Frost - Marianna Baer

couldn’t remember the last time I’d given the tatt a clear-eyed

appraisal. It had changed. The colors didn’t glow with that depth

of pigment that had made it really look like stained glass. Now

they were washed out. And the black lines had thickened and

bled. As if David’s kiss had reacted with the ink.

Damn. It wasn’t the most expensive tattoo, but it wasn’t

cheap either. And I’d taken such good care of it. I kept staring, as

if it was going to change back before my eyes.

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When I was sufficiently sure it wasn’t going to, I dressed and

followed the smell of bacon downstairs, into the kitchen.

Viv stood at the marble countertop island, cracking an egg

into a bowl. At the table, Abby sat hunched over a mug of coffee

and Cameron leaned back in his chair, reading the paper.

“Morning, sunshine,” Viv said. “Eggs? Veggie bacon? Home

fries?”

“Mmm.” I got myself some grapefruit juice from the fridge

then sat down next to Abby. “Hungover?” I said to her.

She nodded. “A little. Need food.”

“Hey,” I said, “have either of your guys’ tatts faded or bled?”

“Nope,” Abby said.

Viv turned from the stove. “Cam? You see my butt more than

I do.”

“Looks good to me, baby,” he said.

I swirled the juice around in my glass. “Mine looks like hell.”

“Go back to the place,” Abby said. “They can fix some stuff.”

“I will. Where’s Celeste? Did she eat already?”

“Haven’t seen her or David,” Viv said.

“David’s getting up.” I tried to keep any suspicious notes out

of my voice.

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I wasn’t successful. All eyes turned toward me.

“And you know this how?” Viv asked.

I would have lied, but my smile and blush told the story. “We

just, you know, hung out.”

Abby rested her head on the table. “Why do I always have to

be right? Why, why, why?”

“So where’s Celeste?” I said. “She’s not in the bedroom.”

Viv ate a bite of eggs off her spatula then recommenced

using it to stir. “Yesterday she asked me if she could take some

pictures around the house. Maybe she’s doing that.”

Honestly, at that point, her absence just seemed like a gift,

one I wasn’t going to question too strenuously. Especially not

after David came into the room, fresh from a shower and looking

ten times hotter than I’d thought before, if that was possible. I

was sure I could get used to that fooling-around stuff. I was just

nervous I’d do something wrong, probably. Push the wrong

button, pull the wrong lever. It had been a long time since I’d

been with a guy, after all. And I’d never felt as excited about

anyone as I was about David. That was probably it:

overexcitement.

Viv served us breakfast and we passed around the best

sections of the Sunday New York Times . David’s foot found mine

under the table. I skimmed through the real-estate section,

fantasizing.

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I was happy to ignore Celeste’s absence for as long as

possible. After a bit, though, David got antsy. He called her cell

and it went straight to voice mail. For once, I wished he wasn’t

such a caring and thoughtful brother.

“Maybe she went to the park?” Cameron said.

“In this weather?” I said, then turned to Viv. “Is Annika

around? Maybe she’s seen her.”

“Nope. Saturday night and Sunday she has off.”

David and I decided to look through the house. It didn’t take

us long to figure out she wasn’t here—unless she was hiding,

which, I hoped, was beyond even Celeste. The whole thing was

giving me a flashback to the bar last night. Maybe we were going

to find her sitting in an alley behind the house, smoking with

Whip.

“What should we do?” I asked David, annoyed that this was

how we were spending our morning. “Walk around the

neighborhood and look in cafés and stuff?”

“I think we should wait for her here,” he said. “If we go out

and she comes back, she won’t be able to get in the house.”

I went to my bedroom to grab a sweater. As I did, I checked

around to see if I could tell what type of clothes Celeste had

worn, in case that told us anything. I quickly realized I should have

thought to check earlier.

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Everything was gone.

All she’d left was a piece of paper folded over one of the

hangers in the closet with a scrawled note: Back to Barcroft.

Sorry, took the dress with me.

“She’s what?” David said, placing his glass of orange juice

down without taking a sip.

“Gone,” I said in disbelief. “Back to school.”

“What? Why?” Viv said, collecting dishes to be washed. “She

seemed okay last night. Was she upset or something?”

“I have no idea.” I thudded down in a chair.

David picked up his cell, sent a message. Called, left a voice

mail telling her to call back immediately.

“Do you think she took the train?” I said. “Or bus? I mean,

what a hassle with her bag, and her cast. What do you think we

should do?”

