Frost (16 page)

Chapter 25

D
AVID 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.”

“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?”

“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 tell 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.

“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.”

“David! I’m driving.” I batted his arm.

“Well, keep your eyes straight ahead. Trust me.”

I did, but couldn’t help asking, “What is it? A body?”

“You don’t want something horrible to be the thing you remember from this weekend, do you?” he said.

“As opposed to remembering my own personal disasters?” I said. “God, we’re at a total standstill again.”

“Hey. Look at me for a sec.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about this mess,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry for my sister’s part in it. I am. But about what you said before—Celeste is
not
always the center of attention. At least not the center of
my
attention. Understand?”

I nodded.

“And this might turn out to have been a pretty important weekend,” he said. “So you should work on remembering the good parts.”

“Important?”

“No?” he said. “Nothing that happened strikes you as important? Nothing’s changed?” His gaze lingered on my lips.

I glanced at the road, looked back at David. “Maybe you should refresh my memory.”

He moved his hand to the back of my head and eased me forward into a long, soft kiss. This time, instead of adding to my worries, the heat and intensity obliterated them. In that moment I knew, despite any self-sabotaging nervousness, this was what I wanted.

Chapter 26

T
HROUGH THE WINDOWS
of Dean Shepherd’s cozy, shingle-style house, I could see people gathered in her living room—standing in clusters, eating, drinking, laughing. . . . I ran my fingers through my hair, tucked it behind my ears, and rang the bell.

The dean answered the door holding a glass of red wine. “Leena,” she said. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

I wanted to tell her how nice she looked in her silk, kimono-style dress. I wanted to tell her David and I had finally gotten together. I wanted to be one of the people invited to the party, not the student interrupting it.

We had to pass through the living room to get to her home office. The smell of onions and garlic cooking poured from the kitchen. The Cinnabon I’d eaten for dinner sat like a brick in my stomach. I said hello to Mrs. Fleissner, an English teacher, and Mr. Prince, a theater teacher, self-conscious about my too-long-in-a-car appearance. I didn’t know the other guests by name, but I could feel everyone looking at me with curiosity. Had the happenings in Frost House been fodder for their party conversation? Hard to say, since I didn’t even know what the happenings were.

Dean Shepherd shut the office door behind us. Stacks of paper filled every surface. She took a messy pile off a chair and asked me to sit, then placed her glass of wine on a bookshelf, as if she’d be too tempted to down it during our conversation.

“So,” she said, sitting. “Have you been back to the dorm yet?”

Was that a trick question? “No.” I said. “Well, I dropped David off there to see his sister. But I didn’t go in. You told me to come straight here.”

She folded her hands together on the desk. “I know I was vague on the phone. I didn’t want to get into it until I saw you in person.”

“It sounded serious.”

“When I went to look for Celeste, the dorm was a wreck.”

“A wreck?”

“Your section of the house. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Clothes everywhere. Boxes in the middle of the hallway.”

“Did someone break in?” I asked, suddenly a bit panicked. I’d left my laptop there, my only valuable jewelry—

“No,” the dean said. “Celeste did it. She was moving all of her stuff into the tiny room with your desks, and your stuff into the room with the windows.”

“She was what?”

“Moving your things, so you’ll have separate rooms.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. “That’s weird. We’ve never talked about doing that. She did all of this on crutches?”

“That’s what she’d called the maintenance worker about—to help her. But there were other things. I noticed some dried blood drops on the floor. Honestly, the whole place looked like a crime scene.” Her pointed stare made me feel like I was the suspected criminal.

“What did Celeste say?”

“She was very cagey. She said she was moving rooms because she didn’t like being in a bedroom with so many windows. Apparently, the blood was from a cut she got while moving the stuff.”

“I guess I’m not surprised she wanted to change the room setup,” I said. “She hates that bedroom.”

The dean’s eyebrows drew together. “There must be something else going on here, Leena. Why would she have left your trip like that, without telling you?”

“I haven’t spoken to her, so I don’t know,” I said. “The only thing I can imagine is that . . .” Peals of laugher filtered in from the next room. I waited until they stopped. “David and I are kind of, well . . . you know. Involved.”

“You are? Since when?”

“It’s pretty recent. Anyway, maybe it has something to do with that. Maybe she felt out of place or uncomfortable.”

Dean Shepherd rested her forearms on the desk and leaned in. “I don’t want to miss a warning sign that something more serious is going on. Given Celeste’s family situation, and her accident over the summer, I can’t just ignore what seems like troubling behavior. You’re sure there’s nothing else I need to know?”

I hated not to tell the whole truth, but I wanted to talk to Celeste, to find out what this was really about. And talk to David, too. If something were wrong, he’d expect me to tell him first.

Like a kid, I crossed my fingers under the desk. “Well, like I said, she’s never been comfortable in our bedroom. She can’t sleep in it. She has nightmares. I don’t know her well enough to know if it’s really the room, or if she’d have this trouble anywhere. I’m pretty sure the main problem is me and David, though. They’re really close, you know.”

“I know,” Dean Shepherd said, sitting back in her chair again. “Okay, well, I’ll trust you to let me know if you notice anything else, Leena. Although, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that you’ve seriously compromised my trust by lying about your chaperones this weekend.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said, relieved that I seemed to have weathered the storm. The meeting hadn’t been nearly as bad as the scenarios I’d imagined—Celeste telling the dean she’d been persecuted all semester. “Being seniors, you know, it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. Over the summer our parents leave us alone all the time.”

