Tainted Frost, page 13
“What about you?” he asks. “What do you wanna be?”
“I don’t know. I always wanted to be a teacher, but I haven’t given it much thought lately.”
“I can see you doing that. You’d put a quote on the board every day before class to inspire the kids.” He squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. I wish we didn’t have gloves on.
“I would so do that. I would put ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do,’ on the first day.”
“Yeah, that would really inspire the kids to break all the rules.”
I swat him with my free hand. “Hey! That’s not what that quote means.”
He laughs. “It would be completely misinterpreted, you know that. The kids would go on a rampage. Pure chaos.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll pick another quote for the kids.”
“Give them that one when they’re older.”
I nod. His face is shadowed as the sun sinks deeper behind the mountains. It will set soon. In a distant part of my mind, I realize that I’m shivering from the cold, but it doesn’t bother me at all.
“We should get going,” he says.
“Yeah.”
We clean up slowly, like neither of us is eager to get away just yet. Then we race each other to the snowmachine. I slip but Alex catches me before I hit the ground. He lifts me up. He brushes away a strand of hair stuck to my cheek.
“Your nose is red,” he says.
“So’s yours.”
His dark eyes study my face for a minute. I think that he will kiss me now, but, no, he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a step back toward the snowmachine, and I wonder why he won’t stay close to me for more than a moment. He puts on his helmet and gives me mine. He revs the engine and the growling sound rises up and knocks me back into the here and now.
On the ride back, I curve my arms around his waist and lean in as close to him as my puffy jacket will allow. I close my eyes and will the seconds to stretch into minutes, the minutes into hours.
Chapter 15
It’s been five days since my last nightmare. A new record. I wonder if Alex has played a part in making them stop. I feel so alive, so gloriously awake when I’m with him. It’s almost like I’m a new person.
The nightmares were always the same: Me, in the woods, running. Sometimes I was running toward my dad, my arms outstretched, but always when I reached him, he would disappear. Most of the time I was running away from something—something dark and heavy. Something that made my heart pound with dread so that I’d jerk awake in the middle of the night, clutching my blanket to my chest, breathing hard.
When my dad disappeared, I was hit with this heart-crushing sadness that I can’t even adequately put into words. I was so destroyed I could barely walk or move any part of my body. Even breathing took effort. It still does. I didn’t go to school for a month. Natalie and David came over a lot. They were hovering blurs on the periphery of my vision. But they were always there. Now, I am mostly just numb, on auto-pilot.
For too long I have been stuck here in this closed-off well, jagged rocks to the left of me, jagged rocks to the right, rancid water lapping at my ankles. I scratch at the walls, breaking my fingernails, desperate to get out. I look up to where I think my salvation is. I want to believe that Alex can take me there, push me through to the other side of the darkness, where there is light. I want to believe that so badly, especially now that he has entered my life again and brought some light with him. But, then again, it seems like too much to ask of one person. It’s not fair to give him that much responsibility.
When you realize how perfect everything is,
you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
It’s a Buddha quote painted in sky blue right above my window. When I first discovered it, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. It summed up exactly how I felt most of the time. Except for my unrequited crush on Alex, I often thought my life was as close to perfect as it could get. A part of me knows I will never be that carefree person again, and another part wants to keep fighting for her.
I’m standing at the dead-end of my street where the woods come out to meet me. It’s early morning, dark, and I’m alone. A breeze picks up and slips in through my jacket collar, blowing its cold breath against my neck, down my back. Everything is silent, everything still. The stripped trees stand guard at the hem of the forest. Tall and skinny and straight, sometimes they remind me of the solid metal bars of a jail cell, but the spaces between them are wide, and I remember slipping through them easily just a few months ago, going to look for my father.
I don’t remember being scared. It was more like an instinctual response rather than a conscious decision. Sheriff Bradley came to our house to announce that it had been two weeks, they had looked everywhere, and that they were going to stop. My mom just nodded, her eyes far away, unseeing. I felt a lump in my throat rise up, up, up, and my eyes sting with a thousand unshed tears—I still hadn’t let myself cry for him. As Sheriff Bradley spoke, I concentrated on his mouth moving, forming words I couldn’t hear, his big hands resting on the wooden table, his gold wedding ring catching the light from above. He had a family to go back to, a family that was waiting for him just like my mom and I were waiting for my dad, but he would go back to them even as he was telling us that my father was lost forever.
I left early the next morning while my mom was asleep. I went to the end of my street and stood at the threshold of the unknown, hesitating, remembering my grandmother’s voice all those years ago, warning me to stay away from the woods, and I walked in through the trees. I went again the next day, and the day after that, and the next and the next. On the sixth day I couldn’t get out of bed.
A car pulls up behind me, but I don’t turn around. I feel the pull of the forest, almost like a voice calling out to me, faint yet insistent. I hear a car door slam shut and footsteps coming near. Finally, I turn my head. Alex comes to stand beside me, hands in his pockets. He doesn’t look at me, instead looks ahead into the forest, brows furrowed. I turn my attention back to the woods and we just stand there for a while, side by side, not saying a word. I take a step forward, feeling that pull again.
