Girl in Snow Read online

  Shock is just sadness that hasn’t reached the gut.

  Of course, I already know that Lucinda Hayes is dead.

  I find out before school this morning, over a naked Toaster Strudel. Ma throws away the frosting packets so we won’t get fat, leaving our strudels an unassuming brown, bare oven tracks running across their backs.

  “Sit down, girls,” Ma says. She taps ash from her cigarette into the kitchen sink. A hiss. In the morning, the wrinkles on Ma’s face are canyons.

  Amy totters to the kitchen table and swings her gigantic purse onto my chair. Amy recently decided backpacks were immature for a seventh-grader, so she carries a brown faux-leather purse instead. Her math textbook is so heavy she walks with a limp.

  “It’s about Lucinda,” Ma says. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. She’s—she’s passed away.” Ma sighs in her pitying way (usually reserved for the post-office attendant and the boy in Amy’s class with recurrent cancer).

  Amy’s bottom lip quakes. Then a shrill, gravelly cry. She stands dramatically and backs into the sliding door, spreading her pink-painted fingernails against the glass and suctioning them there like starfish.

  Ma puts out her cigarette on a pizza-stained paper plate and crouches in her sweat pants next to Amy, who slides to the floor. Ma strokes her hair, unknotting the tangles inconspicuously.

  “I’m so sorry, honey. They’ll make an announcement at school today.”

  Ma is sorry for Amy. She is not sorry for me. I’ve never cried like that, so frantic and choked. I’m not trying to be brave or stoic or anything. I’ve just never liked anyone enough. Ma knows this. She glares at me, Amy’s head still in the crook of her elbow. A runny line of snot drips from Amy’s nose onto Ma’s freckled arm.

  “Jesus, Jade,” she says, shifting her gaze to my stomach, which pudges out from the bottom of my Crucibles T-shirt, bare under my unzipped army parka. “Go put on a real shirt. You’re taking your sister to school today.”

  I lean over the kitchen counter, resting my elbows on an outdated phone book.

  Emotions shouldn’t have names. I don’t know why we bother talking about them, because emotions are never what they’re supposed to be. You could say I feel ecstatic, or guilty, or disgusted with myself. You could say all of the above. Amy sobs, but I identify only this foreign lightness: like someone has sucked the weight from my legs, taken the terrible thoughts out of my head, softened some sharpness jabbing at my ribs. I don’t know.

  It’s so calm.

  “Are you even human?” Amy asks.

  Madison Middle School is a rectangle in the distance.

  “Alien,” I say. “Surprise.”

  “You’re not even sad.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not. Ma says you have serious issues with ‘empathy’ and ‘self-control’ and ‘sad tendencies.’ ”

  “The word is ‘sadistic,’ ” I tell her.

  “Lucinda is dead,” she says, “and you don’t even care.”

  Amy hitches up her purse and her leopard-print coat spreads open in the front. Amy wears a 32AA bra, and no matter how she is feeling, Amy is always quite cute. It’s the product of a fortunate combination: Amy’s red hair and the millions of freckles that dot her cheeks like grains of sand.

  “It’s pretty fucked up, Jade,” she says. She pauses before the word “fucked” to consider. “We’ve known her our whole lives, and now she’s dead, and you’re not even pretending to be sad.”

  I pump the tip of my tongue through the silver loop in my lip. I do this when I want someone to stop talking. It always works.

  Amy stomps ahead, hugging herself close, shoulders bobbing as she stifles more sobs. Always the drama queen. She’s never been close with Lucinda, only Lucinda’s little sister, Lex. When we were young, Ma subjected us to weekly playdates—Lex and Amy would spend hours playing princesses in the Hayeses’ basement, while Lucinda and I were forced to sit there awkwardly until Ma came to pick us up. Lucinda would braid friendship bracelets, and I would read comic books, and we’d pointedly ignore each other while our sisters played make-believe. Lex and Amy used to be inseparable, but now they only hang out when Ma arranges it.

