Frozen Beauty

by Lexa Hillyer

  She nodded.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed.

  She didn’t say anything. She was trying to say something but she wasn’t sure what.

  “Of course, I remember,” he added. “I—”

  “You said something then. About Olivia Khan. You asked if I remembered the time you guys dated in middle school. But then, we were interrupted, and, um, well, I never got to ask you why you brought it up.”

  He was still sort of looking at her in this way where he could be squinting or trying not to cry or trying not to burst into a huge smile.

  “Yeah . . . I think maybe I remember saying that.”

  “So?” she asked, looking up at him, her whole body, from her toes to her chest to the top of her head filling with something she couldn’t quite name. A warmth. A feeling.

  “Well, this is sort of embarrassing, I guess. But you know how she sort of dumped me for being . . . well, in her words, a prude?”

  Tessa couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the surrealness of the whole night, her lack of sleep. She laughed.

  “Well,” he went on, “it was partly that. I mean, I was only thirteen and I wasn’t, like, you know, ready for under-the-shirt action or whatever it was she wanted to do. But it wasn’t just me chickening out.”

  “TMI, but okay . . .”

  “See, we were kissing, and—”

  “Not that I need to picture that,” Tessa interjected.

  He shrugged sheepishly. “Well, we were kissing. On the playground at school or whatever. And she pushed me away and said, ‘This is dumb.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ and she was like, ‘Because I can tell that you don’t really want to be with me,’ and I don’t know what I said, but I was just trying to focus on figuring out what the hell she was talking about. As I’m sure you know, I’ve never been that good at knowing what girls want. So anyway, then she surprises me and is like, ‘Come on, I know you don’t like me because I know you like someone else.’”

  Tessa stared at him, feeling much the way he’d just described he felt then—confused. Wondering what he was getting at.

  He cleared his throat. He was squinting, like he did when he was struggling to get the right words out. “And the thing is, she was right. All that time ago. Three years? It was eighth grade, so a little more than three years ago. Anyway, she had it right on the nose.”

  “Had . . .”

  “She knew that I liked you. Even then. I think it’s possible everyone knew. But I didn’t, until she said it. And I think I still didn’t really know it, didn’t want to commit to it in my head, that I was stupidly, dorkily obsessed with you. I’m not sure I knew what to do with the information. I didn’t want to ruin everything if you found out and didn’t like me back.”

  “You were obsessed with me in eighth grade?” Tessa asked, heat burning her cheeks, and a tiny pang slicing into her ribs—a sudden nostalgia for something she’d never get back.

  Now he finally let himself smile. “No, idiot.”

  “Oh. Wait, what?”

  “I am in love with you.” His voice dropped to a tremor. “Always have been. That’s . . . that’s what I was trying, in my terrible, awkward, sucky way, to say to you. What I’ve been trying to say to you. What I should have said sooner.”

  The words poured over her. She should be happy—so happy. This was what she wanted to hear. But the way he was saying it, with such sadness in his voice . . .

  “But why didn’t you just say it?”

  “I kept wanting to . . .”

  “You did?”

  He nodded, sheepishly. “Of course, but with everything that happened . . . it just seemed wrong.”

  She swallowed hard. “I may have found the answer. It’s going to be okay, Boyd. It’s all going to be okay. We know what happened now.”

  He let out a whimper, but tried to smile.

  “Boyd,” she whispered. She leaned toward him, unable to stop the gravity forcing her closer, like maybe his existence could stop her from cracking completely, from crumbling.

  He nodded, swallowing hard.

  “I want to kiss you again.” Her voice was so thin, it almost wasn’t there.

  He laughed, but it was half a sob. “Me too,” he whispered.

  She smiled, but fear jagged through her. “I think I love you,” she said.

  Then he was crying. She hadn’t seen him cry since seventh grade, when his dad had gone on a bender, and Boyd had thought maybe he was dead. Found him on the living room carpet, facedown.

  “Don’t cry,” she said.

