Authors: Marianna Baer
“I understand what you’re feeling,” I said, moving into the hall, closer to him.
He came out of my room, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his army jacket. “No you don’t. You don’t love your family the way I do.”
I froze. “What?”
His heavy lids narrowed his eyes into slits. His expression wasn’t just anger; it was disgust. “I would die for my sister. You . . . you don’t want anything to do with your family. You don’t even know what
family
means.”
“That’s not true,” I said, barely able to speak. It felt like he’d taken the hammer and driven a spike straight in my chest. “I love my family. And my . . . my friends are like family.” I did. I loved my family and friends—more than anything.
“Who? Viv? Abby? I don’t think so. And not me and Celeste, obviously. Unless you show your love through betrayal.”
Along with the throbbing pain in my ribs, a fire burned in my head, and coldness penetrated the rest of my body. Anger now. The voice echoed inside my skull. Cubby’s voice. The closet’s voice.
Tell him
, she said.
Tell him, Leena.
“What about you?” I said. “You and Celeste are so bonded it’s creepy.”
Tell him.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the one who’s been hurting her.”
The words sucked the air out of the hallway.
David and I stared at each other. His lips parted, jaw slack. As shocked as I was that those words had come out of my mouth.
“You think I would hurt Celeste?” he said.
Did I?
Of course you do
.
I shook my head to clear her words out. “No. I don’t know. I know it wasn’t some . . . some ghost.”
“How could you be so close to me, and think I would do that?” he said.
“I didn’t. I don’t.” My brain was spinning. Had I ever really thought that? I’d had my suspicions, but did I really believe he was capable of that? “I just don’t understand how you can think she’s not sick.”
“Because she’s not!” he said. “How could you be with someone you think might be abusing his sister? God, Leena.”
“I don’t think that. Really. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I did.” I wrapped my arms around myself. I was shaking. “David, I told the dean because I’m worried about Celeste. I did it even though I knew it might mean I’d lose you. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I love you, but your sister is sick.”
David had started walking down the hall, toward the common room. He paused and turned his head slightly, so I was looking at his profile.
Turn
, I willed him.
Meet my eyes. Let me know it will be okay
. He didn’t.
“Who’s the sick one here, Leena?” he said.
He didn’t wait for an answer.
A
STRANGE CALM SETTLED
over the hallway once the side door banged shut behind David. Okay. Okay. It had happened. My limbs tingled on the edge of numbness. I touched my arms. I was still there. I was alive. I touched my face. Dry. I did the same body check I’d done the one time I’d been in a car accident, making sure all of my parts were in their right places. Numb, but intact.
Okay. I was okay. I stumbled into the bedroom. Only, I couldn’t feel the floor under my feet.
Once I was back in the closet, physical sensations started to return. First, a sense of the mattress as it held my body, then of the clothes that dangled above and brushed against me. I curled into a fetal position, holding Cubby. As the feeling came back to my skin, though, I realized the numbness had penetrated all the way inside. Where I expected to feel the intensity of sadness, there was nothing.
The worst had happened. I’d lost David, and in a way that meant I’d never have him back. But it didn’t seem real. The numbness seemed to be my body refusing to believe what had taken place. I knew this feeling—or lack of it. The moment of divine intervention before all hell breaks loose. “We’ve grown apart, Leena,” my mother had said, the first time my world was demolished. For days I’d been fine after she’d said that. Hadn’t told any of my friends, had played the part of the understanding daughter. I’d been fine until the feelings came crashing down, the day I’d emptied my parents’ medicine cabinet and lined the pills up on my bed according to size and shape.
This time, I wasn’t going to wait until it was too late. I found the plastic baggie of pills, reached inside, fondled the hard bits of betterness. I placed a small oval one in my mouth. Then a round one. The sadness was coming. But I could head it off. Because I knew, I knew what I’d done was right. That was what mattered. The sadness was unnecessary. A stupid, physical reaction. If David had to leave me, well, what was there to do about it?
But why did I say those things to him? Maybe it would have been okay, later.
No, it wouldn’t
. The words were all around me.
