Frost (25 page)

Chapter 39

M
OST FRESHMEN EAT IN
L
OWER
R
IGHT
, at least the ones who haven’t made varsity teams or gotten leads in plays. Sure enough, the next morning I found Nicole there, eating breakfast with her friend, Sera.

“Can I talk to you, Nicole?” I said. “Alone?”

Sera stood and picked up her tray. “I was leaving anyway. FYI, Nicki, danger at ten o’clock.” She giggled. “See you later, lovebird.”

I followed Nicole’s eyes toward ten o’clock where a guy in an oversize Barcroft hoodie sat. Nicole jerked her gaze down to her plate. “Shoot. Did he see me?”

“I have no idea,” I said, sliding into the seat Sera had vacated. If only my main worry was running into some guy in Commons. “I need your help, Nicole. The situation is more complicated than I thought.”

“What situation?” Nicole’s eyes flicked back toward the guy. She smoothed her hair behind her ears.

“The thing with the girl in the locker room. I’m hoping you’ll do me a favor.”

Now she focused on me. “What can I do? I don’t even know her.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Just tell Dean Shepherd what you saw. You know, the bruises. Don’t mention my name. Tell the dean like she’s the only person you’ve told.”

“Why? Dean Shepherd hates me. Can’t you tell her?”

I shook my head, antagonizing the terrible headache I’d had since last night. I’d thrown up this morning, too. Nerves. “Like I said, it’s complicated. You don’t have to have a long thing with the dean. Just go in, tell her what you saw. That’s it.”

“Couldn’t it just be an anonymous tip?”

“Nicole,” I said. “You owe me.”

She bit her bottom lip and scraped her fork across her plate, through clumps of scrambled eggs.

“Okay,” she finally said. “I guess it’s not a big deal. I’ll do it.”

“Thanks.” I smiled with relief. One hurdle cleared. “Dean Shepherd usually gets to her office at seven thirty, so maybe you could stop by on your way to your first class.”

Nicole watched as I stood up to leave. “What’s going on with that girl, anyway?” she said. “Someone told me she’s going out with Whip Windham. Is it, like, an abusive relationship?” I could see in Nicole’s eyes that she’d be on the phone the minute I left, telling Sera what had just happened.

“No,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with that.” The last thing Celeste needed was to be the grist of the Barcroft rumor mill.

Although, I supposed that was the least of her problems.

There was a time bomb ticking. I could hear it counting off with every one of my shallow, accelerated breaths that morning. After bio, I wandered down the crowded hall, wondering if Nicole had done what I’d asked, if Celeste had been called to the office, if David knew. Silas Williams, from my Calculus class, stopped and asked me if I’d finished the homework. I couldn’t remember. Saturday, the day I’d last done homework, seemed so far away and fuzzy. I was about to tell him no when I felt a tug on my wrist. I turned.

“Leena,” Celeste said. “Come here.” My heart leapt into my throat. I followed her off to the side of the crowd, into an open space underneath the main staircase.

She stood so our faces were only inches apart and spoke in a whisper. “She told. The little redhead. She told Dean Shepherd.”

“She did?” I said. Celeste’s eyes betrayed no emotion. I hoped mine were just as unreadable.

“Yes! Can you believe it? She already snitched to you. Why would she tell the dean?”

“I guess she was worried,” I said. “So, are you okay? What’s going to happen?” Honestly, I was surprised she was in the classroom building. And that she seemed relatively calm.

“Nothing,” Celeste said. “Thank God. It’s just a pain in the ass.”

“Nothing?” That couldn’t be right.

Celeste brought out a tube of Blistex. I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from asking more questions as she ran it over her lips. “I saw the dean a few minutes ago,” she finally said. “I gave her the whole blood-disorder song and dance, told her about my doctor’s appointment, blah, blah, blah. . . .”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” All of my muscles tightened. I had known Nicole would only tell Dean Shepherd about the bruises, of course. Why had I assumed that would lead to the dean finding out everything else?

Instead, it had led nowhere.

“The good news is I think David figured out a plan,” Celeste said. “Like we discussed.”

The tightness in my chest was keeping me from breathing. “Already?”

“Of course already. The sooner the better. You want me to die in there?”

