The Snow (6 page)

Christina’s throbbing heart did not supply enough energy for the climb to her room. I am old, thought Christina. Perhaps my hair is gray now, instead of silver and gold and chocolate.

She touched her hair, but all she felt was melting snow. I don’t have the briefcase. I dropped it somewhere.

She stared at her empty hands. How, oh how could she have done this? Gone through such torture, only to have lost the documents — the proof?

She began crying.

She hung up her coat. She took off her sneakers and set them to dry over the heating vent. She peeled off her soaking socks. The ice that clung to them melted in her hands. She looked up the whirling stairs and the white banisters that blurred like a forest. The first flight was not so bad. Thick plush carpet softened the way for her frozen toes.

The second flight, bare and slippery wood, was cruel and unwelcoming. This is home? Christina Romney thought. This is where I live?

At the top of the stairs, out of the dark behind the balcony came a waft of white. White that swirled like snow or ghosts. Christina was enveloped in white.

She tried to scream, but the white smothered her.

“It’s me, Anya,” whispered the white. “Where have you been, Chrissie? The Shevvingtons came up and checked your bed, and when they saw you weren’t in it, they laughed and went back to their room. Where have you been? Are you all right?”

Anya’s swirling lacy nightgown, like a bride’s trousseau, folded around Christina. “You’re freezing,” Anya whispered. “Come, I’ll get in bed with you. Body heat will help.” They tiptoed to Christina’s room. It was tiny and dark, with bare floors and cracked plaster. Christina had added flower pictures and her mother’s vivid quilt and a little white rug, but the room stayed dark. There were times when Christina and The Dark were like best friends, huddled together under the covers. But tonight The Dark was laughing, ready to bring out its real friends, creatures of the shadows and the sea.

Anya peeled away Christina’s soaking jeans and hung them to dry. The wind came through the electrical outlets in prong-shaped drafts. “I turned on the electric blanket after the Shevvingtons left,” Anya whispered, “so the mattress would get hot for you.”

Usually Christina hated the electric blanket. She wanted the layers of wool to weight her down. Now the hot blanket was hope and safety.

“There,” said Anya, rubbing Christina’s feet, “you’re all right now.” Under the covers, they wrapped their arms around each other until Christina stopped shivering.

“Anya?” said Christina.

“Mmmmm?”

“Are you back?”

“What do you mean, Chrissie? I’ve never been away. I’ve lived here for a long, long time.”

“But — you waited up for me.” Be sane again, Anya, pleaded Christina silently, like prayers. Be my friend, I need a friend, I need you on my side. And you’re older than me. Oh, Anya, I want somebody older than me! When I was a little girl on the island, I always wanted to be the oldest. I wanted to be in charge and decide everything and run the show.

I was wrong, Anya. It’s awful being the oldest.

Anya, be the oldest! Come back! I need you, Anya.

“I hardly ever sleep,” Anya said. “I just lie there and listen to the sea. The sea keeps count, you know. It wants one of us. I don’t mind if it’s me. But I don’t want it to be you.”

She still isn’t back, Christina thought. I can’t tell her about tonight. I still don’t have an ally. It isn’t the sea who is the enemy.

Christina wanted to weep for Anya or for herself. But she was too tired. She slept.

Anya lay awake, her black hair draping the pillows. She dreamed no dreams; she thought no thoughts. She was empty.

In the morning, at breakfast, Christina clung to Anya. She thought that Mr. Shevvington was watching her more than usual and that Mrs. Shevvington bent closer than usual, but perhaps she was wrong. Mr. Shevvington’s soul was hidden by his elegant clothing, and he stayed smooth and gleaming, no matter how dirty his deeds. Mrs. Shevvington’s soul was hidden by a body so thick and solid it had no feminine curves whatsoever. Her little black eyes were holes in her flat face, and when she smiled her little yellow teeth lay in rows like corn on the cob.

They did not look as if they belonged together. Grown-ups were always startled when they first met Mr. Shevvington’s wife, with her complexion like oatmeal. What does he see in her? they would whisper afterwards, for he was inspiring and she was a pudding.

Dolly sat, thin as a rag doll, in her chair next to Mrs. Shevvington. “I washed the windows in my bedroom again,” she said, her voice high and trembly.

