Frost - Marianna Baer

as scared as if I’d fallen into someone else’s open grave, rather

than up there, with my friends?

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“I don’t think you’re lying,” I said.

“Tactful. You don’t think I’m lying. You just think I’m

psychotic.”

Silence returned as I helped her with her bags and crutches. I

resisted the urge to run down the path to my room and into the

house, resisted the urge to find calm and sanity in my closet as

quickly as possible. Instead, I matched my steps to hers, and held

open the door when we reached the entrance. Celeste hesitated

for a moment. It must have taken all her courage to return to

Frost House. She obviously believed she was in danger, regardless

of the fact it wasn’t true. To her, it was true.

In the hallway outside our rooms I said, “Do you want me to

stay in there with you tonight?” It didn’t feel responsible to let

her sleep alone.

“No,” she said. “It didn’t make a difference before. When we

were in the same room. It was just as bad.”

“Why haven’t you asked, you know, to be moved

somewhere else?”

“What would I say? People don’t just switch dorms with a

month left in the semester. What could I possibly say?” Her voice

was so tired.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re positive you don’t want me to

stay with you?” If she were causing the bruises herself, somehow,

maybe my presence would deter it.

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“I’ve got work to do, anyway. I’ll pull an all-nighter in the

common room—it hasn’t touched me in there. Yet.” She reached

for her doorknob, then looked back at me. “What are you going

to do?”

“Right now?”

“No. Are you going to help me, Leena?”

I smoothed down a flake of paint curling off the wall. “Did

you . . . did you think you might be imagining it? At the

beginning?”

“Of course,” she said. “You think it struck me as totally

normal to be living in a place like this? To have all this stuff

happen? Of course I thought I was crazy. I didn’t know that

something like this was possible. I thought . . . you know, it was

made up, in books and movies.”

“And why—I mean, how—did you decide, you know, that it’s

really happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can just tell. It’s real, Leena. Don’t

you know when something is real?”

How could she be so blind, after seeing her father today?

Real was walls and flesh and DNA and brain chemistry. How could

she not know that?

I shut and locked the door to my bedroom, went into the

closet, and shut and locked that door, too. I sank down on the

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cushion, opened my cell, and pressed the glowing green buttons.

The phone looked like something from outer space, some alien

tool. But it wasn’t. It was a cell phone, made in China, with LED

lights that lit up the buttons so I could see them here in the dark.

Real.

“Miss me already?” David said.

His voice brought everything else about him—his eyes, his

goofy laugh, the smell of his skin. . . . The way he takes care of his

family. What was I thinking, doing this over the phone?

“Leena? You there?”

“Yeah, I . . . I just wanted to say thanks. For inviting me.”

“Everyone loved you,” he said. “And thanks for being so

patient with Celeste. I’m surprised she was so upset. Dad was

pretty good, all things considered.”

I tipped my head back against the wall. “I’m glad I got a

chance to meet him. And your mother. She seems wonderful.

Your whole family does. Anyway, I have to go. I just wanted to

thank you for including me. It meant a lot.”

“I hope you didn’t think I was too pushy,” he said, “telling

you to invite your dad to Thanksgiving.”

I hadn’t even remembered that. “Oh, right. I’ll think about

it.”

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“Because at the risk of sounding like an after-school special,”

David said, “you’re really lucky you have two . . . healthy parents.

And I think, someday, you might regret not . . . not trying harder.”

I breathed deeply.

“I’d love to get to know your family,” he said. “They couldn’t

be all that bad if they made you.”

I smiled. “Thanks. And I’ll definitely think about it.”

After saying good night to David, I picked up Cubby, thinking

I should put the new pills in her now. Then I remembered my pills

weren’t in her anymore, and reached for the plastic bag. As I did,

her voice rang in my head.

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

More and more, the voice came on its own, without me

asking any question. Like a muscle, maybe, my subconscious was

getting stronger. This time, I didn’t understand what she—what

I —meant.

You’re not the one who should try.

With my family. But . . . why? Maybe inviting my dad would

be a good thing.

Stupid. Weak. Believing what David says. He doesn’t know

you.

I’d do it if it made him happy. Did that make me weak?

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David’s happiness. What would even be going on in his life at

Thanksgiving? Where would Celeste be?

“Hello, spirit,” I said. “Are you there?” I felt like a total idiot

the minute the words were out.

No answer, of course. I almost wished there had been—a

diaphanous figure appearing next to me, saying, “You called?”

Then I could have just convinced it to leave Celeste alone, and I

wouldn’t have had to worry.

