The Snow (2 page)

Christina froze. It had not been her own foot. And Anya was too light.

Outdoors, muffled by the rock walls of the cellar, the Atlantic Ocean forced its way into Candle Cove. She swallowed. That’s what it was, she told herself. Tide slapping rocks.

For a moment Christina wanted to flee back upstairs. But this was like a test, and Christina intended to pass. So she walked past the furnace, going deeper into the cellar.

She was tiptoeing. Why am I being quiet? she thought. Do I really think there’s a creature down here I don’t want to frighten? If there is anything down here, I definitely do want to frighten it.

Now the light from the single bulb was behind her. Her shadow was long, darkening her own path. With her flashlight, she split her own shadow in two. “Now one of you go in that room,” she said to her two shadows, “and you there — you come with me.” She giggled.

A deep, throaty voice giggled back.

S
HE DID NOT SCREAM.

The giggle sucked the air out of her lungs and kept it. Christina turned blue. Fighting her lungs, fighting the giggle, she tried to reach the steps. She stuck out her skinny little seventh-grade arms to defend herself.

The giggle thickened and grew deep until it became a groan. It was no tape. It was no trick. It lived; its inhuman noises reached for her like dead hands.

It was between her and kitchen door; the furnace, black and banging, hid it. She swung her flashlight, trying to catch the giggle in its beam. Her arm jerked with nerves and the light leaped around the cellar like fireworks, illuminating nothing. “Go away,” Christina whispered.

Immediately: silence.

Christina and the giggle both ceased to breathe.

She circled, trying to keep her back safe, but not knowing where safety lay. She felt like a slow-motion ballerina. “Anya, open the door!” Christina whispered.

She passed the furnace, and nothing attacked.

She passed the sagging door of the empty room, and nothing touched her. “Anya!” she croaked.

The giggle began again, slithering off the stone walls like spiders.

Christina bolted up the cellar steps and grabbed the tiny handle. The handle spun, opening nothing. “Anya!” screamed Christina, pounding on the door with the flashlight. “Anya, you locked it! Open the door! Let me out! Anya!”

The foggy bulb above her head flickered.

“No!” screamed Christina. “Don’t go out!”

It went out.

She turned, pressing her back against the kitchen door. “Please don’t swim out of the dark,” she prayed. “Please go away.” She was whispering, as if she could not allow the rubbery giggle to hear her beg.

Christina touched her hair.

The strange hair that always protected her. The hair of three colors, with its streaks of silver and gold and chocolate brown. She felt that in the dark the charm of her extraordinary hair could not work; the rubbery giggle would not know that she was Christina of the Isle, with tri-colored hair.

She was afraid to aim her flashlight into the cellar.

What if she saw it?
Its rubbery fingers ready to crush her against the kitchen door?

“Anya!” Christina kicked backward with her foot.

There was no sound in the cellar. No sound in the kitchen.

She could almost hear her own tears spilling down her thin cheeks. She was pressed so hard against the kitchen door, her own back ought to break through the solid wood like a tank.

But it didn’t.

She was alone in the dark, in the cellar, with the giggle.

After a long, long time, she remembered her watch. It was digital and glowed in the dark. She stared at the tiny square numbers as they flickered away the seconds of time. Her skull filled with numbers and colons.

10:32:01.

10:32:02.

10:32:03.

At 11:17:45, Christina knew she was alone in the cellar. She did not know how she knew. But the giggle had gone. Evaporated like water? Or had it walked out another door? But there were no other doors.

She slumped against the kitchen door. She could cry no more; her face was so blotchy her eyes felt swollen shut. “Anya,” she muttered once or twice, “please open the door.”

How had this happened to her?

How had Christina, born on Burning Fog Isle, only daughter of the most wonderful parents in the world, ended sobbing and defeated in the cellar of a sea captain’s house on the mainland?

Burning Fog Isle lay far out to sea. There were so few year-round residents that once the children finished the sixth grade, they were sent to board on the mainland for junior and senior high. (
Boarding.
It turned out to be a terrible word. Flat and hard and full of splinters.)

Christina had never been in a school with classrooms, a cafeteria, hallways, bells that rang, art, music, gym, and hundreds of kids. How thrilled she had been when at last, like Anya Rothrock, and Michael and Benjamin Jaye, she was old enough to get on Frankie’s boat with her trunks and bags, and land at the town dock.

