Freeze Tag

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Was he acting?

  Perhaps she froze part of me after all, thought Meghan. I’m not completely here. Part of my mind is ice. Part of my heart is snow.

  Eventually lunch period ended.

  Eventually Meghan found herself in gym.

  She was taking tennis. The school had an indoor court. Never had it been so satisfying to whack a ball. Meghan hurled all her strength into the drills. The coach was thrilled. “Meghan, you’re vicious!” said the coach happily. “I love when you play like this! This is winning!”

  I will hit Lannie Anveill like this, thought Meghan Moore. I am not giving up West Trevor. And he is not giving me up, either. She’s not allowed to go running around freezing people or scaring me that she might. I won’t put up with it.

  Meghan smashed a ball down into the opposite court. Whatever had been frozen in her melted. She was all heat. All rage.

  All hatred.

  Once she had thought hatred was cold. Wrong. Hate boiled in her mind and her heart. The steam of hate rose in her throat. Bubbles of hate raced through her blood.

  She could actually feel the hate.

  She could feel hate take over her body the way Lannie Anveill’s evil touch had taken over Jessica’s.

  Meghan Moore set down her tennis racket. Meghan Moore backed away from the court, away from the shouting coach, away from the beaten opponents.

  No.

  I refuse.

  I will not be filled with hate. I don’t like people who are hateful. I like nice people. I am a nice person. I will not hate.

  Meghan walked into the girls’ locker room early and stood alone among the slick tiles and the stuck lockers.

  She let the hate seep out of her. It did not leave quickly or easily. Hate was a lingering thing. It liked ruling the body.

  She shook her hands as if shaking water off her fingers. She lifted each foot and shook it. The last little droplets of hate seemed to leave.

  I won’t beat Lannie with hate, thought Meghan. But I have to beat her with something. So what will it be?

  “… because knowing your opponent will give you an edge,” the coach was saying out in the gym. “You must study your opponent’s technique. Then you can see the weaknesses and the flaws, and move in on them.”

  Know your opponent, thought Meghan Moore.

  Did Lannie have weaknesses? Did she have flaws?

  Meghan would have to get to know Lannie.

  There was no other way.

  Meghan had a study hall last period. She usually made excellent use of it. Today, as usual, the forty-four minutes were not wasted. She did not doodle or daydream. But she did not study math or literature, either.

  She reviewed her knowledge of Lannie Anveill.

  Lannie never seemed to get older, or taller, or curvier. She had stayed wispy. Her hair was dry and brittle. It reminded Meghan of herbs that people who had country kitchens were always hanging from their ceilings. There was a dustiness to Lannie, as if she were very old, and had been stored somewhere. Unused.

  Or unloved, thought Meghan. Nobody ever had less love.

  Meghan’s mother used to say that, when she insisted Meghan had to be kind to Lannie. It was blackmail kindness. You could not really feel sorry for Lannie. You were more apt to feel sorry for her parents. There was something in Lannie that precluded sympathy.

  Except for the growing of trees and children, Dark Fern Lane had seen few changes when Meghan was in elementary school. Most of the families who had bought first homes there still owned those first homes.

  Lannie’s father was the only one on Dark Fern Lane who actually did get a second house. Lannie had been about ten.

  Getting a second house, it turned out, was not necessarily good news. For Lannie’s father was not going to bring his wife and daughter along to this second house. He was going to live there with his girlfriend, Nance.

  Mr. Anveill promised that he would take Lannie one weekend a month. It did not sound like a lot of time to spend with your father, but it sure sounded like a lot of time to spend with Lannie. Meghan had shivered for Nance, who surely did not know what that weekend and that stepdaughter were going to be like.

  And when Lannie’s mother remarried, too, Meghan shivered for Jason. Jason moved into the house on Dark Fern Lane, and had to live with Lannie all the time.

  One Friday, Nance and Mr. Anveill were picking Lannie up for The Weekend, and Nance happened to have a conversation with Meghan’s mother, who was raking leaves across the yard and into the street. “I’ve been reading up on stepparenting,” said Nance.