“What is it? He’s not going to do anything too extreme, is he?”

“He hasn’t told me,” she said. “He sent a text that says, ‘Got it.’”

“‘Got it’? That could mean anything.”

“No way. It means he’s got a plan.”

As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I knew she was right.

This couldn’t happen. I couldn’t let David do something horrible to Frost House. I couldn’t go along with this fantasy that Celeste wasn’t sick. And if I waited any longer, it would be too late.

“Can Dean Shepherd see me?” I asked Marcia. “It’s an emergency.”

I stood in front of Marcia’s desk, scrunching and unscrunching my toes in my boots, telling myself that this was the right thing to do. That whatever happened with David, I had no choice. I couldn’t jeopardize Celeste’s life just to hold on to him. I checked my phone about a hundred times to make sure I hadn’t missed a call or text. I’d left David a message that he shouldn’t do anything until we spoke. I was reaching in my bag to check it again when Marcia motioned me to go into the office.

Dean Shepherd was wiping the sleeve of her blouse with a paper towel. “Coffee spill,” she said. “Have a seat, Leena.”

I sat down and laced my fingers together tightly in my lap to keep my hands still.

The dean set aside the paper towel and gave me a small smile. “So,” she said. “Judging from the morning I’ve had, I’ll guess this is about Celeste?”

I started at the beginning, with the ripped skirt, the broken vase, the ruined nests. “I thought she believed Ms. Martin’s cat had done everything,” I said. “I didn’t realize she was connecting it to this other stuff.” I explained about Celeste’s fear she was being watched, the knocking noises, everything Celeste had told me, how she’d built it all up into this final paranoid delusion.

Dean Shepherd listened with a furrowed brow, absentmindedly running her fingers over her chin. “Are you sure this isn’t a joke?” she said when I’d finished. “Maybe she’s upset about you and David, trying to get back at you. Isn’t that what you told me before?”

“No,” I said. “She’s serious.”

“And the bruises? They’re part of this?”

I repeated what I’d told David, about how she might not realize she’s hurting herself. The way she might not have realized she was causing the other things to happen, as well.

“It sounds like there’s been a lot of trouble in the dorm I didn’t know about,” Dean Shepherd said. “I can’t help feeling that maybe it could have been noticed earlier that something was wrong.”

“Noticed by me, you mean.”

Most people might have missed the look that flitted across her face, but I didn’t. Just a twitch of her lips that let me know that’s exactly what she’d meant. That it was my fault for not coming to her earlier. That I’d missed obvious signs the person I was living with—the person she’d trusted me to watch out for—was deeply sick.

“I just thought she was eccentric,” I said, trying to ignore the heavy sadness bearing down. “How could I ever have guessed something like this? It’s completely crazy. I was trying to make things work out okay . . . you know, in the dorm. I didn’t know.”

The dean nodded, her mouth a solemn straight line. “Okay,” she said. “We don’t want to come to any premature conclusions, of course. But I’ll handle it from here.”

“What will you do?”

“Don’t worry—I’ll do what’s best for Celeste. Does David know yet?”

“No,” I lied. “Not yet.”

We sat for a moment. Her face seemed to sag slightly, as if the conversation had added years to her age. “What happened this semester, Leena?” she said. “I feel like in the past, you would have come to me with this.”

I swallowed and tried not to tear up. “I . . . I kept screwing up. You’ve been so mad at me.”

“It’s been a rough semester,” she said. “That’s true. But I would still have been here for you. Always.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. All her words did was make me feel worse.

The paths crisscrossing the Great Lawn stretched empty; everyone else was in class. I fought against a strong wind as I hurried toward Frost House. Leaves swirled above me like the flocks of ravens in Hitchcock’s
The Birds
.

David still hadn’t answered my call. I needed to find him. I hadn’t told the dean about his part in this whole mess, especially not the fact that he might have been lacing the house with lighter fluid as we spoke, because I wanted to believe that he—
we—
could have a life together here at Barcroft for the rest of the year. A life without Celeste. If the dean knew he was going along with the whole haunted house thing, well, that wouldn’t be good. Maybe, just maybe, once he realized his sister was sick, he’d see that I’d actually helped save her. Maybe he’d see that I’d risked my own happiness to make sure she was safe. Maybe he would even realize it now. Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait.

