Girl in Snow Page 6

  Cameron had lots of different Collections, all hidden on the top shelf of his closet. The Collection of Pencil Bodies, the Collection of Pens, the Collection of Photos from When Mom Was Young. The only one hidden in his head was the Collection of Statue Nights—this was his favorite Collection, because it was full of Lucinda.

  Cameron didn’t hide the diary because he was afraid of getting caught.

  He simply didn’t want to ruin her.

  Mom was always tired after work. Her days were long, because she spent them arguing with bored old women about the price of yarn and cutting fabric against the special measuring tape at the craft store.

  Tonight, the refrigerator door whooshed open and closed. The silverware drawer rattled the forks and the knives. Cameron listened until Mom knocked softly on his bedroom door.

  “Why are you on the floor?” Mom said, creaking it open.

  She held a plastic plate of apples cut into smiley faces, with a glob of organic peanut butter scraped onto the rim.

  “I made you a snack,” Mom said. “Come outside. You look like you need some air.”

  Cameron put on his coat and hat and followed Mom to the driveway. They sat on the drying porch steps. Mom’s jacket was pastel purple. She’d worn it every winter as long as Cameron could remember, and her hat was a striped department-store beanie. It didn’t look very warm.

  “I know this has been a hard day,” Mom said.

  She bit into an apple slice. Cameron loved to watch people eat fruit. Peaches, especially, looked like kisses. Sloppy and sticky.

  “I need to talk to you,” Mom said. “About last night. When Lucinda”—she tilted her face up to the sky and closed her eyes, like when she had a headache—“when Lucinda was killed. Remember how Principal Barnes pulled me aside when I came to pick you up today?”

  “Yes.”

  “He asked if you were home last night. I told him you were. The police asked us to go in to the station, but I wanted to talk to you first.

  “Cameron, honey, look at me,” she said. “You weren’t home last night.”

  Cameron tried to take her words and form them into a shape he could better understand: You weren’t home. If he wasn’t home, and Lucinda was dead—Mom would never lie.

  “I was home,” Cameron said.

  “I was so afraid of this,” Mom said. She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I heard a noise from your room. You weren’t there, but the window was open. I know you’ve done this before—walking around at night. I chose not to worry.”

  Cameron coughed, because it felt like the logical thing to do.

  “Mom, I was home.”

  “Sweetie.”

  He couldn’t look at Mom, because he could tell from the way her head was bowed that she was crying. He’d dragged her out to the driveway and made her say those horrible words—You weren’t home; you weren’t. Cameron felt the beginning of Tangled coming on. His head could barely hold itself up; his insides were swollen and angry. The perimeters of his vision were a dusk, his breath like cement in his chest. He pressed the heel of his hand so hard into the sidewalk that the tiny bits of gravel lodged themselves in his skin, sending stinging lines of pain through his whole arm, and he felt a little better.

  “Where was I?” Cameron said.

  “I was hoping you could tell me that,” Mom said.

  “I don’t remember,” Cameron told her, and this was the truth.

  “You can’t have forgotten,” she said. “It was only last night.”

  “I don’t remember anything,” Cameron said, and he couldn’t tell from Mom’s face—which was the most scared and pitying he’d ever seen—whether she believed him.

  Mom’s nose was dripping, a small river above her mouth, but she did not move to wipe it. She picked up Cameron’s sticky hand and interlaced her feathery fingers with his. Cameron was embarrassed because he was too old for things like this, but he liked the feeling too much to let go. It was like someone had pressed a shaky bow to a violin string and played one long, vibrating note through his ribcage and through hers. They were both very still.

  Cameron had not consciously let himself cry in nearly three years, because he was afraid of the floodgate: once he started, he’d never be able to stop. So instead of crying, Cameron let the sadness spread across the inside of his throat, let it melt into his glands, burning thick. He and Mom were both hunched over, they were numb on the drying concrete outside the beige house, they were clinging to one another so tight their palms were sore. This sort of grief was unbearable, but it was nice to share it with someone, even if it made his neck impossibly heavy.