You’d already lost him.
He might have forgiven me. Understood why I did it.
He never loved you. None of them did.
My family, Viv, Abby. Never loved me? Hearing those words shriveled me inside, as if all my organs were dried and cracked. “No,” I protested. “They did. They do.”
Another pill or two or three found their way into my mouth, down my throat, leaving a bitter trail. Didn’t care what they were. Anything would help.
God, I was tired. The headache I’d had earlier grew and grew so I took something for that, as well. Enough to get rid of this one and the next one. Maybe I could wait it out. The feelings. Just stay in here until it was too late to care anymore.
Shelter. Wait out the storm.
You can. Stay with me
. I held Cubby close, almost too exhausted to lift her hollow wood body. These words had nothing to do with her anymore. They were from the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Should this have surprised me? I wondered. Maybe I was just too tired to be surprised.
“I don’t understand why this had to happen.”
You’re safe now, Leena. Admit what you’ve always known.
“What?” I said. “Admit what?”
Why it’s all happened. Why all your pain has happened.
A wave of marrow-deep fatigue swept through me. I needed to sleep—for a week, a month, more—I couldn’t imagine I could ever sleep enough.
I drifted off, who knows for how long, but woke when a steady
beep, beep, beep
filled my ears. I forgot where I was, thought it was my alarm clock. I tried to move, to turn it off, but couldn’t. Then I remembered.
Nausea swelled in my stomach. The beeping grew louder. Louder.
The fire alarm?
Had David . . . ?
I reached for the doorknob. My hand could barely stretch that high, my arm was so heavy. I was fighting against more than gravity. I finally felt the knob, turned, and pushed. Nothing. The door wouldn’t move. The bolt. Had I locked it? No, I hadn’t. The sickness in my gut radiated out.
I lowered my arm.
Your body won’t let you leave
.
It knows what you need. Another pill.
Maybe that would help. Something for energy. This house always knew what I needed, from the beginning. Hadn’t it? I slipped another in my mouth. My eyes shut. I lifted my arm again and tried to reach up. Too tired. The alarm blared. He wouldn’t really have done that, would he? Why would he do it now? I was so confused.
Footsteps thudded nearby, shook the house.
“Leena?” A voice called from far, far away.
I tried to reach for the door. Gravity’s cold nails trapped my arms on the floor. Tried again. Nothing. Now it wasn’t just trying to move that was hard, it was trying to breathe. Bricks, walls tumbled on top of me. Pressed me down. Down toward the earth. Squeezing my chest.
A surge ripped through me, vomited through my listless body. The burn. The stink. I had to get out.
Out there are people who don’t want you
, the walls whispered.
In here is where you belong
.
Was that true? It felt true, inside my bones. My poor, tired bones. Inside my poor, sick gut. But somehow . . .
“Leena?” The door trembled, the knob wiggled back and forth. “Leena, are you in there?” The door wasn’t locked; still, they couldn’t open it. I knew they wouldn’t be able to. Just like David hadn’t been able to, that day so many weeks ago.
They don’t want you. None of them.
Her voice filled the space. Could they hear her, outside the door?
Look what you’ve let them do to you. There’s nowhere for you to go.
“That’s not how it is,” I said back. “Things happen. You can’t stop things from happening.”
Yes, you can. In here.
My arm. Would. Not. Move.
I’ll protect you
, she cooed.
You can’t do it yourself.
You’re too weak. That’s why you came in here. You knew it the first time you saw the house. You knew you needed it.
“Someone’s out there. Looking for me.”
You’ve never been strong enough
, she said.
If you were strong, you wouldn’t have been with David. Admit it, Leena.
I’d tried not to be with him, but it hadn’t worked. That was true. And now look.
Now you know he never loved you. And you’re too weak to take the pain.
“He did love me.”
Weak, stupid Leena. I told you not to be with him. But you couldn’t resist. You couldn’t stop yourself from needing.
“No. I
chose
. I wasn’t weak.” Shudders rippled through me. Another surge of vomit.
It’s okay, Leena. I know. I know you aren’t strong enough. But I love you anyway.
