Frost - Marianna Baer

to hear. She’s going to have a fit.”

“Tell her and Cameron how sorry I am. At least we got a

couple days in the city.”

“I guess,” Viv said, not sounding convinced. “I was keeping it

a secret, but I got us tickets to Letterman tomorrow.”

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“Really? God, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I am, too.”

Sitting in the car, I couldn’t get Viv’s voice out of my mind.

And we’d only moved about five feet in the last ten minutes.

“What is wrong?” I yelled, hitting the steering wheel. “It’s a

Sunday. Who are all these stupid people?”

“Hey.” David laid a hand on my knee. “We’ll get there.”

He had been much calmer than me after we’d found out

Celeste was definitely back in the dorm. Even though we were still

confused about why she’d left, and why she wasn’t answering our

calls, he kept saying, “I know it’s a pain in the ass, but at least

she’s safe.”

I refrained from telling him that with everyone so mad at me,

I didn’t care if she was safe at school or the victim of an alien

abduction. Actually, I did care. I’d have preferred the alien option.

I fiddled with the radio, trying to find a traffic report. “By the

time we get there, I’ll have to interrupt Dean Shepherd during her

party.”

“She’s the one who told you to come talk to her. She can’t be

pissed if you do.”

Bad song, worse song, commercial . . . “Do you think I should

call Viv again?”

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“I think you should try to relax.”

“You keep saying that!” I snapped off the radio and glared at

him. “Do you have any idea how much this sucks?”

“I know it sucks,” he said. “I just don’t think getting upset

does any good.”

“How can I not be upset?” I said. “This is a really, really shitty

situation your sister’s put me in. Put us in. I mean, I know it was

stupid of me to tel Dean Shepherd about Viv’s parents, but I

shouldn’t have even been talking to her. If Celeste hadn’t run

away—”

“Leena—”

“And I don’t even know why the dean wants to see me

tonight! Maybe Celeste made it sound like we did those things to

her. Like we broke her vase and ruined her art project.” I couldn’t

say it to David, but maybe she’d even told the dean about the

nests spelling out GO , about how someone wanted her to leave.

Maybe she’d blamed everything on Abby.

“Why would she do that?” David said.

“I don’t know.” I gripped the steering wheel and focused my

eyes on the Greyhound bus ahead of us. “Because Celeste always

wants to be the center of attention, right? And that’s exactly what

happened in the dorm. And what happened this weekend! Maybe

she even did it all herself—the vase, the nests. So she can be the

victim, just like she wants.” Blood pounded in my ears.

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“Yeah,” David said. “That occurred to me.”

“What?” I turned. He met my eyes with complete calm.

“I was worried, at first,” he said, “that she might have broken

the vase herself.”

Any words in my mouth evaporated. He’d been thinking the

same thing I had? “Oh,” I said eventually. “Well, did you . . . did

you ask her about it?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“What do you mean?” I glanced forward, drove a few yards

to close the gap that had opened up. Looked back at David.

“I didn’t have to ask,” he said. “Celeste told me. Not that she

did it. That she didn’t . She’s not stupid. She knew I’d suspect her.”

“Oh.” This was all such a surprise. “And you believe her?”

“Yeah, I do.” He pointed at the windshield. “Bad accident.”

Up ahead, the left of four lanes was closed to bypass a mess

of police cars and ambulances. David and I fell silent as we inched

up to the scene. Three totaled cars sat at varying angles on the

median.

“They’re using the jaws of life,” I said. “Someone must still be

in that car.”

“Uh-huh,” David said. Then his hand covered my eyes,

knocking into my glasses. “Oh, man. Don’t look.”

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“David! I’m driving.” I batted his arm.

“Well, keep your eyes straight ahead. Trust me.”

I did, but couldn’t help asking, “What is it? A body?”

“You don’t want something horrible to be the thing you

remember from this weekend, do you?” he said.

“As opposed to remembering my own personal disasters?” I

said. “God, we’re at a total standstill again.”

“Hey. Look at me for a sec.” He rested a hand on my

shoulder. “I’m sorry about this mess,” he said. “I’m really, really

sorry for my sister’s part in it. I am. But about what you said

before—Celeste is not always the center of attention. At least not

the center of my attention. Understand?”

I nodded.

“And this might turn out to have been a pretty important

weekend,” he said. “So you should work on remembering the

good parts.”

“Important?”

“No?” he said. “Nothing that happened strikes you as

important? Nothing’s changed?” His gaze lingered on my lips.

I glanced at the road, looked back at David. “Maybe you

should refresh my memory.”

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He moved his hand to the back of my head and eased me

forward into a long, soft kiss. This time, instead of adding to my

worries, the heat and intensity obliterated them. In that moment

I knew, despite any self-sabotaging nervousness, this was what I

wanted.

