Girl in Snow(62)

“I mean, you knew, right?”

“Knew what?”

“About her secret.”

“Secret?” he asks.

“About her and Mr. O.”

“Come on.”

“She was fucking the art teacher.”

“Stop it,” he says.

“I can see her bedroom window from mine. I can see everything.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

I regret this immediately. Partially because it’s a lie. Mostly because I derive a sick pleasure from the way his face contorts.

This gives me a surging satisfaction, mingled with disappointment in myself and, of course, guilt. Ma always says I have serious inclinations toward sadism, and for the first time I understand what she means. Part of me did it to see if he would call me out. If he would say, You’re lying, Jade Dixon-Burns, because I know you. I’ve seen you. I remember you and you are a liar. But we’ve pulled very far apart—for the first time, probably ever, Zap takes my word at face value. He believes me.

“You’re wrong,” Zap says halfheartedly. “It was that freak. That freak that always stood outside her window. I saw you two this morning, coming into the funeral. You’re trying to protect that pervert.”

“Jade?” comes a quiet voice from behind. Mrs. Arnaud’s arms are crossed.

“Thank you for coming over today,” she says, but it’s not in her usual husky voice. She’s heard me.

I calculate the distance between me and Zap. It’s no more than five feet, but I swear, I’ve never felt further from someone. It’s like what Zap used to say about Alpha Centauri, the closest star in the sky. It looks so close, he would tell me, but did you know it’s actually 4.37 light-years from the earth?



It should have ended a month before that Fourth of July. Late May, sophomore year. The same semester we built the fort.

It was past midnight. I’d never gone to Zap like this before, and we were already beginning to fall apart, but I had a red stain in the shape of Ma’s palm ironed across my cheek and the acute sense that spending the night alone would crack something irreparable inside me. One of Ma’s fat rings had broken the skin just below my eye. I didn’t cry—salt water wouldn’t help.

I’d stumbled to Zap’s house in a pair of broken flip-flops, drowning in self-pity and the memory of Ma’s vodka-laced voice. Useless little shit. I rubbed my arm where I knew it would bruise. I read somewhere that if you pushed hard enough on an unformed bruise you could stop it from flowering. This doesn’t work on me. My skin is too thin. Poor circulation.

Zap answered the door in a black T-shirt and a pair of blue plaid boxer shorts. His skinny white legs stuck out the bottom. I rarely saw Zap’s knees; they were round and knobbly, naked outside the familiarity of his pants. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. He made a shushing motion, pointing upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Arnaud were long asleep.

We tiptoed up the creaky stairs and into the guest bathroom, which had a gold soap tray and embroidered towels. Zap clicked the door shut and flicked on the lights—the bulbs were harsh. Hot on my face.

“My God, Jay,” he whispered. “What did she do to you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Doesn’t even hurt.”

I poked the small cut under my eye to show him how much it didn’t hurt, but my finger came away bloody. When I sucked on the nail, I tasted iron.

“Jesus,” he said, pulling one of the embroidered towels off the rack and running a corner under the faucet.

“Don’t,” I said, when he tried to lift the spotless white towel to my face. “Your parents will notice.”

“Here.” Zap pulled his black T-shirt over his head. The static made his hair stand on end. “I have a million of these. We’ll just throw it out, okay?”

He wet the sleeve and pressed it to the lacerated skin. The fabric was cool.

“It was the TV remote,” I said. “I got the wrong batteries.”

“What?”

“Ma freaked out. Said she’d given me specific instructions, and if I couldn’t get a pair of fucking double A batteries how was I supposed to do anything? I told her to stick the triple As in her vibrator.”

Zap opened his mouth the way he did when he laughed really hard, though he wasn’t laughing.

“I don’t need your pity,” I said.

“It’s not pity,” he said. “I’m just worried.”

We stood in the midnight glow of the vanity lightbulbs that lined the bathroom mirror, and he pressed the cloth against my face. I’d seen Zap shirtless plenty of times, at the pool in the summer. He looked more naked here. I’d never noticed the way his skin changed color from his neck to his chest. A ripening peach.

“What’s this?” His hands moved to my arm.

A straight red line branded across my bicep, already purpling.

“The upstairs banister.”

Zap ran a thumb over the tender skin, shaking his head. It wasn’t disbelief—he expected this from Ma. We both did.

“Do you still want to leave here?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember? You said we would move away. Go to New York.”