“Leena?” More thumping. “Are you okay? Leena, let us know if you’re in there. Please. We don’t know if it’s a fire drill, or what, but we have to get out. Why won’t you come out?”
Admit it
, she hissed.
You’ll never be okay. Not out there. David was right. You’re the sick one.
“No,” I whispered.
This voice—Cubby, the closet, the walls—it wasn’t me. Wasn’t from any place inside of me.
You
’re
the sick one.
Thumping. “Leena,
please
!”
Nothing emerged from my mouth because someone held my tongue, pressed it back into my throat so I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I began to gag. I tilted my gaze to the floor, to my arms. Visualized raising them up. But I couldn’t. Only one hand. One hand moved. Lifting it was like lifting the whole house. I reached up with my last bit of energy, reached up with that one hand and scratched at the door. My fingernails scraped against the wood. Once, twice.
“Did you hear that?” someone outside said.
Scratched once more. All I had in me.
I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, except for the voice.
Stay with me
, she cooed, over and over
. I’m the only one who wants you
. After I reached the heaviest place, so heavy I thought my body was being obliterated, I felt a release, a lightness. Like when you’ve held your arms against a doorframe and then walk out and they fly up. I flew up. Up and out and high and wide and all over and circling and spreading. And no more containment. Just me, energy, spreading into wood and plaster and brick and floating in the air and filling the space. An angel after all. No more body keeping me tied down. The body was still there, I just wasn’t in it.
S
UN-STREAMS POURED IN
from the arched window. Dust particles shimmered in the pathway.
“Would it sound really weird,” I asked Viv, my eyes shifting away from the light, “if I told you that part of me . . . part of me didn’t come back?”
“Didn’t come back?” she said.
“You know, after the paramedics got to me.”
Viv reloaded the nail polish brush and stroked the pearly white liquid over my left thumbnail. She’d come down to see me at my dad’s condo. “Well, it kind of makes sense,” she said. “I mean, we have this life-force energy, right? Who’s to say that some of yours wasn’t released when your body thought it was the end. Like a leak in an inflatable raft that’s then patched up. Right? The air that escapes never comes back.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I just . . . I feel like I left something behind. I never would have believed that, before. I mean, it sounds so stupid. It’s the kind of kooky thinking I’d have made fun of.”
The springs of the sofa bed creaked as Viv shifted her weight.
“I suppose,” she said, “a lot was different before.”
Before.
Before, I knew so many things. About David and Celeste. About myself. About real and unreal. I built a fort out of all of these things I knew.
That day in Frost House, the fort collapsed.
Afterward, I searched back through the semester, trying to find new facts to build with. But just as I was ready to nail one down, it would disintegrate in my hands.
Information came to me slowly.
All I grasped at first was that I’d nearly died from a combination of the pills I’d taken and carbon monoxide poisoning. I spent two nights in the hospital: a blur of confusion, the stink of vomit and disinfectant, throat scraped raw, tubes running in and out of my body, fragments of sleep cut short by needles, the claustrophobia of the oxygen chamber, doctors with charts, nurses with implements, and my parents sitting next to me with looks on their faces that said,
How did this happen?
as much as they said, “We love you.”
Not that I blamed them for wondering. I was wondering the same thing.
Everyone wanted an explanation. But how could I explain? So I kept most of what happened to myself, only saying enough to assure the hospital psychiatrist I wasn’t suicidal and didn’t need admission into the psych ward. When I took the pills, my thought process had supposedly been compromised by the carbon monoxide, so they believed I’d just been confused about how many pills I’d taken. I agreed to outpatient therapy.
To my parents’ credit, they didn’t push. And they tried to do what they could. At one point, I woke to my mother standing next to my bed, a tentative smile on her face, hands behind her back.
“I found something that might make you feel a bit better,” she said. She laid Cubby on my pillow. “Your old friend.”
“Oh.” I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat as I turned my face away. “Thanks. But you can get rid of it.”
Viv came for a quick visit the day after I was discharged.