There was no ghost, though. Not now. Not ever. The whole

idea of Frost House as evil was . . . unthinkable. If there was such

a thing as a haunted house, it would be the type of place people

write about—where you feel uneasy and scared to turn out the

lights. I’d never felt anything but safe and wanted in here. It was

that type of house—I’d seen it right away—the type of house that

welcomes and protects. You could tell just by looking.

That much I was sure of. And while I certainly didn’t think

believing in ghosts meant you were crazy, thinking one was trying

to kill you, well . . . that took it to a whole other level.

I pressed my hand against the wall. I moved it slowly, as if

feeling for a pulse. Or reassuring it. Good house. Good, strong

house.

Celeste didn’t realize it’s what’s inside us that’s most scary.

Nothing in the real world could match what our brains and bodies

come up with. It’s all a matter of degrees, what we create as our

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demons. Some minds create scarier ones. Poor Celeste. And poor

David. That sadness in his voice when he talked about losing his

father. . . . Once I spoke to him, he would know perfectly well that

he was losing his sister, too.

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Chapter 36

I WAS TOO ANXIOUS TO SLEEP WELL, felt every spring of

the bed frame through the mattress. Even the Tylenol PM didn’t

keep me from falling in and out of bad dreams and stretches of

lying awake, obsessing over what I was going to say. And in that

sort of delirious half sleep, a new worry occurred to me. What if

Celeste twisted the story around? What if she told David I was

making it all up, that I was the unstable one? She could use the

pill stash as proof. If she had that missing paper, maybe he would

believe her.

And something else, new and confusing: if Celeste was a

physical danger to herself, was she a danger to me? When she

found out what I’d done, would she . . . hurt me?

At 5:15 a.m. I gave up and turned on the lights. I slipped into

sweats and sneakers, before realizing that I didn’t know what

time it was actually legal to leave your dorm. We had to sign in by

ten, and you couldn’t leave in the middle of the night. But when

was it officially “morning”? The last thing I needed was to be

kicked out of school because of an early morning walk.

Instead of risking the world’s stupidest expulsion, I booted

up my laptop and did research, any topic that related to anything

Celeste had said. I searched for a site on hauntings that struck me

as authoritative and scientific. But all they did was confirm my

opinion. Photos of fuzzy shadows on staircases, presented as

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proof. Please! I also googled the town of Barcroft and hauntings,

to see if there were any accounts of the story Celeste had

mentioned. None, of course.

And students had been living in Frost House for generations.

Wouldn’t there be more stories going around about it, other than

those old, tepid ones of Whip’s?

If there was an infinitesimal part of my brain that wanted an

explanation for all those things that Celeste mentioned—the

vase, the burn, the nests—before closing the door on what I knew

wasn’t true, I got it, moments before I was about to put my

computer to sleep. I stumbled on one last site, after searching a

new combination of terms. Finally, a rational site, that offered

legitimate explanations for what lay behind some “hauntings.”

What I read on it made me feel both a rush of relief and a slow

creep of horror. Because it all fit together. And I was more sure

than ever about what I had to tell David.

By seven a.m., I sat waiting for him on the steps of his dorm.

I tore up dried leaves into little pieces and considered my

approach, as if there was a good way to tell him his sister might

be heading down the same path as his sick father. I’d also decided

I needed to come clean about everything, just to be safe. So

Celeste couldn’t manipulate the situation. I was trying not to be

too nervous, but I still had the jitters. There was no telling how he

would react.

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Guys straggled out of the dorm, in pairs and alone, fuzzy,

not-quite-awake expressions on their faces. I sat off to the side,

inconspicuous. David glided right by me with his hands in his

pockets, a brown-striped scarf around his neck and his black wool

hat on his head. I waited, appreciating this moment in which he

looked like a typical prep-school student, headed off for a normal

day of classes and sports and friends on one of the most beautiful

campuses during New England fall.

“Hey,” I called. “David.”

The bench on the steps of the chapel was bathed in the

slanted rays of morning sunshine. We held steaming cups of

Commons coffee in our hands. I’d delayed as long as I could. My

pulse felt too quick and erratic, despite having taken a small dose

of something to calm me. I remembered how angry he’d been

when he’d found out about my Columbia interview. How was he

going to react now?

“There are a couple of things—hard things—I need to tell

you,” I said.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

A V of geese flapped and honked overhead in the pale blue

sky.

“First,” I said, “is about me.”

I kept my eyes on the birds as they receded into the distance.

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“Ever since my parents split up, I’ve been on meds. You

know, psychotropic.”

I paused, took a sip of coffee. The steam fogged up my

glasses.

“It started as a regular prescription thing. But then my doctor