Frost - Marianna Baer
of my voice.
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I wasn’t successful. All eyes turned toward me.
“And you know this how?” Viv asked.
I would have lied, but my smile and blush told the story. “We
just, you know, hung out.”
Abby rested her head on the table. “Why do I always have to
be right? Why, why, why?”
“So where’s Celeste?” I said. “She’s not in the bedroom.”
Viv ate a bite of eggs off her spatula then recommenced
using it to stir. “Yesterday she asked me if she could take some
pictures around the house. Maybe she’s doing that.”
Honestly, at that point, her absence just seemed like a gift,
one I wasn’t going to question too strenuously. Especially not
after David came into the room, fresh from a shower and looking
ten times hotter than I’d thought before, if that was possible. I
was sure I could get used to that fooling-around stuff. I was just
nervous I’d do something wrong, probably. Push the wrong
button, pull the wrong lever. It had been a long time since I’d
been with a guy, after all. And I’d never felt as excited about
anyone as I was about David. That was probably it:
overexcitement.
Viv served us breakfast and we passed around the best
sections of the Sunday New York Times. David’s foot found mine
under the table. I skimmed through the real-estate section,
fantasizing.
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I was happy to ignore Celeste’s absence for as long as
possible. After a bit, though, David got antsy. He called her cell
and it went straight to voice mail. For once, I wished he wasn’t
such a caring and thoughtful brother.
“Maybe she went to the park?” Cameron said.
“In this weather?” I said, then turned to Viv. “Is Annika
around? Maybe she’s seen her.”
“Nope. Saturday night and Sunday she has off.”
David and I decided to look through the house. It didn’t take
us long to figure out she wasn’t here—unless she was hiding,
which, I hoped, was beyond even Celeste. The whole thing was
giving me a flashback to the bar last night. Maybe we were going
to find her sitting in an alley behind the house, smoking with
Whip.
“What should we do?” I asked David, annoyed that this was
how we were spending our morning. “Walk around the
neighborhood and look in cafés and stuff?”
“I think we should wait for her here,” he said. “If we go out
and she comes back, she won’t be able to get in the house.”
I went to my bedroom to grab a sweater. As I did, I checked
around to see if I could tell what type of clothes Celeste had
worn, in case that told us anything. I quickly realized I should have
thought to check earlier.
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Everything was gone.
All she’d left was a piece of paper folded over one of the
hangers in the closet with a scrawled note: Back to Barcroft.
Sorry, took the dress with me.
“She’s what?” David said, placing his glass of orange juice
down without taking a sip.
“Gone,” I said in disbelief. “Back to school.”
“What? Why?” Viv said, collecting dishes to be washed. “She
seemed okay last night. Was she upset or something?”
“I have no idea.” I thudded down in a chair.
David picked up his cell, sent a message. Called, left a voice
mail telling her to call back immediately.
“Do you think she took the train?” I said. “Or bus? I mean,
what a hassle with her bag, and her cast. What do you think we
should do?”
“She’s a big girl,” Abby said, looking at us over the top of the
Style section. “Can’t we assume she knows what she’s doing?”
No one said anything. The last thing I wanted was to spend
another minute worrying about her, but it was just so strange.
“Since it’s bad weather,” Abby continued, “I think we should
go to that movie. It starts in twenty-five minutes. But the
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theater’s a quick walk, right, Viv?” She folded up the newspaper
with loud snapping noises.
“Yeah. Ten minutes,” Viv said.
“And we can go to that museum you read about after,” Abby
said.
I looked at David, could read in his face right away that he
didn’t feel right going out without hearing from his sister. I didn’t
think I’d be able to concentrate on a movie either.
“You guys go,” I said. “David and I will stay here. We can
meet you later at the museum, okay?”
Abby pushed her chair back and stood up. “Whatever. Hope
you have fun.”
Despite the fact that it was the afternoon after our first kiss
and first night together, our time alone was not at all cozy or
romantic. We spent most of it staring at David’s phone. I
attempted the Times crossword puzzle but had trouble
concentrating well enough to make a dent in the clues.
