Authors: Marianna Baer
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.
“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.
“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.
“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 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.
I
MADE IT BACK TO
F
ROST
H
OUSE
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.”
“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.
“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.
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.
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 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 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.
T
HE 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.
“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?”
“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.”
“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 think he—”
“No!” I said immediately. “Not to mention, he was with me.” A thought—David’s lateness to meet me at his dorm—flickered through my mind. But I forced it out. There was absolutely no way.
“Okay.” Kate sat back again. “So, about telling the dean or whoever. I don’t think you should. They wouldn’t investigate; all they’d do is ask Celeste who doesn’t like her. And we know the answer to that.”
“Abby.”
“Right. Now—”
“Kate, you don’t think there’s any chance she’d have done this stuff, do you?” I asked in a quieter voice. I knew the answer, just needed to hear her say it.
“Abby?” She screwed up her face, annoyed. “
Please
. I can’t believe you’d even ask me that. Now, let’s take option two, which, from all you told me, is much more likely.”
Option two: Celeste threw the photo herself.
Kate continued, “If that’s the case, you’ve actually done all you can do. You already asked her what happened to the photo. If she did it herself and pretended not to know about it, maybe she was just embarrassed. In any case, there’s some reason she didn’t want to tell you, so . . .” She shrugged. “What else can you do?”
I sat for a moment and processed what Kate had said. Basically, she was saying that no matter what happened to the photo, I should let it go.
“But . . . I feel like I should be doing
something
,” I said. “Take some sort of action. I don’t want to feel like there’s all this bad stuff going on in my room and I’m just sitting here all la-di-da.”
Kate stared down at her mandala for a minute. “Well, you can’t keep Celeste out. But you could lock the windows, too, I guess. With the doors and the windows locked, if it’s someone else, they won’t be able to get in.”
I nodded. Lock the windows. I could do that.
“You knew she’d be like this,” Kate added. “You told me right from the beginning, it’s always something. So maybe you need to just let her have her little dramas. You’re not your sister’s keeper. Or David’s sister’s keeper. Sit tight and ignore it as much as possible until I come flying home to you.”
“You have no idea how much I wish for that day,” I said.
We talked for a little while about other stuff, and then Kate had to go. Before she logged off, she said, “Oh, and Leena? Would you just jump David’s bones already?”
She was gone before I could respond.
On Mondays, I had a free period after Calculus and would help carry Celeste’s books to Rel-Phil. That afternoon, as we walked across the quad, the sky was blue and the air was knife-pleat crisp. Barcroft looked like a picture in a prep-school catalogue, students everywhere, lounging on the expansive lawn, playing Frisbee, taking their time getting to their next classes.
I felt so much better after talking to Kate. She was so logical and unflappable. I was going to take precautions—locking the windows and doors—but otherwise, it was out of my hands. I still felt angry that it was happening in my home, but at least I didn’t feel the weight of solving everything.
“Good day for KSM,” Celeste said. Kill, Screw, or Marry. Whenever we saw a group of three people—sitting together, walking together, whatever—we each had to pick one to kill, one to sleep with, and one to marry.
“Okay,” I said.
Students sat in clusters all over the wide marble steps of the chapel as we walked past. We’d just KSM’ed a group of freshmen when a new threesome sat down: Simone Dzama, Mr. Bartholomew, an English teacher, and David. My heart did a nervous jump at the sight of him; my body had a flashback to how it had felt on the roof.
“Exempt,” I said immediately.
“No one’s exempt,” she said. “You know the rules.”
“Come on, Celeste.”
“Don’t be so uptight.” She stopped walking. “I’ll even go first. It’s an easy one. Kill Simone, marry Mr. Bart, screw David.”
I looked at her with a grimace.
“What?” she said. “I’m not going to kill or marry my own brother.”
She was trying to shock me. I should have been used to it by now. “Okay,” I said, “Kill Mr. Bart, sleep with Simone, marry David.”
“If that’s your plan, you better hurry up.” Celeste gestured with her chin toward the steps. “You’ll be out of luck on both counts.”
Simone had a hand on David’s shoulder and was laughing, her long legs—with striped knee socks and bare thighs—stretched out in front of her. David stared, apparently mesmerized. A lump settled in my stomach.
“So, what’s up with you and Whip?” I asked, turning away. Because of the distraction of her burn and the photo, I’d never asked her last night.
“He looks surprisingly good in body paint,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”
“So, you had fun?”
“Jesus, Leena.” Celeste glared at me. “David’s obviously already using you to do his dirty work.”
