Melt (6 page)

“Was that the only time?”

Kelly hesitated. “No. I was in love one other time, but she didn’t want me.”

“Was she straight?”

“No. But she was older. I had nothing to offer her. Except adoration. It was ridiculous, really.”

“Why ridiculous?”

“Because I was too young for her. She saw me as a child. It wasn’t possible for her to love me like that. I was naïve and immature and completely inappropriate in every way. It was a classic crush. I absolutely adored her.”

“She must have been something!”

Kelly gazed into Pippa’s sincere face, encouraged to elaborate. “She was. She was a fascinating woman. Like nobody I’d ever known. She was a professor at my school. She taught geology, meteorology, physical sciences.”

“I didn’t even know you studied science.”

Kelly laughed shortly. “It was never my thing, but sometimes, you know, you find a teacher who sparks an interest.”

“You mean an interest in the teacher?” Pippa snorted, then grinned.

Kelly nodded indulgently.

“What happened?” Pippa asked, clearly enthralled with the subject.

“Nothing happened. She transferred to a school in California when I was a junior and that was the end of it.”

“And then you met Megan.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever see your teacher again?”

“No. But I’ve often thought about her.”

Kelly looked away. That was an understatement. She had forgotten almost nothing about the two years she had been obsessed with Jordan Westgate. After that initial geology class, she had taken every undergraduate class Jordan taught. Kelly still saw her clearly in her mind, the intelligent, ironic look in her eye, the tilt of her head when she considered a student’s bizarre statement, as absurd perhaps as two plus two equals six. Without revealing surprise, she would invariably give that unruffled look and say, “Hmm. Perhaps not.” Kelly got so she would start giggling before it even came out, in anticipation of it. When Jordan was in a more sarcastic mood, the response would be the less neutral, “Not in this universe!”

In the beginning, when Kelly was nineteen and going through the first phase of falling in love, it was sweet and happy, but by the end, just as she turned twenty-one, it was merely painful. The day they said goodbye, as Jordan prepared to take a position at UCLA, was an episode of sheer agony seared into Kelly’s heart. Yet it was a moment of sublime happiness as well. Shockingly, Jordan had kissed her on the lips, a few seconds of bliss that would live eternally in her mind. One kiss was as close as she had come to realizing her dream of forever-after happiness in Jordan’s arms. And then she was gone, leaving the echo of her voice and touch like a flickering spark Kelly had nurtured for years against the chill of time and space.

Now, with the anticipation of seeing her again, the spark had been fanned into a full-blown bonfire. Kelly worried that she would be unable to retain her cool when she met Jordan again face-to-face, standing in the midst of that inferno. But that was her goal, to come off with extreme grace and composure, to emulate as much as possible Jordan’s own example of elegant poise, to be the sort of woman, in short, that Jordan would find appealing.

In her mind, she endlessly rehearsed the moment of their meeting. When their eyes met, she would utter a nearly inaudible gasp of astonishment at seeing Jordan again after nearly a decade. Then she would say, with restrained pleasure, “Jordan! What a delightful surprise to see you again.” For her part, Jordan would be equally surprised and, Kelly hoped, glad, as someone might be at a chance meeting with an old friend. Or maybe she would forgo the feigned surprised and merely say, “Hello, Jordan. Nice to see you again. How’ve you been?” In a businesslike manner, she would shake her hand and look her in the eye with confidence. Jordan would say, “Kelly Sheffield, for Christ’s sake! I thought I got rid of you years ago. Now here you are following me to the top of the world, hoping that nine years could have changed the laws of physics and created a reality in which I could return your wretched love. Not in this universe!”

Kelly shook the image from her mind. She’d never been any good at fantasies. They invariably betrayed her insecurities and were so much worse than reality would ever be. Same with dreams. Her dreams and fantasies played out like they were written by a sadistic puppeteer. There was no way Jordan would be that brutal. But her response to seeing Kelly again could very well be a gentler equivalent.

“What about you?” she asked Pippa. “Have you ever been in love?”