I was trying to remember who wrote the short story “The
Lottery,” seven letters, when the phone finally rang. But it wasn’t
David’s; it was mine. And it wasn’t Celeste.
“Leena?” Dean Shepherd said. “Sorry to bother you.”
“That’s okay,” I said, surprised. “What’s up?”
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“Sorry if there’s noise around me,” she said. “I’m in the
parking lot at Whole Foods—dinner party tonight. But I just got a
strange message. Apparently, a maintenance worker was called
over to Frost House to help a student with something. And since
no students are supposed to be there . . .”
A maintenance worker? “Uh, I guess that’s something to do
with Celeste,” I said.
“Celeste?”
“You know how we all came to New York, to Viv’s house?” I
said. “Well, Celeste has sort of, well, she left early.”
“What?” A car honked near her as she spoke. “Why?”
I ran my finger along the side of the place mat, feeling
David’s eyes on me. The only possibility we’d come up with was
that Celeste was having some overblown reaction to us getting
together. I couldn’t exactly tell that to the dean. “It’s kind of a
misunderstanding,” I said. “I’m not quite sure why. She left early
this morning.”
“And came all the way back to Barcroft? Alone? On
crutches?”
“I guess.” It sounded so ridiculous. I didn’t blame the dean
for being confused.
“Did Viv’s parents take her to the train station, or
something?”
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“No. I mean, we don’t really know.”
“Well, I don’t quite understand, Leena, and don’t have time
to talk about it right now. But I’ll go to Frost House on my way
home from running errands and see what’s going on. In the
meantime, please have one of Viv’s parents call me.”
I could have lied. I could have told her they were out, or
whatever. But I didn’t. At the moment, it didn’t strike me as that
big a deal. Dean Shepherd loved me. She trusted me. And Celeste
was the issue at hand.
“They’re actually not around,” I said. “They got this last-
minute trip deal to Paris so they went. But Viv’s housekeeper is
here, or was here, I mean, yesterday, and took great care of us.”
“They aren’t there?” she said.
“No.”
I could hear a sigh of annoyance. “I’ll call you back after I’ve
been to Frost House. In the meantime, you and whoever is with
you—Vivian and Abigail and whoever else—are going to pack up
and drive right back here.”
Drive back to Barcroft? Today? That’s when I realized the
mistake I’d made. My stomach turned inside out.
I slumped against the back of my chair. “Abby is going to kill
me. K-I-L-L, kill me. Now that Dean Shepherd knows that our
chaperones aren’t here, she’s making us come back to school. She
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sounded really pissed. We’re seniors. I didn’t think she’d care.
And everyone knows chaperone letters are bullshit.”
“What’s going on with Celeste?” David asked.
I explained about the maintenance worker being called to
the dorm. “I shouldn’t have told her,” I said, then rested my cheek
on the cool table. “I am so dead.”
I was in my room folding clothes into my duffel when my
phone rang again.
“I found Celeste,” Dean Shepherd said. “She was the one
who called maintenance. I can’t discuss anything now, Leena, but
please come find me at home the minute you arrive back on
campus. I need to talk to you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry about the thing with Viv’s par—”
“It’s not about that,” she said.
“It’s not?” I rested my full bag on the floor.
“No,” she said. “I want you to tell me what has been going on
in this house.”
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Chapter 25
DAVID AND I HIT A TRAFFIC JAM on I-91. The kind of jam
that even in the best of circumstances would make me want to
get out of the car, slam the door, and walk.
With the mood I was in, I thought I might literally explode.
Having to spend one more minute than necessary trapped in the
car, helpless. No chance to make anything better. Just a relentless
cycling in my head of all the ways this was beyond bad. And I kept
picturing Viv and Abby and Cameron stuck in the traffic, too. I
couldn’t stand it. I wished I hadn’t left Cubby—with all of my
pills—at Frost House.
