Girl in Snow Read online

  Jade

  When people die, they become angel caricatures of themselves. Lucinda practically failed out of English class last year—now she’s a star student, role model to all her peers. I can’t even muster a hesitant sadness. Only a misplaced jealousy. The fact is: Everyone dies. Good people die and bad people die, some earlier than others.

  Everyone writes about Lucinda in metallic marker on hefty slabs of poster board. Long, rambling epitaphs from everyone at school, signed next to lopsided hearts.

  We had the pleasure of getting to know you over the past two years as you babysat our little Ollie. We will be sure to tell our daughter, as she grows older, the impact you had on her early years. Lucinda, it is our belief that your light and beauty will shine in our little girl forever.

  —Chris, Eve, Ollie, and Puddles Thornton

  I LOVE YOU LUC! I’m going to miss you so much. You’re in a better place now, sweet angel.

  —Ana Sanchez

  Lucinda, you have been my best friend since the fourth grade. Really, my best friend. When I moved from California, you were so nice to me, even when I was the new kid and I had, like, really weird teeth. And when I broke my toe on the bottom of the swimming pool on vacation and you ran into the hotel and you couldn’t find my mom, you made the hotel concierge carry me out of the pool, remember? I’m going to miss our sleepovers and our pillow fights. I still have that blue shirt of yours, the one you let me borrow for the dance, and I’m never going to wear it because it still smells like you. I love you. Okay. I have to go now.

  —Beth DeCasio

  Dear Lucinda—it was such a pleasure to have you in class this year. I know chemistry was never your strong suit, but you worked hard and you excelled. It breaks my heart to think of all the potential the world lost this week. I speak on behalf of the entire faculty at Jefferson High School when I say you were an incredible contribution to our student body and you will be terribly missed.

  —Mrs. Hawthorne

  I wonder what they’ll do with the poster boards once all this is over. I doubt Lucinda’s family will want them. I wonder if the man who takes out the garbage will look at these scribbled notes and think what a great girl Lucinda Hayes must have been. How humble. How beautiful. How smart. How kind.

  No one remembers her how I do.

  The annual neighborhood barbecue, the summer before sophomore year. It was a few weeks after everything went to shit with Zap, just before the ritual. I’d started showering in a baggy T-shirt so I didn’t have to look at myself. I didn’t blame Lucinda—not at first, anyway.

  Ma told me to wear a swimsuit to the barbecue, but I refused to stoop to such frivolity. The girls on my block used the sprinklers as an excuse to get naked while the creepy dads watched. It worked. Kids ran around with sticky Popsicle mouths, but everyone watched Beth and Lucinda. Flat, tan stomachs dripping sprinkler water. Lucinda’s hair was brown at the ends, stuck in messy clumps to her bare shoulders. They seemed proud of their firm, bony bodies, bald under the gaze of the sun.

  Amy ran around in a bright-pink one-piece with Lex. Lex looked so young that day, two purple barrettes pulling her hair from her face like a drawn curtain. Lex has never been as pretty as Lucinda. Her hair is cut to her chin. Where Lucinda has the right amount of freckles, Lex has too many. Her nose is bigger, beakier, and her stomach tubs out like a baby’s.

  I stayed in my room until Ma made me come down. She had done her hair up big and was sipping a Jack and Coke on the driveway, even though it was barely noon. I sat on the porch with a warm Sprite and observed as Lucinda and Beth pushed their tiny tits together in front of the Hansens’ beverage table. Mr. Hansen stared down at their bikini tops. He heaved a jug of vodka from the cooler by his feet, and sloshed it into plastic cups. They giggled. Pressed their faces close together. I wanted to tell them to put their bodies away—that nobody cared to see them naked—but this was clearly not the case.

  They wobbled away from the table, sipping and scrunching their noses at the bitter alcohol, until Beth spotted me. Pointed.

  “Look who it is,” Beth said. She tottered halfway up the driveway. “I forgot. You’re completely above all this. You’re not even wearing a swimsuit.”

  “Fuck off,” I said.

  “Do you even own a swimsuit?” Beth said.

