Carved in Ice

by Ivy Smoak

  He regretted what he said four months ago. And I pretended it had never happened. I had assumed we had an unspoken understanding. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m sorry, I just…really hate the snow.” It was true. It reminded me of what Don had taken from me. The last time I remembered enjoying a snow storm was with Miles. Both memories were just too painful.

  “You hate the snow? That’s why you’ve been pushing me away for months?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “Why are you lying?”

  “Me? Are you serious?” I could hear my voice starting to rise. “I’m not the liar in this equation, V.” I put his name in quotes.

  “I haven’t lied to you about my name. I just haven’t told you…”

  “What’s the difference?” I was losing my temper. I needed to go outside and feel the snow against my skin. I needed to remember why this conversation was insignificant, because right now it hurt. “I honestly don’t even care what your real name is. That isn’t what I’m upset about.” I stormed past him, grabbed my winter jacket off the hook, and ignored the sound of him following me.

  “So there is something you’re upset about?”

  Jesus. He was so dense. “What do you think, V? You called me Summer. You said that you loved me. And then literally less than 10 minutes after your confession, you started calling me Sadie again. You never spoke of loving me again. You backtracked so fast I thought I had imagined it. I’ve had to give up so much the past several months. I never thought I’d be forced to give you up too when you promised you weren’t going anywhere.” Everything I said was selfish. Because the whole time I was falling for him, I had already fallen for Miles and I was falling for Eli too. V shouldn’t love me. I was a monster. And I was about to be so much worse.

  He just stared at me.

  It annoyed me even more that he had nothing to say to defend himself. “So there you have it.”

  He still said nothing.

  I wanted to slap his stupid masked face. “Would you just put me out of my misery and tell me if you meant it?” My heart stammered against my chest.

  “Sadie…”

  I put my hand up. “That’s all you had to say.” I turned around. “Athena, open.” The window made a whirring noise and started to rise.

  “I meant what I said in the moment,” V said from behind me. “If felt right to say it. I didn’t want to die without you knowing how I was feeling.”

  I stepped outside onto the fire escape and turned back to him. So he had meant it? The gun suddenly felt heavy against my chest. I locked eyes with him. There was so much I wanted to say. I was just about to open my mouth when he started talking again.

  “But I regretted it as soon as it came out of my mouth,” he said.

  The snow swirled around me as it danced in the wind. Nothing good ever happened in the snow. I wasn’t even sure why I had gotten my hopes up. “Great. Thanks for clearing that up. See you later, V.”

  But I wouldn’t. I strongly doubted that I’d see him ever again. I started to walk up the fire escape as the window whirred shut. Because today was the day. As soon as I heard the silence of the city I knew. Don Roberts had taken away my last hope in the snow. How great would it be for him to take his last breath in the silence?

  Chapter 3

  Sunday

  I was going to kill Don today. I was finally going to do it. But there was one thing I needed to do first. I stared down at my old dorm building and waited. I needed to see Miles. Everything always came back to Miles. I shouldn’t have been here. It was wrong, but I couldn’t seem to stay away. Besides, it might be the last time I ever got to see him. If everything went right today, I’d be behind bars before sunset.

  I watched as some blonde girl approached Miles and touched his arm. They laughed together about something I couldn’t hear. He grabbed one of her suitcases for her as they walked toward the dorm. I couldn’t hear their laughter, but his was easy to imagine. It was the kind that warmed my soul. The kind that made my stomach flip over. Coming here was definitely a mistake.

  I exhaled and watched my breath mix with the snow in front of me, obscuring my vision of the two of them. I turned away from the dorm building. Miles was smiling again. Good for him. For years I thought he had forgotten about me. When I found out that he still wrote letters, all of that changed. I let myself believe in us again for the briefest of moments. But seeing him now? Apparently I was as easy to forget as I had originally assumed. The thought was numbing.

  When I was far away from him, I felt strong. For the last few months all I'd been doing was training. I pretended that I was like freaking superwoman. Clearly I wasn’t though. I was weak. Just seeing him laughing with another girl made me want to break down and cry.

  Once upon a time, being with him would have been all my dreams coming true. That wasn’t the case anymore. My dreams had become nightmares. And in every nightmare I had, it ended in one way: with Don taking his last breath.

  I ran across the roof and leapt to the adjacent building. Running along rooftops was better than running through Central Park. Especially at night when it felt like I was running with the stars.

  My feet slid along the slush that was forming on the roof. Running was going to be difficult today. It was going to take me longer than I anticipated to get to my post. I had spent too much time waiting for Miles to appear. If I missed out on my shot because of that, maybe it would finally get me to stop stalking him. Maybe I’d be filled with enough resentment to move on.

  ***

  Did Miles like her? Stop. The gun shook in my hand. Miles didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but my plan. Where the hell was Don, anyway?

  I pulled up the sleeve of my winter jacket and glanced at my watch. I had been on time, but Don was late. Or had he left early?

