Frozen Beauty

by Lexa Hillyer

I can’t stop thinking of our old dog, Sun—

  we’d found her in a parking lot stranded.

  We groomed and loved her, yet some kind of anguish—

  some haunted past we’d never understand—

  just kept on chanting run, run in a language

  that only she could hear. A cry of guilt—

  a wolf in the forest of falsehoods that we built.

  And now, winter whispers: deny, deny,

  silencing me with its little white lies.

  I open my mouth and it fills with snow.

  The end’s a blur—I can’t see where to go.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Before

  1/23

  Dear Diary,

  I cannot believe this. Cannot. BELIEVE this. It’s been about two weeks since my last entry. Today was inventory day at Lupine.

  Today was the day I got fired.

  The call came sometime late in the afternoon. Margaret told me not to bother showing up tomorrow for my shift. I was like . . . what??? She says, “I won’t press charges if you return the item.”

  I mean, I was in shock. Of course, my first response was “What item?”

  “The bra set,” she said. “The one you’ve had your eye on and put on that mannequin.” Her voice sounded nasally and thin over the phone, very I-knew-something-like-this-was-going-to-happen-ish. “Never should have trusted you to lock up on Friday,” she was saying, and that was it. She hung up. Didn’t believe me, clearly, when I left her like a dozen voice messages saying I didn’t do anything. I must have sat on my bed for an hour, just staring at my phone, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I think I stared at it up until it rang and nearly jumped out of my hands.

  It was Patrick calling.

  I suddenly got a bad feeling. His name blinking on my screen reminded me how strange he’d been acting that time when he came to visit me at work. How he made that comment about the bra and underwear, then said he was joking. He’d said he had money to buy me something. He wouldn’t have taken it. He wouldn’t do that.

  Would he?

  For me?

  I still really really like him, but I’m getting so overwhelmed and I don’t know what to think anymore.

  Finally the phone had rung like four times, and I answered before it went to voicemail.

  “Can you get away later?” I froze for a second. “I’m sorry about last weekend. I still need to give you your present,” he said.

  I tried to stall. “I have to tell you something.” My palms were getting sweaty. His voice sounded so excited. But I kept thinking about Kit’s warning to stay away from him. How he broke a glass jar over his stepdad’s head.

  “What?” he said, getting back to his normal, more subdued, sarcastic tone. Then our conversation goes something like this:

  “Big sis keeping watch over you again?”

  “Kit? No, it’s not that. It’s just—”

  “Good, because it’s not her business who you spend time with. Even if she’s right.”

  “What do you mean, even if she’s right?”

  “Nothing, just—I want to see you. Even if I’m no good, or whatever she told you about me.”

  “It’s not that . . .”

  “Then what?”

  And here’s where I tried to casually be like: sodidyouumaccidentallyoronpurposemaybeliketakesomethingfromthestorewhereIworklikeasajokemaybeorsomething?

  I think at that point I was pouring sweat from my ears and talking nonsense but he got the gist of it, because he went quiet and I could feel that he was upset, which is fair and makes sense but still is not an answer. Finally he goes: “You think I stole something.”

  And I’m like, “No no no not that,” desperately trying to backtrack and all that, but I’m like, “Maybe you just thought it would be funny if—or maybe you just—or I guess I was just wondering if—”

  He cuts me off at that point and says something like, “Oh, wondering if I’m the kind of loser everyone says I am. Cheating. Stealing. Lying about it. What else have you heard?”

  I felt really bad then, because it sounded like his feelings were really hurt. And then I remembered that I had felt that exact same way an hour earlier when Margaret acted like it was a foregone conclusion that I was the thief in question.

  It sucks to be accused of something you didn’t do.

  I tried to explain that I really haven’t heard that much bad stuff about him, but I’m not sure if that made it better or worse, because then he’s like, “Ya know what? Forget it. She’s right. Everyone’s right. They’re all right about me.”

  “So are you saying you did take something . . . without paying for it?”