“What’s happened since I left?” I said. “I feel like I’ve been gone for years.”
She told me about the chaos of that afternoon. Apparently, a crowd of students gathered outside the dorm and rumors spread across campus the minute the fire department and paramedics arrived, so many trucks that all of Highland Street was blocked off. Dean Shepherd moved them all out of Frost House—Viv and Abby to Dee Hall, Celeste to Revere Hall.
“Celeste is still at school?” I said, shocked. I hadn’t dreamed that I’d told the dean about her, had I?
Viv’s blank look reminded me she didn’t know the whole story. I gave her a condensed version: Celeste’s fear that Frost House was haunted, my meeting with the dean, David’s anger and his plan to save her—
“Wait,” Viv interrupted. “What did David have to do with the carbon monoxide leak?”
“He caused it,” I said. “By doing something to the furnace. That was his plan to get Celeste moved out.”
Viv shook her head. “That’s impossible. The leak had been going on for a long time.”
Now it was my turn to look blank.
“The alarm nearest your room was screwed up,” she said. “It wasn’t calibrated right, or whatever. So it was only when the carbon monoxide reached upstairs that an alarm went off. You guys had been breathing it for . . . well, they don’t know how long. Hard to say with windows being opened, stuff like that. Didn’t anyone tell you this?”
Did they? “I don’t know,” I said. “I just remember when they found out the carbon monoxide was from the furnace. The stuff at the hospital is kind of a big blur.”
“They still don’t really know if it
was
from the furnace,” she said. “I don’t quite get it, but there was some problem and they couldn’t tell. But we all had to get tested for CO poisoning, and Celeste had to get oxygen therapy. David had nothing to do with it.”
Until that moment, I’d thought David had left me in the dorm, knowing I would get sick from the carbon monoxide leak he’d caused. I hadn’t thought he’d wanted me dead—he wouldn’t have known that I’d shut myself up in the closet with my pills. But still . . . I’d used it as an excuse to believe I was better off without him. Better off without a guy who would ever do something like that.
But now?
Before this all happened, I think I would have forced myself to forget about it, to ignore the fact that I wanted to see him. Anything to avoid the risk of further rejection.
Now, though, I realized that reaching out to David or not reaching out—it was going to hurt either way.
I allowed myself to be a bit of a coward and send a message instead of call, so when he agreed to come visit, I couldn’t sense his tone of voice.
The day he was coming, my body was so twitchy I felt like I was walking around with my finger stuck in a socket. I tried a deep-breathing technique my therapist taught me. A Valium would have worked better. I knew I shouldn’t think that way—didn’t want to think that way—but it was a hard habit to break.
Finally, the doorbell buzzed.
We stared at each other, awkward. His face was paler, drawn—more like his sister than ever. After a moment, I stepped forward and hugged him. My cheek pressed into the satiny puff of his down jacket. We stood like that, quiet, for a long time. I loved being this close to him, no matter what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Leena.”
“Me too.”
A muffled cough came from inside my dad’s room. We broke apart.
“He’s giving us space,” I whispered. “I’ll introduce you later.”
David nodded. “You look good,” he said, running his fingers down my hair. “Are you . . . okay?”
“Pretty much.”
“So.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Celeste is actually . . . She wanted to see you, too. She’s at the coffee place, on the corner. I’m supposed to call her when she can come, if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” I said. “Viv told me she’s still at school. They let her stay?” I began leading him into the kitchen where I’d set out all our tea choices during my nervous morning.
“Yeah,” he said. “Once everything came out, and they realized she was sick, you know, everyone decided she could stay. Thank God.”
“Wait, so, she
is
sick?” I said, turning from the electric kettle, confused.
“From the carbon monoxide.”
“Right, but . . . that’s it? Nothing worse?”
“No!” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew all this. It was the carbon monoxide making her sick. Haven’t you read what it can do? Insomnia, delusions, weird physical sensations. Along with Celeste’s imagination, and Whip’s story about the house. The perfect storm, I guess.”
“So, that’s why she thought the house was haunted?” I asked.