  “I love you too, Tessa.” He was smiling and crying at the same time. He interwove his fingers through hers.

  “So do it,” she said quietly. “Kiss me.” She tugged him a little closer.

  “Tessa,” he said, touching her face. It sent shivers through her. “What if this all falls apart? What if it ruins everything?”

  Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Except what I feel right now.”

  Boyd smiled. “You know what? Screw it,” he said, and leaned down toward her, and wrapped his arms around her, surrounding her in his sleepy, cozy, early-morning smell, and kissed her.

  He tasted like tears—and home.

  There was more to be done. She had to see Lilly.

  “Wake up,” Tessa whispered, hovering over Lilly’s bed.

  Lilly threw back her covers and started to scream but calmed down. “We need to talk.”

  “Why are you . . .” Lilly sighed. “Never mind. I should be used to this kind of thing by now.”

  Tessa was still buzzing from her break-in at the school. Still reeling, still worried she was going to be sick. But layered through it was Boyd’s kiss, lingering on her lips.

  She sat down on the edge of Lilly’s bed. “Lilly, I need to tell you something serious. I’m not sure you’re going to be ready to hear it, but you need to know the truth.”

  Lilly stared at her. “Okay,” she said slowly, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  “Mr. Green. The English teacher. He and Kit were . . . a thing.”

  Lilly gaped at her. “Holy fuck.”

  Tessa swallowed. This was going to be difficult, but she had to get it out. She’d already done it once tonight, after all. “It was supposed to be a secret. Obviously. But I think—I think she threatened to tell, and he . . . he . . . He’s the one who killed her. He kept saying he didn’t want to hurt her, but . . . Look, we have to tell the cops. It needs to come from you. You’re the one who originally said you saw Boyd out there, and they need to know he’s innocent, and—”

  “Wow.” Lilly was looking at her with an expression both of sadness and of hope. “Kit,” she said. “And Mr. Green.”

  “I know, it’s hard to believe.”

  Lilly shook her head. “Not that hard, though.”

  For the first time, a thought occurred to Tessa. What if Kit wasn’t the only one? What if Kit wasn’t the first girl he went after, the first one he threatened. . . .

  She pulled her list out of her pocket. The one she’d written down all the clues on, at the school library.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Laying out all the evidence. We’re going to have to report everything.”

  Lilly sat up straighter, nodding. “Okay.”

  Next, she pulled out the creepy note she’d received the other day, the one that had mysteriously appeared in her pocket. The one that said, This is your last warning. You’re making a mistake.

  Next, she pulled out the poems—the ones she’d taken from Mr. Green’s office.

  Then she pulled out the boy shorts she’d found with the Lupine tags still on.

  “Wait a second,” Lilly stopped her. “Let me see those. Where did this come from?”

  Tessa shrugged. “It was Kit’s. Matches the bra she had on that night . . .”

  “Holy shit,” Lilly gasped. “So she’s the one who stole them, not him.”

  “What?”

  Lilly looked at her. “Nothing,
forget it,” she said. “I just—there was this night where she was late to pick me up from Lupine. She said she had to use the bathroom, but after that night, this bra set went missing. Margaret thought I had stolen it, and I thought it was . . . Anyway, I think I might be able to get my job back now. And my boyfriend, for that matter.”

  “Your . . .” Tessa looked at her. “Your what?”

  Lilly blushed. “Patrick Donovan. We were hanging out a lot this fall . . . I never said anything because Kit kept telling me to stay away from him. And now . . . well, after I ran into you in the woods this weekend, after we got home, I called him. He told me the truth. That he was worried that his uncle was the one who had done something. That his uncle was the one who found Kit’s shirt. But Liam’s so weak, it didn’t really seem possible he could have done anything that bad. Patrick told his aunt, and they are going to put Liam in a home. Patrick’s been helping her out. But he . . .” Here Lilly blushed again. “I think he likes me back. I think we are going to work things out.”