  He didn’t answer directly, just said more things like, “Everyone’s right that I’m no good for you and you should just stay away from me and Kit is always right about everything, isn’t she?” And I felt like a weight was crushing my chest and I was so confused because was this like supposed to be a confession or was he just pushing me away? It felt so terrible and so confusing at the same time.

  And then I didn’t want to be that girl but I guess I was, because I heard myself saying, “Don’t be mad.”

  He’s like, “I’m not mad. I’m just realizing something. It’s time. I was going to tell you that later. It’s time for me to move on.”

  That’s when my heart really started breaking. Because this was it. Everything I dreaded and feared.

  “Move on from me?” I asked him, but he just said, “From all of this.” And he sounded so sad, like he really didn’t want to be breaking up with me even though it sounded like that was exactly what was happening. So I was like:

  “Wait.”

  “Lilly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Nothing, I just. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.” And then he was gone, before I could add “Sorry for WHAT?”

  So, of course, I did the only thing I could possibly think to do.

  I called Mel, and told her everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Now

  FEBRUARY 12

  TESSA’S WHOLE BODY SEIZED WITH an icy heat. Her scream seemed to ricochet off the trees, to come from the trees. Her elbows and knees ached from the fall, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Her vision blurred as she tried to lift herself from the ground, to turn around, to face it.

  He was here. He’d followed her. He’d gotten her. He—

  “Tessa, Jesus Christ!”

  It was Lilly.

  Crouching beside her, looking worried, scared.

  She grabbed Lilly’s knee, coming to a seated position in the dirt, her eyes darting to the woods past Lilly’s shoulder.

  “Lilly, we have to get out of here. Patrick, he followed me. He lied about Kit. He has her shirt. Lil, we have to run. We have to go. Where is he?”

  “Holy shit,” she said, her face stunned, staring at Tessa like she was an alien. There were tears streaking her face.

  “Lilly, we gotta go,” Tessa repeated, scrambling up now, ignoring the pain in her limbs. Her arms shook as she tried to pull Lilly to standing.

  “Tessa. No one was following you except me.”

  “What? No. I was at Patrick’s house. Come on. We have to go. I went there to ask him some questions. Did you know he was back? Let’s get out of here. Then I’ll tell you everything. It was her shirt, Lilly—” Tessa’s voice broke into a half sob. “It was her shirt,” she said again, sniffling. “The strawberry one.”

  She turned around in a circle, listening for the sound of his footsteps still.

  “Sis,” Lilly whispered, pulling her into a hug.

  Even though Lilly was younger, she’d been taller than Tessa for over a year now. Tessa inhaled her little sister’s perfume—not light and floral like the scents Kit wore, but muskier and grassier and smoky, the kind of stuff they sold at Lupine. She could feel Lilly’s heart jackhammering, and pulled back, still dizzy and out of breath and scared.


  “It’s not safe here,” she said.

  Lilly shook her head. “It’s just me, Tess.” Her voice wobbled. “No one else.”

  Tessa began to let herself breathe normally, to see clearly. Lilly was right—there was no one else. Patrick hadn’t come after her. No one had. “How did you get here, then? How—”

  “I heard Patrick had come back, and I guess I wanted to see for myself. But instead of finding him, I found you.”

  Lilly looked down at her muddy Keds. “This has to stop, Tess.” Her voice got quiet. “Boyd got let out on bail. Did you know that?”

  Tessa went cold. She hadn’t known. Why hadn’t he told her? And how was that possible? The Taylors had so little.

  “I—how?”

  Lilly averted her eyes. “I guess his dad got a bond. They pay down a small part up front. Apparently Innis had to sell that old lawn tractor and some of his collectors’ items just to get half the down payment. Who knows where the rest came from.”

  Tessa shook her head. She knew about those collectors’ items, Boyd’s dad’s prized possessions, all lined up in the garage. Mostly old junk he’d collected. “He’s planning to plead guilty anyway. Involuntary manslaughter. Don’t you think that’s messed up?”