“The rules at Barcroft apply just as much to seniors as they do to underclassmen. You know that.”

“I know.” Blah, blah, blah . . . I supposed she had to say all of this.

“I haven’t checked, but I believe this is the first strike against everyone involved. Luckily. So, you’ll meet with the disciplinary committee, but it won’t lead to anything as serious as expulsion.”

Her words hit me like a slap. “The disciplinary committee?” I said. “Really?”

“Of course. What did you think?”

What did I think? I thought she’d write it off as a stupid, but harmless, mistake.

I thought I was special.

I stood at the bottom of the narrow stairs, looking up at the closed door to Viv’s room waiting for me at the top. I hadn’t yet seen Celeste or the supposed disaster area. In the common room, the only sign of something amiss was a black garbage bag with Celeste’s violet comforter inside. It smelled like rotting fruit. I couldn’t imagine why, and didn’t really care. The only thing I cared about was being alone in my room. But I knew I had to face Viv and Abby first. If I delayed telling them, it would just be hanging over my head for longer.

I forced myself to lift my legs. Step. Step. Step. My hand felt heavy as a cement block when I raised it to knock on Viv’s door.

“Yeah?” Viv answered.

“Can I come in?” A question I never would have bothered asking before tonight.

There was a pause. “Whatever.”

Viv and Abby sat together on the bed, each holding a mug of tea. Normally, I’d have joined them, but I knew better, especially from the looks on their faces.

“You guys made it back okay?” I said, standing awkwardly just inside the doorway.

“Obviously.” Abby said. “Seeing as we’re here.”

“I’m so, so, sorry, you guys,” I said. “But I didn’t have any control over this. I didn’t know Celeste was leaving.”

“No control?” Abby said. “Seems to me you’re the one who told the dean about Viv’s parents. In other words, the one who ruined our weekend.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I feel terrible. I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you guys.”

“What do you want, Leen?” Viv asked in a tired voice.

I drew a deep breath. “I talked to Dean Shepherd. And she said that we have to meet with the DC. But because it’s our first offense, we don’t have to worry about being kicked out.”

“Kicked out!” Abby sat up straighter. “Are you kidding?”

“I said we’re
not
going to be kicked out.”

“But it’s a first strike?” Abby said. “You know what that means? No drinking, no smoking, no illegal parietals or sneaking out at night. No anything! During senior year! If we’re caught doing anything, we’re kicked out. We might as well be handcuffed to our desks!”

“I know. I’m sorry. It sucks.”

Viv’s hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Abby said.

“Oh my God,” she repeated.

“Viv.
What?
”

“Cameron,” Viv said, her voice quiet. “Freshman year. Before we were together. He was busted for drinking.”

“He’s on probation?” I said. How could I not have known that?

Viv nodded.

A weight dropped in my gut like a cannonball.

“Viv,” I said. “You know I didn’t mean—”

She pressed one hand against her eyes and waved the other in my direction. “Just go. Okay? Go.”

“Please, Viv, I—”

Abby glared at me. “What part of ‘go’ don’t you understand?”

Thankfully, the door to what was now Celeste’s bedroom was closed. I’d have locked it from the outside if I could.

Trembling, I took Cubby off the windowsill and opened the door to my closet, momentarily jarred by how uncomfortably large and bright it seemed, empty of clothes. But then the smell and the soft air reached for me, and I knew it was still the same. Celeste had dumped my clothes from the other room in a pile; it only took me a few moments to hang them up—everything except my ankle-length puffer coat, which I spread on the floor in one corner. The space wasn’t nearly as full as with Celeste’s wardrobe, but it would do. I scooted into the corner with the puffer as a cushion. No more worrying about Celeste walking in on me. And I didn’t foresee Abby or Viv coming to visit anytime soon. The thought made my throat swell. I breathed deeply, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent.

“What am I going to do?” I said to Cubby.

The ring of my phone from my pocket startled me. I only answered because it was David.

“How’d it go?” he said.

It took me a second to realize he meant the meeting with Dean Shepherd. “Okay,” I said.

“Really?”

I bit the inside of my lip, remembering. My voice trembled. “Well, sort of.” Then I started to cry. “Can we . . . I’m sorry, can I just talk to you tomorrow? I can’t really deal right now.”

“Of course. Are you okay, Leena? Have you seen Celeste?”

“No. Not yet.” And whenever I did would be too soon. “I’m sorry. I really have to go.”

I hung up, took off my glasses, and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids to try and make it stop. But the tears were too strong for that. I lifted off Cubby’s head. My fingers fumbled with the baggies of pills. I set aside ones I didn’t want. Found the one I did.

“Everything is ruined,” I whispered even though there was no need to be quiet anymore.

You’re here now
, she said.
It’s okay
.

“But Cameron . . . . I’ve ruined his
life
. And Viv’ll never forgive me.”

Shhh . . . You don’t need her
.

I wanted to believe what I was telling myself. Wanted to believe I’d be all right. But I knew it wasn’t true. Of course I needed my friends. They were . . . everything.

Bit by bit, a calm settled over my body. My tears stopped, and I slept. A deep sleep, not the sleep of someone who’s worried she might have lost three of the most important people in her life.

The sleep of someone who knows she’s come home.