She snorted a short laugh. “I’ve never even been kissed. Not kissed for real. A dorky boy took me out once and kissed me goodnight so fast he almost missed my mouth. Then he ran away like he was being chased by a chainsaw murderer.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s not a lot to choose from here. Not the kind that interest me, anyway.”

“You mean women?” Kelly ventured.

“Yeah.” Pippa smiled self-consciously, then averted her eyes. “Specifically lesbians.”

Kelly laughed. “That’s what I meant. No other lesbians in Ilulissat?”

“As if! I barely know of any gay people,” Pippa explained. “I don’t expect to meet anybody here. This is how I figure it. In all of Greenland, there are only twenty-eight thousand females. In Ilulissat, there are two thousand females and a hundred and sixty girls in my age group. Over half of those are married, so that leaves about eighty. Nobody really knows what percent of the population is gay, really gay and not just experimenting, but I’ve heard it’s about three percent.”

“That’s conservative,” Kelly pointed out.

“This is a conservative place.”

“Okay. You have a point.”

“Mathematically speaking, that means there are two single lesbians, at most three, in my age group in this town. And I’m one of them.” She sighed fatalistically. “I’ve had my eye out for the other one, but so far, nothing.”

“Those aren’t very good odds. But when you go away to college, everything will be different.”

“If I ever do. Even if I do get to go to college, it could be two, three or four years from now before I even know another lesbian.” She grimaced. “Can you imagine staying celibate until you’re in your mid twenties?”

Kelly sputtered. “Uh, that’s not a death sentence. A lot of people aren’t sexually active until their twenties. It’s really not that unusual, especially in a situation like yours where there isn’t anyone appropriate to date. There’s no urgency about sex. You don’t have to feel pressured about it.”

Pippa shook her head, looking mournful. “It’s not just sex. It’s the whole thing. Going steady. Holding hands. Kissing.”

“It would be nice if you had that.” Kelly patted Pippa on the back sympathetically. “I guess it’s kind of lonely here for girls like us, isn’t it?”

Pippa brightened at the suggestion that she and Kelly were in the same club.

Kelly stood and stretched. “Do you mind if I set up my camera and take a few shots here before we go on?”

“No problem! Take as long as you want. We’re making good time. We’re over halfway there now.”

Kelly walked out to a point with a particularly fine view of the bay and set up her tripod, her mind still occupied with thoughts of Jordan.

She wanted to find out, after all this time, if the sight of Jordan still tugged at her heart, if the nearness of her still made her knees weak. Or if, as Jordan had predicted, she had merely had a crush and had outgrown it in the intervening years.

But she already knew she hadn’t outgrown it. She had never believed Jordan’s assertion that her love was a transitory infatuation. Jordan thought of her as a child, full of heady dreams and illusions. Even as a teenager, Kelly had been more grounded than that. Some might say more cynical, but she liked to think of herself as merely realistic. She hadn’t been a romantic idealist like many girls her age, prone to flights of fancy, but neither was she a pessimist like her mother. What she had found in Jordan was a woman whose spirit resonated deeply with her own, someone she would even dare to call her soul mate.

She had never loved Megan as deeply as she had loved Jordan. She had tried to be happy with Megan, but her heart knew there was something more profound and satisfying available, if not with Jordan, then with someone else. In the end, that was why she and Megan couldn’t make it. She had always felt a little like she was settling for second best. She couldn’t forget the exquisite joy of all-consuming love, of wanting to give herself wholly and selflessly to someone else. She wanted to find out if that joy was still possible or if her heart had hardened. Even if Jordan was still unavailable to her, she yearned to feel that old emotional intensity, just to know it was still a part of her.

There was also a chance that Jordan would see her in a different light now that she was older and more experienced. They weren’t that far apart in age, less than ten years. The age disparity wouldn’t seem so great now. It wouldn’t be out of the question for Jordan to see her as more of an equal. She might even be able to love her. But she hardly dared think that for fear of wounding her carefully guarded hope.

These were the thoughts Kelly had been carrying around since signing on for this trip, all the while having no clue if Jordan was even available. None of the information she had found about Jordan’s many recent accomplishments had anything to do with her personal life. That didn’t surprise her. Jordan could be married with five kids and none of her students or colleagues would know it. Unless she had changed.

