.

I stared at it, momentarily speechless. That rip had not been

there after I tried it on. I was sure. And it didn’t even look like it

could have happened accidentally. Still, a guilty feeling wrapped

around me, as tight as the skirt had been.

“Celeste,” I finally said, “I didn’t rip your skirt. I mean, I did

try it on for a minute, but—”

“You could have at least hung it back up.”

“Hung it . . . ? I did hang it up.”

“Funny. I found it on the floor.”

“But I did hang it up. I promise.” I had hung it up well, hadn’t

I? And I’d checked the fabric so thoroughly.

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“I can fix the rip,” she said, putting the skirt back in the

closet. “That’s not a big deal. But is this how it’s going to be? You

punishing me for living here? Because if it is, we should forget

about it right now. I can tell the dean this isn’t going to work, that

I need a room somewhere else.”

I imagined the scene. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t have to do

that.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. Why don’t we . . . start fresh?”

“Like, forget this stuff happened?” She gestured at the skirt

and the bed.

I nodded.

Celeste seemed to consider this for a moment. She hopped

over, delicately picked up one of the roaches, and held it up to

her face. “What do you think, little guy?” she said. “Forgive and

forget?”

She turned the roach so his head faced me, turned him back,

and wiggled him so he appeared to be nodding at her.

“Okay,” she said. Then she smiled. “Leena! I’m so happy to

be living with you.”

When I reached the end of the driveway—still not knowing

where I was headed, or what exactly had happened back there,

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only knowing that there was a great big lump of unpleasantness

in my throat—I ran into Abby and Viv, carrying grocery bags.

“Thomas!” Abby called as she bounded up to me. “Check it

out!”

Her bags were filled with microwave popcorn, ice cream,

pretzels, Diet Coke, protein bars, trail mix. . . .

“Wow,” I said. “That should keep us going.”

“What’s wrong, Leen?” Viv said, clearly picking up on my lack

of enthusiasm. “Was your presentation okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “It’s just . . .” And then, even though I knew I

shouldn’t give Abby ammunition against Celeste, I couldn’t help

telling them what had happened.

Abby’s mouth dropped open as I spoke. “That’s the foulest

thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I can’t believe she’d do that to

you.”

“She must have been clueless that you’d mind,” Viv said.

“But, also, isn’t it so strange about the skirt?” I turned to

Abby. “You were there when I tried it on. Wouldn’t we have been

able to tell, if it ripped that bad?”

Abby shrugged.

“You didn’t go back and try it on, did you?” I asked.

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“And left it on the floor, ripped?” she said in a tone of

disbelief. “Are you serious?”

I immediately realized how offensive the question had been.

“Of course you didn’t,” I backtracked. “Forget I said it. It must

have been me.”

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Chapter 8

THAT NIGHT AFTER SIGN-IN, we all gathered in the

common room for a beginning-of-school dorm meeting. Ms.

Martin, our house counselor, was late. Abby, Viv, and I sat on the

couch, which I’d spruced up with one of my tapestries. The

cushions were so old and squishy that the three of us had sunk

together in the middle, like we were in a hammock. Celeste sat in

the armchair, her cast propped up on the coffee table. She wore a

black silk camisole, green satin pajama pants, and an orange

turban-type hat with a rhinestone pin on the side. Hopefully,

Abby wouldn’t make a comment about the outfit. I’d asked her

and Viv not to say anything about the roaches, and as far as I

knew, they hadn’t.

When I’d returned to the dorm this afternoon, the bugs were

nowhere to be seen. In their place on my bed lay a vintage

sleeveless top, light pink with tiny black beads in a fireworks

pattern.

“I don’t know why I bought it,” Celeste had said. “It’s too big

for me. I know you’re not into clothes, but I think it would look

hot on you. Keep it, if you want.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s really pretty.” I’d never have chosen it

for myself, but I’d have liked it on someone else. Maybe it would

look good. I handed Celeste my own peace offering—a bouquet

of dried Chinese lantern flowers I’d bought for her in town.

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“Dead already. Good thinking,” she joked as she reached for

her vase. “Look, David told me it was a total bitch move to put

those roaches on your bed. I suck at this roommate thing. I want

to try to be better, though. You have to tell me when I’m screwing

up.” After arranging the flowers, she set the vase back on her

dresser. “Perfect. This was my granny’s. She had a superstition

about never letting it sit empty.”

I’d felt better about the vibe between us after that, but the

thing that still nagged at me—even now, as I waited for the dorm

meeting to start—was the rip in her skirt. Like I’d said to Abby, I

just didn’t see how I could have missed it. Not to mention that I’d

definitely hung the skirt back up. I was sure of it. So if it wasn’t

me . . . ? Had someone else been in our room, when neither of us

was there?

I was trying to stop worrying when Ms. Martin arrived.