Frost - Marianna Baer
skin was dull, lips chapped—aside from her pulled-together outfit,
she looked as bad as I felt. I’d thought I was going to have trouble
controlling my anger, but much of it drained away.
“What happened?” I said. “We were really worried.”
“I took the Fung Wah Bus to Boston,” she said. “Bummer
with my leg, but only fifteen dollars.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” I leaned my back
against the wall. “Why didn’t you talk to us before leaving? You
do realize we’re all going to disciplinary committee because of
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this?” Silence. “Cameron might get kicked out.” Saying those
words made me want to vomit.
“You weren’t in the room. How was I going to talk to you?”
she said, scratching inside the top of her cast.
“Was it because of me and David?”
“Because it turned out you’re a slut like the rest of them?”
“Excuse me?” I said, standing up straight again. “Not that it’s
any of your business, but nothing much happened.”
“Of course it’s my business. He’s my brother.”
“Exactly,” I snapped. “He’s your brother, not your boyfriend
or husband. You get pissed when he asks about your romantic
life.”
She didn’t respond, just resumed scratching. How could she
be so cavalier about this?
“Look,” I said, trying to retain some sort of composure. I
couldn’t stand any more fighting. “David and I are going to be
hanging out, like you’ve wanted all semester. So I need to know
why you’re so upset. I mean, you out-and-out told me you
wanted us to get together. Is it . . .” I didn’t quite know how to ask
if she was jealous without implying she was in love with her own
brother. “Are you concerned he won’t have as much time for
you?”
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Scratch, scratch, scratch. She didn’t look up as she spoke. “Of
course not. I already told you I wanted David to have a girlfriend
so he’d get off my back.”
“Okay, well . . .” I couldn’t force her to admit to it. And what
good would it do, anyway? At this point, I wasn’t going to break
up with David to make her feel better. “Dean Shepherd is really
worried about you. She wants to know what’s going on. Why you
came back early and everything. And why you moved out of the
big room.”
That got Celeste’s attention. “I told her why,” she said.
“Because you don’t like all the windows? She didn’t buy it.
Well, she didn’t buy that you’d have come back early from New
York to do it.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Just that maybe you’d been uncomfortable that David and I
were together.”
Celeste’s mouth dropped open. “What, like I wanted him for
myself?”
“No! Not like that,” I said. “It was the only reason I could
think of.”
“You didn’t tell her about . . . you know, the stuff I told you
before, did you?”
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“No.” I hugged the folded towel closer to my body. “But
Celeste, if that’s why you switched rooms, if you’re really still
having those strange thoughts—that someone’s . . . watching you,
or trying to mess with you—maybe we should tell someone.”
She shook her head. “You promised you wouldn’t. You can’t.
I told you how bad it would be for me. And I told you I felt better
the next day. That was just a bad night, before I realized the cat
had done it. I blew it all out of proportion. You promised, Leena.”
“I know. But things change.”
“You know what’s changed?” she said. “I slept last night.
Comfortably. I told you I didn’t like those windows the very first
day. And then with all the other weird stuff that happened . . .
Can’t you see why I freaked out in there? Now I don’t have to
worry.”
Her exhausted appearance didn’t match this version of
events. “Are you sure?” I said. “Why is your comforter in the
trash?”
A flicker of something—fear? panic?—passed across her
face. “David didn’t take it yet?” she said. “It got wet and mildewy
while we were gone. Rain through the windows. He has to wash
it.”
“The windows were shut,” I said. I’d locked them all before
we left.
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“They leaked,” she said. “A welcome-back present from the
house.”
Enough to get her bed that wet? “Was someone in our room
while we were gone?” I asked.
“No,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “No one. Look, I switched
rooms to give you some privacy and because I can’t sleep over
there. What’s the big deal? You don’t mind, do you? Why would
you mind? It’s better for both of us.”
“I guess,” I said. And, truthfully, having my own room was
the one good thing that had come from this mess. “But the way
you did it . . .”
“I shouldn’t have come back early,” she said. “I’m impulsive.
You know that. And, okay, maybe I wasn’t expecting things with
you and David to move that fast. I thought you— Whatever. It’s
not important. I shouldn’t have left. And I’m sorry. But I’m fine.
This new room arrangement is going to fix everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
I shut myself in the bathroom and stood under the shower
and made a decision. Celeste had been very clear, again—if
something was wrong, she didn’t want me interfering. She
wanted her own room, her separate life. And that’s what I’d
wanted right from the beginning, wasn’t it? The less I knew, the
less I had to keep from David. She hadn’t shown any concern for
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the rest of us when she’d come back from New York like that, no
matter what her reason. So, fine. Our own rooms. Our own lives.
I spent most of the day with David, a large part of it lying on
his bed as he tried to distract me from worrying about Abby and
Viv and the disciplinary committee. We listened to almost
everything on his iPod—from James Brown to Eminem; he
described in detail the gourmet meal he wanted to cook for me
one day soon; he tried to explain the math he was doing (all I
really understood was that it was called topology and had
something to do with a donut and a coffee cup being the same
thing); he told me stories about better times with their father. All
of this interspersed with sweetly intense bouts of kissing. He was
obviously trying to distract himself, too, from worrying about
Celeste, because by midafternoon he’d asked me “how I’d
thought she seemed” one too many times.
I propped myself up on my elbow. “New rule,” I said.
“Rule?” David said. “Are your rules as strict as your
moratorium was?”
I punched his shoulder. “Listen. Seriously. Now that you and I
are, you know, together, I really think it’s best if you . . . if we
don’t talk about your sister as much. I don’t want to always feel
like I’m your source of information. Okay? I want to keep things a
little more separate.” For an instant, I had the horrible thought
that maybe the only reason he even wanted to be close to me
was to find out stuff about his sister, but then he said, “Yeah,
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you’re probably right.” He ran a hand through my loose hair,
fingers getting caught in a tangle. “Could get messy.”
