Freeze Tag

  “Is that why the car crashed?” said West. His voice, too, was flat. But his throat gave him away. It gagged.

  Lannie’s smile was as sharp as a splinter. “Maybe,” she said. And then she laughed, and the laugh pierced Meghan’s skin and hurt.

  A few houses down Dark Fern Lane, the school bus stopped.

  Children poured out.

  Tuesday, who had a generous and romantic nature, and therefore usually let West and Meghan ride home by themselves, got off last. She separated from the little ones. Her dark blonde hair bounced against her neon pink windbreaker. She swung her yellow bookbag in a circle and jumped successfully over an ice-crusted puddle in a driveway. She was laughing. She must have had a great day, or a funny ride home, because even though she was on her own now, the laugh was still carrying her.

  “Why, it’s Tuesday,” said Lannie sweetly. “Dear Tuesday. I’ve never liked her either, really. Wouldn’t it be unfortunate if …” Lannie smiled. Then she said once more, “Get out of the car, Meghan.”

  Tuesday hurled her bookbag toward her own front steps — missing by a hundred yards — and headed toward her brother and her best friend. “Hi, Meggie-Megs!” shouted Tuesday.

  It was a very old nickname.

  Meghan hardly knew which person it meant: she felt at least a century older than the little girl who had once been called Meggie-Megs by the neighborhood.

  The only sound inside the car was the sound of West trying to swallow and not managing.

  For a moment Meghan was furious with West. What was the matter with him? What did he think those big wide shoulders were for? They were for taking control and throwing people like Lannie Anveill out into the street.

  But muscles meant nothing.

  Not against a touch like Lannie Anveill’s.

  West’s and Meghan’s eyes met. This time the message they exchanged was very clear. They were trapped. “You better get out of the car,” said West, his eyes going helplessly to his little sister.

  Meghan got out slowly, holding the door open, as if nothing more could happen until the door was closed: The car could not leave, Lannie could not have him, nobody could be frozen, all was well, as long as she held the door open.

  “Get out,” said Lannie, “or I’ll freeze Tuesday.”

  Meghan slammed the door. She ran forward to deflect Tuesday from her path toward the car.

  Lannie shifted her insubstantial weight closer to the driver. She said something. Her tongue flickered when she spoke. Snakelike.

  West drove away.

  “West is going somewhere with Lannie?” Tuesday said. “What is he — a mental case? Nobody goes anywhere with Lannie.”

  “Lannie needs to talk,” said Meghan. This was an accepted teenage reason for doing anything: if people needed to talk, you needed to listen.

  “Lannie?” said Tuesday skeptically. “Talk? Right. Lannie doesn’t do talk, Meggie-Megs, you know that.”

  Meghan changed the subject. “You’re pretty bouncy, Tues. What happened today?”

  “Well!” said Tuesday, beaming. “You’ll never guess!”

  “Tell me,” said Meghan, linking arms with her.

  What would West and Lannie do on this afternoon? Where would West drive? What would Lannie want from him? Meghan tried to imagine what it would be like for West, sitting in that front seat, Lannie inches away, with her contented chuckle and her pencil-thin arms and her terrible touch.

  But from the way Lannie had moved, she was no longer inches away. She was there.

  The emotions ripped through her all over again: the fear, the panic, the rage … and even a very little bit of the understanding.

  Meghan followed Tuesday into the Trevors’ house. There was always a lot of food at the Trevors’. Nobody ever dieted there. There was chocolate cake and rocky road ice cream and mint candy and cheese popcorn and onion bagels and sliced strawberries. Meghan’s family had things like diet Coke and celery sticks.

  The kitchen was entirely white: Mrs. Trevor had redone it a few years ago and it reminded Meghan of a hospital room. It looked like the kind of room you’d hose down after the autopsy.

  But the family left debris everywhere: on the counter were a bright plaid bowling ball bag, a pile of trumpet music, a stack of old homework papers, a folder of phone numbers, two pairs of sneakers, folded laundry, and breakfast dishes piled with toast crusts.

  It was so real.