This was to be the year of being normal.

The year of being just like everybody else.

She had trembled with the joy of being ordinary.

It was Anya’s senior year; Benjamin was a sophomore and Michael a ninth-grader. They would have friends; she would have friends; Michael would be on all the teams; Anya would gleam like a new moon; and Christina would be special and spoiled.

But Anya — lovely Anya, with her black hair like a storm cloud around her fragile, white face — had lost her grip on reality. Anya had been terrified of the sea, of the tides that rose every twelve hours and smashed against the cliffs below the mansion. Anya had been terrified of a poster of the sea that hung on her wall and seemed to change texture and color with Anya’s sanity.

Slowly Christina had seen the truth. Perched on the cliff over the glittering sea, with its cupola and many roofs — Schooner Inne looked romantic on the outside. But … the Shevvingtons were destroying Anya on purpose and enjoying every minute of it.

No parent saw it. No matter what Christina explained to Michael and Benj — who were right there, who should have seen! — they just got irritated. “Stop telling yarns, Chrissie,” they would say. And sometimes they even complained to the Shevvingtons, “Christina’s yarning again.” The Shevvingtons convinced Michael and Benj that Christina made up these things in order to attract attention.

The only teacher who realized what was happening, Christina’s math teacher, was fired.

So Christina turned to Blake, Anya’s boyfriend. Handsome, preppy Blake, who dressed in catalog Maine clothing, and whose watches cost more than a lobster boat. Anya and Blake had walked and danced and kissed, looking like a photograph in a slick magazine. They could have been modeling jeans or perfume or fast cars.

But even with Blake there, Anya collapsed. Her honor grades vanished like snow in the sun; her mind faltered; she quit high school. Blake struggled on; Blake never gave up.

But there was nothing the Shevvingtons did not plan for.

Somehow they arranged for the creature in the wet suit to entice Blake into chasing him. Their timing was perfect. As the twenty-foot tide rolled in like a living army, cannonading off the cruel cliffs, Blake was to be dashed to pieces. But even the Shevvingtons could not plan for the lucky chance of a tourist strolling by. Blake was saved, though he was in the hospital for weeks. But he went straight from the hospital to the boarding school, and for Anya it was the final blow. She never saw Blake again; Mr. and Mrs. Lathem, his parents, refused even to give Anya Blake’s address and phone number, because they held Anya responsible for everything that happened to Blake.

Oh, Blake had phoned once or twice. But he was swept up in another world now, and who knew what he believed about what the Shevvingtons and his parents had told him? And so they had lost Blake, their only ally.

But Christina, golden hair bright as summer apples, silver hair bright as stars, fought back. She was of the island: she was granite, like the rock she was born on, and nothing would stop Christina.

She had shown the Shevvingtons a thing or two! They finally saw she could keep Anya from falling off both the real cliff of the sea and the mental cliff of her mind.

There had been a week — a wonderful moon-bright week — in which Christina knew herself, age thirteen, to be stronger than the principal. The Shevvingtons had bowed down to Christina.

And then, laughing in the way of adults, who are always more powerful in the end, the Shevvingtons had brought forth Dolly, Michael and Benjamin Jaye’s little sister. Christina’s best friend on the island. Dolly was supposed to be in sixth grade, safe on the island for another whole year. But Mr. Shevvington used his power as principal, announcing that Dolly was “far too bright to be isolated on that remote little island with its pitiful excuse for a school.” And Dolly’s parents had agreed to let her go to the mainland early.

Had Michael and Benj protested? Had they said “No, no, the Shevvingtons are evil”?

Of course not.

Michael and Benjamin Jaye were oblivious to any of it.

Christmas vacation arrived. The five children went back to the island for two glorious weeks. And on those beautiful December days, filled with sweet song and crispy cookies, never had Burning Fog Isle seemed so remote from the mainland. It was a world of mothers and fathers, of being tucked in at night. It was a world of peace and laughter and people you had known all your life.

Her parents had said gently, “Chrissie, honey, you’re exaggerating. You’re getting such wonderful grades in school. Writing such fine papers. You seem to have so many friends to write us about, so many interesting activities. It is a terrible shame about Anya, but she’s always been fragile, you know.”

