First Frost

by Sarah Addison Allen

  Bay started to duck inside the closet to help Claire. “Are you all right?”

  “Stop!” Sydney said. “You’ll mess up your hair!”

  Bay threw her hands in the air with exasperation. “I think you used thirteen cans of hair spray on me. My hair is not going to move for a decade!”

  Claire emerged from the closet with the cardboard box in one hand, rubbing the top of her head with the other. When she noticed the photos on the floor, she immediately set the box down and went to her knees, her mouth forming the word Oh. “These are photos of Grandmother Mary! I’d forgotten about them.”

  Sydney went to her knees beside Claire, helping pick up the photos. She stopped to examine one. “Hey, Claire, look at this. This must be the fairy picnic Grandmother Mary told me about.”

  Claire leaned over to look. “Must be. Grandmother Mary told you a lot more about that time in her life than she told me.”

  Claire and Sydney were shoulder to shoulder now, an image Bay would always think of when she thought of them together, how close they were, like they knew what was inside each other’s pockets.

  “Why did Grandmother Mary tell you more than she told Claire?” Bay asked, curious.

  Claire looked up at her and answered, “Because your mom was pretty and popular, like Grandmother Mary was when she was young.”

  Bay felt her world shift slightly, like when you think you’re on the last step of a staircase, only to discover there was still another step left. “You were popular?” Bay said to her mother.

  That made Sydney laugh. “You sound so surprised.”

  “But you’re a Waverley.”

  “One has nothing to do with the other,” Sydney said, staring at the photo. “Grandmother Mary had a lot of suitors when she was young, before she married, before she got old and … strange.”

  “Agoraphobic,” Claire corrected, putting the rest of the photos in the shoe box and crawling back to the last box she’d taken from the closet. As soon as she lifted the lid, she laughed in surprise. “We’re finding everything of Grandmother Mary’s but her dresses. Look, here’s another one of her kitchen journals. She hid these things all over the house. I once found one inside a mattress.” Claire brought out a small, thin black notebook with Waverley Kitchen Journal on the cover, as all her journals had. But written beneath this one was also the word Karl.

  “How many journals have you found now?” Sydney asked.

  “Over a hundred.” Claire opened the journal and her brows fell in confusion.

  “What is it?”

  “Look at this,” Claire said. “She blacked out every single page.” On each page, every line Grandmother Mary had written had been crossed out with thick black horizontal ink stripes, obscuring the original script.

  Sydney shook her head. “She was a funny old lady. She was always scribbling in those journals. She was almost manic about it.”

  “She did the best she could,” Claire said, leafing through the journal. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. Raising us couldn’t have been easy for her.”

  “You always gloss over the fact that when Mom brought us here, she stayed for almost six years before she left again,” Sydney pointed out.

  “But it was still Grandmother Mary who took care of us.”

  “Mom took care of us while she was here. Evanelle said it took Grandmother Mary almost a year to get used to people being in her house again. She barely talked to any of us.” Sydney waved her hand dismissively at Claire, as if this was a familiar argument. “But you never remember those parts.”

  Claire seemed to think about it, then said, “Well, after Mom left, Grandmother Mary took care of us.”

  “After she left, Claire, you took care of us.”

  “No, it was Grandmother Mary,” Claire argued. “She ordered food and clothes and shoes for us. Washed our sheets.”

  “You did all of that. You were twelve when Mom left us. I remember getting so frustrated with the things you would pick out for me to wear. You dressed me in gray dresses and black sweaters, like an old lady, for most of elementary school.”

  “I did not.” Claire paused. “Wait, I did, didn’t I?”

  Sydney shook her head with a snort. “You and your revisionist history.”

  As Bay watched them bicker and coo, she began to realize how much she didn’t know about the Waverley sisters, their histories, their lives before Bay knew them as the unit they were now. She knew, she’d always known, how protective they both were of her, so they’d never offered up much information. Then again, Bay had never asked before, and questions now overwhelmed her. Who was Mary, really? Why was she one person when she was young, and another when she was old? Why was she raising her own daughter’s daughters? Why did Lorelei leave?