She attached her camera to the tripod and turned it down snug. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pippa’s bright red jacket moving along a nearby ridgetop. Poor kid, she thought, with her wild, romantic heart and no place for it to run free. Was that better or worse than having a wild, romantic heart that fixed itself on a hopeless pursuit?

She was soon immersed in her work, transfixed by the beauty and solitude all around her. She forgot all about Pippa…and even Jordan.

Chapter Six

Pippa’s head throbbed like thunder. She opened her eyes and tried to comprehend her situation, gradually realizing she was lying on the cold ground in the dark. Why was it dark? It was summer, the middle of summer. It never gets this dark in the middle of summer. She saw a circle of light above and her eyes finally made sense of it. She was looking at an opening to the outside. Through it, the blue of the sky was unblemished by any detail. She was in a cave, she reasoned. That was weird. There are no caves in Greenland. Startled by a whistling sound, she listened more carefully and recognized it as the wind passing over the opening above.

She tried to raise her head to look around, but everything swam violently, so she closed her eyes and lay still until it was calm again. Then she tentatively rolled onto her side, feeling a sharp pain in her ankle. She must have fallen. She looked up again at the opening ten feet above. Her head hurt. She felt around until she located a sticky mass of hair at the back of her head. She realized she was bleeding…or had been bleeding. The blood was nearly dry. Maybe it wasn’t too bad. But what about the ankle? She tried to move her foot, then winced at the sharp pain.

Peering into the dimness around her, she could see the outlines of large boulders, but only barely. God, she thought, I hope there’s no polar bear in this cave! Then she remembered again that there are no caves in Greenland and wondered where she was.
What country is this?
I hope it’s America, she thought with sudden excitement. Or France or England. Or Africa. Maybe she’d fallen into a diamond mine!

She remembered the penlight on her key chain and reached into her front pocket to fish it out. Its beam exposed the space around her: rock walls and a dusty floor containing smooth, featureless boulders. Against one wall was a pile of soccer ball- sized rocks about two feet high that looked like they’d been arranged there purposely like a stack of cannon balls. They looked like a cairn, but a cairn inside a cave would be a strange trail marker. Maybe not so strange a marker for something else, she reasoned, like a buried treasure. A buried treasure inside a cave, now that idea had potential. Her mind raced off with visions of gold doubloons.

Beside her on the floor were the few scattered cottongrass flowers she’d dropped on her way down. She’d been picking them, she recalled. That was her last memory, stepping toward a patch of fluffy blooms with the intention of presenting a bouquet to Kelly as a cheery gift. Kelly was so taken with them. She’d never seen anything like them, she’d said, and had taken dozens of photos of them on her first trip to Rodebay.

“They grow all over,” Pippa had informed her. “Very common, like weeds.”

“What seems common has to do with your frame of reference,” Kelly had said. “I think they’re darling!”

Kelly took a lot of photos. Not just for the articles Mr. Lance was writing, but of whatever caught her eye. She even took pictures of Pippa.
Does she think I’m darling too?

She decided to sit up again, but her head spun wildly as before. In the split second before her thumb released the penlight button and the cave went black, she thought she saw someone on the other side of the chamber. Adrenaline flashed through her body and her blood went cold as she lay perfectly still holding her breath, listening. It had been a face only, a pale face framed by light-colored hair. It was a woman. Maybe not a human woman. Maybe a ghost or a witch or a vampire, but whatever it was, it was a female one, for sure.

Hearing nothing for two, three, four seconds, she fumbled to turn the light back on, but the room spun around her so fast, she grabbed at the floor, feeling like she would fall off. She squeezed her eyes shut again and curled into a ball, waiting for the spinning to stop.

Flashes of light shot across the black field of her vision as she lay still and quiet. Then there were indistinct, flickering yellow flames as the world gradually slowed and came into focus. Though her eyes were still shut, a scene was forming. Bit by bit, the flames solidified into a small, cool fire in a stone fireplace with a stone mantel. Above that an intricately carved wooden cross hung on the wall, its design a fascinating network of curving tendrils like vines or snakes.