“So, good rule?” I said, relieved.
“Good rule.”
The six of us met with the disciplinary committee on
Tuesday. Later that night, in some sort of masochistic haze, I
decided to listen to Viv and Cam’s show on WBAR, but there was
a guest host. I supposed they wanted to spend their last night
together alone.
Cam had to leave school on Wednesday.
The rest of us, as promised, had gotten probation.
Walking across campus Wednesday afternoon, I saw
Cameron’s car—filled with belongings—in the parking area next
to his dorm. He and Viv stood outside of it. Even from the other
side of the Great Lawn, I could tell by the stoop of her shoulders
and Cameron’s hand stroking her back that Viv was crying.
I dropped my gaze to the ground and hurried along, the path
becoming a muddy, gray blur.
Once I got home I headed straight for the closet. I wanted to
know that it would be okay, that I’d be okay, even without Viv,
like I’d told myself in here the other night. I stroked Cubby’s
feathers. I just needed to know that I could get past how much it
hurt.
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In here you can, her voice said.
On Thursday, Dean Shepherd told me she wanted me to step
down from peer counseling.
“You understand,” she said. “We can’t have the mixed
message of someone in a leadership position like that getting into
trouble.” There was a hint of sympathy in her voice, but it didn’t
do anything to make me feel better.
I couldn’t hide my desperation as I spoke. “What if I just step
down as cohead? But keep counseling? Could I do that?”
“Maybe next semester. I doubt it, though,” she said.
Had I thought she’d sounded sympathetic a moment ago?
Because now, I didn’t see how there was any chance she felt
anything but derision and disappointment. The horrible feeling it
gave me was even worse than knowing I wasn’t a part of my
program anymore. I hated myself more than she ever could.
Later that day, David and I took a walk through the
arboretum at the edge of campus. A few trees were still lit up
with flame-colored foliage; mostly, I saw the brown leaves under
our feet. I told David how I’d messed up not only my friendships
with Viv, Abby, and Dean Shepherd, but also my one meaningful
extracurricular. I told him I had nothing left.
“What about me?” he said, sounding hurt.
I wrapped my arm around his waist and squeezed.
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Thank God. I had David. And I had my house.
I was incredibly relieved that my room was tucked in the
back, and on a separate floor from Viv’s and Abby’s, so I didn’t
have constant reminders that Frost House was now a divided
territory. I couldn’t have handled listening to their muffled voices
and laughter, or the sounds of their sock feet on the wooden floor
going back and forth between each other’s rooms. As for Celeste,
in the days since we came back from New York, I’d barely seen
her. My space was truly my own and I wasn’t going to let the
opportunity go to waste.
The Saturday after we got back, I made a rare call to my dad
to ask if I could buy some supplies at Home Depot on his credit
card. He said yes—probably partly out of shock at hearing from
me, and partly because he always likes to support home
improvement.
As I walked across the store’s parking lot, I found myself
scanning the cars for his orange Subaru, even though this Home
Depot was about an hour from his condo. Going to any sort of
hardware store without him never felt quite right.
I began in the paint department. After a long period of
deliberation, I chose a very light sky color, called “Blue Heaven.” I
got brushes, rollers, trays, Spackle, and drop cloths. I considered
buying a ladder, but they were too expensive, so I decided I’d just
borrow one from maintenance.
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Next, I found all the supplies I’d need for wall-mounted
shelves.
In the garden department, I chose tulip and daffodil bulbs to
plant in the backyard that would bloom next spring, and a couple
of houseplants to hang in my room, along with the necessary wall
brackets.
Then I got an egg-crate–foam-mattress pad and a brass,
sliding bolt lock.
The closet needed an upgrade, too.
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Chapter 28
“ALL I’M SAYING IS THAT I don’t want you in my room
anytime soon.”
“Nice,” David said from the other end of the phone. “This is
how you treat me?”
I scooped some more Spackle onto my knife. “I just want it to
be a surprise. Give me a couple of weeks. Then you can be over
here whenever you want. I promise.”
“All right,” he said in a tone of resignation. “What are you
doing tonight?”
“Studying, I guess.”
“Want to come over and do it here?”
“If you let me get some work done,” I said, scraping the
whitish paste over another small hole in the wall. “I’ve got to
seriously start working if I want to have any chance at Columbia.
I’ve never been this behind before.”
“Speaking of Columbia,” he said, “Paul, the guy who owns
the restaurant I might work in, wants to meet with me over
Thanksgiving. So I was thinking you could come down and we
could spend a couple of days in the city together.”
When I’d mentioned to David that Columbia was on my list
of long shots, he’d started talking as if it was a given that we’d
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want to be in the same city. Every time he talked that way, I
wanted to die of happiness. We’d only been a couple for a week,
but I already felt like he was a central fixture in my life. I couldn’t
believe I’d even hesitated. Our togetherness seemed so obvious,
and inevitable. Sort of like the way I’d felt when I’d moved into
Frost House.
I spotted some holes midway up the wall that needed to be
filled. “That’d be great,” I said, stepping up on the chair. “But I
always go to Abby’s parents’ place for Thanksgiving.”
“Do you think you’ll do that this year?” he asked carefully.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I wouldn’t.
“Probably,” I said. I’d gone the last three years. Her parents
owned a bed-and-breakfast farm in Maine. I loved visiting them.
Abby had to have forgiven me by then. Right? I wasn’t sure how
many more weeks I could take with her and Viv not talking to me.
Or even how many more days. . . .
“Well, if you come to New York,” he said, “you can check out
where I might end up living. This guy Paul knows is going to be
subletting his place and it would actually be affordable if I get a