  Claire reluctantly set the journal aside and looked in the box again. She took out several sheets of yellowed tissue paper, then said, “Jackpot! Here’s a dress.” She brought out something so thin and delicate it looked like it was made of vellum. Claire put it to her nose. “It even smells like her soap.”

  Sydney set aside the photo of the fairy party and took the dress. “Her gray smoke soap. I loved that stuff.” Sydney stood and held the dress against Bay. “Yes, perfect for a garden nymph.”

  Bay looked down at the wispy dress, her fingers trailing over it. It really was perfect. It was a faded teal green with layers of beige netting forming a sheer cowl neck. Old sequins were sewn down the side, forming the shapes of flowers, and a silk sash sat below the hips.

  “It’s the same dress she’s wearing here,” Sydney said, bending to pick up the fairy picnic photo. The picnic table in the photo was an old door set up on sawhorses, and the seats were old tree stumps, or maybe thick pieces of firewood, topped with square cushions. Six men were sitting there, not looking at the camera, but at the beautiful woman with long, dark hair, almost to her waist, standing at the head of the table. She was smiling, her arms outstretched, as if welcoming everyone to her world. The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.

  Even it looked a little in love with her.

  “Okay, enough reminiscing,” Sydney said, pushing Bay into the hallway, toward the bathroom. “Hurry and get dressed!”

  * * *

  When Bay and Phin walked into the gymnasium together, Bay very nearly grabbed Phin’s hand, she was so nervous. But his hand was impossible to get at. He was covered from head to toe in a white sheet dotted with tiny rosebuds. Two crude eye holes had been torn into it.

  “I can’t believe you wore a sheet,” she said.

  “When you came to my door in a costume, I had to think fast,” Phin said, his voice muffled. “My mom is going to kill me for poking holes in her best sheets.”

  “Why didn’t you use your own sheets?”

  He hesitated before he mumbled, “They weren’t clean.”

  Boys.

  “So, what do we do here?” Phin asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been to a dance before.”

  “You helped decorate it.”

  “That didn’t give me any insight into the social dynamics of the thing.”

  “It looks great.” He moved his head around, as if trying to see through the eye holes. “What I can see of it.”

  “Take that thing off.”

  “No way.” He sidestepped her when she reached to grab the sheet. “No one knows it’s me. I’m in disguise.”

  Bay looked around. The place did look great. The lighted, covered ball on the ceiling cast shadows on the gym walls that looked like dead trees. And there was a corner where stills from classic horror movies flashed onto a white screen. Riva had gotten Maisy Mosey’s dad, who was a professional photographer, to take photos of kids posing in front of the movie stills as they acted like they were being chased by the Blob or Hitchcock’s birds.

  Unfortunately, without telling the decorating committee, it appeared that some parent
s had the brilliant idea of bringing bales of hay for everyone to sit on, and also cute little scarecrows left over from the kindergartners’ party. The gym ended up looking like a square dance gone horribly, horribly wrong.

  All the county high schools had been invited, and Bay could see the soccer players from Hamilton High making fun of the scarecrows, pretending to be afraid of them.

  It was trouble having Hamilton High here. Everyone knew that except maybe the principals, who had set this whole thing up. The Bascom High soccer team didn’t make the state playoffs, but Hamilton High did. They were old rivals, Hamilton High, the rural school with great sports teams, and Bascom High, the city school with a disproportionately large number of students from wealthy families. The two teams were sizing each other up from across the gym. All the soccer players on both sides were dressed as zombie players with white face paint, fake blood on their jerseys, and fake skin peeling off their arms. The only way to tell them apart was by the color of their uniforms and the numbers on their backs.

