Frost - Marianna Baer
Maybe, I thought as I stared at the sunburned back of Whip’s
neck, maybe the difference between me and him was how
ingrained I felt here. My parents had just gotten a divorce when I
arrived in ninth grade. And although they liked to say it was
amicable—neither of them had cheated and they’d used a
mediator instead of lawyers—it had hit our lives like a wrecking
ball. I’d had to build a new life; Barcroft was the foundation. Of
course I was worried about leaving.
“Leena Thomas,” I said when I reached the guy handing out
manila envelopes. I took mine and slid out the multicolored
sheets of paper. My housing assignment form had a note in
familiar, flowing handwriting: Hello, L! Please call or stop by and
see me ASAP. Looking forward, NS.
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NS—Nancy Shepherd: Dean of Students, faculty advisor to
the peer-counseling program I’d started, my mentor. I’d been
looking forward to seeing her, too. I wanted to hear about her
summer camping trip, which had involved an encounter with a
“feroshus beer,” according to my postcard from her seven-year-
old daughter, who I babysat during the school year.
Now, though, instead of asking about that (Budweiser?
Corona?), I had to start the semester by bothering her about
Celeste.
Shaking off the thought, I slipped my registration papers
back in the envelope, stood up straighter, and searched the
crowd for Abby’s walnut-brown curls. A shriek rattled my
eardrums.
“Leena-bo-beena!” Vivian Parker-White loped toward me, all
long limbs and flowery skirt and skin tanned from weeks in
Greece.
“I’ve missed you!” I said, my smile buried in a rain-wet mass
of coconut shampoo smell as we hugged.
“No,” she said, “I’ve missed you!” I squeezed even tighter,
trying to make up for months of only virtual communication.
Boarding school had spoiled me—I was used to having my friends
around me all the time.
As Viv and I broke away from our hug, Abby materialized
next to us. She bounced up and down. “Can we show now, since
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we’re all together? We don’t have to wait till we’re back at the
dorm, do we?”
“I almost forgot,” I said. “Here, though?” A couple of
sophomore boys stood right next to us. One of them grinned
when our eyes met, as if he knew I was considering unbuttoning
my cutoffs.
“No chance,” Viv said. “Mine’s not for public viewing.”
“Come on.” Abby grabbed our hands. She pulled us through
the registration room, into a black granite hallway, and down a
set of polished concrete stairs, chattering about her horrible class
schedule and the “Green Beret disaster.”
“It’s not a disaster,” I said, wishing she hadn’t mentioned it.
I’d go see the dean in a bit. Now, I just wanted to enjoy this
moment, wanted to see if my guesses were right—an Aries
symbol for Viv, and a butterfly for Abby. At the end of last
semester, we’d made a pact to get tattoos over the summer and
had forbidden further discussion about it until the moment of
revelation.
Abby pushed open the door to the girls’ bathroom.
“Who goes first?” Viv asked.
“Me,” Abby said.
Doing a mock striptease move, she lowered the right strap of
her tank top. Two hollow-eyed faces stared up from her shoulder
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blade. A comedy/tragedy drama-mask thing. One face smiling,
one frowning, the expressions exaggerated almost to the point of
dementia.
“Ooh, I love it,” I said. “Really well drawn.”
“Exdese,” Viv agreed, using the dorky word for excellent
we’d made up freshman year. “And very appropriate, of course.”
“It’ll be even more appropriate if you become bipolar,” I
pointed out.
“Ha, ha.” Abby flicked me on the arm. “Who’s next?”
Viv turned around and lifted up her skirt. Smack in the
middle of the left cheek of her thong-clad butt was a heraldic
crest: black and red, with fleur-de-lis designs around a knight’s
helmet and a stag’s head.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s . . . amazing. It’s so elaborate.”
“Oh my God,” Abby said. “It’s the Parker family crest! Isn’t it?
The one you showed me online?”
Viv turned back around. “Yup. Isn’t it funky? It’s thanks to
Orin.”