  I wonder how Amy would feel if I died. Maybe she’d sleep in my bed some nights. Maybe she’d make a blanket out of my old T-shirts, which she’d keep in a box to show her children once they turned sixteen. Maybe she’d feel relieved. I’m suddenly aware of the ten feet of space between us, the four sections of sidewalk that separate Amy and me. I almost run to catch up with her. But just as unexpectedly as it comes, the desire passes again, leaving a faint, pulsing hatred somewhere I can’t touch.

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

  A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

  EXT. PINE RIDGE DRIVE—BROOMSVILLE, COLORADO—EARLY MORNING

  CELLY (17, slouched, dyed black hair), and SISTER (13, her opposite), walk to school. Celly hums a bouncy, upbeat song.

  SISTER

  Are you even human?

  CELLY

  Alien, surprise.

  SISTER

  You’re not even sad.

  CELLY

  No, I’m not.

  SISTER

  That’s fucked up.

  CELLY

  How can you claim to be sad? You barely even knew her.

  SISTER

  Who cares how well I knew her? It’s not a popularity contest.

  CELLY

  Everything is a popularity contest. This sadness you’re referring to. I know how it looks. You’ll go to school today and you’ll accept knowing hugs from all your pretty little friends. You’ll tell them how Lucinda let you borrow her nail polish once, five years ago.

  Sister walks faster, away from Celly.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  No one will call bullshit on you. All your pretty little friends will cluster around, trying to get closer to the wound.

  Sister turns a sharp corner, nearly running now. Celly calls out after her.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  (louder)

  You’ll smile in spite of yourself. The teachers will let you skip your assignments. Tell me it’s not a popularity contest. Tell me, Sister. Go ahead.

  Sister practically sprints up the school’s front steps. Celly stops walking and watches her sister disappear into the building.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  (sotto)

  Tell me about my sadness.

  Zap used to have a constellation map taped to his ceiling. I would lie on his bed and stare at all the black space between pinpoint stars, thinking how half an inch on the poster was a million miles in reality. I would imagine floating through space on a continual supply of fake oxygen. That way, you could forget that back on earth there’s this stunted, superficial way of existence. I think about this as I try to tune out the girls by the mirror—about how living would feel without air, and how that non-air would feel without people. Quiet.

  “I heard Zap went home. Didn’t say anything, just walked right out after first period.”

  “He must be so devastated.”

  I flush the toilet to let the girls know I’m there. It doesn’t make a difference. They carry on, their voices like roosters crowing, waking me from a zombie sleep. I focus on the frayed laces of my fat black shoes until the door swings open—a sliver of chatter slips into the bathroom from the crowded hall outside. The door shuts. Cavernous silence.

  Zap loved that poster. His favorite constellation was Libra, because it looked like a kite, which reminded him of when he was little and he lived in Paris. He remembered the Seine, he said—he had this red-and-blue-checkered kite he flew down by the riverbank on summer days. He gave me a seashell years ago, from a beach on the French Riviera where he’d gone on vacation. One day, we’ll get out of here, he told me. It’s a big world out there; you’ll see. The shell is a rippled beige, shaped like an ear. I used to keep it under my pillow.

  His name isn’t really Zap, of course. It’s Ed
ouard, pronounced with the emphasis on the second half. His parents are French—they both moved to America at eighteen. They met in the French Undergraduate Society at Yale and they’ve been in love ever since—real love. Mr. Arnaud buys Mrs. Arnaud flowers on his way home from work, and sometimes they hold hands in public. His mom is like a woodland creature, slight and green-eyed.

  No one can pronounce “Edouard”—he’s gone by “Zap” since the fourth grade, because one day he came to school dressed in a gigantic lightning-bolt costume he’d made from a cardboard refrigerator box. It was the week after the flash flood of ’98, which killed three people in Longmont, the next town over. He painted the lightning bolt yellow and harnessed it on with a pair of suspenders. All day he went around saying zap, zap, zap, passing out fun-sized candy bars. He was a force of nature, he said, but the kind that brought joy instead of harm. I thought this was so great. Everyone did. After school, he and I went to the field behind my house and watched the clouds roll toward the mountains in surrender.