  Josh was number eight. She found him right away. He’d spiked his blond hair and had poured some fake blood on his head so that it streaked down his face and onto his jersey. His mouth was painted to look like it was monstrously large, with extra teeth. Some of his friends had red eye contacts. One of them had hidden one arm inside his jersey so that it looked like his arm had been ripped off.

  “Let’s get something to drink,” Bay said to Phin, the moment she saw Josh. Bay felt strange, like something in her had changed, which she thought was silly, because only the outside had changed. It was this magic dress, but also the cleverness of her mother’s gift with hair. Her hair made her feel pretty, but tender, vulnerable to thoughts of Josh taking one look at her and seeing her in a whole new light, of him walking up to her in front of everyone and telling her he hadn’t realized how beautiful she was, that everything she’d written in the note made sense now.

  She and Phin walked to the refreshment table while “Thriller” blared over the DJ’s speakers.

  “Nice spread,” Phin said, trying to pick up a cookie through the sheet.

  “Take your hand out, for heaven’s sake.”

  “No way. I don’t want anyone to know it’s me.”

  “They’d know you by your hands?”

  “They might,” he said, picking up a cookie with his hand covered by the sheet, like a puppet. He brought it up to his mouth, forgetting he had no mouth hole.

  Bay shook her head and looked away. A few seconds later, Phin said, “The cookies are really good.” But she could barely make out the words. She turned back to see his mouth making chewing motions behind the sheet. He’d obviously risked someone seeing his distinctive hands and grabbed at least half the cookies off a plate.

  “Riva came up with the idea for all of this,” Bay said. And it was a nice setup. The drink dispensers looked appropriately ghoulish, with plastic eyeballs floating in one, and a giant plastic brain floating in another. The finger pastries did actually look like real fingers, and the ghost cookies were clever—Nutter Butters dipped in white chocolate with chocolate chip eyes. There was also a platter of black licorice rats, hot dogs wrapped in dough to look like mummies, and a bowl of square white mints simply labeled, Teeth.

  But, there again was some parent’s brilliant idea to use red gingham tablecloths and napkins that read, Ya’ll have a safe Halloween! This had to be the weirdest hoedown ever. Hamilton High was yukking it up.

  “Where is Riva?” Phin asked.

  Bay looked around and found Riva near the DJ’s setup. She was dressed in a big bee costume, like the bee girl in that Blind Melon video from the early nineties. All her friends’ costumes looked inspired by iconic, retro videos. Dakota was in a Madonna cone bra. Trinity was in a suit like Annie Lennox, and Louise had on her Jamiroquai hat. Bay had to give them props for the clever costumes. Much better than all the zombie soccer players. “She’s with her group. Over there.”

  “What’s your plan?” Phin asked, still eating his cookies under the sheet, like a little boy sneaking sweets into his bed at night.

  “I don’t have a plan,” Bay said.

  “If this is about the bet, you have to let them see you. Shh, be quiet,” Phin suddenly said.

  “Be quiet? Why? Are you always this crazy, or are you just too sleepy at the bus stop in the mornings and I haven’t seen it?”

  “Riva is coming over here,” Phin whispered. “Don’t tell her it’s me.”

  “Why would I tell her it’s you?”

  “Bay, is that you?” Riva said as she walked over. “Great costume. The dress is so Gatsby! And your hair! Oh my God. Your mother must have done it. You might get the award.”

  “Super,” Bay said, having no idea what the award was.

  “What are you?” Riva asked.

  “A Waverley,” Bay said.

  “No, I mean, what is your costume?”

  “I’m my great-grandmother, Mary Waverley. She used to throw parties in the Waverley garden dressed as a garden nymph.”

  “Nice.”

  “Blind Melon bee girl?” Bay asked, pointing to Riva’s antennae.

  Riva made a face. “It wasn’t my first choice. We all got together and came up with a theme, then we each took turns picking which costume we wanted from the list. I got to pick last, hence, the bee costume. I feel like such a Mavis.”