  But Tessa was still stuck on the shirt—the strawberry cutout shirt Patrick had been holding in his hand, like a rag. “I don’t know, Lilly, I—I guess I don’t think he did anything wrong. Not anymore. But why was Kit so against it?”

  “She thought he was a drug dealer or violent or something, but she was wrong. I know him. I trust him.”

  A drug dealer.

  Tessa thought of the pills that had been mentioned in the autopsy report—the ones found at the site that night. “Are you absolutely sure, Lilly? That he wasn’t carrying pills or anything?”

  Lilly shook her head. “The only person I know carrying pills around lately is Mel.”

  Tessa went cold. “Mel? What do you mean? What kind of pills?”

  Lilly shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t really know. Do you think I should be worried?”

  Tessa didn’t know. She didn’t know what to think. It all felt so complicated. Mr. Green had all but confessed to her. But there were still pieces that didn’t add up.

  She looked out the window, to the sky. She could make out a star or two, fading into the morning light. She knew how far that light had to travel to get here. It looked faint—hardly there at all—but in fact it was a light that was many times more powerful than the sun. It was just far.

  Just far.

  Or even if the star itself had burned out a million years ago . . . its light was real, anyway. Its light was still here. And it was still reaching her, even from out there in the cold, dark universe.

  “Lilly, go back to sleep. I still have something I need to do.”

  And amazingly, Lilly did—after crying into Tessa’s arms until they were both shaking.

  Tessa tucked her back in, waited until her breathing slowed.

  Lilly had mentioned a diary—her diary.

  It was easy to find.

  She kept it right underneath her bed.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Before

  2/13

  Dear Diary,

  I might be losing my mind. I’ve been seeing her everywhere. She’s haunting me.

  And I know it’s because this is all my fault, because I went back to Mel’s and didn’t call the police. By the time they got there it was too late. I’ve been going to school and everyone’s trying to act normal around me, but nothing is normal and it will never be normal again.

  Maybe I was wrong to say anything about seeing Boyd out there with Kit, fighting. But I was just trying to tell the truth. That is what I saw. Have I ruined everything?

  My whole family has been put on pause. We are frozen. We can’t move on from this and I don’t know if we ever will. How am I supposed to live with that? I’ve cried for days, and now I just feel . . . wilted. Wrung out.

  I’ve tried to talk to Mel about it, but she’s only gotten more distant. I gently asked her if she remembered anything else from Saturday night, but she basically screamed at me. Then she told me she talked to Tessa this week—twice. Once underneath the bleachers at school and once at Jay Kolbry’s party. I didn’t even ask why she went to Kolbry’s, after everything that happened this week—I didn’t want to set her off again. She said Tessa has been bothering her and it’s tipping her over the edge, making her feel crazy. I was a bit shocked that she felt it too, felt the same way as me. I feel like I’m going crazy as well. But at least we’re in it together.

  I keep wondering if Mel’s secrecy has anything to do with Dusty, since she was texting him so much that night. At least I assume that’s who she was texting. But when I tried to ask her about it, she basically broke down. Said all this crazy stuff about how she NEEDS Dusty. I kept being like, “But why?” and she finally said, “He makes me feel safe. Being with him is like erasing everything that came before.” I don’t know exactly what she meant by that, because she was a virgin before Dusty, so what is she trying to erase? Who is she trying to stay safe FROM?

  Anyway. It’s Monday. My first full week back since . . . since the funeral. I was sitting in math, and Patrick walked in, right before the bell rang.

  Just sauntered into class like he hadn’t been missing for the past week.

  I knew he was back in town. Boyd told me. And Mel tried to as well. I had been hoping to see him yesterday but instead just had a big Tessa-related meltdown in the woods and went home to sob it out.

  A few minutes into class, he tapped my back while Mrs. Gluckman was writing on the board and passed me a note. All it said was, I’m so sorry about everything. Can we talk after school?

  After school we went to the art room to talk, because the door was unlocked and no one was in there.