  Beth didn’t bother me. I’d taken much worse from her (fake love letters addressed to me, dildos stuffed in my locker). Beth didn’t scare me, with mascara running in pools beneath her eyes.

  “Go fuck yourself, Beth.”

  “Why don’t you?” Beth snapped. “It’s not like you’ll get it anywhere else.”

  She laughed loudly. Nudged Lucinda for support.

  This is how I will always remember her.

  Lucinda stood there, vacant, radiant and timeless in her yellow swimsuit, blond hair curling wet against her skin, toes painted white in those plastic flip-flops, not caring—not even knowing—what she’d taken from me.

  It was worse than anything intentional. Girls like Beth, I could handle. But Lucinda was indifferent, so caught up in her bright, easy world, that contempt for her filled me like it never had before. How she stood, glittering and oblivious. It ignited me.

  I saw you, I wanted to tell her. I saw your toothpick legs wrapped tight around him, I saw the way your back arched, I saw how the two of you thrashed and moved, a pair of undulating eels in shadow. I saw how he touched you. Hungry. Piggish. You can have him, I wanted to say.

  But I couldn’t, because Lucinda was somewhere else. She stood in the August sun, one hip jutted out, completely removed from Beth’s taunts and my submission, her pretty head tilted charmingly to the right.

  Lucinda Hayes didn’t recognize my goddamn face. She was unaware. The world is special for girls like her. It was this that burned me.

  The funeral is almost over. Ma and Amy press tissues to their faces, and makeup seeps into the paper. The minister goes on about Lucinda’s “light,” how she will “never be forgotten,” how during a “tragedy like this” we must “support and appreciate the ones we love.” The old man in front of me is asleep, the Hansens are holding each other, and Jimmy Kessler wraps a piece of chewed gum around a Q-tip, which he pokes into a crack in the pew.

  Hey, I would say to Zap, if this were a different world. Are you okay?

  Zap wouldn’t need to say anything back. When we were little, we played a game called Telepathy. We’d freak out our parents by reading each other’s minds; I could tell you what he was thinking in less than three guesses. In reality, we’d invented this complicated system: words in sets of threes, a countless number of them, which we memorized and dictated to one another. Are you okay? I would say. The answer would be either Rottweiler, bagel, or Gandalf. By the third try, I’d undoubtedly get it right.

  Zap sits a few rows in front of me, wedged between his parents. He watches the photo of Lucinda on the altar like he hopes it will start moving, like if he stares long enough, she will jump out of her glossy frame and into the pew next to him.

  His glasses are folded in his lap. Hair flat in the back. It’s not that I wish he wanted me again, as a best friend or anything else. That’s not it at all. I guess I hate that he looks like a wilted, airless version of himself—all for someone that isn’t me.

  The blatant narcissism of this thought nearly makes me laugh out loud. How self-indulgent. I stop myself, only to realize that the funeral is over.

  People stand. They mill around, hugging one another, gossiping in hushed voices about the possibility of a town curfew if the police don’t catch the killer. Amy beelines for her friends from school. She pointedly ignores Lex: Maybe she doesn’t know what to say. Or maybe all Amy’s fuss about Lucinda is just a sign of her melodrama. Her own liar grief.

  I don’t know what to do with myself, so I uncoil my headphones and place them over my ears. The sound of the memorial chapel is muffled, filtered through pieces of plastic and foam. I don’t turn on any music. I’m thankful for the barrier
between my ears and the scene around me, so I sit while everyone chats, trickles out.

  That’s when I see her: Querida. She clings to the arm of a man who is not Madly. A black veil covers her face, but I recognize the sway of her hair, the slight bulge of hip beneath her form-fitting black dress. Part of me wants to walk over, say hello. But how do you categorize your knowledge of someone like that? Someone you’ve only watched, who you’ve asked a dumb question once, someone you wish you could magic yourself into? The answer: you don’t. So when Ma sends Amy over to collect me, I put on my jacket and follow them out, headphones still on.

  A few paces ahead: Cameron and his mother. He hasn’t looked away from his own feet.

  When we get outside, the wind is brutal. Two police officers are getting out of a squad car. They’re both burly, just how you’d imagine cops would look, with broad shoulders and beer bellies. One has a moustache—the kind of moustache you grow as a joke—and the other twirls a toothpick between his jaws. They walk toward us. No—toward Cameron.

