First Frost (5 page)

“Hey, Bay.”

He knew about the letter she'd given Josh. Everyone in school knew. But he was kind enough never to mention it. They stood in cold, comfortable silence. There was very little traffic at this time of morning.

“So, are there going to be good decorations for the Halloween dance tomorrow?” Phin suddenly asked.

“Yes.” Bay looked at him curiously. “Are you going?”

He made a snorting sound and scrubbed the gravel shoulder of the road with the toe of his old military boots, ones that had belonged to his dad, who had died in Afghanistan. “Me? No way.” He paused, then said, “Riva Alexander is on the decorating committee, too, isn't she?”

“Yes.”

“I heard her talking about the food she was going to bring. It sounded nice,” Phin said wistfully. “She's nice.”

“Riva? Seriously?” She shook her head as if disappointed in him. “Phin.”

“Oh, come on. You can pine away for Josh Matteson, but I can't like Riva?” He saw the look on Bay's face and said, “Sorry.”

“It's okay.” When you take your heart out of your chest and hold it out for all to see, it's not like you can expect everyone not to notice.

Phin gave a short laugh. “We can always dream of a normal life, can't we?”

“No, Phin, we can't. And we shouldn't. We're fine like we are! We're great,” she said, up on her high horse again. She was up there a lot lately.

She didn't used to be like this. She'd always been confident about where she belonged and who she was but, lately, she'd been so
insistent
about it. She would hear herself sometimes, and even she found herself annoying. She was overcompensating. She knew that. But her emotions were so hard to control these days. She would cry at the drop of a hat. She would get angry at her mother for absolutely no reason. She was fifteen. That was part of it. But it was also the time of year. As soon as first frost was here, she was sure everything would get better. She'd be nicer to her mom. She'd sign up for driver's ed. And maybe Josh Matteson would even fall in love with her and everything would be perfect.

“I want to live in your world,” Phin said.

“What are you talking about, weirdo?” She gave him a playful nudge. He was so thin it was like pushing at something pliable, like a bendy straw. “You already do.”

*   *   *

After school that Friday, Bay headed to the last meeting of the decorating committee in the school gymnasium—a state-of-the-art, embarrassingly large facility that dwarfed the three other academic buildings of Bascom High. A few years ago, the high school booster club had raised the funds for the gym in less than six months. Apparently, there were a lot of parents with deep pockets and memories of their glory years in sports here. The place smelled like fresh paint and new rubber and missed opportunities.

At the first after-school decorating committee meeting a month ago, Riva Alexander had let Bay sketch out how she'd wanted the gym to be decorated, then she had Bay make a list of things to buy, while the other girls on the committee talked about the costumes they were going to wear. At the second meeting, Bay did her chemistry homework while Riva regaled the committee with what food and drinks she and her mother were bringing: flaky pastries that looked like knobby, weathered fingers, with slivered almonds for fingernails; big plastic drink dispensers with plastic eyeballs floating inside the punch. They'd spent the entire two hours huddled around Riva's laptop, looking up where Riva had gotten her ideas on Pinterest.

When Riva had asked Bay to help decorate, she'd hinted that she'd hoped Bay would get her aunt Claire to cater the dance, too. Riva loved food, and she would have loved to have spent hours talking to Claire about menus, going off on tangents about flan and crème fraîche and pink Himalayan salt. But Riva was out of luck. If it wasn't about candy, Claire didn't have time for it.

Claire normally would have a lot of catering work this time of year. She used to have a party to cater almost every night in October. Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been
mountains
of maple cakes with violets hidden inside,
lakes
of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top. But not this year. When Claire wasn't making candy, she was on the phone, talking about the candy, or filling out orders for the candy, or boxing up the candy. There were even companies calling, asking about buying Waverley's Candies. The way Bay saw it, Claire making candy was like the perfect chair in the perfect color in the perfect place in a room—only it was made of the wrong fabric. And when something that small was wrong, most people didn't bother fixing it.

