Girl in Snow(48)

She laughed loudly. Nudged Lucinda for support.

This is how I will always remember her.

Lucinda stood there, vacant, radiant and timeless in her yellow swimsuit, blond hair curling wet against her skin, toes painted white in those plastic flip-flops, not caring—not even knowing—what she’d taken from me.

It was worse than anything intentional. Girls like Beth, I could handle. But Lucinda was indifferent, so caught up in her bright, easy world, that contempt for her filled me like it never had before. How she stood, glittering and oblivious. It ignited me.

I saw you, I wanted to tell her. I saw your toothpick legs wrapped tight around him, I saw the way your back arched, I saw how the two of you thrashed and moved, a pair of undulating eels in shadow. I saw how he touched you. Hungry. Piggish. You can have him, I wanted to say.

But I couldn’t, because Lucinda was somewhere else. She stood in the August sun, one hip jutted out, completely removed from Beth’s taunts and my submission, her pretty head tilted charmingly to the right.

Lucinda Hayes didn’t recognize my goddamn face. She was unaware. The world is special for girls like her. It was this that burned me.



The funeral is almost over. Ma and Amy press tissues to their faces, and makeup seeps into the paper. The minister goes on about Lucinda’s “light,” how she will “never be forgotten,” how during a “tragedy like this” we must “support and appreciate the ones we love.” The old man in front of me is asleep, the Hansens are holding each other, and Jimmy Kessler wraps a piece of chewed gum around a Q-tip, which he pokes into a crack in the pew.

Hey, I would say to Zap, if this were a different world. Are you okay?

Zap wouldn’t need to say anything back. When we were little, we played a game called Telepathy. We’d freak out our parents by reading each other’s minds; I could tell you what he was thinking in less than three guesses. In reality, we’d invented this complicated system: words in sets of threes, a countless number of them, which we memorized and dictated to one another. Are you okay? I would say. The answer would be either Rottweiler, bagel, or Gandalf. By the third try, I’d undoubtedly get it right.

Zap sits a few rows in front of me, wedged between his parents. He watches the photo of Lucinda on the altar like he hopes it will start moving, like if he stares long enough, she will jump out of her glossy frame and into the pew next to him.

His glasses are folded in his lap. Hair flat in the back. It’s not that I wish he wanted me again, as a best friend or anything else. That’s not it at all. I guess I hate that he looks like a wilted, airless version of himself—all for someone that isn’t me.

The blatant narcissism of this thought nearly makes me laugh out loud. How self-indulgent. I stop myself, only to realize that the funeral is over.

People stand. They mill around, hugging one another, gossiping in hushed voices about the possibility of a town curfew if the police don’t catch the killer. Amy beelines for her friends from school. She pointedly ignores Lex: Maybe she doesn’t know what to say. Or maybe all Amy’s fuss about Lucinda is just a sign of her melodrama. Her own liar grief.

I don’t know what to do with myself, so I uncoil my headphones and place them over my ears. The sound of the memorial chapel is muffled, filtered through pieces of plastic and foam. I don’t turn on any music. I’m thankful for the barrier between my ears and the scene around me, so I sit while everyone chats, trickles out.

That’s when I see her: Querida. She clings to the arm of a man who is not Madly. A black veil covers her face, but I recognize the sway of her hair, the slight bulge of hip beneath her form-fitting black dress. Part of me wants to walk over, say hello. But how do you categorize your knowledge of someone like that? Someone you’ve only watched, who you’ve asked a dumb question once, someone you wish you could magic yourself into? The answer: you don’t. So when Ma sends Amy over to collect me, I put on my jacket and follow them out, headphones still on.

A few paces ahead: Cameron and his mother. He hasn’t looked away from his own feet.

When we get outside, the wind is brutal. Two police officers are getting out of a squad car. They’re both burly, just how you’d imagine cops would look, with broad shoulders and beer bellies. One has a moustache—the kind of moustache you grow as a joke—and the other twirls a toothpick between his jaws. They walk toward us. No—toward Cameron.



They arrested Cameron’s dad on Labor Day. Fifth grade. I was at Zap’s house, watching a SpongeBob marathon and eating butter mixed with brown sugar, when Terry rang the doorbell.

Ma had sent him to bring me home. You could have just called, Mrs. Arnaud said. Terry was small and twitchy on the front porch, wringing doughy hands. You haven’t heard? he asked. Our cop neighbor was just arrested. Jade, it’s time to come home.

Ma sat on the couch in the living room, drinking cold tea from earlier that morning. With the phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder, she picked through a container of leftover Chinese food.

“Lee Whitley,” she said into the phone. “You know, the police officer who lives around the corner? Next to the Hansens?”

Faint babbling from the other end.

“The police department just released a statement. It’s awful, just so awful. He pulled her over on the highway, claimed she was speeding. Poor girl was only twenty-three. Dragged her into a ditch on the side of the road and beat her nearly to death. She’s alive, but still in the hospital.”