The Snow (8 page)

Christina thought how the stairs narrowed on the third floor and the balcony tilted. “If we hide in pairs,” Christina shouted, “I want to be Dolly’s partner.”

“No way,” said Gretch, irked. “She belongs to me.”

“I’m with Gretchen,” Dolly agreed. “You stay with Katy, Christina.”

Katy hung her head. “You don’t have to stay with me, Christina,” she murmured. “You can find somebody else.”

Mrs. Shevvington looked at Christina. Every girl at the party could read that expression. Really, Christina — can’t you be nice to that poor, ugly, little fat girl for one evening?

They’ve won a round, Christina thought. They’re making me look like the bad guy when
they’re
the bad guys. “They’ll never find
us
, Katy,” said Christina. “I know all the best spots in the house. Stick with me! We’ll get that Murderer.” She lifted her chin, staring into Mr. Shevvington’s eyes, blue tonight. But Mr. Shevvington looked youthful and innocent, as if all he had in mind was a silly game in a silly house with silly girls.

But Mrs. Shevvington’s lips curled, like an animal preparing to eat raw meat. It’s her, Christina thought. She’s the dangerous one.

Mr. Shevvington explained the complex rules of Murder. They had to keep on the move, avoid being killed, and yet find out who the killer was. They had to stay with their partners. They could not get in large groups.

Mr. Shevvington put a cassette into the stereo and flipped the switch, which played the music in every room. The slithering strings of violins trembled in the air like old ghosts.

Mrs. Shevvington turned out the lights.

The guests scattered through the house, banging their shins on furniture. The stairs creaked as they dashed up and down. Crazy giggles ricocheted like bullets.

In the dark, Christina could watch nobody. Katy held so tight to her hand Christina thought her bones might break.

Wherever it would happen, it would happen up high in the mansion. So Christina dragged Katy up the first flight of stairs and then up the second. “I don’t wanna be up here,” Katy wailed. “It’s too scary up here.”

“Sssssshhh,” Christina said.

“Let’s hide under the dining-room table, Chrissie,” Katy whispered.

“Shut up,” Christina hissed.

The house began to fill with screams as heavy hands and cold fingers unexpectedly touched a player in the dark.

Then the girls began screaming just for the fun of it. Somebody turned the eerie violins up higher.

Anya began screaming for real: the ghastly high scream Christina remembered so well. Once, screaming like that, Anya had tried to step out the third-floor window, seeing fire where there was only fog.

Anya screamed like an animal. Christina imagined Anya frozen with fear in the dark. Was Anya to be the victim, not Dolly? Had the Shevvingtons seen Anya’s improvement after all? Was playing with Dolly just intended to confuse Christina?

“
Chrissie! Chrissie! Chrissie, where are you?
” screamed Anya.

Once Anya’s fears had pulled her to the edge of the cliffs. Now — during the slumber party — was something pushing her instead?

“I’m coming, Anya!” She abandoned Katy, racing in the blackness down the stairs. “Stand still, Anya, so I can find you. It’s all right, it’s just a game; don’t be afraid.”

“Christina, shut up!” Gretch yelled from some other location. “You’re ruining the game. Let her scream. It’s wonderful. She has the best scream of all.”

Christina felt her way into the kitchen, to the source of the screams. “I’m here, Anya.” Christina edged forward. A white splotch appeared in the dark. Anya was only inches away. Christina reached for the lace trim on the apron.

Too late, Christina heard the giggle.

She caught desperately at the wall, at chairs, at anything — but there was nothing to hold.

The giggle turned into a groan.

The white vanished. The dark turned into a black hole.

And it was Christina who fell. Down the cellar stairs. Hitting the steps, hitting the rail, hitting the stone floor.

Down into the waiting giggle.

M
ORNING SUN GLITTERED ON
new-fallen snow.

The snow had blown into wonderful drifts, like whorls on top of a lemon meringue pie.

Christina’s knees hurt. She stumbled to school.

Jonah came running to meet her. “What happened, Christina?” he asked. “I know Mondays are pretty bad — but limping?”

Gretch and Vicki bounded up. “We had the best slumber party ever!” cried Gretch. “They live in the most wonderful house. You should just see all the treasures. Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington are so terrific to those island children. We should all be so lucky. We had the best food and the best fun. I got to sleep in a bed with its own little stepstool because the mattress was so high: me and Dolly and Vicki. It was perfect.”