“What are you thinking?” Alex asks.
“I went there, you know,” I say, taking another step forward. “After they stopped looking for my dad. I went into the woods to look for him. I went five times.”
“How far?” I hear him swallow. “How far did you go?”
“I don’t know. I just walked around for a long time. It’s not like I knew where I was going. I didn’t find anything.” I take a deep breath and close my eyes. “Sometimes I want to go back.” I hold my breath and keep my eyes closed, waiting for Alex’s response to this, because I’ve never admitted it to anyone else. Not even David or Natalie. No one knows I went into the forest to look for my dad. No one knows I still sometimes hold out hope that he’s alive. When Alex doesn’t say anything, I turn to look at him, and it’s like he’s somewhere else. His eyes seem to look beyond the trees, through them even. He looks haunted.
“Alex?”
He looks at me.
“You weren’t scared?”
I hug my arms around my body, suddenly cold. “Not really. I don’t remember feeling anything. I think I was running on adrenaline or something. One time I saw a bear. It was, like, fifty feet away from me. It sniffed at the air and then just went the other way. Another time…”
“What?”
I take a breath as the fuzzy image of those days slowly comes into focus. “There was a wolf. It appeared out of nowhere when I was heading for this clearing and it growled at me.”
“A wolf?”
“A gray one.”
“Was it in a pack?”
“No, just by itself. It growled at me and I turned back and when I looked again it was gone.”
He’s quiet for a while, studying my face with an expression I can’t really describe. “You’re shivering,” he says finally. “Come on, let’s go somewhere.”
With one last look at the woods, I follow him to his car. He drives to Jerry’s and gets out and holds my door open for me while I’m still fumbling with my seatbelt.
“Thanks,” I mumble, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. Jerry’s is nearly empty; most sane people are enjoying their winter break and sleeping in. I know what makes me rise so early in the morning, but I don’t know what demons are torturing Alex, and I feel uneasy about asking. We slide into a booth near the window and I shield my face with a menu; I still get nervous around him. I wonder if he’s heard the rumors about us.
After I’ve read the entire contents of the menu for the millionth time in my life, I sneak a peek at him over the top of it. He has his menu flat on the table in front of him and he’s studying it intently. Maybe he’s nervous, too. A lock of hair falls over his forehead; he presses his lips together once in a while like he’s deep in thought. I look at his forearms, browned slightly by the winter sun, tense with muscle, and his fingers, long and lean and strong.
“What are you gonna order?” he asks, looking up suddenly. I duck behind my menu. “Um, I don’t know. I usually order the same thing every time. It’s a bad habit.”
“I do that, too. Scrambled eggs, toast, bacon and sausage. Coffee, black. And that’s it.” He snaps his fingers.
“Hmm, good choice. But not better than blueberry waffles and tea with milk, four sugars.”
“Four sugars? Are you crazy?”
“Shut up. Sugar makes everything better.”
He shakes his head, laughing. “You’re definitely crazy, Monroe.”
“Whatever,” I say, but I’m smiling. We order and put the menus away and look at each other.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say back. He looks straight into my eyes in this unnerving way and I force myself to look away. I take a packet of sugar and twist it between my fingers. I tear the top edges off.
Smiling, he plucks the torn sugar packet from my hand, positions it out of my reach, then takes my hand in his, weaving his fingers through mine. “I missed you. Kinda.” He’s looking down at the tapestry of our fingers and not at me.
“Kinda? That’s promising.” I try to sound unconcerned, but my heart is thudding.
“You know what I mean.”
And I do. I feel the same way.
A tired-looking Lissa brings our food, unceremoniously dropping the plates down on the table, and our fingers unravel.
“I missed you, too,” I say. “Kinda.” I reach for the syrup and pour it over my waffles. We eat quietly for a while, our eyes on our plates as those three words—I missed you—settle like dust around us.
Finally, I work up the nerve to look at him, and he’s looking out the window with the same plaintive expression he had when he came and found me staring at the woods.
“Alex, is something wrong?”
He jerks his head at my words, like he’d forgotten I was there. But he recovers quickly, smoothing his hair off his forehead and smiling in a sheepishly endearing way that makes me smile right back.
“Sorry. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I just can’t sleep.” He takes a deep breath. “Listen,” he says and then stops.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“Is it about the rumors about us?” I blurt out, and instead of feeling embarrassed I am completely relieved. Finally, it’s out, and we can talk about it.
“The rumors?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you heard them?”
“I don’t really pay attention to rumors.”
“Oh.”
It’s quiet again. I stir my tea, the sound of the spoon clinking against the sides of the cup too loud in the silence. It happens again, that feeling of being disconnected, that sensation of floating out of my body, looking down at myself from above.
“You shouldn’t pay attention to them either,” he says. “It’s stupid. People just love to talk ‘cause they’re bored.”
I don’t respond. A part of me wants him to acknowledge the rumors, to make a definitive statement about what we are. Are we dating or not? Does he really like me? What is all of this about, really? But I don’t say a word.
