Frozen Beauty

by Lexa Hillyer

  It was hard to explain how this felt.

  Without her sister, Tessa was nothing. Potential with no form. Energy with no direction.

  She thought tears would come, but still, they hadn’t.

  There were only a few cars on the road. Tessa hovered on the shoulder of Route 28—the site where it all had happened. The place where her sister’s body had been found, half undressed in the back of Boyd’s truck, like something from a cautionary tale. Little Red Riding Hood ravaged by the wolf.

  Blunt head trauma.

  She stared at the stand of trees, the way the branches looked like arms, thin and reaching.

  She couldn’t believe it had only been ten days since that night, since everything had changed. She wasn’t even sure how she’d gotten out here so fast—it felt as if the night had stretched longer to keep her in it. It felt as if she’d been transported here in a dream, though she must have simply walked.

  After she had put Lilly’s diary away, something had slipped out of its pages. A note. A note in familiar handwriting.

  hey you, still up for sleeping over tomorrow night?

  Excited to hang w u. love u.—Mel.

  It wasn’t the sentiment of the note that had startled Tessa, but the loopy scrawl. She’d stared at it for a long time, and finally understood what it reminded her of. The note she’d found in her own pocket the other day. This is your last warning. You’re making a mistake.

  It was still a while before the truth of it had sunk in.

  Mel had been the one who’d threatened her.

  Mel. Why would she care what Tessa did? Unless . . . unless she knew something.

  Tessa thought back to Mel’s frantic eyes when they spoke under the bleachers last week. And then again, the dismissive way she’d tried to get Tessa to back down at Kolbry’s Valentine’s Day party on Saturday.

  What do you know, Mel?

  She stepped off the shoulder, into the shelter of the trees.

  Tessa wasn’t sure anymore what she was looking for. Kit wasn’t here. She was never going to be here. She wasn’t going to materialize. Was she?

  It was just like Lilly had said. Tessa wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

  So what was she thinking, coming here?

  Tessa got down on her knees.

  The snow was cold, soaking through her pants, but it didn’t matter, she didn’t feel it. The dawn had come.

  Her fingers shook. She dug through snow. Near the base of this tree, then that. Pushing, crawling, twigs snapping beneath her. Was she crying?

  Kit, she said aloud, or in her mind. Kit, please. Please tell me what I am missing.

  There, in the snow. The engagement ring—or a vision of it, anyway. And that’s when she knew she wasn’t in her own body anymore, wasn’t in time, but had fallen away somehow. She was so cold she could hardly feel the boundaries of her body anymore.

  She was so tired. Hadn’t slept at all tonight. Hadn’t slept in—when had she last slept? She recalled not sleeping, only dreaming, dreaming of three sisters singing, of three sisters arguing. And nightmares—of wolves. Blunt patches of dark unconsciousness, mixed with bursts of light and waking.

  She was so tired—too tired. Maybe Lilly had been right. She’d been relentless, trapped in an inability to see the whole picture, to accept the truth.

  Tessa lay down in the snow.

  Kit lay down in the snow.

  She was herself and not, at the same time.

  Kit, she called out silently.

  She just wanted to help.

  She just wanted for Kit not to have died.

  She didn’t want Kit to die.

  She didn’t want her big sister to be hurt.

  Didn’t want her to be angry, to be hurt, to be heartbroken, to be alone.

  Tessa had followed her. She had followed Kit.

  Hadn’t she? Just now? Wasn’t that why she was here? Following the inexplicable path of clues Kit had laid out for her?

  The snow was a cold blanket beneath her. She shuddered against it, hot breath against the frost of broken twigs and congealed leaves.

  Her eyelids were so heavy. Thoughts of Sleeping Beauty swam through her mind. She thought of old Liam Donovan and his mutterings. Princesses asleep. What had he seen?