Salt spray from the whipping waves below the cliffs constantly turned the windows opaque. Christina loved the feathery scrawls of frost, but Dolly whimpered. “They close me up,” she said fretfully to Christina. “They stitch me inside my room. They turn my room into the inside of a sleeping bag.”

“Don’t say that out loud,” Christina whispered. “You must not let the Shevvingtons hear you say that.”

But Dolly thought Christina was just being hard. She turned to Mr. Shevvington and told him, because he cared when a person was afraid of something. “Poor Dolly,” he said. “You’re afraid you might suffocate, aren’t you?” He smiled.

Then he walked them to the front door, checking that everybody had a book bag and gym shoes.

“And there’s another thing,” said Dolly, although Christina was signaling her not to talk about it. “I don’t like the balcony or the way the bathroom door opens onto the stairs. I don’t even like the stairs. Please, may I have a bedroom on the second floor instead? Nobody ever stays in the guest rooms. Please, may I have a guest room? So I don’t have to go all the way up to the third floor? I’m afraid I’ll fall. At night I can’t even go to the bathroom because I’m afraid I might trip over the railing.” Dolly shivered with her fear of heights.

“You must learn to cope with your fears,” said Mr. Shevvington.

“Why?” said Christina. “Why not just change bedrooms?”

Mr. Shevvington said that Christina did not want anybody but herself to be strong. That Christina approved of Dolly being weak and afraid. “That way you will always have a meek little follower,” Mr. Shevvington said.

Christina would have stayed to argue, but Michael and Benj were running down the steps, heading for school. Today of all days, Christina did not want to be alone with a Shevvington. She dragged Dolly after the boys. At the bottom of Breakneck Hill, Dolly turned left for the elementary school. Christina walked in the boys’ footsteps through the snow. How would she get through the school days now, knowing what lurked in those halls by night?

Michael and Benj threw snowballs at everything that moved.

Would she see a mound of snow the size of a briefcase?

Or had the giggling creature found it and put it back under the knee cavity of the principal’s desk?

In English the essay topic had been “cozy spots.” Christina had written about the thickets of blackberry canes on Burning Fog Isle, where she and Michael and Dolly and Benj used to play War. But Mrs. Shevvington chose fat, ugly Katy to read aloud.

“ ‘I like sitting under the hair dryer at the beauty parlor,’ ” Katy read. “ ‘It’s a noisy, wheezing, hot-air world. I can’t hear anybody’s conversations. I read high-fashion magazines and think about being beautiful.’ ”

Gretch laughed viciously. “At least you can
think
about being beautiful, Katy,” she said.

Katy withered and flushed.

Mrs. Shevvington smiled and said nothing. She passed out sets of vocabulary cards. Gretch took advantage of the movement in the room to whisper to Christina, “I’m having a slumber party this Saturday night. You could come this time. I wouldn’t mind.”

It took all Christina’s control not to beat Gretchen black and blue with the vocabulary cards. “I’m afraid I’ll be busy,” she heard herself say. “I’m having a slumber party of my own.”

She could not imagine what had made her say such a thing. The Shevvingtons would never let her have a friend spend the night.

And besides, did she really want the seventh grade to know how the island children lived?

The beautiful parlor downstairs with its black and gold Oriental furniture, furnished by the sea captain from his voyages to China, for his bride. They weren’t allowed in there; they might soil something.

The magnificent dining room — nobody could approach that gleaming table; island children might rest their shoes on it.

The adorable guest rooms, with the frilly canopies on the four-poster beds. No, island children were confined to the kitchen, the ugly little back room with the black-and-white television, and their barren rooms on the third floor.

And did she want anybody to see Anya? Seventh-graders were cruel. They would poke fun at Anya, and Anya might be hurt.

Besides, nobody could have fun when Mr. or Mrs. Shevvington was around. It would be the worst slumber party in the history of junior high. Girls would telephone their mothers and ask to be brought home, they would hate it so much.

But all day long, Christina found herself inviting people to the slumber party she could not have.

Jenny was delighted to come. Joanne couldn’t wait. Susan and Rebecca and Emily all wanted to come.

Christina found herself madly inviting everybody she had ever met — everybody whose name she remembered — just so that Gretchen couldn’t have them at her party.

What price am I going to pay for this? Christina thought.

Part of her was sick and wanted to run away to California.

The other part of her kept asking more and more girls to come to the party.