“I was asking about Christina’s limp,” Jonah said, turning his back on Gretch.

Gretch and Vicki threw back their heads and howled with laughter. “When we played Murder, Mr. Shevvington said the only rule was, ‘Don’t go near the cellar.’ So who goes into the cellar? Christina!”

Jonah knew Christina’s cellar stories. He knew she would never have gone into the cellar again in her life. Jonah put a brotherly arm around her and said, “Chrissie, are you all right?”

It was comfort, not romance, but Vicki and Gretch were furious with jealousy. “She just skinned her knees,” said Vicki, brushing it off. “Anyhow it was her own fault. She opened the bolt on the cellar door herself.”

“I did not!” cried Christina. “The door was wide open when I got there! I was trying to save Anya.”

“Save Anya?” they repeated. Vicki and Gretch fell on each other, laughing. “Christina, it was a game. Nobody needed saving. We were all having a good time screaming. Anya’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top anyhow, you know. Her mind melted last year. Only the world’s best shrink could save her now.”

Christina was trembling. “Somebody opened the cellar door on purpose, Jonah.”

“Oh, right,” Vicki said. “You’re always trying to blame somebody, Christina Romney. You tell people you have this terrible life, but it’s all lies. The Shevvingtons are fabulous. And no matter how rotten you are to your guests, like poor Katy, and no matter how demanding you are and how you try to force Dolly into stuff — the Shevvingtons forgive you and try to help you. Now you’re even trying to blame somebody else because you went and opened the cellar door, which you’re not allowed to do.” They flounced away.

Jonah asked, “Did you fall, Chrissie? Or were you pushed?”

He believes me, Christina thought.

At the party not even Anya had believed her!

She had felt the thing’s fingers on her skin. They were cold, and they stank of the sea. It was like being stroked by a fish.

But the crash of her body on the stairs had saved her. The noise brought Katy, Jennie, Amanda, and Linda running. The slimy fingers retreated to the shadows in the back of the cellar. Christina lay in a crumpled pile at the bottom of the rickety stairs.

Every guest at the party gathered in the door to tell her what an idiot she was, falling down the steps in her own house.

“Jonah,” Christina whispered now. “It was there. It’s real. It lives. It touched me.” Everything granite in Christina disintegrated. She put her arms around Jonah, hung her troubles around his neck, and wept.

But they were too young, and it was too soon. Jonah was appalled. His friends would see; it was too intimate; they were in public; what was she doing? He forgot the cellar and the giggle and the Shevvingtons and pulled back, trying to disassociate himself from all that affection and need. “I — um — I’ll see you in — uh — class,” he said desperately. “And — I’m busy this afternoon — I — I hope your knees are okay.” And he fled.

Christina snapped an icicle off the row that lined the school and threw it like a tiny javelin into a drift of snow. When she turned around, Jonah, Vicki, and Gretchen had disappeared. Christina stood alone.

It was seventeen below. The cold chewed her fingers. By the time the last warning bell rang and she forced herself into the building, her fingers were stiff and blue.

In homeroom they had to fill out forms for statewide testing, which would take place later in the month. When she tried to write, the letters came out looking like Egyptian hieroglyphics. My mind feels like that, thought Christina. Meaningless curves and twitches.

The day passed in a similar fashion, twitching and curving.

Who was the next victim of the Shevvingtons? Did they want Dolly or Anya or Christina? Who was the thing? What did
he
want?

“The essay,” said Mrs. Shevvington in English class, “is to write a contemporary parallel of a fairy tale. I will assign the fairy tale. Jonah, for example, will have
The Little Red Hen.
In this story, of course, no farm animal will help the little red hen raise the wheat or grind the flour, but when the loaves are baked, they all want to eat it. The moral, of course, is that if you want to enjoy the results you must put in the work first.”

Mrs. Shevvington circled the room. She stopped at Katy’s desk and smiled at Katy. Christina knew that smile. She tried to think how to stand between fat, ugly Katy and that smile, but no solution came to her. “I’m hoping to make each story match the student,” Mrs. Shevvington said to the class. “That way it will be more fun.”

Fun for whom? wondered Christina.