“What are they saying anyway?” he asks.
“Just that we’re dating and stuff like that.” I refuse to add anything about the “making out like a couple of horny rabbits” part.
“Oh.” He looks down at his plate. I can feel every muscle in my body tense up, waiting, waiting for him to answer the unspoken question that seems practically to vibrate in the air like a plucked guitar string, but he says nothing. Outside, the sun squeezes through the clouds and pours its light through our window. It falls across Alex, picking up subtle violet and blue highlights in his hair. Just like on a raven’s feathers. I can’t believe I’d never noticed it before. I stare at it in awe.
“Your hair,” I say. “It has purple and blue streaks in it when the light hits it.” Without thinking, I reach over and take a lock of his hair between my fingers, stroking it the way I stroked the feather he left behind the other night. It’s surprisingly soft. He doesn’t move, but looks at me attentively, lips slightly parted as I rub my thumb across his dark strands. And then I realize what I’m doing and pull my hand back. Heat swarms through me. It’s weird to touch him like that, like he’s mine, when he’s clearly not. I’m surprised at myself because I’m usually not that bold.
He blinks a few times, shakes his head, like he’s coming out of one of those sweet, consuming daydreams, the ones that make you lose complete track of time, and I wonder if he felt anything at my touch, if his heart started beating hard, if his stomach knotted up. It almost makes me laugh to think that he might feel what I feel. For the longest time even fantasizing that he might one day like me back seemed ridiculous. Now, though, it seems strangely, beautifully, wonderfully possible. He smiles slightly. “Yeah, I know. It’s like raven feathers,” he says, pushing his hair back with his hand. “It’s weird.”
“Yeah, Romanov, that is the weirdest thing about you.”
“Shut it, Monroe.”
“You shut it, Romanov.” I stick my tongue out at him like I’m a third grader. He just laughs, and I stick my tongue out again while simultaneously crossing my eyes, loving that I can be my silly self with him, loving that I can make him laugh. All my life I’ve wanted so much to be cool, to be that fearless girl who believes she can do anything, who has confidence gleaming off her skin, like Marina, and now that I’m making the coolest boy in school laugh and hang on my every word, it’s like I’m getting a little taste of what cool is. And it’s delicious. Maybe this is what ambrosia tastes like.
“You’re too cute,” he says, and my brain does that thing when it repeats his exact words, with the precise inflection and everything, over and over. I casually take a bite of my waffle. “Well, you’re kinda cute, I guess,” I tell him. “But not too cute.”
“I guess I’ll settle for kinda, then. I don’t wanna be too anything.”
“Yeah, right.” I scoff. “You don’t wanna be too smart? Or too rich? Or too awesome?”
“Nah. Too is always bad. Balance in everything.”
“That could be a quote. I could put it on my wall.”
“Maybe you should.” He grins. “But make sure you write my name under it. Don’t try to claim it as your own.”
“Oh, whatever, you probably stole it from somewhere.”
He sticks a straw between his lips. “Maybe.” He looks very dashing like that, debonair. I can imagine him on a red carpet somewhere, light bulbs flashing in his face, people screaming and chanting his name. The sunlight catches the iridescent streaks in his hair again, and I’m reminded that he’s not really human, not completely. It fills me with a sense of purpose. I have to undo this knot of mystery that is his whole existence, unwind and untangle it until it loosens.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” I say.
He hesitates, like he knows that question is always followed by another question that you really don’t want to answer. “Sure,” he says finally.
“Well, okay. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I’ve been reading up on some Tlingit mythology, um, about Raven, and I was just wondering if maybe you had some Tlingit blood in you?”
“Not that I know of. Why, what have you been reading?”
“Just like some of the old stories, you know? In one of the stories it says that Raven could change form into anything, even a blade of grass, and it made me think of you and how you can change form. I mean, it would make sense if the whole reason you’re able to shape-shift is because you have Tlingit blood and it comes from that. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”
He rubs the back of his neck, looking away. “I guess.”
“Don’t you ever talk about it, like, with your dad?” As soon as the word “dad” leaves my mouth, Alex leans back, away from me, shifting from side to side, unable to find a comfortable position on the squeaky vinyl seat. He runs a hand over his face and looks out the window. I almost wish I hadn’t said anything, but I’m itching for answers, and I feel that I rightfully deserve them, because you don’t just fly into someone’s window in the middle of the night and change from bird to human without giving them a very thorough and detailed explanation as to how that’s possible.
“I told you,” he says. “My dad doesn’t tell me anything. You don’t think I’ve tried to get some information out of him? I’m just as curious as you. Hell, I’m more curious because I’m the one it actually happens to.” He exhales and leans his head back so rapidly it bangs against the back of the seat. “Ow,” he mutters, but doesn’t move his head. He keeps it thrown back like that while I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down with every swallow.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I take it all back.”
He looks at me through narrowed eyes. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. Didn’t mean to blow up on you like that.” He leans forward, putting his elbows on the table. “So, what else have you learned? I’m not too familiar with any of those legends. I mean, I know about Raven obviously, but not all the stories.”