  Cameron had considered keeping his Collections in Dad’s closet instead, because Mom would never go inside. It was down the hall, outside their bedroom. The closet smelled like Dad: worn leather, the pages of the morning newspaper. Dad’s closet was the place Cameron went when he was most Tangled—since Dad left, Cameron had gone into his closet only twice, when the missing felt too big. He’d stood among scratchy shirts and pants folded on hangers, wondering how it felt to put on these clothes every day, how it felt to be someone bad.

  The Collection of People Who Did Terrible Things was a manila folder. On principle, Dad belonged in there, even though Cameron felt so morbid sticking him in with Andrea Yates.

  Everything started with Andrea Yates. You hear about that woman from Texas who killed her own kids? someone said in class. Drowned them all in the bathtub. Thought she was saving them from the devil.

  Cameron had looked it up on the family computer. He printed everything he could find: news articles, blog forums, family photos. He simply wanted to know how such a love had been chronicled, to possess it somehow, if only to feel sad for the dead kids and sad for the husband and even sad for Andrea Yates. Even though it made him nauseous, looking at all the terrible things this woman had done, he wanted every detail. He wanted to know what the kids ate for breakfast that day, what they were wearing, and how the husband felt when he found all their tiny bodies laid out on the king-sized bed. If the kids had shampoo in their mouths, if it bubbled between their baby teeth, if they tried to scream but only gurgled. If Andrea Yates did something so awful for love. If you could count a love like that—five gangly bodies, soaked in murky water that leaked through to the mattress. One was an infant, he read. He wondered how a love like that drowned. Or worse, how it dried.

  So the Collection of People Who Did Terrible Things began with Andrea Yates, and once he started looking at all that, the rest of the collection came quickly and with the same burning curiosity. Next was the sorority-house murderer from the South. Then, Jack the Ripper. And in the back of the folder, Dad.

  With the Collection of People Who Did Terrible Things spread out on the floor, Cameron started to feel Tangled. He pulled the eraser from his pocket and kneaded it against his palm until it was pancake flat. His thoughts were like cartoon hummingbirds, making circles around his head, pecking at his earlobes, nudging his shoulders. They wouldn’t leave him be. Usually, he was thankful for their company, but Lucinda’s diary was in his closet, and she was dead, and here Cameron was, sitting on the floor with Dad and Andrea Yates.

  Cameron popped the screen out of his bedroom window and let the February air lick his cheeks.

  The neighborhood was dim with shock. Snow, mostly gone. Lucinda died last night, and shadows seemed longer. Headlights were blinding. Cameron observed from his invisible places.

  The Hansens were watching television. Their faces sagged, blue light flickering against their gooey skin.

  Mr. Thornton sat alone in the living-room armchair, baby Ollie’s toys scattered across the rug. Usually he would walk the dog around this time of night, pulling the bright-blue retractable leash from a hook by the door. When Mr. Thornton clipped the leash onto the dog’s collar, Cameron always started walking home; he did not like to share the shadowed street’s refuge. But tonight, the dog was sleeping by Mr. Thornton’s feet. He’d left one light on—the stained-
glass lamp in the far corner of the living room. It threw his details into silhouette: the ridge of his suit jacket, still pressed. The folds of his ironed shirt. The tie, hanging around his neck like an abandoned noose.

  Once, the school counselor asked Cameron if he was happier on his own than with other people. This was a dumb question. Other people were not trying desperately to stay Untangled, they were not thinking about their Collections and the complexities of the bodies within, or about Lucinda Hayes and the individual strands of her hair with little glands at the tips, secreting waxy oil. They were not picturing Rayna Rae’s hipbones in the centerfold, or the flat space between those hipbones, like the clean inside of a marble sink. Even when Cameron was with other people, he was alone, and this made him feel both cosmically lucky and useless to the world.