“Your astrologer—sorry, your advisor,” I corrected myself,
“told you to get your family crest tattooed on your butt?”
“No, of course not,” Viv said. “He told me I should
incorporate my family history into my identity.”
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Abby covered her mouth; a snort escaped her nose.
“It’s an important part of my being,” Viv added.
I made the mistake of looking into Abby’s glimmering brown
eyes, and we lost it.
I shook with laughter until my cheek muscles ached. It was
perfect. The Parker-Whites are a bizarre hybrid of old money
aristocracy (Parker) and new-age bohemianism (White). Their
psychic “advisor” is practically a full-time employee.
Eventually, the bathroom filled with wheezes and deep
breaths as Abby and I struggled to compose ourselves. Viv waited,
arms crossed.
She leaned back against a sink. “Laugh all you want. But Orin
said something else, too. Something not so good.”
“What?” I said, bracing myself for another absurdity.
Before she could continue, the bathroom door swished open
and three of our dorm-mates from junior year bustled in.
“I heard about your new roommate, Leena,” Jessica Liu said
as the other two went into stalls. “That should be entertaining.”
“You heard? How?” I didn’t like that. Other people knowing
made it seem more like a done deal.
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“My brother went to school with her brother. They were on
the phone yesterday and her brother asked to talk to me. He
wanted to make sure she wasn’t rooming with some psycho.”
“Hah!” Abby said. “That’s rich.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked Jess.
“The truth. That Celeste was in serious danger.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Anyway, I’m not sure
if it’s going to work out for her to live with us. Dean Shepherd
wants to meet. Speaking of which . . .” I checked my watch. “She
won’t be in her office much longer. I should get going.”
“Leen, we’re not done!” Abby said.
“We’ll finish later, okay?” I gripped the chilly metal door
handle. “I need to deal with this.”
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Chapter 3
ALTHOUGH THE RAIN HAD STOPPED, the humid air still
clung to me like a full-body sweater as I hurried past the stately
brick buildings of the main quad on my way to Irving Hall. Barcroft
is one of the oldest boarding schools in the country, and while the
newer buildings are flashy and modern, the central campus is
quintessential New England prep school.
Marcia, the dean’s assistant, said I’d have to wait a few
minutes. I sat on a leather chair and rearranged the legs of my
cutoffs to separate my clammy skin from the slick surface, then
took out my packet and thumbed through my registration
materials. Black type floated into abstract designs as I silently
rehearsed my conversation with the dean.
Until now, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that it
would have been her decision to move Celeste to Frost House.
But sitting here, I couldn’t understand it, given how well Dean
Shepherd knew the situation. How well she knew me.
After answering a posting on the job board freshman year,
I’d started babysitting her daughter on Sunday afternoons while
the dean was with her husband, who was in hospice with terminal
cancer. We kept the arrangement after he died, as well.
Sometimes I stayed to help with dinner and ended up eating with
her and Anya. I think she was happy to have someone to distract
her from stuff with her husband, and I loved listening to her talk
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about books and music and places she’d lived and traveled.
Growing up as an only child, I’d spent a lot of time with my
parents and their friends; she reminded me of one of them.
Probably some kids at Barcroft thought I was a suck-up,
hanging out with the Dean of Students. But I didn’t ask her for any
special treatment. Until Frost House, of course.
I called her the day I discovered it last fall. “I saw the most
amazing house all hidden in the bushes,” I said, words rushing
out. “And I peeked in the windows and I think it might be a dorm.
Is it? Because it would be the most perfect place to live for senior
year. All quiet and separate, kind of like living off campus, away
from the frenzy. And if it is a dorm, how many—”
“Slow down,” she’d said. “Describe it for me.”
“Off Highland Street, by the playing fields. White clapboard,
Victorian.”
I could have described it down to the fish-scale pattern of
the shingles on the roof. My father restores old houses and my
mother is a realtor, so I grew up learning all about colonials and
Victorians, gables and lintels and cornices. From the moment I
saw the little house, I’d felt a weirdly intense desire to live there.