The dance decorations had arrived that week, so this final committee meeting was to be spent putting them up. Bay tried to do her homework on the bleachers, but the other girls kept interrupting her, asking where everything belonged. She finally put her books away and joined them. Some boys from the soccer team—boyfriends and want-to-be boyfriends—showed up with duct tape and butcher's twine and ladders pilfered from the janitor's closet, acting very manly about it.

Bay stood in the middle of the gymnasium, directing them all, feeling like an ice skater in a snow globe, spinning and spinning. It was nice. She always had this image in her head, the end product when everything was where it was supposed to be, and it was thrilling when she could actually make it happen in real life.

She didn't realize at first when everyone had gone quiet. The music from Riva's laptop was still blasting. Bay was admiring the lighted ball that was hanging from the steel rafters. It was shrouded in paper cut-outs that cast shadows on the walls, which looked like a dark forest. Surrounding it were glittery paper bats chasing full moons made from wrapped, store-bought popcorn balls, which students could reach up and pluck from their strings from the ceiling. She finally looked around with a smile, only to see the whole group staring at the gymnasium doors.

There was Josh Matteson, bits of stray smoke curling off his shoulders, smoke only she could see. Her hand almost went to her heart, but she stopped herself halfway and pretended to scratch her neck instead.

He, too, seemed confused as to why everyone had gone silent. That's when he saw Bay.

Bay cursed that stupid note. It had taken her weeks to write. When school had started in August, she'd seen Josh in the hallway on that first day, and suddenly she'd had honey in her veins. The note had laid it all out as passionately and sincerely as she could make it. She'd described her feelings as best she could, though she wasn't sure she'd gotten it just right. She'd told him she'd be outside on the front steps after school every day, waiting for him if he ever wanted to talk—which she was
still
doing, almost making her late to her job at her aunt Claire's house every afternoon, but she couldn't help herself.

Funny, when she'd given him the note—in front of his friends, which had been her first mistake—it had never occurred to her that he wouldn't believe her.

To Josh's credit, he smiled from the gymnasium doors. “I was wondering where everyone went,” he said in that deep, bright voice of his, like fresh water in a dark cavern.

“We'll be out at your house later,” Riva said, quickly stepping forward. Riva looked like she was already wearing a costume. She favored billowy skirts with colorful scarves tied around her waist. Her eyes were slightly tilted in a way that gave her an exotic, gypsy-ish air, despite her fair, WASP-y coloring. There was something about her that was just slightly west of center, making her the odd one out in her group, the one gotten mad at the most and excommunicated for days on end for mysterious mean-girl reasons.

“Want to stay and help decorate?” Riva added, but it was said insincerely, because if she had wanted him there, she would have asked him before now. But she hadn't. Because of Bay. Josh was avoiding seeing her, and his friends knew that. And what Josh thought mattered to them. Josh was a star soccer player, class vice president, and he had been voted most likely to succeed in the senior superlatives—based entirely on his last name, some conjectured. But they only saw how perfect and beautiful and easygoing he was. They couldn't see him burning with unhappiness.

“No,” Josh said. “I'm not very good at that kind of stuff. I'll just watch.”

Everyone tried to act normal, giving Josh deference while still trying not to slight Bay, presumably so Bay wouldn't run out and leave them in a lurch. They needed her. All the county high schools had been invited to this soiree, so it had to be special, it had to be the
best,
to show off to their rivals.

But Bay would never do that—would never run from herself.

It was so excruciatingly awkward that everyone, Bay most of all, was relieved when it was over and they all went their separate ways, Josh leaving a trail of soot behind him that blew away in the breeze.

 

3

Bay walked from the school to her aunt's house in the growing darkness, having just missed the late buses because of the meeting. She didn't feel like running today like she usually did, always so anxious to get to the Waverley house. So she crunched slowly through the red leaves on the sidewalk, her face to the sinking sun, thinking about Josh. When she saw herself with him, she saw snow, so maybe this winter something would happen. Maybe she just had to be patient. She'd discovered long ago that getting things to where they belonged was sometimes a timely process, so she'd become good at waiting. If only there wasn't this longing that felt like actual
pain
sometimes. No one ever told her it was going to be like this. It was a wonder that anyone fell in love at all.