  “Oh?” said Mrs. Moore.

  “Experts say not to expect to get along for at least two years, let alone feel any love for the stepchild. So I don’t expect a thing, and I certainly don’t love Lannie, but I wish she would brush her teeth more often.”

  Lannie was standing there at the time. She had chosen a few pretty orange and yellow maple leaves to admire. But she did not take them inside with her. She crushed them in her hand.

  And then there was the day when Jason, waxing his car (he drove a classic Corvette; the former Mrs. Anveill was not interested in men who drove dull cars) talked to Meghan’s father. “I don’t know how to be a parent,” he confided. He seemed to feel this freed him from having to try.

  That year, Lannie skipped a grade, catching up to Meghan. Lannie had never seemed especially smart, and many people were surprised that Lannie was skipped up. Meghan understood perfectly. Lannie’s scheduled teacher was afraid of her. What better way to breathe easily than to bump up the source of your fear?

  Beside her in study hall somebody coughed. Somebody moved his chair. Somebody dropped a book on the floor.

  Meghan heard none of it. For she had remembered the dog. She had not thought of that dog in years!

  Why didn’t I remember? she wondered. Why didn’t I add things up? What took me so long?

  Jason had brought home an Irish setter. Such a beautiful dog!

  Dark red, lean, and graceful.

  It bounded across the narrow yard on Dark Fern Lane, whipped around the Jaguar and the Corvette parked in the drive, and rushed back to Jason to lick his hands. Jason, impossibly handsome in his sporty jacket and jaunty cap, knelt to fondle the dog.

  How attractive everybody was! The fine strong stepfather! The magnificent cars! The lovely fluid Irish setter! Meghan had been awestruck. Her own family was dowdy and dull.

  Jason, laughing happily, had hugged the dog.

  “He’s never hugged me,” said Lannie.

  The dog did not yet have a name. Lannie’s mother came out and she too admired the beautiful dog. “We need a name for it,” said Lannie’s mother with great concentration. “It must be a perfect name.”

  “For a perfect dog,” agreed Jason.

  They hugged each other, and leaned against each other, as if they and the dog were the family.

  As if Lannie did not exist.

  The Irish setter, loping over the green grass, passed near the two young girls. Meghan, who was not fond of dogs, shrank back.

  But Lannie had put her hand out.

  Meghan, in the study hall, clung to the table, sick with dizziness, as if she were about to faint. I knew, thought Meghan, I knew even then. I knew what was going to happen.

  How vividly Meghan remembered Lannie’s fingers. Too long for a little girl’s hand. Her wrist too narrow, skin too white.

  The dog tipped over, as if made of cast iron. It lay on the ground with its legs sticking out like chair legs.

  “Oh, no!” cried Jason. “What’s the matter? My beautiful dog!”

  Lannie’s mother said, “Quick! We’ll take the dog to the vet.”

  They crooned and wept.

  They rushed for help.

  They showed the paralyzed dog more affection and worry than they had ever shown Lannie.

  Lannie’s skin was as cold and white as snow, but her eyes, her pale dead eyes, were hot and feverish with pleasure.

  Meghan rem
embered backing away, trying to slip unseen into her house. She had accomplished it easily. Lannie had forgotten Meghan. Lannie’s satisfied eyes remained for hours on the place in the grass where the dog’s frozen outline was impressed.

  The following spring there was another ending in Lannie’s life.

  People who drive Jaguars as fast as Lannie’s mother either lose their driver’s license or get killed. With Lannie’s mother, it was first one and then the other.

  Everybody on Dark Fern Lane felt obligated to go to the funeral.

  Only Meghan had refused to attend.

  “Darling,” said Mrs. Moore, “I know funerals are upsetting, but Lannie is in school with you, and she’s your across-the-street neighbor, and you owe it to Lannie to show support.”

  Why didn’t I want to go? thought Meghan, tapping her pencil against the cover of her unopened literature book. The boy next to her stared pointedly until she flushed and stopped tapping.

