Winter Longing (5 page)
School? She was going to school? I read the words again, but they still made no sense.
Lindsay’s familiar handwriting stared up at me, and I hated myself for wishing she’d stay away. I’d thought she was hurting, too, but if she were, how could she go back? Going back was inconceivable to me. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. All I wanted was to cocoon myself in this room and never emerge.
My stomach growled at the sight of the pastries. Even though they were no longer piping hot, I found myself reaching for one. Apparently, my body’s instinct to survive wouldn’t be denied.
My cell phone rang, and I grabbed it, desperately hoping to see Spencer’s name.
But it was the school’s number. It had to be Lindsay, who didn’t have a cell of her own. I turned the phone off when the beep told me she’d left a message, then I pitched it at the thick red carpet.
I spent the day curled in my overstuffed red chair in the corner next to the window, my feet propped on the matching ottoman. I looked through my photo albums at least a dozen times.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in my room this long without popping in a DVD, but those fictional stories no longer held any allure, not even any chance at escape.
Mom came in with a chicken-salad sandwich and chips around lunchtime. She must have thought I was asleep, because she slid the plate onto my desk and walked quietly back toward the door.
“You didn’t go to work,” I accused.
“No. I wanted to be here for you.”
I should have told her I was fine, but I couldn’t. It was too big of a lie.
Neither of us seemed to know what to say next, so she offered me a weak smile and walked back out.
But what was there to say? Sorry the boy you’ve loved since you were eight finally kissed you, then died the next day?
She couldn’t even say that, because she didn’t know about our kisses. The only person who did was Lindsay, and for some reason, now I wished she didn’t.
I curled farther down into the chair and refocused my meandering thoughts, visualizing Spencer alive and working his way down the mountain toward me. I daydreamed of all the things we’d do together. Our first date. The Snow Ball. Admitting we loved each other. Eventually expressing our love for each other, maybe beneath a thick blanket while the northern lights performed their magical dance overhead.
I liked these fantasies.
Reality intruded in the form of Lindsay. How had I not heard the front door?
“Hey.” She sat on the ottoman at my feet and eyed me with her worried expression. “Have you eaten today?”
I pointed toward the half-eaten sandwich.
“Lots of people at school asked about you.”
Several ticks of the clock went by. “I just . . . couldn’t.”
She stood and walked to the window, staring out at the waning day. “I couldn’t sit at home.”
I still didn’t know how she could face going to school so soon after our best friend had died, but I didn’t have the energy to figure it out. Or to examine the anger that was welling up inside me.
I lowered my gaze to the open photo album on my lap, at a picture of Spencer and me at last year’s Labor Day cookout. I closed my eyes and remembered the details of the day.
“Here you go,” Spencer had said as he extended a plate piled with food to me.
“Dude, that’s enough food for three people,” I’d replied as I looked at the huge barbecue sandwich, mountain of chips, and two brownies.
“You need to eat. Helps you heal.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I twisted my ankle, genius. I don’t have the flu.”
He shrugged, sat on the ground beside my lawn chair, and dug into his own food. “I feel guilty, so I’m groveling, okay?”
“Oh, yes, this is your fault, isn’t it?” I pointed at my wrapped ankle propped on another lawn chair. I’d tripped while chasing him up the stairs after he’d come into the living room, wearing the flapper-style costume I’d been working on for Halloween.
“Yep. Guess you’ll have to think of an appropriate way to scold me,” he said suggestively, prompting me to give him a smack to the back of his head.
I wanted to laugh at the memory, but I couldn’t. I ran my fingertips over his glossy, smiling image. I’d been an idiot not to tell him how I felt sooner.
Only the impending start of our senior year, the last year we might spend together, had prompted me to risk our friendship by telling him I liked him much more than just as a friend. I could still feel the soft, warm, tentative first kiss we’d shared on the banks of the Naknek River and how it had ignited the boom, color, and sizzle of the Fourth of July inside me. The taste of the cherry Twizzlers he constantly munched on at the store still lingered.
Lindsay took my hand and squeezed it. I opened my eyes, hating her for pulling me out of my sweet memories. I pulled my hand out of hers and stared out the window. Another day fading away. Another day without Spencer.
I didn’t even turn my head when Lindsay sighed and slid off the ottoman. A few seconds passed before she returned and took my hand again. She’d been running a bath.
“Come on.”
I followed wordlessly, thankful she’d skipped the platitudes. When she left me alone, I sank onto the closed toilet seat and stared at the steamy, foam-filled water, inhaling the lavender scent of the bath salts. I silently scolded myself—it seemed wrong to indulge in comfort when Spencer might never enjoy warmth and smell favorite scents again.