“Hello again.”

She had just reached the Waverley house. She stopped on the sidewalk and turned. Across the street, she saw the same man she'd seen yesterday on the green downtown, the elderly man in the gray suit. He didn't have his suitcase with him today.

Bay smiled in surprise. “I see you found Pendland Street.”

“Indeed, I did. Thank you.”

“Are you visiting someone?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said.

Bay was momentarily distracted by the Halloween lights flipping on in Mrs. Kranowski's yard behind him—orange twinkle lights strung in her boxwood bushes, tattered glow-in-the-dark ghosts hanging in her spindly maple tree. The decorations had obviously been in storage, because Bay could smell mothballs from across the street. Mrs. Kranowki's elderly terrier, Edward, was at the front window, barking wildly at the man.

When Bay's eyes flicked back to the man—it had only been seconds—he was gone.

Edward stopped barking, as confused as she was.

Bay's dark brows knit and she slowly backed away, then ran to the house. She slid up the wet hill, then hurried to the front door, looking over her shoulder as she entered, half expecting the man to have followed her.

First frost falling on Halloween this year seemed to be making everything just that much weirder.

It had been rose candy day in the Waverley house, the scent still permeating the air, even though the kitchen was closed for the evening. It smelled as if there were a garden hidden in the walls somewhere.

The back labels on all the rose candy jars read:

Rose essence is for memory

of long ago first loves,

have a taste and you will see

the one you once dreamed of.

Bay took a deep breath and felt her shoulders relax. But then she gave a start when her aunt appeared at the top of the staircase. She was in a bathrobe, obviously getting ready for her night out. “Bay?” Claire asked. “What's wrong?”

Bay pushed herself away from the front door. “Oh, nothing. Just this elderly man I've seen outside two days in a row. He wanted to know where Pendland Street was.”

“It's a popular street.”

“He just seemed strange. He was wearing this shiny gray suit, like a salesman, maybe.”

“Hey, Bay!” Mariah said, running down the stairs past Claire. She had brown eyes and curly brown hair like her father, hair that always looked somehow in motion, even when Mariah was still, as if someone were running their fingers through it, lovingly.

“Hey, squirt,” Bay said, giving her a hug. “I've got homework. How about you?”

“Yes.”

“Let's do it together in the sitting room.”

As Bay walked into the sitting room with her backpack, she almost missed the look on Claire's face, the look that maybe this man in the silver suit was not someone Claire was unfamiliar with.

*   *   *

Sydney arrived not long after Bay and Mariah had settled on the floor in the sitting room with their homework. She had just come from work and looked beautiful, as always, that perpetual scent of sweet hair spray floating around her like she was encased in fine mist. Again, her hair seemed a little more red than it had that morning. The change was subtle, but getting more noticeable. Her mother was slowly but surely turning into a redhead. Something like this happened to Sydney every year around first frost—an unexplained cut, or an odd change in color. But it was worse this year than most. Her restlessness was worse. It was for all of them, as if they all wanted something they suddenly feared they couldn't have.

Sydney asked how school was, and Bay gave her vague answers. Sydney finally gave up and headed upstairs to help Claire with her hair. Honestly, if it weren't for her mom's skill with hair, they would all have birds' nests on their heads.

Henry showed up next. He sat with the girls in the sitting room and waited, his blond hair still wet and the scent of Irish Spring soap clinging to his skin from his recent shower. Henry was a good man, a steady man who worked hard and loved unconditionally. He was a grounding force as strong as gravity in Bay and her mother's lives. Henry was Bay's adopted father, the only father she'd ever really known. She lost her biological father years ago. Bay could barely remember him now, the edges of his existence corroding like faxed paper. Her mother, always trying to make things right, never talked about him, for the same reason she kept trying to make Bay go out more and be more social, less Waverley. She was trying to make up for things that weren't her fault. Sometimes Bay just wanted to hug her and tell her that it was all right. But that would put a serious crimp in her effort to avoid talking to her mother, an effort so concerted that it baffled even her sometimes.