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Chapter 26

THROUGH THE WINDOWS of Dean Shepherd’s cozy, shingle-

style house, I could see people gathered in her living room—

standing in clusters, eating, drinking, laughing. . . . I ran my fingers

through my hair, tucked it behind my ears, and rang the bell.

The dean answered the door holding a glass of red wine.

“Leena,” she said. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

I wanted to tell her how nice she looked in her silk, kimono-

style dress. I wanted to tell her David and I had finally gotten

together. I wanted to be one of the people invited to the party,

not the student interrupting it.

We had to pass through the living room to get to her home

office. The smell of onions and garlic cooking poured from the

kitchen. The Cinnabon I’d eaten for dinner sat like a brick in my

stomach. I said hello to Mrs. Fleissner, an English teacher, and Mr.

Prince, a theater teacher, self-conscious about my too-long-in-a-

car appearance. I didn’t know the other guests by name, but I

could feel everyone looking at me with curiosity. Had the

happenings in Frost House been fodder for their party

conversation? Hard to say, since I didn’t even know what the

happenings were.

Dean Shepherd shut the office door behind us. Stacks of

paper filled every surface. She took a messy pile off a chair and

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asked me to sit, then placed her glass of wine on a bookshelf, as if

she’d be too tempted to down it during our conversation.

“So,” she said, sitting. “Have you been back to the dorm

yet?”

Was that a trick question? “No.” I said. “Well, I dropped

David off there to see his sister. But I didn’t go in. You told me to

come straight here.”

She folded her hands together on the desk. “I know I was

vague on the phone. I didn’t want to get into it until I saw you in

person.”

“It sounded serious.”

“When I went to look for Celeste, the dorm was a wreck.”

“A wreck?”

“Your section of the house. It looked like a tornado had hit it.

Clothes everywhere. Boxes in the middle of the hallway.”

“Did someone break in?” I asked, suddenly a bit panicked. I’d

left my laptop there, my only valuable jewelry—

“No,” the dean said. “Celeste did it. She was moving all of her

stuff into the tiny room with your desks, and your stuff into the

room with the windows.”

“She was what?”

“Moving your things, so you’ll have separate rooms.”

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“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. “That’s weird. We’ve never

talked about doing that. She did all of this on crutches?”

“That’s what she’d called the maintenance worker about—to

help her. But there were other things. I noticed some dried blood

drops on the floor. Honestly, the whole place looked like a crime

scene.” Her pointed stare made me feel like I was the suspected

criminal.

“What did Celeste say?”

“She was very cagey. She said she was moving rooms

because she didn’t like being in a bedroom with so many

windows. Apparently, the blood was from a cut she got while

moving the stuff.”

“I guess I’m not surprised she wanted to change the room

setup,” I said. “She hates that bedroom.”

The dean’s eyebrows drew together. “There must be

something else going on here, Leena. Why would she have left

your trip like that, without telling you?”

“I haven’t spoken to her, so I don’t know,” I said. “The only

thing I can imagine is that . . .” Peals of laugher filtered in from

the next room. I waited until they stopped. “David and I are kind

of, well . . . you know. Involved.”

“You are? Since when?”

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“It’s pretty recent. Anyway, maybe it has something to do

with that. Maybe she felt out of place or uncomfortable.”

Dean Shepherd rested her forearms on the desk and leaned

in. “I don’t want to miss a warning sign that something more

serious is going on. Given Celeste’s family situation, and her

accident over the summer, I can’t just ignore what seems like

troubling behavior. You’re sure there’s nothing else I need to

know?”

I hated not to tell the whole truth, but I wanted to talk to

Celeste, to find out what this was really about. And talk to David,

too. If something were wrong, he’d expect me to tell him first.

Like a kid, I crossed my fingers under the desk. “Well, like I

said, she’s never been comfortable in our bedroom. She can’t

sleep in it. She has nightmares. I don’t know her well enough to

know if it’s really the room, or if she’d have this trouble

anywhere. I’m pretty sure the main problem is me and David,

though. They’re really close, you know.”

“I know,” Dean Shepherd said, sitting back in her chair again.

“Okay, well, I’ll trust you to let me know if you notice anything

else, Leena. Although, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that you’ve

seriously compromised my trust by lying about your chaperones

this weekend.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said, relieved that I seemed to have

weathered the storm. The meeting hadn’t been nearly as bad as

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the scenarios I’d imagined—Celeste telling the dean she’d been

persecuted all semester. “Being seniors, you know, it just didn’t

seem like that big a deal. Over the summer our parents leave us

alone all the time.”

“The rules at Barcroft apply just as much to seniors as they

do to underclassmen. You know that.”

“I know.” Blah, blah, blah . . . I supposed she had to say all of