“The Shevvingtons,” Christina said, in her last attempt to convince her parents, “took Anya’s fragility and snapped her like little bones.”

But they all sighed and said Chrissie was yarning. It was comforting to believe that Michael and Benj saw nothing because there was nothing to see. Christina even made a New Year’s resolution to stop yarning about the Shevvingtons.

They had gone back to Schooner Inne: Michael to basketball, Benj to slog on in school until he turned sixteen and could quit and be a lobsterman; Dolly to sixth grade; Anya to her laundromat; and Christina to her new resolution.

January classes began.

It seemed to Christina in those first days of January that the Shevvingtons hovered over Dolly like birds of prey, circling in the invisible air currents of the threatening sky, waiting for the time to strike. The Shevvingtons were drilling into Dolly’s soul with diamond-tipped bits. Christina had no evidence. She hadn’t even figured out yet how they were doing it.

She did not know that she had fallen asleep against the cellar door.

The door opened.

Christina fell backward into the kitchen.

The cold, harsh ceiling light blinded her. Blinking, she stared up to see Michael, Benjamin, Dolly, and Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington staring down at her. The Jayes wore jeans. The boys’ huge feet were encased in huge, dirty high-top sneakers. Dolly wore tiny, brand-new white sneakers. Mrs. Shevvington’s nylons gleamed like water. Mr. Shevvington’s creased pant leg rested on his polished leather shoe.

“May I ask, Christina,” Mrs. Shevvington said, “why you have chosen to spend your morning in the basement?”

“I was trapped down there,” Christina said. She sat up. Now she was staring into their kneecaps. Awkwardly she turned herself over and struggled to her feet. Dolly was giggling. Michael and Benj were shaking their heads in tolerant amusement. “There was somebody down there!” she said. “Somebody — he kept giggling at me.”

The boys rolled their eyes. “Chrissie,” said Benj, “stop yarning. We’ve told you and told you. You’ll never make friends when you spend all your time yarning.”

“It’s true,” she said. She sounded like a bleating sheep. “Somebody lives in that basement! He’s huge and rubbery, and he — “

“What have you been reading!” exclaimed Dolly, giving Christina a little punch in the side. “Chrissie, get a grip on yourself. You’re falling apart like Anya.”

Anya appeared. She had a tray in her hands. A teacup and a small plate with toast crusts lay on the tray.

“Anya, where were you?” Christina sobbed. “I called and called! You didn’t rescue me.”

The rest burst into laughter at the idea that Anya could rescue anybody. Anya, frightened by the guffaws, flushed and nearly dropped her tray. Benj rescued the teacup and set the tray down for her. “I was so cold down here,” Anya whispered. “And you went away, Chrissie. I went up to my room. It’s safer up there, so high. Away from the waves. Things don’t reach me there.”

Mr. Shevvington lost his temper. “Christina, look what you’ve done. Anya was improving. Now you’ve terrified her again. She’s lost all the ground she gained. Why do you do these rotten things, Christina? I think you purposely plan to destroy poor Anya’s self-esteem.” He turned to Anya. “Christina loves to exaggerate, Anya, dear. You must learn to ignore everything she says.”

Dolly giggled softly.

Christina hardened her jaw to keep from showing hurt.

Mrs. Shevvington said, “Wipe that expression off your face, young lady. March back into that cellar.”

Christina backed up against Michael and Benj. Save me! she thought. Don’t make me go back down there ever again!

The boys pushed her to Mrs. Shevvington, who said, “I will escort you, Christina. We will examine every room. We will look in the dust beneath the furnace, and we will measure the spaces behind the unused sawhorses. Then you will march back up here and admit to everybody that this is yet another of your attempts to get attention.”

“A
W, CHRISTINA,” SAID JONAH
. He was laughing at her! Christina grew hot with hurt and anger. How could her best friend — a boy who was always saying he wanted to be
better
friends, be a real
boyfriend
— not believe her story? “You have the most active imagination in the state of Maine,” he teased. “You see a fishing boat out at sea and you think it’s an invading navy. One seal pops its head up in the harbor and you’re sure that little brown thing means the harbor is mined with bombs.”