  The dream took shape, but it was not Tessa’s dream, it was Kit’s. Somehow Tessa knew it as she dreamed it. She was screaming at a man in the woods, the words raw in her throat, the word please hovering between them, pathetic and ashamed. His eyes were shadowed by the hunting hat, but she knew those eyes so well, had thought she was falling in love, but now she knew she’d just been a dumb girl, had just been one of the good ones waiting for something to come along and make her go crazy, just waiting for life to happen to her. For love to happen to her. And now it had, and she regretted it. Couldn’t take it back. Had crossed an invisible line. She’d never be the Kit she’d been before. And she thought to tell him so, but his hands were on her again, and he was whispering shhh, and she wanted, more than anything, to not feel this broken or this hurt. She wanted, more than anything, to feel like she’d once felt before—whole. And that was why she let him kiss her one last time. It was just a kiss goodbye.

  But before she could tell him that, someone else was bursting out from between the trees by the side of the road.

  “Get off of her, I swear to God, leave her the fuck alone,” said a girl’s voice.

  Kit turned and saw—Mel. Holding a rifle that looked too clunky for her frame. Her hands were shaking, and the whole gun wobbled in the snowy air, or maybe that was just a trick of the light. “Once is enough, but never again,” she said, her voice low and steady. “Get off of her,” she said.

  Drew had already lifted his hands, but it wasn’t enough. Mel was crying and shaking, and even in the swoosh and noise of the storm and the running of the truck’s engine not too far away, she could still hear it when Mel cocked the gun, hand on the trigger. In that moment, Kit understood two things.

  One: she hadn’t been Drew Green’s first mistake.

  Two: whatever had happened between her and Drew, it hadn’t been the same with Mel. Something very, very bad had happened to her.

  And yet, she realized a third thing in that moment, even if it wasn’t conscious—she wasn’t going to let him die for it. Not like this. Not when some part of her still loved him.

  She leaped at Mel, and Mel swung away, the butt of the rifle striking Kit in the temple.

  Kit fell.

  VERIZON SERVICE RECORD

  8:23 P.M. TO 11:47 P.M., FEBRUARY 4

  Hey it’s me, Mel

  Hello Mel

  You need to say sry to Lilly, she really likes you

  This isn’t your business but thanks

  I’m serious

  You didn’t like us dating anyway I thought

  True but she’s my best friend and she’s upset

  so you owe it to her to talk to her

  will think about it

  hey

  what

  do you have any more of those things

  You mean the meds

  duh

  i can check. Told you b4 im not interested in doing this

  I just need a few more tho pleeeease you don’t get it

  You’re right I don’t

  So can you bring me some more?

  What like now?

  Yeah tonight

  i am almost out

  no maybe tomorrow it’s getting late

  i have cash tho

  pleeeease I can’t sleep

  jesus

  ??? so? Patrick?

  Fine, where

  Meet me a few doors down, you know the addy

  I can be there like midnight or so

  Great and don’t try anything funny

  What r you even talking about

  I’m only doing this bc of you

  I’m serious

  So am i

  Hey I don’t see you

  Around the corner.

&n
bsp; Its freezing out hurry

  Oh there you are

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Now

  FEBRUARY 14

  TESSA WAS STILL NOT HERSELF, but a shadow self, dreaming. Still caught in the whirlwind of snow and memory and truth. It had all unspooled in her mind—as if Kit hadn’t gone entirely, her story still playing out inside Tessa, over and over, just waiting to be seen and heard. As if the truth had been in Tessa’s blood, in her DNA, this whole time. Maybe it had been.

  The dream, the vision, swirled on:

  Somehow in the chaos, the ring had fallen into the snow, was lost somewhere in the darkness.

  Drew had run off.

  Mel was still standing there, shaking.

  “Just go,” Kit told her.

  “I—I’m sorry, Kit. I hurt you. Let me help . . .”

  “No. You need to go home, where it’s safe. I’ll just be a minute.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Go, Mel.”

  Whimpering, Mel was gone.