  So ordinary.

  So comforting.

  Meghan knew right away that her worries were false and exaggerated.

  Nobody freezes anybody, thought Meghan. I can’t believe that West and I let ourselves fall for Lannie’s silliness. No wonder she was laughing at us. We fell for her dumb story. Poor old Lannie needs to be the center of attention and did she accomplish it this time! I’m such a jerk.

  Meghan helped herself to a handful of cheese popcorn and then a dozen chocolate chips from the bag — nobody ever got around to making cookies in this family; they just ate the chips straight — and then a glass of raspberry ginger ale and finally some of the strawberries. Tuesday meanwhile had strawberries on Cheerios with lots of milk, tossing in a few chocolate chips for variety. For quite a while there was no sound but the contented intake of really good snacks.

  “They chose me to hostess the JV cheerleaders’ slumber party!” said Tuesday, sighing with the joy and the honor. “It’s going to be here, Meggie-Megs! Isn’t that wonderful? They want to have it at my house.”

  It did not necessarily indicate that Tuesday had become the most popular girl on earth. Mrs. Trevor was probably just the only parent willing to have a dozen screaming ninth- and tenth-grade girls overnight. Plus Mrs. Trevor would certainly have the most food and be the most liberal about what movies they could rent.

  But Tuesday didn’t see it that way. Nobody ever sees popularity that way. And Lannie probably didn’t see that she had blackmailed West into driving away with her; Lannie probably thought she was just getting her fair share of popularity at last.

  At that moment, Mrs. Trevor came home. She was a very attractive woman. Heavy, but the kind of heavy where you would never want her to lose weight: she was perfect the way she was. All the neighborhood children called her Mom even though everybody but Lannie had a mom of their own. “Hi, Mom,” said Tuesday happily.

  “Hi, Mom,” said Meghan.

  Mrs. Trevor hugged and kissed and made sure everybody had had enough to eat. Then she made sure she had enough to eat, too. “Tell me that I did not see my son driving around with Lannie Anveill.”

  “You did not,” said Tuesday agreeably.

  “Yes, I did,” said her mother. “What’s going on?”

  “Lannie has a crush on West,” said Tuesday, “didn’t you know that?”

  “Of course I knew that. But West is dating Meghan.”

  “They’re just going to talk,” said Meghan.

  Mrs. Trevor got out her huge coffeemaker, the one that dripped and kept for hours. Meghan was happy. She loved the smell (but hated the taste) of coffee. For a really good kitchen smell, you needed bacon, too. If Meghan told Mrs. Trevor that, Mrs. Trevor would have bacon in that skillet in a second. She would think it was a perfectly good reason to cook some: because Meghan wanted to smell it.

  “I feel funny,” said Tuesday suddenly.

  “You do?” said her mother, all concern. “In what way, darling?”

  “Frozen!” said Tuesday. She rubbed at her own skin, trying to warm herself with friction.

  There is such a thing, thought Meghan, as being too understanding. Or perhaps that’s not it at all. Perhaps I’m just too afraid to think about what’s really happening. I’m too eager to put it on the shelf and pretend it’s not there. But Lannie’s come off the shelf. She’s here. She’s not going away.

  She has West.

  She could have Tuesday.

  What am I going to do?

  Meghan thought of saying: Mom Trevor, Lannie has evil powers, she can freeze people, she
froze me once, she froze the Irish setter, and probably froze her own mother. Now she’s threatening to freeze Tuesday. So since we now both want your son West, what do I do? I can’t sacrifice Tuesday.

  Mrs. Trevor would laugh and say, “No, really, what is going on?”

  Meghan was a great fan of television real-life shows. She adored America’s Most Wanted, and Cops, and Rescue 911, and all shows of rescue and law and order. She imagined herself calling the police. Hi, my boyfriend is driving around town with this girl who …

  Right.

  When they stopped laughing (and her call would be taped! Her voice would be forever captured on tape — so jealous of her boyfriend she called the police when somebody else sat in his car!) they’d say, “Okay, honey, get a grip on yourself.”