  That summer, Mrs. Arnaud brought hot chocolate in thermoses and Mr. Arnaud carried the camping gear—we set up sleeping bags in the middle of the field to watch meteor showers. Scratchy grass poked through nylon. It was too cloudy to see any meteors, but we didn’t care. The sleeping bags smelled like the Arnauds’ house: Laundry detergent. Christmas candles. We laid on our backs, and Zap recited all these useless facts about outer space, like did you know you can see only fifty-nine percent of the moon’s surface from our shit spot down on earth?

  Thinking about Zap makes me sick. I bend over the toilet and make a series of violent gagging noises. They sound forced. Someone opens the bathroom door, hears me, and leaves again. Nothing comes up.

  At the sink, I debate splashing water on my face, but I’m wearing too much makeup. The black around my eyes will smudge—it will look like I’ve been crying, and I can’t cry today. My eyeliner is extra dense, just the way Ma hates it.

  Usually, I avoid mirrors. But today I’m hoping that the sight of my own body will help me place myself in the newly shifted universe. My arms are still doughy. My skin is still sickly white. Pustules burst from every surface, despite Ma’s prescription medication and my monthly trips to the dermatologist. Stop picking, Ma always says, but I like the way my skin peels. I like exposing the red, glistening part underneath.

  Russ

  Why did you become a cop?

  It happened when Russ was a child, he says. An incredible act of violence. He refuses the details. People nod sympathetically, but Russ takes no satisfaction in that head shake—awe, respect, the necessary driblet of pity.

  In truth, Russ became a cop because he couldn’t afford college and he had been told about the benefits of carrying a gun.

  Russ gets the call at 5:41 a.m.

  Hello? he says.

  His teeth are fuzzy with sleep’s film.

  Russ, the lieutenant says, crackly in the speaker, we’ve got a body.

  Russ picks yesterday’s boxer shorts off the floor. Wriggles them on. Usually, he would roll over Ines on the way to the bathroom—he allows himself three seconds of that familiar warmth, hot salt skin beneath her ratty cotton nightshirt. Ines always sleeps through this, so Russ takes some time to hate himself in the shower as he lathers his body with dollar soap.

  Today, Russ rolls out of bed on his own side.

  We’ve got a body. Russ has never heard these words before. Well—in cop shows. Thriller movies. And of course, he heard these words in his head all through recruitment, through his time at the department’s local academy, and all through training for the Broomsville police force. Back when his job still glimmered with potential, before he knew he’d be spending ninety percent of it watching cars whiz past at five over the speed limit.

  By 5:54, Russ is in his squad car, radio stuttering. It’s still night. His hands are numb and the steering wheel is icy leather.

  Russ runs his tongue over his teeth. Regrets it. Plaque: his mother used to say it like a swearword, the corners of her lips turned down in disgust. He has forgotten to brush.

  6:03 a.m., and Russ is the last to arrive.

  The body is at the elementary school. All five patrol cars are parked in the middle of the street like they’ve been washed from the curb in an apocalyptic flood; fire truck and ambulance flash red across the intersection. Russ parks on the corner and his tires squeak, packing down snow. A layer of new slush mars the concrete.

  Fletcher, someone says when Russ approaches. It took Russ months to adjust to this form of address. Fletcher was his father. Even after a year on the force, it didn’t register in his memory. Fletcher! someone would call, and Russ would keep typing case reports like no one needed him.

  Now, the team is clustered around the playground carousel. They rub their eyes, bleary from the early-morning call: Sergeant Capelli, Lieutenant Gonzalez, Detective Williams, and all five patrol officers. They stand in a tight circle at the center of the black morning, backlit by a film of gray at the horizon where the sun will eventually rise.

  Detective Williams ushers Russ forward, hands shoved in his pockets, asking what took him so long, he’s got to see this—it’s pretty bad, they found her like that, go take a look.

  The body belongs to a young girl. Fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. She is covered in a thin membrane of fresh snow, and her skin is jaundiced in the glow of CSI’s spotlight. Blood and snow have frozen together on one side of her head (blond, the few untouched pieces of hair by her scalp). Her neck is broken, twisted to the side at a decrepit angle. The girl’s eyes are closed—postmortem, Russ thinks, because the snow has been wiped from her forehead with clumsy hands. She wears a purple skirt and black, sparkly tights, flecks of glitter dotting the nylon.