  This was the most Riva had ever said to her, and Bay wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Finally, she said, “Mavis?”

  “You know, like in Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret? The girls in the book formed a secret club and got to choose secret names. The other girls got names like Alexandra and Veronica, but Margaret got stuck with the name Mavis.” Riva’s eyes went to Phin, who was standing next to them, and frowned. He was standing a little too close, like he thought he was invisible. “Well, see you later.”

  “Bye.”

  “Nicely done,” Phin said, back from being invisible. “You actually had a conversation with Riva Alexander. She’s going over there to tell them.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You are such a liar. You like to think you don’t care, but you do. There’s this little thing called give-and-take. Some people you can be yourself with, some people you have to be less weird with. And guess what? Those people are all over the place. You can’t avoid them. The world isn’t just yours. Everyone has to live in it.” Phin began to back away from her, slowly, like she wouldn’t notice he was moving. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make like a ghost and hover.”

  * * *

  Over the next hour, Bay would catch sight of ghost Phin, hovering around different groups, listening to their conversations. He hung around Riva the most, and then would move when she started getting suspicious. He seemed to be ridiculously enjoying his anonymity.

  Bay had lingered around the refreshment table for a while, and some people talked to her, complimenting her hair and dress. A Hamilton High boy dressed like a ninja had asked her to dance, but she’d said no. She’d spent the rest of the time with the awkward girls on the bleachers, watching Josh.

  Phin had been right about word getting around about her. Riva had gone immediately and told her friends that Bay was there. But Bay wasn’t the only news that night. Riley Asher had been sent home for wearing a nude body suit and long wig, saying she was Lady Godiva. There was a rumor that someone brought a flask of vodka. And some Hamilton High soccer players were saying rude things to the cheerleaders. With so much gossip going around, it was hard to keep track of which news was spreading where, but Bay knew exactly when Josh found out about her. She’d been watching him intently, waiting.

  Someone from his team came up to him and punched him on the arm, saying something with a laugh. Josh shook his head. The teammate looked toward the bleachers and pointed at Bay.

  That’s when Josh’s eyes met hers. She didn’t look away, even though she felt her heart beat so hard in her chest that it made the gauzy parts of
the dress flutter. He looked confused. He took in her hair and her dress, and his lips parted slightly.

  This was it, she thought. She stood up. The awkward girls around her looked at her, then looked over to Josh, and for a moment she felt their hope, too, like it was contagious, like she was doing this for all of them.

  His teammate punched him on the arm again, and Josh frowned at him and turned his back to her.

  She slowly sat back down and the awkward girls looked away, dissapointed.

  Well, that was it, she thought, her shoulders relaxing a little.

  Josh had seen her. That was all she’d wanted. Well, that’s not all she’d wanted, but she’d accomplished what she came here to do.

  It was done.

  Now she just had to wait for Phin to stop floating around, eavesdropping on everyone. Then she could go home and finally try to stop loving Josh Matteson so much.

  7

  At some point during the next hour, Bay became aware that Josh had left the gymnasium. She’d never looked directly at him again, but she always knew where he’d been by the thin stream of smoke he left behind him. Until now. She was sitting on the bleachers, by herself now because the other awkward girls had decided to be even more awkward and dance in a group to slow songs in the middle of the gym. She was near the door, close enough to hear the word fight whispered as several kids snuck out.

  She suddenly had an uneasy feeling as to where Josh might have gone.

  There’s a secret society in high school that most kids only find out about later, and then it suddenly makes sense when they remember the week all the popular girls went without makeup and all the popular guys dyed their jeans pink. It was their rush week, their formal induction into the upper crust. The exclusivity made them feel important and in control, and their gatherings were mostly harmless. But sometimes there were drugs. And sometimes fights.

  Bay couldn’t find Phin—there were too many ghosts at the dance, boys who would go home in ruined sheets to angry mothers—so she slipped out the door with the others, going to the faculty parking lot, which was almost void of cars.