I
WISH I WERE
beautiful, Christina thought. She twined the silver locks with the gold, and then the gold with the brown. I’m interesting, she thought. I’m unusual. But I’m not beautiful.

She borrowed Anya’s hot rollers to set her hair. She thought of poor, fat, ugly Katy, whose favorite cozy nook was the hair dryer at the beautician’s.

Suddenly, critically, Anya said, “You have too much hair on each roller. Here. I’ll do it for you.”

It always surprised Christina when the old Anya surfaced, as if bits and pieces of her were floating around and latched occasionally onto things like hot rollers. Last night she was partly aware, Christina thought. She stayed up for me, warmed my feet. And now tonight she’s partly here.

Perhaps the Shevvingtons had misjudged. They thought Anya was completely destroyed, but perhaps she was healing.

The Shevvingtons must not know, Christina thought. They must not see Anya coming back. Or they would go after her again. This time, like Val, they would get her put away.

When Anya gently took Christina’s hair off the curlers, gone was the tangle that usually capped her head. Elegant, smooth waves fell past her shoulders and gleamed in the lamplight. She felt older and romantic: she was a woman now, not a mere seventh-grader.

“Me, too!” Dolly cried.

If Dolly sees changes in Anya, thought Christina, she will tell the Shevvingtons.

“Anya, fix my hair,” Dolly ordered. Dolly unbraided her hair. The braid pattern stayed in the hair, as if she had been run over by tank treads.

“Leave it like that,” suggested Christina.

Dolly looked annoyed. “Make me look older than Christina, Anya,” Dolly said.

Anya fussed with Dolly’s hair. She arranged it in long, soft loops, like a girl at the turn of the century, and fastened it with hidden bobby pins and one large glittering barrette.

Dolly’s prettier than I am, Christina thought. I am granite, like the island. I am strong and tough. But I am not pretty.

For a strange, painful moment she yearned for prettiness more than anything on Earth. It hurt inside, crying out, Let me be pretty, too!

The telephone rang. Mrs. Shevvington answered downstairs, calling up, “It’s for you, Christina. Do not stay too long on the phone unless it’s homework. The telephone is not a toy. Do not abuse your telephone privileges.”

Christina walked sedately down the three flights, because if she ran Mrs. Shevvington would punish her by not letting her take the phone call. “Hello?” she said cautiously. Mrs. Shevvington stood right next to her.

“Hi,” said Jonah. He sounded breathless and eager, like somebody going Christmas shopping.

“Hi, Jonah.” Her hair was as silver as stars, as golden as summer apples. She felt pretty.

Jonah said, “I had a nice time this afternoon.”

She and Jonah had gone skating on the parking lot ice. They had raced, flinging insults and snowballs at each other. It had been loads of fun, but it had not been romantic. A phone call, though, that was romantic.

Mrs. Shevvington’s little black eyes were hardly a foot away. “Page ninety-eight,” Christina said. “First twenty examples.”

Jonah said, “Chrissie. Is this code or is she listening?”

“Both,” Chrissie said.

Jonah said, “Let me know what they say about having the slumber party, Chrissie. See if they’ll let you have boys come, too. Now that would be fun.”

He was flirting with her. She touched her hair, reminding herself she was an elegant woman with gleaming tresses. But Mrs. Shevvington laughed and walked away and Christina turned back into a pumpkin: seventh grade, dumb and young. “See you tomorrow,” she said, which was not even conversation, let alone flirting.

It occurred to Christina that there might not be a price to pay for setting up a slumber party. At dinner when she asked for permission, the Shevvingtons would simply say, “Absolutely not. Twenty screaming, animal-like, seventh-grade girls in our perfect inn? Never.”

Then at school, Christina would just say, “They wouldn’t let me. You’ll have to go to Gretch’s after all. Too bad.”

This began to sound rather nice. It would be the first time this year that Christina had not only gotten herself into trouble, but also out of it.

But to Christina’s amazement, the Shevvingtons said, “What a grand idea! Why, Christina, that will be lovely. We’ll have such fun! We’ll play all kinds of games. We’ll make popcorn balls and pull taffy. We’ll play hide-and-seek all through the house. We’ll draw lots to see which girls get which guest room. You must tell them to bring their very best robes and slippers. We’ll have a midnight fashion show and drink hot chocolate before we retire to our suites, like English ladies.”