My face flushed. “He worries about you.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s the goddamn problem.” She turned toward the steps and called, “Hey! David!” He looked in our direction and she beckoned him over. Crap. What was she planning?
David said something to Simone then grabbed his bag and walked over.
“What’s up?” he said.
“You guys are annoying me,” Celeste said, gesturing at the two of us. “That’s what’s up. All this delay. Dilly-dally, twiddle-twoddle. It’s annoying.”
The flush in my cheeks flared hotter. “Celeste—”
“No. Wait a minute.” She reached into her bag I was holding, brought out a bunch of papers, and began shuffling through them. “I don’t know what the holdup is, but . . . here. A catalyst.” She separated out a sheet of white paper. David reached for it but she hid it behind her back and turned to me. “The other day, David brought me papers he’d picked up for me at the office,” she said. “But a couple of his own things were mixed in the pile.” Now she held out the sheet for us to see.
The syllabus for David’s English class.
“So?” I said.
Celeste turned the paper over.
On the back, David had done a bunch of doodles: a remarkably realistic eye, a glass of water, a cartoon cat . . . My immediate thought was,
Wow. David can draw
. A split second later, though, my brain made sense of the largest doodle on the page. An elaborate graphic version of a name—in black ballpoint pen, a name turned into an almost Celtic twisty-turny hedge of intertwined, swooping strokes.
Leena.
My breath stopped.
David grabbed the paper from Celeste. “What the hell?” he said, shoving it in his bag. “Who cares?”
“Yeah,” I said, recovering enough to jump to his defense. “So he doodles. Big deal.”
Celeste snorted. “Anyone who has ever been in love knows the primal urge to doodle the loved one’s name.”
“You’re unbelievable,” David said, shaking his head. “I’m outta here.”
“It’s just a name on a piece of paper,” I added, to assure him I wasn’t making a big deal out of it.
David walked away without looking again at either one of us.
“I’m doing this for your own good,” she called after him. “Don’t you want to actually live life, instead of just thinking about it? Instead of focusing on everyone else?”
David didn’t turn around, just held up a hand giving Celeste the finger. People on the path had stopped and were staring.
“Thanks for ruining a nice friendship,” I said as his figure receded.
“He’ll get over it.”
We started walking again. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t making her carry her own bag after that little episode. And I couldn’t believe that instead of just being angry, some of what I felt coursing through my body was actually excitement. I didn’t want to let her know that, though.
“Has it occurred to you that if something
were
going to happen between me and your brother, it should happen at its own pace?” I said.
“No,” she said plainly.
I shifted her bag on my shoulder. “Well, has it occurred to you that if something
were
going to happen, the fact that you are so suspiciously,
overly
gung-ho about it would give someone like me second thoughts?”
“Huh.” She seemed to consider this. “No.”
“It is a little weird,” I said. “Your insistence. Just tell me—why do you want us to get together so bad? Do you have some ulterior motive?”
She stopped walking and looked at me. “Okay. Yes, actually, I do.”
Of course. I raised my eyebrows.
“I want you to get him off my back,” she said.
“What?”
“I want him to have someone he can take care of so he’ll stop spending every free minute wondering who I’m hooking up with or whether I’m losing my mind or whether I took a crap yesterday. Is that so weird? I have enough to worry about without worrying about him worrying about me.”
Her voice and face made it clear she was telling the truth. I didn’t quite know how to respond.
“I just know,” she added, “that if he had the right girlfriend, not just some fling, he’d be the best boyfriend ever. It’s not like I randomly picked you. I really, honestly think you’d be great for him. Don’t you think he’d be great for you?”
I stared at her some more, at the almost pleading look in her eyes. “You sound like you’re trying to sell your used car,” I said finally, laughing a little.
“Leena,” she said, smiling now, too. “I promise, he runs really, really well.”
As I walked away, after leaving Celeste at the religion building, I found myself unable to contain a huge smile. Celeste’s reason for wanting us to get together
wasn’t
that weird. And despite feeling bad about David’s embarrassment, I couldn’t help feeling a giddy jolt of excitement when I thought about what had happened on the quad. I actually broke out into a skip.
For once, I wasn’t the one doing the elaborate name doodles. They were being done about me.
David called me that evening. “So, that was awkward,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, hugging a pillow to me, “you could say that.”
“Sorry she’s such an ass,” he said. “I wasn’t mad at you when I walked off like that. I just couldn’t believe her. Of course, I should have acted like I didn’t care. That would have been much better. She’s like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. She really is.”
“I know.”