“The whole thing is pretty crazy. Here we were thinking Frost House was out to get her, and, in a way, it was.”
“Wow. I didn’t realize she’d been affected so severely.” I tried to process this information while pouring hot water into our mugs. “Choose whichever tea you want,” I said, and then, after putting chamomile into my own mug, “What about the weird things that happened in our room, though? The vase, the nests . . . Carbon monoxide doesn’t explain any of that.”
“Probably the cat,” he said with a slight shrug.
“Really?”
He stopped dunking his tea bag. “Are you still worried she did those things herself?”
“No. I’m just . . . I don’t know. Confused,” I said. “I haven’t been able to figure any of this out. I mean, I knew that it caused my headaches and probably made me throw up, and made me tired and generally not feel well. But I don’t get . . . There’s a lot I don’t get.”
“If I didn’t know better,” he said, nudging me, “I’d think you were trying to convince me that there
was
something weird going on in that house.”
Before, I would have been the first one to buy into David’s theory. The first one to say that was what happened to me, too. That my thoughts had been altered, twisted by the unhealthy air I’d been breathing. But then I remember the pull I felt toward the closet, that very first day. And even
before
the first day we moved in, the way I felt the first time I ever saw the house, that intense
need
to live there.
And what had I seen that day last fall? What had I mistaken for smoke, as it drifted from the unusable chimney and danced into the sky?
After sending David away to the coffee shop, Celeste and I sat on my dad’s balcony, even though it was cold outside. I think we both wanted as much fresh air as we could get. We sat quiet for a moment.
“So,” I finally said. “This is fucked up.”
Celeste looked at me and laughed, a real laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “It is.”
“There are still so many things I don’t understand,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“How did you get the bruises?”
She pulled up the fur-lined collar of her vintage coat. “I’d wake up, find them on me,” she said. “And I’d have strange memories of fighting something off. It seemed like I was awake when I did it.” She paused. “Who the hell knows? My shrink thinks they happened during my night terrors. That I’d thrash around so much I hurt myself.”
“I saw you do that,” I said. “I guess it could have happened.”
“Maybe.” We held eyes, though, and another conversation passed between us. One in which we agreed on the possibility that maybe she
had
been awake when she fought something off all those nights. I knew it then: Celeste was as confused as I was.
“Something else,” I said. “Did you ever throw your beetle photo across the room?”
“What?” she said. “No. When did that—?”
“The same night you were burned in the tub. I didn’t want to tell you.”
“That burn . . .” Celeste rubbed the spot where it had been. “I know which handle I turned that night. The water coming out of the faucet was cold.”
“But the faucet was hot enough to burn you?”
She nodded.
“What does your shrink say about that?”
She gave a half smile. “I’m waiting until a later session to break it to her.” After a moment she continued. “You know, you were right to tell Dean Shepherd what was happening. Thanks for doing that.”
I felt a rush of shame, knowing that the main reason I had done it was that I didn’t want to lose Frost House. How could I have thought that I was so weak? How could I have been so convinced that Frost House was the only place I could ever be happy?
I might need a long time to answer those questions. Now, I still had more for Celeste.
“So that night at your parents’,” I said, “you had a whole story, about that woman who had lived in Frost House. Didn’t you wonder why she hadn’t done anything before? To other students? I’m assuming we would have heard if there were other people who had trouble in the dorm.”
She tightened her silver-wool-with-sequins scarf around her neck.
“I thought it was because we were the first girls to live there,” she said. “It was a woman who died; she’d had a baby girl taken away from her. I thought she wasn’t interested in boys.” Celeste stared off at a plane in the sky. “I couldn’t figure out what she wanted, aside from me leaving, though.”
I didn’t say anything, just watched our healthy breaths puff white in the cold air and thought about Celeste’s theory, thought about my answer to her final question. And while thinking, I realized: I knew everything that had happened to Celeste this semester, but she didn’t know anything that had happened to me. Somehow, it didn’t seem right.
Then I told her my version of the past months, including my theory of what Frost House had wanted:
She had wanted Celeste to leave. But she had wanted me to stay.
Forever.