  “Yes.” Lilly paused. “But whatever happened, you have to face this, Tessa: we can’t undo what happened that night. As much as it hurts, we have to . . . we have to say goodbye.”

  “No.” The word rushed out in a harsh, ragged whisper. “You sound just like Mel, you know.”

  “What does Mel have to do with this?”

  “She was at Kolbry’s party last night. Did you know that?”

  Lilly looked shocked, tears drying to sticky streaks on her face. “No, I—how do you know that?”

  Tessa sighed. “Where do you think I was last night? I went to Kolbry’s to try and find out what happened to Kit at his Halloween party—to find out if she’d gotten pills from him, to find out what she was hiding. And instead, all I got was an earful of Mel saying the same thing, telling me to butt out, warning me to back off. I’m tired of everyone telling me to stop!”

  “You talked to Mel, then?”

  “Yeah, I did. Why?”

  Lilly shook her head, but she still looked scared. “I just . . . I don’t get it. Any of it. Why she was at Kolbry’s. Was she with Dusty?”

  Tessa looked at her sister. “No.”

  “I’m worried about her.”

  “About Mel?”

  Lilly nodded, looking like she was going to cry again.

  “You should be worried for me, for us. Someone is out there, a killer, someone who wants to finish what they started.”

  She stopped talking when she saw how hard Lilly was trying to keep her face from shattering into tears.

  Because Lilly, of all of them, had always known how to use the waterworks to her advantage. As the baby of the family, she could constantly find ways to burst into tears at just the right moment to get Tessa in trouble for something. For years when they were little, Lilly used to have this trick of planting her Legos and dolls in Tessa’s or Kit’s room, then begging to be let in to collect them. Once inside, she’d hug a bedpost or desk leg and absolutely refuse to leave, like some sort of koala or desperate stalker. And if Tessa or Kit tried to kick her out, she’d scream and sob, and it was the older sisters who would end up grounded or forced to play with her as their punishment.

  So seeing her like this, trying to be brave, to hold it together . . . it stopped Tessa. It woke her up.

  This entire week, Tessa hadn’t paused her pursuit of answers long enough to even consider what Lilly was really feeling—what her grief looked like. In fact, she realized now, she had oddly assumed that Lilly simply wasn’t grieving. That she was doing what normal people did—coping. Moving on.

  But of course, grief was a sly thing. It morphed like smoke. It hid in the cracks.

  Tessa stood there gaping. A fog had lifted, and she suddenly saw the moment for what it was: two relatively normal-looking teenaged sisters standing in the arboretum on a chilly February afternoon—one with long, reddish hair, wearing skinny jeans and a trendy striped T-shirt under her winter coat; the other with stringy light hair, in a stained old plaid top and ragged black jeans—arguing and getting angry and resenting each other like sisters do . . . because you don’t choose to love your family. You’re stuck with them. And sisters are the hardest—they are mirrors of you; they are competition, opponents in everything from pancake servings to endless Monopoly games to who gets to ride in the front to who gets the most phone calls from boys. They’re a reflection of your best and worst self, and yet strangers always on the brink of going their separate ways and leaving you, or being left by you—a shadow in the doorway, falling across the carpet. A hug that lasts the length it takes to snap a photo, before it turns into a shove.

  They have the power to undo you. And, maybe, to save you. That’s a terrifying kind of love, Tessa realized.

  “Come on,” she said to Lilly, feeling as overwhelmed and exhausted as her sister looked. “Let’s get home.”

  NEVER MINE TO KEEP

  BY KATHERINE MALLOY

  I know her all too well: she’s intact—a hard-

  boiled egg—while I’m a cracked windowpane.

  Her voice is the whir of a running sink: soft words

  of water swirling down into the drain—

  reach under; feel her falling on your hands.

  I’m all adorned in black, revealing much

  by way of shoulder blade, and here I stand

  resting my brow against the glass—I touch

  its cool but firm resistance.