  They arrested Cameron’s dad on Labor Day. Fifth grade. I was at Zap’s house, watching a SpongeBob marathon and eating butter mixed with brown sugar, when Terry rang the doorbell.

  Ma had sent him to bring me home. You could have just called, Mrs. Arnaud said. Terry was small and twitchy on the front porch, wringing doughy hands. You haven’t heard? he asked. Our cop neighbor was just arrested. Jade, it’s time to come home.

  Ma sat on the couch in the living room, drinking cold tea from earlier that morning. With the phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder, she picked through a container of leftover Chinese food.

  “Lee Whitley,” she said into the phone. “You know, the police officer who lives around the corner? Next to the Hansens?”

  Faint babbling from the other end.

  “The police department just released a statement. It’s awful, just so awful. He pulled her over on the highway, claimed she was speeding. Poor girl was only twenty-three. Dragged her into a ditch on the side of the road and beat her nearly to death. She’s alive, but still in the hospital.”

  A string of lo mein slipped from between her chopsticks.

  “Yeah, they’re sure it was him. I know, I know. He was always so nice, wasn’t he? And his wife. Sweet woman, very timid. They have that boy, too; he’s two years below Jay in school. Skinny little thing. Never looks you in the eye.”

  That was just the start of it.

  The town talked for weeks. No one tried to hide it from the kids. Me and Amy weren’t allowed to walk past the Whitleys’ house, not while Cameron’s dad was awaiting trial. We had to take the long way around the backyard to get to school. I broke this rule whenever possible, dragging my feet across the sidewalk by their house, trying to get a peek into the Whitleys’ living room, to see where the bad man ate dinner and brushed his teeth. The Whitleys kept their curtains shut.

  I’d steal glances at the headlines before Terry whisked them away every morning.

  “WHITLEY TO STAND TRIAL; VICTIM WON’T TESTIFY”

  “BROOMSVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT DENIES ALLEGED ASSAULT”

  Lee Whitley never looked particularly threatening. He was slight, like Cameron, with duck feet and a scraggly beard that never looked full. He had pale skin and light eyes, somewhere between green and brown. Perpetually sweaty. Not intimidating. I’d see him in his cop car some days after work, just sitting in the Whitleys’ driveway, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup with his feet on the dashboard.

  The headlines escalated as the trial progressed.

  “EVIDENCE FOR ASSAULT CASE DISAPPEARS FROM POLICE HOLDING”

  “BROOMSVILLE POLICE LIEUTENANT TESTIFIES FOR DEFENSE”

  “WHITLEY PRONOUNCED NOT GUILTY”

  “His friends got him off,” Ma said, swirling white wine at the kitchen table with the windows open. “Sick. It’s just sick.”

  “RELEASED POLICE OFFICER FLEES, LEAVING WIFE AND YOUNG SON BEHIND”

  The victim was a skinny brunette with a trail of hearts tattooed down the side of her neck. Hilary Jameson. She moved away after Cameron’s dad disappeared. Once they were both gone, everyone stopped talking about it. A few weeks later, I walked past the Whitleys’ house—the curtains were still closed, but someone had planted a single tulip in a pot on the front porch. It was a violent shade of purple, the color of a bruise.

  WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK

  A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

  INT. CHURCH—DAY

  Celly and Friend sit in a church, surrounded by construction. Above them: a lopsided crucifix. Friend eyes Celly as she fidgets with an earring, impressed by her no-bullshit demeanor.

  CELLY

  Do you ever wonder why some people have beautiful faces and others don’t?

  FRIEND

  Genetics?

  His words echo through the cavernous space. Celly looks up. Leans in.

  CELLY

  (whispered)

  I have this idea. Maybe ugly people exist so we can understand the human brain a little better. If everyone was pretty, no one would need to talk.

  (beat)

  I’ve seen your drawings, stashed away in the art room.

  Friend averts his eyes.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  You make people prettier than they actually are. The way you smudge the pencil. The way you shape their faces.

  FRIEND

  I draw people exactly how I see them.

  CELLY

  But isn’t that a lie, if it’s not actually how they look?

