Girl in Snow(77)

“It’s okay,” he says over his shoulder. “They caught the real guy.”

“I know.”

We both nod, two people stuck in different places at the same time.

“See you around,” he says. He lifts his chin at me, in the way boys do when they’re trying to look casual. This makes me laugh, but he can’t see because he’s already gone, absorbed into the group of sports kids standing by the windows.

There are a million types of love in the world. I think of that night, in the bathroom, how Zap’s thumb wandered tender over bruises. How do you classify that sort of love—young, fleeting? I keep trying to distill the difference between friendship and love—in an effort to figure out how you can lose both at once—but maybe it doesn’t matter.

It was love. It was there. It was enough.

I leave my brown bag on a ledge by the courtyard and push through the lunchtime clusters toward the music wing.

The practice room smells like brass and linoleum. You could shout in here, and it would echo. The drums are lined up against the wall, the piano exposed ivory in the center of the room.

Zap’s trombone case is lined up with all the other trombone cases. A label near the bell reads “ARNAUD.”

The seashell is jagged in my pocket.

I take it out, hold it up to the light. It is pearly and transparent. Fossil. I leave the seashell in the nook where Zap keeps folded sheets of music. The shell rests against a tattered page, so seemingly insignificant. Offshore.

As I let the door bang shut behind me, I try to ask myself how I feel. This is stupid, I know. Emotions shouldn’t have names. I’m tired of bothering with them.

Mostly, I feel uncaged.



“She left us something,” Aunt Nellie says, when I walk into the Hilton Ranch one night.

“Who?”

“Our Tuesday-night lover-girl. Melissa found it in Room 304. We thought maybe you’d know what it means.”

Aunt Nellie hands me a folded scrap of paper, and before I can open it she says, “Someone threw up in Room 101. You’d better hurry.”

I wait until I’m in the elevator. The note is no bigger than my palm, just a corner of notebook paper. On it, Querida has scrawled in smeared pencil.

yo me perdí de noche sin luz bajo tus párpados y cuando me envolvió la claridad nací de nuevo, due?o de mi propia tiniebla.

—Neruda

Google tells me:

I got lost on a lightless night under your eyelids and as lucidity enveloped me, I was born again, master of my own darkness.

—Neruda



Cameron opens the door in a pair of Jefferson High School sweat pants that ride an inch above his ankles and a gray T-shirt stained at the neck. He looks how I expected. Gaunt. Eyes darting in all directions.

“Come on,” I say from the stoop. “I want to show you something.”

“Right now?” he says.

“Right now.”

He puts on the same jacket he wore on the cliff, though it’s warmer outside now, and the Velcro covering the zipper has balls of lint caught in its teeth. Behind him, his mother stands in a baggy sweater, arms crossed. She looks like someone who is constantly cold.

“Jade,” she says. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Hello, Mrs. Whitley.”

“I have something to give you. Wait right here.”

Cameron and I sit, both bumbling and gawky, while he ties his shoes. I’ve only come over here once since the truth came out, and then, we sat on the couch. We watched six episodes of Full House until I said, It’s getting late; I should go. Cameron looked at me with these huge, weird eyes and said, Come back soon, okay?

When Cameron’s mom returns, she presses a purple brochure into my hand.

“Take a look at this,” she says. “Just an idea. It’s a summer program I did when I studied ballet, around your age. Cameron says you want to be a writer, and I’ve heard their program is good. They give out scholarship money where it’s needed.”

The brochure is for a summer arts program at NYU. A summer of artistry and diversity in the heart of New York City, it reads. The words alone make my throat itch, so I fold the flyer and stuff it in the pocket of my jacket so she can’t see how softly this touches me.

“Thank you,” I tell her.

“When will you be back?” she asks.

“An hour. Two, tops.”

I have Ma’s car, and as we slide in, I turn the radio all the way up. I wish the Crucibles were playing, but they’re not, just some shit pop song I don’t recognize. Cameron presses his forehead to the window as we merge onto the highway. Headlights whiz by, fast-moving light. Comets.

I steer us into the Hilton Ranch parking lot and pull my all-access key from the pocket of my army parka. Cameron follows, feet shuffling and dragging, in through the revolving doors and to the elevator bank.

When we get to the room, Cameron glances back, furtive.

I know this room will be clean, because I did it myself and no one has reserved it since. I triple-checked the log. Trash bags are tied tight around plastic cans, the bed is tucked, neat and trim at the corners. Pillowcases fluffed. I’ve even Windexed the mirrors and folded a towel into the shape of an elephant at the foot of the king-sized bed.

“Smell it,” I say, as Cameron follows me inside.