  “Do you think Lannie is capable of love?” asked Tuesday.

  “No,” said Mrs. Trevor. She didn’t add to that.

  Meghan couldn’t stand it. She liked long answers. “Why not?” said Meghan.

  “She never had any. I’ve never seen a child so thoroughly abandoned. Why, even when her mother was alive, I never saw anybody pick Lannie up, or kiss her, or hug her. She put herself to bed, nobody ever tucked her in. She ate alone, nobody ever shared a meal with her.”

  The coffee was made. Mrs. Trevor poured herself a big mug and added lots of sugar and milk. Meghan thought anything a Trevor did would always be sweet and warm like that.

  “Poor Lannie,” said Mrs. Trevor. “It’s enough to freeze your heart.”

  Chapter 5

  TUESDAY AND HER MOTHER discussed the slumber party. Mrs. Trevor agreed to everything.

  Meghan was impressed. Her own mother would be thinking up blockades, barricades. Battening down the hatches of the house to protect the Moores against the cheerleader invasion. Her own mother would confine the girls to the yard and the basement playroom. On the night of the party, Meghan’s mother would constantly roam the place, keeping an eye on things and maintaining standards.

  Mrs. Trevor didn’t have any to maintain, which streamlined the whole event.

  Meghan wished she was a JV cheerleader and could come.

  But she was not and, as the afternoon passed, she felt more and more left out of the celebration. When eventually Meghan slipped out and headed home, Tuesday and Mrs. Trevor scarcely noticed.

  When Meghan was little, the front yards on Dark Fern Lane had seemed like vast stretches of green grass. When they played yard games, what great distances their little legs had had to pump! When Lannie was It, what terrifying expanses of empty space Meghan had been forced to flee over.

  Now the beginner bushes were fat and sprawling. Meghan’s father liked to prune and trim his bushes, and in the Moores’ yard, the bushes were neat and round, like plums. But the Trevors never trimmed, and the long thin tentacles of forsythia bushes arced through the darkness. Icy fronds touched Meghan’s face and twisted cords grabbed her waist.

  Lannie’s fingers in winter.

  Meghan sobbed dry tears, tottering among the obstacles.

  A raised ranch house has three doors: front door atop many steps, back kitchen door opening onto a high deck, and a door into the garage. If you go in by the garage, you must ease your body between the silent cars and the debris stacked along garage walls. There is an oily waiting stink in a garage. The darkness that has collected over the years lies in pools, sucking your feet.

  In winter, the garage door was always dark.

  Meghan hated the garage door. But if she went in the front, she would be exposed to Lannie’s view. If Lannie was home. If Lannie was looking away from West.

  And she could not go in the kitchen door, because it was latched as well as locked.

  The door in the garage opened with a raspy scream.

  It wasn’t the door, thought Meghan. It was me.

  Would Lannie have frozen Tuesday? Had Lannie frozen her own mother? It had seemed silly when she was surrounded by the warmth of Mrs. Trevor. Now, in the oily dark, it seemed so very real.

  Meghan did not feel frozen this time, but suffocated. The oil that had leaked out of the cars and soaked into the cement floor came through the soles of her shoes and crawled up her veins and lay like a sheet of rubber over her lungs.

  West and Lannie. Hours now. Alone together.

  She got out of the garage, up the stairs, into the safer more open dark of the living parts of the house. She turned on no lights. She did not want Lannie Anveill, across the street, to see that she was home.

  Although of course Lannie always knew.

  And Lannie, who could materialize anywhere, anytime, Lannie might suddenly be leaning against the wallpaper right here in this room, with her little chuckle of ice and snow.

  It was a matter of will not to turn on the lights and make sure that the corners were empty. Lannie isn’t here, Meghan told herself. I’m not going to be a baby and panic.

  She sat in the dining room, which the Moores never used; it was just wasted space with a table and chairs. But it had a window view of West’s driveway. She wanted to see him come home.

  He didn’t get home till supper.

  He parked that car of his mother’s and sat quietly for several moments behind the wheel before he opened the door and got out. What was he thinking about?

