by Lexa Hillyer
Of course, that wasn’t at all how it ended up happening. Not when she cut back through the woods.
The week after that night—the night Kit died—Mr. Green’s attentions had turned back toward her, but unlike before, there was an open fierceness now. He made it explicitly clear that she couldn’t tell anyone about that night without implicating herself. Made it clear, too, that he thought it was all her fault that Kit was dead. She’d believed him.
Needless to say, it hadn’t been easy for Tessa and Lilly to convince her to come forward, even after she told them all of this. “What if no one believes me anyway?” she’d sobbed. “What will my parents do with me? What will he do to me?”
“He can’t do anything—not anymore,” Tessa had said confidently, though she hadn’t been entirely sure, deep down. It wasn’t like any of them had any experience with this. They couldn’t say how it would go. Would there be an epic trial that would take over their lives for the remainder of high school? Would they be dismissed outright? Would Mel be arrested for her part in Kit’s death?
The possibilities seemed overwhelming and endless, but one thing held Tessa to her determination—the truth.
The truth had to matter. For Kit’s sake. Even if it was worse, in a way, that she’d died knowing it.
Because they knew now that Kit had really thought she’d been in love. And Tessa couldn’t blame her for wanting that. Kit had had what everyone else wanted: the reputation of being the good girl, the adored, the perfect one. But all she’d wanted was to fall, to burst the bubble, to live.
And what damning evidence did they really have, anyway? A bunch of love poems—none of them actually addressed to Drew. Fancy underwear, a coincidental tattoo—so what? They could prove Mr. Green had bought the ring from a pawn shop, but that meant nothing when it came to the actual case. The gun would only have Kit’s DNA on it—and Mel had cleaned it meticulously anyway. The threatening notes had been from Mel, in her attempt to protect Tessa from Mr. Green. Mel was afraid, too, of what would happen if Tessa thought Mel had killed Kit on purpose. And then, Tessa’s visions. Her chimerism, which she still claimed had helped her make the final connection of what had happened that night, before Mel admitted it to them. But they knew trying to convince authorities that Tessa had literally dreamed it through Kit’s eyes would be going too far. They’d all be laughed at.
So what did they have?
Nothing.
Nothing but the truth.
And so they told it—as much of it as they could.
And then they waited.
It was enough . . . at least to call in more people for questioning, including Mr. Green and his fiancée. It was enough to rerun fingerprints on the truck, which was still in custody—where they found a match to Green at last, on the glove compartment. Where, incidentally, he must have grabbed Boyd’s hunting hat due to the heaviness of the snow—explaining why he looked like Boyd when Lilly saw him out there in the dark.
It was enough that they realized the keys in the ignition had been a spare set, the original still in Boyd’s bedroom, as he’d claimed all along.
There was nothing to prove that Boyd had been there that night. Boyd was off the hook. Lilly’s original claim had been debunked.
But that meant she wasn’t a credible witness.
The whole thing was a complicated mess.
They feared it would never be resolved.
Mr. Green resigned, as he’d told Tessa he would, and they heard rumors he was moving one town over. That felt too close. It felt like a complete erasure. It seemed like maybe nothing would ever be done to resolve what had happened. That justice wouldn’t be served. Tessa started to feel lost as to what would count as justice anyway. Nothing would undo what he’d done to Mel. Nothing would bring Kit back. Nothing would fix the shattering.
And then.
And then.
And then.
The rumors had gotten out.
Three more girls came forward.
One from their school, and two more from the college where he’d TA’d before he got the job in Devil’s Lake.
Evidence mounted slowly, like snow.
Another winter came and went.
Eventually Mr. Green was found guilty at trial—not of murder, but of pretty much every disgusting thing he had done.
That night, Boyd, Tessa, Lilly, Patrick, Mel, Dusty, Dar, and Toma had all been together—they’d become a kind of pack. Oh, and Greg Heiser, too—of spice-rack Halloween costume fame. For whatever reason, he was there as well. They were at the Malloys’ house, watching a movie, when Tessa and Lilly heard their mom give a little shriek from the kitchen.
They ran in, and she was crying over the phone. Somehow, Tessa had known, before her mom explained anything. It had finally happened.
Which meant her job chasing the truth was finally over.
A part of her melted into sadness at the thought—it was really over, and all that was left of the anger was the long stretch of grief, of missing, that would last forever.
The three of them held each other in a tight group, and eventually, the rest had come into the room to see what was going on, and the hug had turned massive.
From the center of it, Tessa felt surrounded by life.
Even though there were tears, and even though it still hurt—sometimes so much that it was hard to breathe—she realized that somehow, without her looking, she had begun to live again, already. Life had a sneaky way of doing that to you, of marching you forward like a bossy older sister. She’d begun to accept that while death could be random, crude, and completely unfair, life was something else: something wild, uncertain, and full of possibility.
And she knew, as she was warmed by all those arms, all that love, all that belief in the truth—all that knowledge of the light that reaches you even from the depths of darkness and space—that she was ready now, at least for that much.
Ready to dive into this life of hers and find out what was next.
About the Author
Photo by Charles Grantham
LEXA HILLYER is the author of young adult novels Spindle Fire, Winter Glass, and Proof of Forever as well as the multiple-award-winning poetry collection Acquainted with the Cold. She is the cofounder and president of publishing at Glasstown Entertainment, an all-female creative development and production company located in New York and Los Angeles. Lexa lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter and their very skinny orange tree.
WWW.LEXAHILLYER.COM
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Books by Lexa Hillyer
Proof of Forever
Spindle Fire
Winter Glass
Frozen Beauty
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
FROZEN BEAUTY. Copyright © 2020 by Lexa Hillyer. Interior illustrations © 2020 by Babeth Lafon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2020 by BABETH LAFON / ILLUSTRATION DIVISION
Cover design by MOLLY FEHR
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Names: Hillyer, Lexa, author.
Title: Frozen beauty / Lexa Hillyer.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperTeen, [2020] | Summary: “When the body of 17-year-old Kit Malloy is found out by the woods frozen to death and half-undressed in the back of the boy-next-door’s truck, her sisters Tessa and Lilly are left to pick up the pieces, search for answers, and ultimately find their own voices.” Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009516 | ISBN 9780062330406 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Secrets Fiction. | Sisters Fiction. | Murder Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H5648 Fro 2020 | DDC [Fic] dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009516
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Digital Edition MARCH 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-233042-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-233040-6
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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