“She’s a big girl,” Abby said, looking at us over the top of the

Style section. “Can’t we assume she knows what she’s doing?”

No one said anything. The last thing I wanted was to spend

another minute worrying about her, but it was just so strange.

“Since it’s bad weather,” Abby continued, “I think we should

go to that movie. It starts in twenty-five minutes. But the

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theater’s a quick walk, right, Viv?” She folded up the newspaper

with loud snapping noises.

“Yeah. Ten minutes,” Viv said.

“And we can go to that museum you read about after,” Abby

said.

I looked at David, could read in his face right away that he

didn’t feel right going out without hearing from his sister. I didn’t

think I’d be able to concentrate on a movie either.

“You guys go,” I said. “David and I will stay here. We can

meet you later at the museum, okay?”

Abby pushed her chair back and stood up. “Whatever. Hope

you have fun.”

Despite the fact that it was the afternoon after our first kiss

and first night together, our time alone was not at all cozy or

romantic. We spent most of it staring at David’s phone. I

attempted the Times crossword puzzle but had trouble

concentrating well enough to make a dent in the clues.

I was trying to remember who wrote the short story “The

Lottery,” seven letters, when the phone finally rang. But it wasn’t

David’s; it was mine. And it wasn’t Celeste.

“Leena?” Dean Shepherd said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“That’s okay,” I said, surprised. “What’s up?”

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“Sorry if there’s noise around me,” she said. “I’m in the

parking lot at Whole Foods—dinner party tonight. But I just got a

strange message. Apparently, a maintenance worker was called

over to Frost House to help a student with something. And since

no students are supposed to be there . . .”

A maintenance worker? “Uh, I guess that’s something to do

with Celeste,” I said.

“Celeste?”

“You know how we all came to New York, to Viv’s house?” I

said. “Well, Celeste has sort of, well, she left early.”

“What?” A car honked near her as she spoke. “Why?”

I ran my finger along the side of the place mat, feeling

David’s eyes on me. The only possibility we’d come up with was

that Celeste was having some overblown reaction to us getting

together. I couldn’t exactly tell that to the dean. “It’s kind of a

misunderstanding,” I said. “I’m not quite sure why. She left early

this morning.”

“And came all the way back to Barcroft? Alone? On

crutches?”

“I guess.” It sounded so ridiculous. I didn’t blame the dean

for being confused.

“Did Viv’s parents take her to the train station, or

something?”

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“No. I mean, we don’t really know.”

“Well, I don’t quite understand, Leena, and don’t have time

to talk about it right now. But I’ll go to Frost House on my way

home from running errands and see what’s going on. In the

meantime, please have one of Viv’s parents call me.”

I could have lied. I could have told her they were out, or

whatever. But I didn’t. At the moment, it didn’t strike me as that

big a deal. Dean Shepherd loved me. She trusted me. And Celeste

was the issue at hand.

“They’re actually not around,” I said. “They got this last-

minute trip deal to Paris so they went. But Viv’s housekeeper is

here, or was here, I mean, yesterday, and took great care of us.”

“They aren’t there?” she said.

“No.”

I could hear a sigh of annoyance. “I’ll call you back after I’ve

been to Frost House. In the meantime, you and whoever is with

you—Vivian and Abigail and whoever else—are going to pack up

and drive right back here.”

Drive back to Barcroft? Today? That’s when I realized the

mistake I’d made. My stomach turned inside out.

I slumped against the back of my chair. “Abby is going to kill

me. K-I-L-L, kill me. Now that Dean Shepherd knows that our

chaperones aren’t here, she’s making us come back to school. She

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sounded really pissed. We’re seniors. I didn’t think she’d care.

And everyone knows chaperone letters are bullshit.”

“What’s going on with Celeste?” David asked.

I explained about the maintenance worker being called to

the dorm. “I shouldn’t have told her,” I said, then rested my cheek

on the cool table. “I am so dead.”

I was in my room folding clothes into my duffel when my

phone rang again.

“I found Celeste,” Dean Shepherd said. “She was the one

who called maintenance. I can’t discuss anything now, Leena, but

please come find me at home the minute you arrive back on

campus. I need to talk to you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry about the thing with Viv’s par—”

“It’s not about that,” she said.

“It’s not?” I rested my full bag on the floor.

“No,” she said. “I want you to tell me what has been going on

in this house.”

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Chapter 25

DAVID 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