  It was weird. We kind of just wandered around the studio, looking at the papier-mâché masks the art kids are making for the spring play, and the line sketches—practices in shadow—and the nudes. I seriously did not know nudes were a thing high schoolers were allowed to draw, and I would think it would be embarrassing to be standing next to Patrick looking at nudes, but it wasn’t. I feel like we’re adults now, sorta. Maybe so much has happened that we’ve both matured into different people than we were a week ago.

  Even though I wasn’t looking straight at him, I was noticing every single thing. His blue soccer shirt and ripped jeans and gray sweatshirt, two-thirds unzipped. The fading bruise. The way he kept putting his hands in his hoodie pockets and then pulling them out again.

  Maybe we weren’t mature at all. Maybe we were just looking at the student art so we didn’t have to say anything real.

  “Look at this one,” he finally said, and his voice sounded rusty. He was pointing at a drawing of a girl (clothed) who was hugging her own legs.

  “So where did you go?” I asked.

  He let out a heavy breath. “It was stupid. I was trying to get to Vermont. I have a cousin out there and I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. Basically, I spent a lot of time sleeping on busses. When I found out what was going on here, I turned around and came back. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “So what do you want to talk about then?” I asked him.

  I was afraid he was going to bring up something about Kit. Or Tessa. And how we have his sympathies. Which would have just felt extra shitty. Talking about it is somehow more awful than not talking about it.

  But instead he said, “Quadrilaterals.”

  I laughed, and it wasn’t much, but it was the first time I laughed since . . . before.

  “I miss quadrilaterals. That’s why I came back. No one teaches them quite like Mrs. Gluckman.”

  And maybe I was reading into it, but I think what he was really saying was something else.

  “I missed quadrilaterals too,” I said quietly.

  Then he reached out and took my hand and I knew for sure he was not really talking about geometry but about us.

  I tugged his hand a little and he turned to face me and his face looked like such a mix of emotions then. “I’m sorry. Not just about everything. I mean yes, about everything. I guess this
is just hard. Between us.”

  “But why? Why does it have to be hard?” I asked.

  “Because I generally fuck things up,” he said with a shrug.

  “You’re not that bad, though,” I said.

  And he smiled. “You think so?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just—we’re all a work in progress, right?” Maybe I said it because it sounded good, because we were surrounded by crappy student art. But it felt true in that moment.

  “A work in progress. Okay. I like that.”

  “Come here,” I said. And we hugged for a long time, and the smell of his deodorant and detergent got into my nose and made me calm, but then I started crying like an idiot. Because my life has fallen apart and I can’t really deal, and no amount of starting over is ever going to feel the same as getting my sister back.

  And he just stood there and held me while I cried, in the stupid art room, with winter sunlight streaming in through the high windows, and the drying watercolors dancing against the wall, and the hideous papier-mâché masks staring back at us, and tears messing up my whole face.

  And then I finally got myself together and realized that I needed to go home and see my family. I needed to be home.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Now

  FEBRUARY 14

  THOUGH MORNING HAD BROKEN—birds darting in and out of the trees—the outline of the woods still looked charcoal and quiet. These woods are lovely, dark and deep. A poem Kit had read aloud to her before. Or a poem inside her head, because she was Kit, and Kit was her.

  Kit, the reconciler of family fights. Kit, the lighthouse in storms, the calm at the center of everything. Kit, the homework helper, the pancake perfecter. Kit, the one with a voice as pretty as their mom’s; Kit of the Christmas carols. Kit, the schoolyard defender. Kit, the patient, the beautiful, the wise. Kit always knew something Tessa didn’t know. It was like the future didn’t exist unless Kit had lived it first, had left enough of an impression in the snow to give Tessa a path to follow. Not that Tessa needed to be like her, just that the world was shapeless until someone had given it form and meaning, had made space for Tessa to enter into it, had left enough of a trail of bread crumbs to keep Tessa going. That’s what their chimerism really was, wasn’t it? A little bit of information, a set of coded clues, alluding to the sense of Kit—information that had become part of Tessa’s very cells.