  Alone, Kit pushed into the woods. Deeper and deeper, into the darkness, and into the cold. The farther she went, the more determined, the more desperate she became. She would not fail. She had to find the ring. She could not fail. It was her last chance not to fail, not to fall. She only wanted to make things right again.

  But Mel’s face. The gun. The guilt written all over Drew. It was too much. It changed everything. She thought it had been love, but what if it hadn’t been?

  She shook, retching into the snow. She was soaked through. Cold beyond belief. Teeth chattering until her jaw felt like it might break. And her head killed. She could see drops of blood falling into the snow. This was craziness, she had to stop. But how could she go home? How could she face her life, and the truth?

  She crawled through snow and mud and sticks and leaves, until she couldn’t crawl anymore. It was only when she finally gave up that she found it. But her hands were so numb by then she couldn’t really pick it up. The ring slipped again from her fingers. She laughed, feeling delirious, and tried to call out—as if anyone would hear her—but she was shaking so hard her voice had become trapped in her throat and only a gargle came out.

  Determination gave way to fear. She’d gone too far from the road. She didn’t know which way the road even was anymore. It was too dark. It was too cold.

  And no one knew she was out here.

  The woods had grown thin in ragged patches, and somehow she’d made her way not to the street but to the lip of Devil’s Lake itself, frozen over. Gray lace in moonlight.

  It looked magical, just now.

  She’d become too cold to think, but as she looked at the lake’s reflective surface, she realized the cold was turning into tiredness. She couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t feel a thing, but she knew she was lying down, curled up, for warmth.

  Minutes or hours had gone by. Kit was being carried through the woods. A deep, rumbling voice was chanting over her, but not at her, not really. Talking to itself. Himself. She was so cold—too cold. She didn’t know where she was or what she’d been searching for, or waiting for. Her whole body convulsed with the cold. It was inside her, every time she breathed in, like breathing broken glass.

  The arms around her were weak. In danger of dropping her, letting her fall away into darkness and nothingness and night. The wind and hail bit at her flesh like the teeth of wolves.

  The old man was calling her Sarah. He was saying he was sorry. Calling her princess. “I’ve found you,” he said.

  They were stumbling toward a source of light. Before she could understand what had happened, she was—burning.

  She was on fire. There had to be fire in the hail. There was no hail, just flame.

  No, pure heat. She was at the beach—that time they went to the big lake for a full week, rented a cabin. Dad had been alive back then. It had been so hot in the cabin that at night the girls stripped down to just their underwear and covered themselves in damp towels, propping up three different fans, but none of it had helped. She could taste the cedar-scented heat of their room that summer, felt it oozing into her eyelids as she slept.

  She couldn’t breathe she was so hot. She tossed in the bed—no, in the arms. Next summer she’d insist they go somewhere with air-conditioning. But for now, for now. She needed to get these clothes off.

  Needed to get a damp towel and find the fan.

  She struggled as the man laid her down inside a coffin.

  No, not a coffin. The truck. Boyd’s truck. Her eyes were only half open because of the storm ravaging her. “Wait.” But the man turned, startled by something in the distance.

  She threw off the blanket—the exact texture and color of her winter coat—then tore at her shirt, needed to get it off her, it was stifling her. She was too hot. She’d die she was so hot. The man was gone, or had never been.

  Maybe she was alone.

  Maybe she always had been.

  But no, that wasn’t right. Where were her sisters? She’d seen them, hadn’t she?

  Empty bunk beds. The summer cabin on fire. That was it—the cabin was on fire.

  Heat like nothing she’d ever felt before surrounded her, suffocating. If she didn’t get out, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

  She burst out of the cabin, but her family was nowhere to be found. She ran down to the pebbled shore, throwing herself into the lake.

  She could feel her burnt flesh sizzling as she sank into the cool lake. But then . . .

  Then she was shivering again. As quickly as she’d been hot, she’d gone cold again, colder than ever before.