My head was killing me. I searched the inside of my jacket pockets, in case I had any of my meds hanging around. Nothing. I’d get some at the dorm. Assuming it was still standing. No—that wasn’t really a concern—David hadn’t talked about burning down the whole place, and he certainly wouldn’t do it without telling me first, letting me get out the things that mattered to me. Still, I couldn’t help scanning the distance for any sign of smoke.

Branches swayed in front of the little house when I reached the driveway. My little old lady house. Vulnerable. But not on fire.

I opened the side door. The common room looked the same as ever; clueless as to what was going on around it. Waiting for us to come hang out and watch TV or make microwave popcorn. Or have another Sunday night dorm dinner. All the things I’d envisioned when we moved into Frost House. I automatically straightened the tapestry that covered the couch.

Once in the hallway, I heard the sounds. Objects moving, shifting, in Celeste’s room. I moistened my lips. It couldn’t be Celeste—she had classes straight through to lunch. And if the dean had called her immediately, she wouldn’t have come back here, would she? Would the dean call her? Or send people to pick her up at class in person? A vision of Celeste in a straitjacket flashed in my mind. Being carried out of her class, wrapped up like a lunatic.

Celeste’s door was closed. I kept my footsteps soft, so I could make it to my own room first and take at least a little something to help with this headache. The floorboards creaked and groaned.

Click
. I stopped. The door to Celeste’s room opened. David stood there. His hair leapt out from his head in messy clumps. Circles of sweat darkened his shirt. From the look of the room he had been moving things out of her closet.

“Leen, hey. I’m so glad you’re here,” he said.

He opened his arms. My body fell into his. I was pulled in two directions. Pulled into his warmth, like I wanted to crawl under his shirt and hide there, as if I could be folded into his body and leave mine behind. But the buzz, the life I felt in his body also gave me strength to remember I’d done the right thing. Energy darted back and forth between us. When I felt the push rather than the pull I separated from him, taking that strength, feeling it in my bones. What I had to do now was a thousand times harder than what I’d already done. A million times harder.

“Did you get my message?” I asked.

“No. You called?” He patted his pockets. “Oh, right. My phone’s in my bag. I left it in your room. What’d you say?”

“Did you . . . did you need something in my room?”

“I borrowed a couple of tools.” He reached over to Celeste’s desk and picked up my hammer. He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “I have a plan. I would’ve called but I figured you were in class all morning. Shouldn’t you be at math?”

“David,” I said. “It’s too late.”

“Too late? For what?”

I filled my lungs as if preparing to be submerged underwater. “I told Dean Shepherd about Celeste.”

His head jutted back slightly, his chin pulled into his neck. “You what?”

“If she’s not sick, they’ll find out. And if she is sick, she needs help.”

Now he stepped back completely; I could no longer feel the heat from his body. The hammer dangled from his hand. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I knew that you were too close to her to do it yourself. And it had to be done.”

“You told the dean
everything
?”

“Most of it. I didn’t tell her that you know. I thought . . . well, I thought it would be better to keep you out of it. Dean Shepherd might find it kind of odd that you believe all the haunted stuff, too.”

There were nails in his voice when he spoke. “What were you thinking?”

“We talked about this before, David. You know what I think. Celeste needs help.”

“I know she needs help.
I’m
the one helping her. That’s why I’m here.”

“Please, David. Please don’t be mad.” I wanted to touch him, but knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. I rested my hand on the desk, instead. “This isn’t the Dark Ages. They won’t just lock her up.”

“Shit.” He banged the hammer down with a jarring crash, barely missing my fingers. I snatched my hand back.

“This ruins everything,” he said. “What the hell do I do now?”

“David—”

“Shut up, Leena. Okay?”

He pushed by me, across the hall, into my bedroom. I leaned against the wall next to Celeste’s desk, pressed fingertips against my forehead. What had just happened? My whole body felt cold with dread.

I heard the sound of David putting his coat on, then metal jangling. He stood inside my room, near the door, where I’d hung my keys since the day Celeste gave me his room key. I assumed he was taking it back.
Please don’t
.