  Meghan tried to remember the funeral.

  I didn’t go, thought Meghan. I stayed home.

  Why?

  The answer did not come, and yet she felt it there: a piece of knowledge she had chosen to bury when she was young. When she was thirteen. A terrible age. Meghan was very grateful not to be thirteen any longer.

  In any event, Lannie, at twelve, had no mother, and so of course went to live with her father and Nance. Nobody on Dark Fern Lane missed Lannie. Meghan breathed deeper and laughed longer with Lannie off the street.

  Not a month later, Nance drove into Lannie’s old driveway. Lannie was in the front seat with her stepmother.

  The weather had turned unseasonably hot, and everybody was outdoors — because nobody on Dark Fern Lane had air conditioning — and therefore everybody saw and everybody heard what happened next.

  “Lannie’s father,” said Nance to Jason, “has deserted us.”

  Jason said he was sorry to hear that, but he did not know how it involved him.

  “Lannie is yours,” said Nance, and she drove off faster than Jason could think of an argument.

  There was Jason, in his driveway, with Lannie Anveill. “Well,” said Jason. “Well, well, well.”

  Lannie stayed. Jason continued to lead his own life. Lannie always seemed to have clean clothes and a recent shampoo. But that was all she had.

  Absolutely all.

  The children on Dark Fern Lane graduated from elementary school, left middle school, and entered high school.

  They no longer had neighborhood birthday parties to which Lannie must be invited. They no longer went to the same ballet classes and had to give Lannie rides. They no longer gathered for afternoon snacks at the Trevors’, and had to give Lannie a plate of nachos as well.

  High school was big and airy and full of strangers. Even when they had attended it for years, it was still full of strangers. Sometimes they went days without running into Lannie.

  Even when they saw Lannie, they didn’t think of her. They were completely absorbed by their own lives. The whole world, from the President of the United States to their mothers, was remote and bothersome.

  Had any of them noticed Lannie?

  Even once?

  The final bell rang.

  Meghan stood up, dazed.

  Here’s what I know about Lannie Anveill, thought Meghan Moore. Nobody loves her. Nobody ever has.

  Chapter 4

  AND YET, FOR ALL that, when Meghan went down the usual hall at the usual time, there was West, in his usual place. And as usual, her heart leaped, her legs danced, and her lips smiled.

  “West!” she said.

  His smile filled his face. “Meghan.”

  They hugged at the locker and went arm and arm to the car.

  Lannie had fallen away from their thoughts and their lives like a piece of paper dropped to the floor. How remote those hate-filled tennis-ball-smacking minutes became. How meaningless the knowledge of Lannie’s loveless life. Meghan forgot again. Only teenagers can forget so completely, so often.

  Meghan knew nothing except the joy and the warmth of the boy she adored. Her world was very small, and very full.

  “This afternoon I’m going to work on my truck,” said West happily. “It’s cold out, but the sun will be shining for probably another hour and a half. I’m trying to fix the door handles.”

  “That’s a good project,” said Meghan, who thought it was the most boring thing she had ever heard of.

  West beamed, and shared his door-handle restoration plans with her. It seemed that both handles had broken off on the inside. “You have to keep a window rolled down in order to get out,” he explained. “And I can’t be letting it rain and snow inside my truck!”

  Considering that it had been raining and snowing inside that rusty old hulk for a decade now, Meghan didn’t see why he felt so deeply about it. But she loved him so she said, “I could help.”

  She knew West didn’t really like help when he worked on his truck. In fact, West didn’t like company. He liked to be alone with his toolbox and his chore. But she loved him a whole extra lot today, and she wanted to sit on that dumb old front seat and watch him sweat.

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly.

  They threaded through the escaping cars — hundreds of kids leaving school as fast as they could — and found West’s mother’s car. West measured his happiness by the number of days he was allowed to take the car to school. It wasn’t all the time, by any means. It wasn’t even half the time.

  “How long before the truck is up and going?” said Meghan, meaning, How long before you and I can ride together every day?

