Girl in Snow(70)

Things Cameron Asked Himself:

How do you explain the badness inside you?

White flame sun in his pupils, Cameron pulled the .22 from his waistband. He swore if he lived through this day, he would not say another word to another human for the rest of his life, not even if that word was “sorry.”





Jade





Kids at school refer to the cliff in passing. It’s a revered make-out spot—the cliffs are tall, but not dangerously so. It overlooks the reservoir, and at night the moon hangs over the water like a single burning bulb. Last year, I came up here with Jimmy Kessler. His mouth was a suction cup, and he tasted like sour milk. When I got home, I took a long shower—the water ran cold as Ma pounded on the door.

It’s the golden hour now. The sun looks like melted sugar. Irises grow more layers. Purple mountain majesties.

When I get to the base of the cliff, I lean my bike against an aspen. My legs burn as I take the first few steps up the steep, dry path. Powdery red dirt covers my heavy boots.

By the time I reach the top, sun is coming down in rays so thick you could grab them by the fistful. They filter through naked branches, scattering shadows across the plateaus.

Cameron sits on the edge, feet dangling into the abyss. He does not look any particular way. His back is stiff, unnaturally so, and he stares into the unknown space below, the hood of his winter jacket folded over his forehead. It drowns him.

I imagine, just for a second, how it would feel to be with him.

Cameron would do it differently. It would still hurt. But he wouldn’t say, Hey, you should probably go; my parents will be back soon. He’d be shaky. Nervous. And afterwards, he’d wrap his arms around you and kiss your forehead and you would lie there until you weren’t out of breath anymore. Cameron knows how to watch. Because of this, I imagine he’s much different than Jason from Ohio, or Jimmy Kessler, or even Zap. Cameron would look at you like a painting he doesn’t want to understand: He would study each brushstroke. He would see something embarrassed, something raw and cracked and fragile, and he would trace these things with artist’s hands.

Cameron will never watch me this way. I don’t want that. But it’s funny, to suddenly be able to picture this, knowing someone so minimally. It’s tangible.



“Hey,” I say.

Cameron is barely visible behind the curtain of his hood. One hand is clenched inside a pocket.

I ease down next to him, swinging my feet in time with his. My boots hit the underside of the cliff, and a few pebbles chase one another over the edge.

“Hey,” he answers.

“I saw you that night,” I say. “Before and after. I saw you come back without her.”

“Please go,” he says.

“You followed her to the park. You staggered back. You looked drunk. You threw up in the bushes in front of the Hansens’ house. Remember?”

He’s crying now. Tears fall fast, but he doesn’t move otherwise, not a muscle.

“Want to know something?” I say.

“Sure.”

“I wanted her dead.”

“That’s a pretty terrible thing to say.”

“I know. So I didn’t tell anyone what I saw.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Cameron says.

“Not you,” I say. “Her. I came here for her. Anyway, we’re not all that different, you and me. Wanna know something else?”

“Sure.”

“You can only see fifty-nine percent of the moon from the earth’s surface. No matter where you go, in the entire world, you’ll only ever see the same face. That fifty-nine percent.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m just saying. We know this fact, but it doesn’t stop us from staring.”



The night I got home from that grisly scene at Zap’s house—I don’t want to—I stood in front of my own bathroom mirror. Studied myself, in my ripped-up concert T-shirt, with jeans that cut too tight across my bulging hips and skin that puffed out like the head of a cupcake. It was a searing hatred. A whole and incapacitating contempt for the very cells that made me up, for the way those cells replicated without my permission, how bones grew without my knowledge and skin acquiesced, folding over them in this intolerable manner.

I took a safety pin from Ma’s sewing kit in the linen closet. I lifted my shirt and poked my ribs 815 times, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to leave a connect-the-dots across each flabby rib, a poem in braille I would never learn how to read.

This can’t be it, I thought. This can’t be love.

This rotten love was stuck to my skin, humid, dewy. That night in the bathroom, I could not fathom the possibility of peeling it off, allowing new, pink skin to breathe. So for years I wore it like a cloak, this decaying love. An excuse.

Now, on the cliff, I find there are no excuses to be made.



Cameron pulls a small object from his pocket.

The thing looks out of place in Cameron’s palm. It’s a tiny girl made of porcelain, lying on her side against his reddened lifelines. A ballerina. I would recognize the figurine anywhere. It has the most unrealistic face and this awful smile—the kind of smile you know is a cover for something else.

“Where did you get that?” I ask. “Did you take it from the Thorntons’ house?”