  FRIEND

  Art can’t be a lie.

  CELLY

  That sounds pretty pretentious.

  FRIEND

  It’s all about perception. What I see is automatically my truth, simply because I’ve seen it. I’ve interpreted it that way.

  CELLY

  (in spite of herself)

  Fair.

  Celly picks at her black nail polish.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  What do you see when you look at me?

  He watches her.

  FRIEND

  A knife. An idealist. A rock. Soft flesh.

  Russ

  Cynthia used to be a ballerina. She told Russ about the big auditions she’d gone to in New York City. Showed him her old shoes, broken and streaked black from marley floors, sweat-stained ribbons tangled around invisible ankles. Put them on, Russ said, a joke. Cynthia laced them up her bare ankles and stood on her toes, using the arm of the couch for balance. She wore a pair of matronly khaki shorts and an old, faded polo shirt. Beaded earrings.

  Lee came in from the kitchen and walked awkwardly to his wife. Russ, so small at the other end of the couch. Lee pressed his hands to Cynthia’s stomach, and she leaned into him. Lee’s smell: roll-on deodorant, hours-ago coffee. Wrapped around his balancing-act wife, Lee kissed the veins that bulged out the side of her neck.

  Chapped lips, wrinkled skin.

  A wound, gaping.

  In the parking lot outside Lucinda Hayes’s funeral, Detective Williams plays a game on his flip phone.

  Of course, Russ isn’t supposed to be here. But Detective Williams had nodded schemingly at Russ on his way out of the building, gesturing for him to follow like he was bestowing Russ with some cosmic honor. Russ almost reminded the detective that his brother-in-law was a suspect, but he kept his mouth shut and followed anyway. He found it interesting, detective work, in a temporary and provisional way: you could sit down for two hours and be fascinated by this, then you could go back to your everyday world. Your house and its stained carpet. You didn’t have to live inside this.

  There’s a catch, Detective Williams says, distracted from his game of Tetris by the slow exodus of mourners from the funeral home.

  And what’s that? Russ asks.

  We can’t call him a suspect, Detective Williams says, but we still have to look productive. Make a bit of a stink. The chief has made it clear, we have to look like we’re doing som
ething.

  It’s a funeral, Russ says.

  It’s over, Detective Williams says, gesturing to the people as they file out.

  Ines is inside with the other mourners, wearing a black cotton dress she bought at a garage sale. She did her hair all curly and nice, bunched at the nape of her neck. Russ sighs. Regrets it. He is bigger on the inhale.

  Russ has not seen Cynthia in years. Only a glimpse, a few summers ago, as she pushed a bright-red cart through the Target on Elm Street. Cynthia browsed the cereal aisle, flipping boxes upside down to look for price tags. Russ had the perverse urge to approach her, but instead he bought shaving cream and a box of Oreos for Ines. Double Stuf.

  He drove home. Stopped at the light on Elm Street, Russ thought of Cynthia’s hands—how delicate they’d looked as she pulled her beat-up purse farther up her shoulder and placed an off-brand jar of pasta sauce in the cart. Had they always been so fragile? You’d think Russ would remember a detail like this. But after so many nights around tables—eating and drinking, Russ sliding accidentally into the lava core of Lee and Cynthia’s marriage—Russ can still recall her smell. Hand-sewn bags of lavender and rice, which she’d heat in the microwave and rest across the hump of her neck.

  Now, Cynthia walks out of Maplewood Memorial. She wears an oversized ski coat. Pastel purple, browned at the sleeves from years of wear, with a collage of ski tickets dangling from the zipper. How does Cynthia look: a wilted daisy.

  And it’s too late. Russ has seen the boy. Cameron is in that awful crux, the period of teenage disaster you never believe you’ll grow out of. He’s too long, sandy hair hanging in greasy clumps. Oily skin, that curved beak of a nose. Greenish-hazel eyes, too close together. Russ looks away, but already his heart fights some battle—to hate or protect, to hold or to hurt? How does Cameron look: just like his father.

  When Cynthia was eight months pregnant with Cameron, Russ and Lee went out to Dixie’s Tavern. A freezing night, between Christmas and New Year’s.