  It wasn’t like it was hard to figure out the mayor’s schedule. Especially one that was apparently as beloved as Don Roberts. He'd won by a landslide in the polls a few months ago, and his first initiative was to clean up the city. He was pointing all the blame for the increased crime on the vigilante. Meanwhile, he was letting the mafia infect the city behind his constituents’ backs. And somehow, only my team knew his secrets. He had the cops in his pocket. Hell, he had everyone in his pocket.

  Today Don was doing some reading at a local elementary school. It was all so fake. A public service that he did to keep up appearances. He didn’t care about children. For all I knew, he was scouting out his next victim. The thought made the gun shake in my hand again. Get a grip. My finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Drop the gun, Summer,” Eli said from behind me.

  I didn’t need to turn to know it was him. It was easy to remember what his voice sounded like whispering in my ear. My whole life was filled with memories, but in the present I had nothing. Nothing but this moment to hold on to. “No thanks,” I said calmly. No one was stopping me today. Enough was enough.

  “I’m serious, Summer. Don’t make me do this.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. His gun was raised too, except his was pointed at me instead of the street below.

  I laughed. “You expect me to believe that you’d shoot me?” Yeah right. I looked back out over the ledge again. Where the hell is he?

  “It’s an elementary school,” Eli said. “You’re putting innocent children at risk.”

  The irritation in his voice annoyed me. I would never put children in danger. “Luckily I’m a good shot.”

  “No one’s a good shot from this distance with a pistol. This isn’t the way. We’re getting so close.”

  I turned back around. “We? Are you serious? It hasn’t been a we since you told V I was going to kill Don. You betrayed my trust. There is no we, Eli.”

  His gun was still pointed at me.

  “I barely got away from him today. He watches me like a freaking hawk. Just let me finish this thing and then we can all move on.” Saying the words out loud didn’t make me believe them. How was I going to move past this? I
was going to end up in jail or dead myself. The thought of Miles tried to crawl back into my mind, but I pushed it aside.

  “If you kill Don, you’re not going to get any answers. I agreed to help you do it when I thought we knew everything. When getting back at him for what he did to you was all that mattered.”

  “I have all the answers I need. He killed my parents. He destroyed me.” My voice cracked. “To me, revenge is the only thing that matters.”

  “Summer…”

  “We both know what this is really about, so stop lying to yourself," I said. "I stopped mattering to you. That’s what happened. You don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself.”

  “You really have lost it. I’ve been defending you this whole time. I’m on the run just as much as you are. I gave up everything for you.”

  I laughed. “And you’ve done nothing but regret it.”

  Eli shook his head. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  “It’s probably the hair.” The sound of a door closing made me turn around. I peered off the roof. There he was. And just like I had suspected, he wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of kids. I lifted my gun.

  And I immediately felt something hit the side of my neck. I reached up and felt the small feathers that accompanied the vial of serum that V used to knock people out. Damn it. I looked back at Eli as I fell to my knees. I hadn’t even realized that he wasn’t holding a regular gun. “I hate you,” I mumbled as I fell onto the concrete. My gun fell from my hand and skidded away from me.

  “Yeah, you’ve made that perfectly clear.” Eli bent down and lifted me over his shoulder. “Luckily for you, you’re not so easy to hate.”

  I would have laughed, but I was just so sleepy. “I don’t really hate you,” I said with a yawn. “How could I hate you when you have such a nice butt?” I put both my hands on his ass and squeezed.

  He laughed. “I don’t think you’ve said anything that nice to me in months. Maybe I should drug you more often.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” I yawned again. “Maybe then I can be happy again.”

  “Summer?”

  I drifted to sleep at the sound of his voice.

  Chapter 4

  Sunday

  My head hurt. I went to reach for it, but I couldn’t move my hands. The last thing I remembered was getting ready to kill Don. The feeling of my hands being bound made me slowly open my eyes. Had I been arrested? Had I done it?

  “Good, she’s awake!” Liza called and sat down in one of the three chairs across from me.

  I blinked. “Liza, untie me.” I hadn’t been arrested. It was coming back to me. Eli had interfered. He had ruined my plans. I tried to stand up off the floor and realized my feet were tied together too. “Seriously, untie me.”

  “No can do, Summer.”

  “Why?” I tried to move my hands again to no avail.

  “We’re having an intervention,” Liza said.

  I stopped struggling. “An intervention? Are you serious? Why?” I watched as Eli and V sat down in the chairs on either side of Liza.

  “Because you’ve been such a bitch recently.”

  I looked up at her. “Me? News flash, Liza, you’re always a bitch. At least to me.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” V said. “Both of you.” He glared at Liza.

  She shrugged and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “She asked.”

  “That’s not what this is about,” Eli said. “Summer, we’re worried about you. You’ve stopped talking to us. You’re shutting us all out.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath as I tried to twist my hands out of the rope. Ow.

  Eli leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Summer, look at me.”

  I continued to struggle without looking up.

  “Distancing yourself isn’t helping anyone. We need to be able to work as a team, and in order to do that, we need to be able to trust you.”

  I had nothing to say, so I kept trying to get loose.

  “I’ve known you for a long time and…” started Eli.

