Frost - Marianna Baer

what had killed those flowers. With anyone else, I would have

assumed they were completely kidding.

But something in her expression told me she didn’t quite

think it was funny.

An hour and a half later, I turned over my last page of notes

on the podium in front of me. Finally, the end was in sight.

“So, to sum up,” I said, looking out at the rows of faces, “the

peer-counseling program is all about students supporting one

another. We know how hard it is to make the transition, to deal

with the pressures of school. Don’t feel bad asking for help. And, I

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promise, we have an amazing group of students working with us.

You’d be lucky to talk to any of them.

“Are there any questions before my cohead, Toby, tells you

about the training program?”

I hoped my speech hadn’t been too boring. Despite taking

the pill, I’d felt too nervous to make eye contact while speaking,

so I hadn’t noticed how many of the new students had been

surreptitiously (or unsurreptitiously) texting or playing video

games.

“Yes?” I said to a small girl in the front.

“Uh, so . . . I . . .” Her voice was shaky. “No, never mind.

Forget it.”

“Sure?” I said. “There are no dumb questions.”

She nodded, and I made a mental note to ask her privately,

after the meeting. Maybe it was something she didn’t want to say

in front of a room of strangers.

“Anyone else?”

I searched the audience for hands. Then I saw David. He sat

in the last row, out of place in the room of mostly freshmen. Our

eyes met. Fuck-buddy . The word flashed like a neon sign over his

head.

“Okay, so . . .” I ruffled through my speech notes and willed

my blush to go away. “I guess that’s it then. Here’s Toby.”

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I shielded my face from the strong sun as I stood talking to

Dean Shepherd on the path leading from the auditorium to the

main quad, keenly aware of the fact that David hadn’t passed by

us yet.

“You haven’t mentioned your college visits,” Dean Shepherd

said. “How did they go?”

“Okay,” I said. “I don’t have a first choice, yet. Maybe

Wesleyan, or Columbia. But they’re both super long shots.”

Whenever I talked about colleges, the air I was breathing felt a

little thinner. It seemed impossible that I’d choose the right place,

even more impossible that the right place would choose me. And

most of the money in my college fund had been spent on

Barcroft.

“It’s worth a try,” the dean said. “Michael used to teach at

Wesleyan. You’ll have to come to dinner soon and meet him.”

“You’re still seeing him?” I said. “That’s great.”

At the edge of my vision, I sensed people approaching. I

snuck a look—it was David and some girl—then kept my eyes on

the dean as she told me about her boyfriend.

“Hi, David,” she said when he reached us, alone. “Settling in

okay?”

I made my mind a blank slate, ignored that neon sign over his

head. Or at least I tried.

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“Pretty much, thanks,” he said, then turned to me. “Actually,

I just wondered if you were going back to the dorm now?”

I moistened my lips. “After lunch, I am.” Was he looking at

me with more than friendly interest? It was hard to tell; his eyes

had such a natural intensity. In the end, probably better if he

wasn’t. I might not be strong enough to resist.

“Could you give this to my sister?” he said. “I’d bring it

myself, but I have another orientation thing and I know I’ll just

end up forgetting.” He handed me a small white envelope, then

added, “Assuming you haven’t kicked her out already, that is.”

An image of her holding the dead tulips flashed in my mind.

“Not yet,” I joked back. Folding the envelope into my bag, I could

tell it contained a key.

“David,” the dean said. “I spoke to Harry Weintraub and he’s

ready to meet with you whenever. You have his number and

email?”

“I do,” David said. “Thanks.”

“Seems like a nice young man,” Dean Shepherd said as he

walked away.

I watched his retreating figure—the broad shoulders, the

defined calf muscles—and noticed he had a bounce in his walk,

not the usual too-cool saunter of a good-looking guy. “Nice young

man. Is that a euphemism for hot as hell?” I asked the dean.

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She laughed.

“And what was that about Dr. Weintraub?” I said. He was a

teacher and well-known mathematician. I’d wanted him for

Calculus, but he was taking a couple of years off. “Isn’t he still on

leave?”

“Official y, yes. But he agreed to work with David on an

independent study.”

So math was David’s thing? He must have been pretty

brilliant for Dr. Weintraub to make a special point of working with

him. I wondered what spoons had to do with it. . . .

“David told me,” I said. “You know, about their father.”

The dean nodded. “It wasn’t my place. But I’m glad he did.

And Celeste arrived this morning?”

“Yup.”

“How was that?” she asked, putting an arm around my

shoulders.

“Well,” I said, “it’s going to be an interesting semester.”

“You know what Edith Wharton said?” the dean replied. “She

said, ‘I don’t know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I

should want someone who made life interesting.’ Maybe the

same applies for roommates.”