  If I’m the knife,

  then she’s your slender spoon, so take her to

  your mouth, where she is home, for my shelf life

  is done and now alone I must make do

  with numbing dreams—though even in my sleep

  it’s plain that you were never mine to keep.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Now

  FEBRUARY 13

  “I FORGOT FAMILIES WERE INVITED,” Tessa muttered into Lilly’s ear as they made their way down the length of the indoor risers in the old DLHS gym on Monday morning. The smell of sneakers and B.O. wafted in and out of her nostrils, reminding her why she hated gym class. That, and the whole coordination, strength, and physical skill thing.

  Despite everything unfolding and shattering in her world, it turned out the rest of life moved on, whether you wanted it to or not. Hence, she was back at school, filing into the gym for the winter awards ceremony.

  “Hi, babes,” Mel said, appearing on Lilly’s other side before she could finish her sentence. She kissed Lilly’s cheek and sat down on her other side. Mel leaned in toward Lilly. “You seen Boyd yet? I heard he’s home.”

  Boyd. His dad had secured a bail bond. But from the looks of it, he hadn’t come to school. Tessa ached to see him. She had so many questions. Maybe she’d skip out of school after this was over. School wasn’t doing her any good these days, anyway.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mel pop a pill into her mouth. The sight of it jarred something in her for a second, and she turned toward her. “Hey, where’d you—”

  But now someone was shouting “Shhh!” into the microphone. A senior named Abigail Hart had come up to the podium in the middle of the gym floor—the very same spot where Missy Brainerd had tried to do a cheerleading stunt that landed her with a broken hip (and, as the rumors went, a broken vagina). Abigail started talking about the awards being the first step in scholarly success and becoming a master of your own fate. Some stupid senior guy shouted “Master-BATE!” and a bunch of people laughed. Abigail cleared her throat and turned over another note card, and Tessa stopped listening.

  She’d wanted to go to the police last night—they should know about Kit’s torn shirt in Patrick’s possession. But Lilly had stopped her, claiming it was ridiculous to think Patrick would just be carrying around
incriminating evidence if he’d really done anything wrong. Plus, why would he ever come back if he had? “I just want to get through tomorrow’s ceremony, and Kit’s award, without any drama, okay, Tess? Then you can do whatever you want,” Lilly had pleaded.

  She did have a point, but it still made Tessa sick to her stomach to think about that strawberry cutout shirt . . . once pure white, now stained with grease and crumpled in Patrick’s hand. . . .

  Lilly had insisted they sleep it off, that she was being paranoid. Maybe Lilly was right. Probably old Liam Donovan had been the one to find the scrap of shirt, out by the woods during one of his meanderings.

  So instead of telling anyone what she’d seen, Tessa spent the evening rereading all her research on hypothermia.

  It’s a very common side effect to experience what’s called “paradoxical undressing”—where the victim gets so cold she begins to feel hot . . . so hot that she panics and rips off her clothes, only to cause the hypothermia to take hold faster. By that point, there’s usually no hope. Could Kit have torn off her own shirt?

  Restless, Tessa had gone downstairs to try to talk to their mom. She felt like she hadn’t seen her in a year—ever since the funeral, her family had splintered, like a bunch of electrons suddenly repelled by their own energy, grief causing them to unbind and disperse. She suddenly missed her mom so much, suddenly felt so cold, deep-in-her-bones cold, that she knew she’d never get comfortable in her own bed.

  She wanted to hear her mom’s voice, to be soothed and told it was all going to be okay even though it wasn’t.

  But her mom was sleeping on the couch by the time Tessa went downstairs last night—a wad of used tissues in a pile at her side. She’d been crying again.

  Tessa had stood there for a minute, not wanting to wake her but not wanting to be alone either. Lilly was asleep in her room. Everyone was asleep except her. She felt like a sleepwalker, a zombie, a ghost.

  She knew Lilly was right—that she’d checked out this week, had been somewhere else, on a different plane, skating over the surface of life but feeling nothing, engaging with none of it, floating, as if a breeze could blow her away. Loss had done this to her.