As if it was the answer to a question I didn’t even know I’d been
asking. I’d wandered around all four sides, appreciating its
architectural quirks and fantasizing: warm evenings hanging out
on the porch; reading, curled up in a window seat. . . .
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“Off Highland Street?” the dean had said. “That’s Frost
House. A four-student dorm. Reserved for senior boys.”
“Boys? ” I hadn’t considered that possibility.
My reluctant acceptance of this news lasted less than
twenty-four hours, during which I kept going back to Frost House
in my mind. The next day, I couldn’t resist an urge—a pull—to
visit again in person. As I stood there, staring up like I was lovesick
for one of the guys inside, I struggled with what to do. I wanted to
call the dean back, wanted to see if there was any chance it might
be switched to a girls’ dorm for the next year. But it seemed like
such a big favor. While I debated, a slender column of smoke rose
from the chimney and curled into the blue sky. A working
fireplace? In a dorm? I took my phone out of my bag and called.
I told her honestly how worried I was about the stress of
senior year, and how much difference living in a small dorm
would make. I told her that boys didn’t appreciate window seats
and wraparound porches. She laughed.
“Even if we could switch it to a girls’ dorm,” the dean said,
“you’d still have to go through the housing lottery. There’s no
guarantee you’d be the girls who get to live there.”
“I know,” I said, watching the smoke from the chimney dance
away. “But if it’s a boys’ dorm, we won’t even have a chance.”
“Well,” she said after a moment. “It is only a matter of four
students. Let’s see what we can do.”
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And now she’d moved Celeste in, without even telling me?
I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the blue
paper that listed my class schedule: Molecular Biology, Gender
Relations in America, Calculus—
“Leena?” The dean’s voice made me look up. She was
standing in the door to her office, smiling warmly.
“Welcome back,” she said, beckoning me to her. “Come on
in.”
Dean Shepherd closed the office door behind us and drew
me into a hug. “It’s wonderful to see you,” she said. “You look
healthy, rested, all those good things.”
“Thanks. You too.” Her ash-blond hair had been cut pixie-
short, bringing out her bright hazel irises.
She patted the chair next to her desk. “How was your
summer? You survived the twins?”
“Barely,” I said, sitting. I was indescribably thankful my stint
at all-day babysitting for five-year-old twin boys was over. “But it
paid really well. So thanks again for recommending me. How’s
Anya?”
“Great. She can’t wait to see you.” The dean’s smile lingered,
but not in her eyes. “I want to talk more about everything later,
Leena. There’s another reason I wanted to see you now. Not to
catch up.”
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“I know.”
“Oh.” She nodded once. “I’m so sorry you didn’t hear it from
me first. I left a message with your father for you to call me
yesterday, when we made the decision.”
“He must have forgotten,” I said, unsurprised. It did make
me feel a little better to know she’d tried to get in touch with me,
though.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I should have called again. Celeste
is just one of the crises I’ve had to deal with this week.”
“I feel bad for her, of course,” I said. “But, the thing is, it’s
only me, Viv, and Abby in Frost House, and I’m wondering if she
might feel uncomfortable, living with a group of friends. Not that
we wouldn’t be nice to her. Just . . . it might be awkward. Do you
know if . . . if there might be another first-floor room open
somewhere?”
From the slightest intake of her lips, I could tell this wasn’t
what the dean wanted to hear. A pang of guilt twitched in my gut.
“Maybe one of the dorms in the middle of campus,” I added.
“More convenient.”
“There were a couple of other rooms we could have moved
her to,” she said. “But I talked it over with faculty who know
Celeste, and we all felt that Frost House was the best option.”
“Really? Can I ask why?” There were other rooms—that was
good news.
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She placed her palms together and interlocked her fingers.
“Between us, there’s been some difficulty with Celeste’s family
over the past year. We think it’s best if she’s in a small, quiet
dorm. More like a home.”
With Celeste there, it wasn’t a home anymore. Homes are
for families, not strangers. And our family was set—Viv, the
caretaking mother; me, the problem-solving, fix-it father; Abby,