  “Long time,” said West, half gloomy because there was so much to do, and half delighted because there was so much to do.

  West got in his side and Meghan opened the door to hers.

  Lannie was sitting in the middle of the front seat.

  West froze in the act of getting behind the wheel, looking exactly like a statue in Freeze Tag — one leg in, one leg out, half his body on the seat, half still outside the car.

  Meghan froze all over again. Her hand froze on the door handle and her face froze in shock, seeing Lannie ensconced in West’s mother’s car. Meghan’s mind and heart and body raced through every emotion of the day: fear, panic, rage, and finally knowledge.

  I know she isn’t loved, thought Meghan, striving for understanding and decency. But I don’t want her to start with West!

  And Meghan especially didn’t want to see Lannie so pleased with herself.

  West evidently decided that good manners would carry the day. West hated not getting along with everybody. It was a character flaw, in Meghan’s opinion. You couldn’t always be friends with everybody. But West, like the rest of the Trevors, was endlessly polite. It gave them protection; they could stand neatly behind their courtesy.

  “Hey, Lannie,” said West easily. As if it were quite ordinary to bump into her in his car. As if it meant nothing now, and was not going to mean anything later. “Want a ride home? We’ll drop you off.”

  But it did mean something, Lannie being there in Meghan’s place. Meghan could not quite get in the front seat and sit next to Lannie. Not after she had remembered the dog.

  West did not look at Meghan. She could not exchange thoughts by eye. What shall I do? thought Meghan, as if her life depended on it. After a moment she got in the backseat by herself.

  Lannie smiled victoriously and rested a hand on West’s thigh.

  Meghan was outraged. That’s my place! she thought. Don’t you touch him! He’s mine!

  But she did not say anything.

  None of them said anything. Meghan did not think she had ever driven down these roads and kept silent. She did not think she had ever come out of school without a thousand stories and complaints and jokes to tell.

  West seemed to sit very casually in the driver’s seat, rather like a van driver who’d been giving rides for a hundred years and drove with a single fingertip, a slouch, and a shrug.

  They reached
Dark Fern Lane without having uttered a word. And it was Lannie, taking control, who spoke first. “Drop Meghan off,” said Lannie. Her voice was as cold as January.

  Meghan pressed back against the upholstery. Lannie seemed to have lowered the temperature in the whole car, just by speaking. As if her breath carried frost with it.

  “Aw, come on, Lannie,” said West. “I had lunch with you.” As if that were enough. As if Lannie Anveill would settle for that. “Meghan and I have plans.” As if Lannie cared. As if Lannie were going to allow those plans to be executed.

  Outside was very January. Cold and waiting, the weather hiding behind a gray sky, waiting to blast them out of their safe houses. The ground hard as iron, expecting snow, needing snow.

  In the backseat, Meghan felt queerly numb. She lifted her hands, to be sure she still had them. Drop me off, she thought. Off what? A cliff?

  And suddenly she knew.

  A glaze frosted her eyes, like the day she had been frozen in the yard.

  A glaze of knowledge.

  Lannie turned around to glare at Meghan for taking so long. Her hooded eyelids lifted and the dark irises glowed like the Northern Lights. “Get out of the car, Meghan,” said Lannie, in a voice as flat as a table.

  “Lannie,” breathed Meghan. She was trembling so hard she did not see how she could pick up her bookbag, or find the door handle.

  Lannie smiled her smile of ice and snow.

  “Did you freeze your own mother?” said Meghan. “Is that why the car crashed? Because she was frozen?”

  Because that’s why I didn’t go to the funeral, thought Meghan. I remember it now. I was sure Lannie made her mother pay for loving the dog more.

  The bleached eyes swung from Meghan to West.

  West’s big hands tightened on the steering wheel.

  “Look at me, West,” whispered Lannie.

  “Don’t look at her,” said Meghan. But Meghan couldn’t look away. Nor could she move. She was afraid to lean forward and so much as rest her hand on West’s shoulder. She was afraid to touch the door handle, for fear that Lannie had infected it, and it would be a carrier, as wires carry electricity.