Katy must have had the same thought. She gathered herself, ready for the blows.

“You, Katy,” said Mrs. Shevvington, the smile growing like a blister on her skin, “will do the story of the ugly duckling.”

Katy went so white the pimples stood out on her face like a rash.

Gretchen and Vicki giggled.

Mrs. Shevvington turned to Christina.

Die, you hateful woman, Christina thought, willing Mrs. Shevvington to have a heart attack.

Mrs. Shevvington simply smiled wider. “Christina, you will update the story of the boy who cried wolf.” Her little teeth lay between her thin lips like pellets from an air gun. “Of course in the new version, it will be the
girl
who cried wolf.”

The class had expected something that would make Christina cry. This was nothing. They were disappointed.

But Christina understood. The message was very clear.

You may scream for help all you want, Christina, my dear. Nobody will believe you. And then, when you really need help, when the screams are loud and real
—
no one will come, Christina of the Isle. You are alone.

I
T USED TO BE THAT
the ending of school was a clock thing: the big hand on twelve and the little hand on three. But now the close of school was a physical relief of body and soul. I’m out. It’s over for a while.

“Everybody’s coming over to my house,” said Jonah. “Want to come, Chrissie?”

Benjamin bounded by, headed for his garage job. Suddenly it struck Christina that Benj was still in high school, though he had always planned to quit at sixteen.

How clever the Shevvingtons were. Benjamin and Michael Jaye were the balance. If anybody noticed that right after Anya fell apart, Dolly developed strange fears and Christina behaved oddly — why, Mr. Shevvington could point out how successfully he had kept this fine young lobsterman in school.

“Yes, I’m coming,” said Christina.

Across the school yard Dolly flew, her new jeans so long that the rolled cuffs made pale blue saucers around her skinny ankles. “Chrissie?” she called. Her voice was as thin as a snow flurry.

Traitor, thought Christina. Her eyes stung with hot tears that Dolly should have joined up with Gretchen and Vicki and the Shevvingtons.

“Chrissie, don’t be mad.”

Christina turned her back on Dolly to go with Jonah.

“Chrissie, I need you,” Dolly said.

They were Christina Romney’s words. Her love of helping people was as strong as her love of life itself.

“Chrissie, dancing class is so scary. I’m in the advanced class, but I’m not as good as the advanced girls. I have to dance alone, and they laugh at me. I’ve begged the Shevvingtons, but they won’t let me drop out. They say it’s good for me to face some competition for a change. They say on the island we didn’t know anything about the real world.” Her pixie face was turned up into Christina’s, waiting for Christina to solve her problem.

A very heavy hand landed on Christina’s shoulder. Mrs. Shevvington had materialized. Her candle-stub fingers pressed painfully between the bones of Christina’s shoulder, and then attached themselves to Dolly’s head. “You must try your very best,” said Mrs. Shevvington to Dolly.

Dolly’s tiny diamond-shaped faced was skewed by grief. “My best,” said Dolly, “isn’t good enough.”

The Shevvingtons do not destroy by any evil of our times, thought Christina. Not by drugs, not by alcohol. But by an evil as ancient as time: cutting away strength, beauty, confidence, friendship — until there is nothing left, just a shell.

“Dolly, that’s wonderful!” cried Mrs. Shevvington. “I’m so proud of you! If you get nothing else out of dancing class, you’ve learned a very important lesson. Sometimes your best just isn’t enough, and you have to accept being ordinary. You island girls oft times have difficulty admitting your ordinariness. You are so sure you are special.”

Dolly’s red hair seemed duller, her fair skin wanner, her bright eyes dimmer.

Mrs. Shevvington smiled. “You run along to your class now, Dolly.”

Dolly obeyed instantly, like a slave, like —

like Anya.

In Jonah’s yard the snow was thigh high. Jonah brought out snow shovels and brooms. The children shoveled paths. He had drawn a maze on paper and was shouting directions, but nobody listened, shoveling joyfully at their own routes. The paths interlocked and dead-ended. White walls of shoveled snow grew higher and higher, until only the fluffy pompons on their ski caps showed above the passage walls.

Above their heads, the sun set in a sky the color of frostbite. Pink channels appeared in the heavens as if dead children frolicked there in a maze of pearl.