  Looking down, she saw she was damp with sweat. Or lake water. No, neither—hail and sleet and snow. She was still—where? Trees everywhere. Red taillights. Red truck. Snow everywhere. She couldn’t move—too cold to move now. The wetness on her skin—bare—where was her shirt? Where was her coat? The wetness had hardened, turned into ice, trapping her inside like shining, invisible armor. Sealing her in. She couldn’t move. The cold was a clamp, a burn, a buzz, a drill, a dread, a fact, an overwhelming truth, a god.

  You can’t look a god in the face.

  She closed her eyes.

  She was no longer lost in the woods or the lake house or the back of the truck, but slipping backward through time.

  She was a child, curled in her bed. Her mother was singing a lullaby to Lilly; through a closed door she could hear the soft voice, and even though she was two and a half years older—five to Lilly’s almost three—the melody comforted her, too. Kit had always been the good one, the good girl who didn’t cry at night.

  She pictured the lullaby traveling through baby Lilly, like some sort of ghost song, a silver thread, then weaving through toddler Tessa, twirling itself into her hair and her mind and her arms, before making its way at last to her, to Kit, where she lay in her bed—until the song had united all three of them, making them one.

  Finally, sleep had come.

  Epilogue

  ONE YEAR LATER

  HOW MANY WOMEN DID IT take to be believed? Tessa had thought there would be power in numbers, but if you were a teen girl, that wasn’t necessarily the case. The combined testimonies of her, Lilly, and Mel added up to what law enforcers could disturbingly easily write off as hysteria, a twisted friendship pact of some kind. A “witch hunt.”

  Which made no sense—were they supposed to be the witches or the ones hunting?

  Mel had been terrified to say anything in the first place. Not only had Mr. Green been threatening her to stay quiet, but she knew her own role in it looked bad. She’d had the gun with her that night because she was afraid, just of being out alone in the dark. Plain and simple. Because of Mr. Green, she’d felt afraid all the time, really.

  It had all first begun when Mr. Green, subbing in for a student English tutor, had begun tutoring Mel once a week. It had at first been the sum of a couple of unwelcome touches, a smile that suggested more, that had left her bewildered and unnerved, but without any concr
ete wrongdoing to point to.

  It had escalated quickly, though, making her feel more and more uncertain. He’d talked about their special connection, and why it had to remain a secret. In her longing for a boyfriend, and status, she’d kind of thought it was flattering, even though it scared her too. It was only when it went past a certain point—asking her to do things physically she didn’t want to, not knowing how to say no, how to get away, going too far—that she knew for sure it wasn’t okay, that she wasn’t safe. That she wanted it to end. And he wouldn’t let it. Told her what everyone would say about her, they’d call her dirty, or they’d think she was a liar. What would her own mother say?

  He’d been right, she realized. When she tried to talk to her mom, Mrs. Knox had slapped her, told her to shut up and stop inventing daydreams. Her mom thought she was saving herself for marriage, or at least her midtwenties. What was even the point? The path of least resistance had been to latch on to someone else, someone who made her feel safe. Dusty.

  It had worked. Mr. Green seemed to have moved on. She thought—she prayed, literally—that it was all over, that the whole thing had been a wild misunderstanding, even though she knew deep down that she might never feel completely whole or safe again. She’d lost her virginity over winter break—to Dusty, by choice. Still, she’d only done it to try to write over the past. She’d cried about it for weeks, in private. She’d imagined it would be so different. But still, she wanted only to move on.

  Except at night, when the memory of it all would often surface, and she grew paranoid that someone could hurt her, could violate her again, at any moment. That her body was no longer her own. That no walls would ever make her safe. That was why she’d gotten used to going down into her dad’s den and gazing at the guns, imagining what it would feel like to hold one—to point one at Drew Green.

  She just never imagined that the opportunity would come. She had only been expecting to see Patrick out there at the edge of the cul-de-sac, where they’d agreed to meet so she could buy those anti-anxieties she could no longer sleep without. The gun was gratuitous, but it made her feel better, and she figured she’d be home in five minutes and simply put it back where she’d gotten it.