  He had been alone with Lannie Anveill for three hours.

  What had they done in that three hours? West … with his Trevor need to be courteous. Just how courteous had West been? What on earth had they talked about?

  That hand on the pants leg of West’s jeans. Lannie’s hand. Thin and white like a peeled stick. What had that touch been like?

  Had West shivered and felt sick?

  Or could Lannie’s hands, which froze bodies and hearts, make other changes, too?

  West did not look over at Meghan’s house. He did not look at his own, either. He got out of the car so slowly he looked damaged. He had to pull himself along, as if his limbs were a separate weight. He had trouble opening his front door, and trouble closing it when he was inside.

  But then the door closed, and he was as lost to her as he had been driving around with Lannie.

  The dining room curtains had been put up years ago and their positions rarely changed. They hung stiffly at each side of the sills, as frozen into place as if Lannie had touched them. It was utterly silent in Meghan’s house. She had not turned on the television or the radio for company. Her parents were not yet home.

  Meghan was so lonely she wanted to run over to the Trevors. Not even waste time getting to the door. Leap straight through the window.

  But Lannie would be watching. Lannie always watched. It was what she had done her whole life: stand in the shadows and watch.

  Standing in her own shadows, watching the passing of others, Meghan thought — Life? This is not life. This is a warehouse.

  Lannie had just been stored, all these years. Born and then stuck on a shelf, while others lived.

  It was time to turn on the lights and go back to living herself. Meghan left the dining room, and walked through the house flipping every light switch. Then she sat by the phone.

  It did not ring.

  Meghan couldn’t believe it. What was the matter with West? He had to know that the most important thing on earth was to call her up and tell her what was going on.

  He didn’t.

  Meghan’s parents came home. The routine in the Moore household never varied. Her mother and her father smiled at the sight of her, lightly kissed her forehead or her cheek, and asked how her day had been. How Meghan yearned for the passion at the Trevors’ house — the clutter and noise and chaos and exuberance.

  “I had a great day,” said Meghan. The morning’s academic successes might have happened ten centuries ago. “I’m really improving in Spanish. And history was very interesting.”

  Her parents wanted to hear her improved Spanish accent. They wanted to find out what had been so interesting in history.

  But it was West’s interest she want
ed.

  West did not call after supper.

  He did not call at all.

  At nine-thirty, Meghan gave up the wait and telephoned him herself.

  West answered. “Hi, Meghan,” he said. There was nothing in his voice.

  “Are you alone?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s listening?”

  “Everybody.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tell you later.”

  “I have to know now. I can’t sleep without knowing!”

  West sighed and said nothing.

  Meghan said, “I’ll meet you at the truck.”

  They had done this a few times: crept out of their houses, walked silently over the dark backyards down the hedge lines, down the sloping grass, slick with evening frost. Then they’d sit in the front seat of the Chevy to talk. You couldn’t slam the doors because it would make a noise the families might hear. Plus now that the handles didn’t work from the inside, you didn’t dare shut the doors anyway.

  The truck interior was not romantic.

  In summer, because it was in a low place where vines and tangles grew thickly, there were mosquitoes. In winter, a chill rose off the ground and could not be shaken. Meghan’s feet got so cold she couldn’t stand it. And this was January. Cold as Lannie’s heart.

  “Okay,” said West finally.

  “What time?”

  “Same time.”

  “Eleven?”

  “Okay.”

  “West, I can’t tell a thing from your voice. What is going on? Is it okay? What did Lannie do?”

  “It’s okay,” said West.

  “I love you,” she said to West.

  There was a long silence. “Okay,” he said at last.

  But it was not okay.

  Meghan’s parents liked to be in bed by a few minutes before eleven, and at eleven, sitting up against the big padded headboard, they would watch the evening news together. In that half hour of broadcasting, Meghan could do anything and her parents would not know.

  As soon as their door shut, she slipped downstairs to rummage in the closet, seeking out her heaviest coat.

  On the back step, the wind bit her face and cut her skin.

  She felt like an explorer on a glacier.