  My laugh made Eli sigh. It was one of those sighs when you’re truly exhausted. When the battle seems too hard. I knew the type of sigh because I'd been trying to fight it off my whole life. I felt bad that I had made him sigh that way. That I had made him feel like giving up…on me.

  “Summer, we’ve all been talking and we think maybe you should go to therapy.”

  That made me stop. “Really? And who should I go to therapy as? Sadie Davis? Summer Brooks? All of my identities are dead, remember? I’m wanted for murder, Eli. I can’t exactly stroll up to the nearest psych ward and get admitted.”

  “I didn’t say psych ward. Jesus.” He ran his hands down his face. “We could bring a therapist here…”

  “Despite what you all might think, I don’t need therapy. I’m perfectly fine.” I wasn’t. Every morning when I woke up it felt like I was drowning.

  “That’s debatable,” Liza said. “You did try to murder someone today.”

  “Not someone. I tried to kill Don. Why are you all suddenly acting like I’m crazy?” Why can’t I untie this freaking rope? “Besides, no therapist is going to agree to come help someone accused of murder.”

  “I know one,” V said.

  “Well obviously a therapist that’s willing to help a man who lives behind a mask isn’t very good at what he does. No thank you.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Liza said. “And before you throw something back at me, can we just remind you that you’re not the only one that had to give something up the past few months? We’re in this together, whether we like it or not. You could at least make it a little more enjoyable to be stuck with you.”

  “Are you comparing giving up your upscale Manhattan apartment to what I've been through? Cry me a river.”

  “You’d know I gave up more than that if you bothered to talk to me!”

  “And what, Liza? You’d be able to tell me what true loss feels like? Everything was taken from me. Everything I’ve ever cared about!” I struggled against my restraints.

  “That. That right there. How is that supposed to make us feel? Because I thought we all cared about each other.” She glanced at V.

  All she cared about was V. She was probably only sitting there pretending to care because he had asked her to be a part of whatever the hell this was. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. It was getting hard to breathe. “I need to go outside,” I said. “Will someone please untie me?”

  They didn’t respond. The silence was so unnerving.

  “Look, I’m not seeing the whack-job therapist that V uses who is clearly terrible at his job. And I’m not going to go find one on my own. Conversation over. Now untie me please.”

  “My therapist doesn’t know I’m the vigilante,” V said. His voice rumbled lower than usual. “He’s good at what he does, it’s not his fault that I’ve been lying to him. And you’ll be using a fake name so he won’t connect the dots.”

  I wanted to keep arguing with them. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t insane. But there was a benefit to meeting V’s ridiculous therapist. Maybe I could finally figure out who V was. “Okay, I’ll meet him.”

  “That was easier than I expected,” Liza said.

  “Well, you guys are right. I’ve been hard to live with.” As if they hadn’t.

  “Or you could just talk to us,” V said. “Tell us what’s really bothering you. We’re your friends.”

  Friends. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. Wasn’t that one of the problems? That we were once so much and now we were just friends? “No, I want to talk to your therapist.”

  “But if you…”

  Eli cleared his throat. “Perfect. He should be here in about twenty minutes. We thought you’d need more convincing.” He smiled at me.

  I let my eyes focus on his lips. I barely remembered what it was like to kiss him. Why couldn’t I remember? God, maybe I was crazy. It felt like I couldn�
�t focus on anything.

  “Fine,” V said as he stood up. “I’ll be in my room so he doesn’t see me.”

  “Or you could stay and take off your mask.”

  “Goodnight, Sadie,” he said without turning around.

  The name Sadie hurt even more than the word friends. Whatever we had was dead. Why had they suddenly decided I needed therapy now? Was it because of my question for V this morning? I hoped he hadn’t talked to Liza and Eli about that. It was embarrassing enough hearing him say he didn’t love me to my face. I didn’t want anyone else to know and whisper about it behind my back. “Can you untie me now?” I asked no one in particular. I didn’t want to go outside anymore, but I still wanted to be free. Really, I just wanted to curl up in a ball in my bed and dream. My dreams were the only place I could truly be happy.

  Eli sat down beside me and started untying the ropes.

  I looked up at him. “You really think I need therapy?”

  “I don’t know, Summer. Maybe it would help.” He pulled the rope away from my feet.

  “I’m the same girl I was when I lived with Don. The only difference is that I’m stronger now.”

  “That’s not the only difference.” He pulled the final rope away.

  I rubbed my wrists as soon as they were free. “Yes, it is.”

  “The Summer I fell in love with had hope.”

  His words from earlier today came back to me. He said he didn’t even recognize me anymore. “I do have hope. I’m just hoping for something different.”

  “Don’s death instead of the hope to live your life?”

  I shook my head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  My eyes locked with his. “Maybe that’s the problem. I don’t see a reason to try anymore. Wouldn’t it be better if you were relieved when I died instead of missing me?”

  Eli lowered his eyebrows. “No. And I think you’re underestimating how much I care about you. Even when you’ve been pushing me away. If you died, I’d miss you every day.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. It was nice to know that at least one person still cared if I was breathing. “But I’ve been such a bitch.”