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I supposed that was the best way to look at it. If I anticipated

an interesting—if odd—semester with Celeste, someone so

different from me and my friends, and saw it as a chance to get to

know her better, then I wouldn’t be disappointed. Still, I held on

to the hope that didn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t also be easy.

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Chapter 7

MY MOTHER CALLED WHEN I WAS on my way back to

Frost House after lunch. I wasn’t in the mood for a long

conversation, but picked up anyway because I knew she’d keep

calling until she reached me. I hadn’t talked to her since arriving

at school, had only sent her and my father brief messages saying

I’d gotten here safely. My father had written back: “Remember to

get car inspected. Visit soon. Dad.” My mother was higher

maintenance.

I walked down Highland Street, giving her a brief summary of

the weekend.

“What kind of interesting?” she said when I used the word to

describe Celeste again. “Medieval castle? Skyscraper?”

Matching up people with architecture: our family version of

“If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

The perfect answer came as I turned into the Frost House

driveway.

“Casa Batlló,” I said. Casa Batlló—an outrageous apartment

building in Barcelona with colorful, mosaic walls that seem to

ripple, balconies that look like enormous skulls, a ceiling that

swirls like a whirlpool. Disconcerting, but beautiful.

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“You were scared to death of Casa Batlló,” my mother said.

“Do you need me to call that Dean of Students woman, honey? I

don’t want you living with some girl you’re scared—”

“Mom,” I interrupted. “I was only six when we went to

Barcelona.” Gravel pressed into the thin soles of my sandals.

“Everything is fine here. I have to go, okay?” It bothered me when

she tried to get involved in things about my life she didn’t

understand, things I could take care of myself.

If she wanted to be a part of it all, she shouldn’t have moved

across the country.

Ignoring my comment about needing to go, she began to tell

me about an article on a new kind of yoga that she was going to

email me. “Apparently, it’s much better for managing stress than

the kind I’ve been doing,” she said. “If there’s a studio near

Barcroft that offers it, I’d be happy to pay for you to take classes.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, heading down the hall to my room. “Sounds

great.”

As I set my bag on the floor in the bedroom, I registered

something strange on my bed. My mother’s voice chirped on as I

moved closer. Sheets of newspaper covered with rows of small,

dark . . . what? I moved closer. Bugs?

“Sorry, have to go,” I said. I hung up without waiting for her

response and stared.

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Cockroaches. Dead. At least a hundred. Shiny brown with

spindly legs. On my bed.

A roar filled my ears.

“Celeste!”

There were dead cockroaches.

On my bed .

I couldn’t take my eyes off the carcasses. Some as big as two

inches long. Legs and antennae and slippery-looking abdomens. A

battlefield. I shivered violently, as if all those tiny legs were

crawling on my skin, scrabbling up my arms and my spine and my

neck.

This was not interesting. It was repulsive.

“Celeste!” I yelled again.

I heard the flush of the toilet. Celeste came thumping in.

“I know, I know. Sorry,” she said in a blasé voice. “I needed

to see if they all arrived okay.”

“Take them off,” I said. The angry roar in my ears was so loud

I was sure she could hear it, too. “Take them off my bed. Now!”

“Okay. Let me just get their box.” She hopped over and

grabbed a shoe box off her dresser.

“Why do you even . . . why do you even have them? This is so

disgusting.”

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“For a photo project. It’s taken me a really long time to get

enough of them. You can’t just buy them anywhere.”

“Really, really disgusting,” I said. “And why didn’t you put

them on your bed?”

She gave me a look as if I were the crazy person. “No room.”

I glanced over. Celeste’s bed was covered with ten or so

small birds’ nests and what appeared to be an assortment of little

bones. God, I wished Dean Shepherd were here to see this—what

she was asking of me. David, too, for that matter.

“I’m going to go out for a little while,” I said, not knowing

where I’d go, just knowing that I couldn’t be here with her.

“When I get back, there will be no dead things in the bedroom. I

don’t care what you do with them. I just don’t want them in my

bedroom.”

“Fine. Sorry, I didn’t know you had a phobia.”

“It’s not a phobia!” I said. “It’s perfectly normal! This is not

the sort of stuff that should be in my bedroom! Especially not on

my bed!”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” she said. “I get the point.

But it’s not like you haven’t touched my stuff, too.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Unless David tried on my skirt,” she said.

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Her skirt? My heart started thumping. How could she . . . ?

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” She put the shoe box

down again and hopped over to the closet. She tugged at the

doorknob, jiggled it, pulled. “This stupid door won’t let me in. It

keeps sticking.”

“The wood’s probably swollen.” I went over and turned the

knob. The door opened easily.

As Celeste reached inside, I had the irrational hope that she

was going to bring out a skirt I’d never seen before, a skirt I hadn’t