  Lucinda was dead, and the fact settled over the houses like last night’s snow. It fell gently at first, and soon it would melt carelessly into the way of things. But not for Cameron: Lucinda was dead, and the reminder slapped him constantly, freezing ocean waves against his thighs. He could only wade deeper. Deeper, until the truth bubbled into his mouth, salty, miserable. Deeper, until it was pointless to search for shorelines because he knew Lucinda would not be standing on them.

  Day

  Two

  THURSDAY

  FEBRUARY 17, 2005

  Jade

  Cameron pulls an apple out of a paper bag. Bites into it, tentative. Even from the courtyard, I recognize that familiar self-consciousness as he sits alone at a table by the window.

  People have been whispering about it all day: the cops are just looking for evidence now. He was obsessed with Lucinda. Her stalker.

  I don’t think it was like that, with Cameron and Lucinda. They were friends. Really. And those people don’t know how he looked, standing pathetic on her back lawn every night. Melted gazes. Adoring.

  Once, I heard Beth shrieking some ridiculous taunt about Cameron—she and Lucinda were walking arm in arm down the science hallway when Cameron passed with his head down. “Psychopath,” Beth hissed, loud enough for him to hear. Cameron camouflaged himself easily, disappearing nimbly into the swarm of students.

  Lucinda stopped walking, wriggled her arm free, and pulled her notebook protectively to her chest; it had a printout of a Degas painting plastered to the front. A ballerina perched on a bench, tying silky ribbons, with a tutu sprouting from her fairy waist.

  “You don’t even know that kid,” Lucinda told Beth. “Leave him alone. He’s not crazy.”

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

  A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

  INT. JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL—CAFETERIA—NOON

  Celly approaches FRIEND (15, social pariah) at a cafeteria table. He looks up at the mass of her, doe-eyed.

  FRIEND

  (startled)

  Uh. Hi.

  CELLY

  We met yesterday. In the principal’s office.

  FRIEND

  I-I know.

  CELLY

  Can I sit?

  Friend stuffs his half-eaten apple into its paper bag, blushing as Celly sits across from him.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  I’m not going to tell on you. For what I saw the other night.

  FRIEND

  (stammering)

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  CELLY

  The night Lucinda died. I saw you on her lawn. I always see you there.

  FRIEND

  I don’t—

  CELLY

  It’s okay. You didn’t kill her.

  Friend looks around, then into his lap.

  FRIEND

  You don’t even know me.

  CELLY

  I’ve got this theory, you know. Every person is just a conglomeration of observations and insights. You can’t ever know someone, not really. Anyway, I don’t think you would hurt Lucinda.

  Friend swallows, hard.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  I’ve observed. You’re not the only one capable of watching people.

  Friend stands up quickly, crumpling his paper bag into a ball. He looks back at Celly.

  FRIEND

  Thanks, I think.

  Friend rushes away, leaving Celly alone. She laughs, shaking her head.

  CELLY

  God help me if I’ve turned into an optimist.

  I don’t approach Cameron. Instead, I sit under the tree in the courtyard, tracing a smelly chemical Sharpie over my tattoo. A dragon with a spiky tail and swirls of fire.

  Chapter Two of Modern Witchcraft is all about signs from the dead. You get three signs if someone is contacting you from the afterlife: the Image, the Dream, and the Token.

  A man in Oklahoma lost his wife to a serial killer. She sent him these three signs, over and over again, which he recorded carefully on his blog: the Image, the Dream, the Token. The Image, the Dream, the Token. Signs from the dead, he blogged, are really just signs from your own mind. It isn’t possible. They continued, in sets of three, until the man in Oklahoma finally called the cops. Surely someone was fucking with him.

  The cops found him hanging from the ceiling fan, one of his wife’s old-lady nightgowns wrapped around his neck. From the placement of the noose, they confirmed it was not a suicide. But all the doors to the house were locked from the inside.

