Frost

Marianna Baer, Frost

 Dedication

For my mother, with love

Part One

Chapter 1

BEFORE I LIVED THERE, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary. It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples. Hidden enough that I didn’t even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard. I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member’s house. Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings; this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor. The kind of place a family would live. The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves: Come inside, come inside. . . .

When I realized that the house was actually a tiny dorm, that my friends and I could be that family for our final semesters, I knew I’d discovered our school’s very own Shangri-La. I couldn’t escape the reality of senior year at ultracompetitive Barcroft, but at least my home life could be a fantasy.

Over the summer I kept thinking what good luck it was I’d stumbled upon Frost House that day. If I’d believed in anything more mystical than textbook facts back then, I might have wondered if it had been fate. I have no idea, now, if fate exists. But I do know one thing about the day I found Frost House:

Good luck had nothing to do with it.

The afternoon we moved in, a late-August storm turned the surrounding leaves into a rain-whipped, electric-green frenzy. Frost House waited in their midst. A little old lady.

“Isn’t she sweet?” I said to Abby as I eased my car up the narrow driveway, branches scraping the windows on either side of us.

“Sweet?” Abby said. “Maybe a couple hundred years ago.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of shabby chic?” I turned off the engine of my equally ancient Volvo station wagon. The windshield wipers died; Frost House melted into a blur. Abby and I glanced back at the carful of stuff we had to unload.

“Let’s register first,” I said. “I’ll just check if Viv is here, in case she wants to ride over with us.” I also couldn’t wait to see my room. I’d been picturing how to decorate it for weeks—my nightly fall-asleep ritual on the pullout couch at my dad’s.

Shielding myself with an armload of cotton tapestries, I splashed up a brick path to the side door. Unlocked, luckily. I stood in the snug entryway, smelled the fresh paint fumes, and wiped the rain off my glasses. Music—The Black Keys—pulsed in the humid air. I called Viv’s name up the staircase in front of me, then realized the bass vibrations were coming from a suite of rooms on the ground floor, tucked in the rear. Strange. Abby’s and Viv’s bedrooms were upstairs. I was the only one living back there for the next few months.

I passed through the common room—pausing to appreciate the glistening, milk-white walls; the comfortable couch and armchair; the mini-fridge and microwave—and down a short hall, music getting louder with every step: Let me be your everlasting light. . . . On the right, my bedroom door gaped wide. Cardboard boxes, duffels, and garbage bags littered the floor. Piles of colorful clothes covered one of the beds, which was made up with a silky violet quilt and sunshine yellow pillows.

Classic Viv. She’d obviously mixed up our room assignments.

Sensing movement on the other side of an open closet door. I laid my tapestries on the second, unmade bed. The pounding bass line camouflaged my footsteps as I crept around boxes and bags toward my unsuspecting housemate. I waited for a moment in a spot where we still couldn’t see each other, only the thickness of the door between us now, and then sprang—

“Boo!”

“Jesus!” A guy spun around. Something fell from his raised hands. I reached out, caught it. Owww. A sharp corner of the poster-sized frame had stabbed my palm.

“What the hell?” The guy—dark hair; olive, freckled skin; about my age—took the frame from me and set it on the floor. “Are you crazy?”

“Sorry,” I said, my palm throbbing but not cut. “I thought you were—”

“Wait a minute.” He edged past me and turned off the speakers. The air took a second to recover. “Thought I was what?” he said. “In need of a heart attack?”

For a moment, I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not. Then he smiled, brows raised above his heavy-lidded, intensely blue eyes. Whoever he was, he didn’t go to school here. I’d have noticed.

“No,” I said. “Thought you were someone else.” Duh, Leena.

Now he laughed and rested his hands on his hips. “I figured. I’m Celeste’s brother. David. I transferred to Barcroft this year.”