“What?” Viv had said in a whisper when I called to tell her
what had happened with Dean Shepherd. “You’re saying we have
to leave? Today?”
“I know it sucks,” I said. “Why are you whispering?”
“We’re at that museum—the Museum of Sex,” Viv said. “Can
you believe there’s a Museum of Sex? Anyway, I don’t want Abby
to hear. She’s going to have a fit.”
“Tell her and Cameron how sorry I am. At least we got a
couple days in the city.”
“I guess,” Viv said, not sounding convinced. “I was keeping it
a secret, but I got us tickets to Letterman tomorrow.”
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“Really? God, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well, I am, too.”
Sitting in the car, I couldn’t get Viv’s voice out of my mind.
And we’d only moved about five feet in the last ten minutes.
“What is wrong?” I yelled, hitting the steering wheel. “It’s a
Sunday. Who are all these stupid people?”
“Hey.” David laid a hand on my knee. “We’ll get there.”
He had been much calmer than me after we’d found out
Celeste was definitely back in the dorm. Even though we were still
confused about why she’d left, and why she wasn’t answering our
calls, he kept saying, “I know it’s a pain in the ass, but at least
she’s safe.”
I refrained from telling him that with everyone so mad at me,
I didn’t care if she was safe at school or the victim of an alien
abduction. Actually, I did care. I’d have preferred the alien option.
I fiddled with the radio, trying to find a traffic report. “By the
time we get there, I’ll have to interrupt Dean Shepherd during her
party.”
“She’s the one who told you to come talk to her. She can’t be
pissed if you do.”
Bad song, worse song, commercial . . . “Do you think I should
call Viv again?”
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“I think you should try to relax.”
“You keep saying that!” I snapped off the radio and glared at
him. “Do you have any idea how much this sucks?”
“I know it sucks,” he said. “I just don’t think getting upset
does any good.”
“How can I not be upset?” I said. “This is a really, really shitty
situation your sister’s put me in. Put us in. I mean, I know it was
stupid of me to tel Dean Shepherd about Viv’s parents, but I
shouldn’t have even been talking to her. If Celeste hadn’t run
away—”
“Leena—”
“And I don’t even know why the dean wants to see me
tonight! Maybe Celeste made it sound like we did those things to
her. Like we broke her vase and ruined her art project.” I couldn’t
say it to David, but maybe she’d even told the dean about the
nests spelling out GO, about how someone wanted her to leave.
Maybe she’d blamed everything on Abby.
“Why would she do that?” David said.
“I don’t know.” I gripped the steering wheel and focused my
eyes on the Greyhound bus ahead of us. “Because Celeste always
wants to be the center of attention, right? And that’s exactly what
happened in the dorm. And what happened this weekend! Maybe
she even did it all herself—the vase, the nests. So she can be the
victim, just like she wants.” Blood pounded in my ears.
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“Yeah,” David said. “That occurred to me.”
“What?” I turned. He met my eyes with complete calm.
“I was worried, at first,” he said, “that she might have broken
the vase herself.”
Any words in my mouth evaporated. He’d been thinking the
same thing I had? “Oh,” I said eventually. “Well, did you . . . did
you ask her about it?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“What do you mean?” I glanced forward, drove a few yards
to close the gap that had opened up. Looked back at David.
“I didn’t have to ask,” he said. “Celeste told me. Not that she
did it. That she didn’t. She’s not stupid. She knew I’d suspect her.”
“Oh.” This was all such a surprise. “And you believe her?”
“Yeah, I do.” He pointed at the windshield. “Bad accident.”
Up ahead, the left of four lanes was closed to bypass a mess
of police cars and ambulances. David and I fell silent as we inched
up to the scene. Three totaled cars sat at varying angles on the
median.
“They’re using the jaws of life,” I said. “Someone must still be
in that car.”
“Uh-huh,” David said. Then his hand covered my eyes,
knocking into my glasses. “Oh, man. Don’t look.”
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“David! I’m driving.” I batted his arm.
“Well, keep your eyes straight ahead. Trust me.”