  When I first read this chapter I was sitting in my bed, on top of a mountain of dirty T-shirts, reading by the light of my chamomile candle. Everything in my bedroom was suddenly a sign: My moon charts. Troll dolls with wiry pink hair. My obituary collection. My collection of rocks that look like other things (hearts, dogs, Jesus). The Image, the Dream, the Token. The Image: a visual representation of the deceased. The Dream: just as it sounds. And the Token: something of yours that the deceased has claimed for themselves. How can you be sure to recognize a sign when it comes? A fist knotted in my chest—a silly, paranoid fear.

  My only reprieve: I’d never known someone who died.

  The first magic spell I did was on Amy. I wanted her home from school so Ma wouldn’t notice if I cut class, so I mixed a bag of herbs and hid it in Amy’s laundry, just like Modern Witchcraft said to do. The next day, she woke up with a fever. I promised never to practice magic again. Of course, that only lasted so long.

  The warning bell rings, and I leave the second half of my peanut-butter sandwich under the courtyard tree so the birds can pick at the remains. On my way out, I consider going over to Cameron’s table, playing out this unlikely scenario I’ve imagined. But real life doesn’t swell like that, in waves you can predict as they roll, as they peak. Neither does love. I don’t know how love goes, but my guess? Something else altogether. Avalanche.

  Everyone talks about Zap too, of course. But by default, he isn’t as suspicious as Cameron—Zap is not awkward or greasy or small. No, Zap shines too bright for that sort of public contempt. In a year and a half, we’ll all be graduated, and Zap will be at some big college, playing soccer. Though I’ve vowed not to think about college until next year, when I have to—writing scholarships are hard to get, and Terry doesn’t make enough money to send me anywhere good—I find some relief in this image. We’ll all be in dorm rooms, drinking cheap beer, with shiny new lives. Maybe in the muddle of distance and time, everyone will remember Zap for who he really is.

  I have witnessed Zap’s truest cruelty. I’ve seen the slate gray of him.

  I’ve seen hatred in Zap Arnaud’s eyes—and I’ve deserved it all.

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

  A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

  INT. JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL—MUSIC WING—AFTERNOON

  Celly sits on a piano bench in the corner of the practice room, instruments strewn around the space. BOY (17, lanky and handsome) wipes the mouthpiece of his shiny trombone with a clean white rag.

  Celly watches him.

  CELLY

  Remember when we were little, and heartbreak was
something reserved for pop songs and dead pets?

  Boy doesn’t react.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  When we were so young and stupid, when we could spend all day exploring a patch of grass in an open field, digging for bugs—

  BOY

  I remember.

  Celly waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. Instead, Boy packs his trombone in its case, locking it away.

  CELLY

  You recognize me, don’t you? We’re still those kids. Sure, we do fewer whipped-cream-eating contests. Less whispering in each other’s ears. But it’s still us.

  Boy looks back at her before he walks out of the room.

  CELLY (CONT’D)

  It will always be us.

  Zap and Lucinda ended just before Christmas. Two months ago. At least, that was the word around school. They’d never been official—just rumors here and there—but Zap was free now. The girls talked about it in the locker room after gym class. I stayed in the corner, fighting to get my jeans over my legs, which were still damp from the shower. Heard she dumped him, someone said. She wouldn’t even tell him why.

  Zap’s last class of the day was band. He plays the trombone. This is a new addition, a school requirement I think he secretly enjoys. Once, I saw sheet music sticking out of his backpack: a cover of a pop song for trombone. I imagined Zap sitting in his bedroom with a foldable music stand, lips vibrating against a frigid mouthpiece.

  That day, I lingered in the music hallway, a textbook in my arms, neck craned like I was searching for someone. I wasn’t. Through the window of the practice room, Zap disassembled the trombone into a long, padded case, wiping out the mouthpiece with a clean white rag. I took a few deep breaths and clicked open the door, holding the textbook in front of me like an excuse.