Girl in Snow(60)

And the next night, Hilary Jameson. Four broken ribs in a ditch on the side of the highway.

Russ knows nothing of love. The lethal grip of it: a stillborn blue.





Jade





The Arnauds have repainted their house. It’s a pastel yellow now. They also redid the garden in front—a stone path leads up to the porch, where two hand-carved rocking chairs sit next to a rustic wooden table. I bet Mrs. Arnaud spent hours poring over the Pottery Barn catalogue at their sunny kitchen counter. Cette couleur? she probably asked Mr. Arnaud, and he probably kissed her forehead, slow like he used to. I bet the Arnauds speak in quiet French before bed, Mrs. Arnaud in a clean silk nightgown, hair falling natural in her face.

Chunks of half-melted snow litter everything. I take the new path up to the door, but I hesitate before ringing the bell. Nostalgia stops me.

Nostalgia is my favorite emotion. It’s like, you think you know how to deal with the passage of time, but nostalgia will prove you wrong. You’ll press your face into an old sweat shirt, or you’ll look at a familiar shade of paint on a front door, and you’ll be reminded of all the time that got away from you. If you could live it all again, you’d take a long moment to look around, to examine knees against knees. Nostalgia puts you in this dangerous re-creation of something you can never have again. It’s ruthless, and for the most part, inaccurate.

I feel very small, standing on Zap’s stoop in my white dress and my army coat. This isn’t a bad thing.

When I ring, Mrs. Arnaud answers immediately, still wearing her tailored black ensemble.

“Hi, honey,” she says. “Please, come in.”



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

A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns

INT. BEDROOM—DAY (LATER)

Celly watches from the doorway as Boy sits on the edge of his bed, pressing his thumbs deep into his temples. He looks up.





CELLY


Hi.





BOY


What are you doing here?





CELLY


I came by to make sure you’re okay.





BOY


Thanks. I appreciate that.

The two stare at each other in silence.





CELLY


(gesturing to the bed) Can I . . . ?

Boy shrugs. Celly scoffs, hiding her hurt.

CELLY (CONT’D)

I know there’s a part of you that wishes we were young again, that we hadn’t lost our way or whatever.

Boy watches the lines in his palms. Tracing. Avoiding.

CELLY (CONT’D)

I want you to remember how we got here, okay? The love that drove us to become the people we are. It meant something.

(pause)

Right?

Boy finally lifts his head. He looks at Celly, earnest now.





BOY


It meant everything.



Zap used to be messy. When we were little, he’d throw school papers in piles on his desk. His soccer cleats would leave mud cakes at the bottom of his closet, and his jeans were always splayed across the floor, like he’d stepped out of them and they were waiting there, patient, for his legs to fill them again.

I consider doing our secret knock—two sets of quick raps, a horse’s patter—but we are old now. Instead, I knock twice, firmly.

“Come in,” he says.

Zap sits on the edge of his bed. His arms are crossed and his elbows rest on his knees; his body makes a perfect box. His shoulders form an angular T, and his head is bowed and limp in the center, thumbs pointed up toward his face.

“Hey,” I say. Voice too high. “It’s me.”

His bedroom is spotless. He’s painted the walls—one is red, the other three white. On the red wall, he’s hung a bulletin board, which he’s covered in pictures of him and various friends. The boys’ soccer team, crowded around a campfire. Leaning out of jeeps. They’re all very tan from a summer of lazy drinking on docks and joyriding dirt bikes through the mountains.

He got a new bedspread. It’s black, and looks scratchy. The sheets and the comforter are both tucked in at the corners.

“My parents called you, didn’t they?” he says, without looking up.

“They’re worried.”

I’m still standing in the doorway. I take a tentative step forward, hoping he’ll invite me in. He doesn’t. The seconds pass, miserably slow, honey slinking to the bottom of a jar.

“I don’t know what they want from me,” he says, gaze still fixed on his hands.

“I don’t know, either,” I say.

It occurs to me that Zap and I have not been alone in the same room for nearly two years. It also occurs to me that two years is a very long time to avoid someone—to form new ways of speaking, to kiss girls with flat stomachs. To clean your room.

Zap lifts his head. His eyes are puffy and ringed in tired circles. Under his gaze, I feel gigantic. My dress grabs me in all the wrong places and I cross my arms to cover the scabs from picking.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” he says. “But I’d really like to be alone.”