  Later, Russ will see photos of this girl, alive, and she will look like teenagers he used to know. Like the girls he and his school friends thought about when they jerked off in the early afternoon, listening anxiously for the grumble of the garage door. Child hips.

  Lucinda Hayes, someone says from behind.

  It’s Detective Williams. He puts a hairy hand on Russ’s shoulder and continues: The family reported her missing late last night. Heard something in the yard, parents checked, she wasn’t in her bed. The body matches the description. We’ll need you and the boys to stay here, secure the scene after Medical is done. Then take a walk around the neighborhood. Knock on some doors, ask around.

  This your first body?

  Russ doesn’t answer. He looks down at the dead girl again. She does not seem at peace. He thinks of Ines and how she sleeps, all those shifting positions; Ines has seven, maybe eight sleeping forms she cycles through each night, indecisive about what will bring her comfort. Nothing, it seems.

  The body—Lucinda Hayes—reminds Russ of his wife. She does not know how to position herself. Legs jut at an angle. She looks dissatisfied.

  Russ was barely twenty-one when he started his job. He’d spent the three years since high school on his parents’ couch, doing crunches on the carpet and waiting to be older. He attended the occasional criminal-justice class at the community college, and after dinner, his father drank scotch and told Russ about his own time in training. The sergeant pulled out the shadow box, with his old badge and his old gun, and he talked himself ruddy. When Russ’s father retired, the department had rolled out the infamous meat-and-cheese platter, an inexpensive champagne toast.

  When it finally came time, Russ passed all his tests at a mediocre level: civil service, written exam, oral board, psych evaluation, fitness test. Then, training, where he spent twenty weeks shadowing an older, more experienced patrol officer.

  His assignment was Lee Whitley—the pale, bony officer the rest of the patrol guys whispered about, the weakest member of the Broomsville Police Department. A man who’d been given four whole years to prove himself entirely unremarkable.

  Russ doesn’t allow the memories very often. But in these rare moments of reminiscence, Russ wonders if he always knew�
�somewhere locked and hidden away—what would come of Lee Whitley.

  They met outside the lieutenant’s office on Russ’s first day of training. A dreary afternoon, seventeen years ago—1988. Hair was bigger and cigarettes weren’t so bad, and they all wore faded denim with white, foamy sneakers.

  Lee was the skinniest thing. His gaze flitted down and to the left when he spoke. Bulky nose, turned-in feet. Hazel eyes with pinprick pupils. His concave chest made a hollow sound when you slapped it in jest.

  Okay, Russ said, and that was all he could manage.

  Okay, Lee said back.

  Russ thumped him on the back in that jovial young-man way. Lee coughed. A crooked, impish smile. Lee crushed a paper cup in his hands, and dregs of instant coffee ran down his elbow. Russ liked him then, this scrawny pup trying to look big as coffee made its sluggish descent down his forearm.

  And so it began: this brilliant, unlikely pair. Both too aware that this partnership, just minutes in, had already begun to expand into some slippery shape, water on a hardwood floor, an ever-changing mass that neither could contain.

  Who found her? Russ asks one of the other patrol officers.

  The night janitor, the officer says, then uses his middle finger to point. Russ follows the arc of knuckle, though he already knows whom he will see.

  Sure enough. The night janitor.

  Ivan stands with one hand in the pocket of his janitor’s uniform. A cigarette dangles from the other. When Ivan puffs those massive lungs his breath is doubled and thick—nicotine, carbon dioxide. The glow of Ivan’s cigarette is a lively orange, flickering against a sea of black police jackets. Dismal gray snow. Russ is not surprised by Ivan’s presence on the playground. Ivan works the night shift at the elementary school—Ines asked Russ to pull some strings; Ivan was having such a hard time. So he did.

  Russ loves his wife very much. Quiet Ines. But Russ does not love her brother. In fact, Russ wishes, deeply and acutely, that Ivan did not exist.