As if my body had a will of its own, I found myself slipping into the water. When the delicious warmth soaked into me, my chin began to quiver.
“Forgive me,” I whispered.
“Which one should I wear to the academic competition in Anchorage?” Spencer asked as he held up two shirts, one striped in various shades of blue and one sporting a hideous orange-and-purple check pattern.
“Hello, you’re twelve. Can’t you dress yourself?” I asked.
“Without your expert opinion. That would just be silly,” he said dramatically.
“The blue one,” I said, though I thought Spencer would look good in anything.
CHAPTER 5
On
Friday, three days after the crash, Mom came to my room early. Dressed for work, she sat on the edge of my rumpled bed and took my hand. “I don’t feel right leaving you here. Maybe you could come with me. It might help to be with your friends.”
Friday, three days after the crash, Mom came to my room early. Dressed for work, she sat on the edge of my rumpled bed and took my hand. “I don’t feel right leaving you here. Maybe you could come with me. It might help to be with your friends.”
“Was that what Lindsay said?” I knew it was irrational, but the hurt and anger I felt seeped out anyway.
“Winter.” Her tone scolded but not strongly. “Everyone handles grief in different ways.”
I retrieved my hand and rolled over, turning my back to her. Part of me knew she was right, but I felt like my emotions were coming apart at the seams, flying in random directions. The anger seemed to keep some of the pain at bay. At least sometimes I convinced myself of that for a few minutes.
Mom sighed. “Call me if you need anything, then. Or even if you just want me to come home.”
“I just want to be alone.” This was a lie. I wanted Spencer there with me—kissing me, holding me.
I listened as Mom left the room. When I heard her voice outside, I dragged myself to the window. She stood in the driveway talking to Jesse Kerr, but I couldn’t make out their words. I saw him shake his head, and she got into her car and backed out of the gravel drive onto the street.
Jesse didn’t follow her. Instead, he looked up at my window. I gasped when his eyes met mine. The startling thought that he might try to come up and see me—offer me some empty comfort—made me step back from the window, out of view.
I sank onto my ottoman and dropped my head into my upturned hands. If a simple glance could unnerve me so much, no wonder my mom seemed concerned. I wondered if I looked as brittle as I felt.
The walls of my bedroom began to close in on me. I wanted to take the fake Oscar, which Spencer and Lindsay had gotten me two birthdays ago, and use it to bust every breakable object in my room. My movie posters no longer held wonder and dreams, and if I’d had more strength, I would have ripped them down and torn them to shreds. Dreams were now a thing of the past for me. And for Spencer.
I knew I couldn’t concentrate long enough to lose myself in reading or homework. My DVD collection could melt, for all I cared. When I looked at my sketch pad, I had to fight the urge to set fire to it. Part of me wished the walls would literally close in and squash me like a trash compactor. But that part of myself that forced me to eat—and had driven me to sink myself into the bathwater—wanted to escape this madness caused by my isolation.
So I emerged from my room like a prisoner thrust upon a world I no longer remembered how to live in. Like Morgan Freeman’s character in
The Shawshank Redemption
.
The Shawshank Redemption
.
Dad was already gone, off tending to the infected and broken citizens of Tundra. I meandered into the kitchen and pulled a sleeve of Ritz crackers from the cupboard. I trudged from the kitchen to the living room, surveying the room like I hadn’t seen it in years. Suddenly feeling as if I couldn’t breathe indoor air another moment, I wandered onto the deck out back that faced the thinly wooded area at the back of our property.
I closed my eyes. Sounds and scents became sharper. The breeze carried the scent of firs and the faintest hint of the coming winter. Beyond the stirring of the air through the trees and the belch of Lane Berkley’s old pickup down the street, I heard boat motors on the river and the barely discernible lap of waves against the riverbanks.
Despite my fatigue, I headed for the river. It took me three times as long to reach it as normal. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my exhaustion or because I was afraid how I’d react to the spot where the relationship between Spencer and I had changed.
As I neared the riverbank, I didn’t cry. Instead, the memory of our first kiss made me smile.
The call of arctic terns overhead caused me to look up. I watched as their dark red beaks disappeared to the south.
I was so immersed in the sensory details around me that I jumped when I heard someone’s footsteps crunch on the gravel path. I expected one of my parents or Lindsay—
not
Jesse Kerr. The likelihood of him standing there, staring, was so unthinkable that I wondered if I’d begun to hallucinate.
not
Jesse Kerr. The likelihood of him standing there, staring, was so unthinkable that I wondered if I’d begun to hallucinate.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m not going to jump in the river—if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I was concerned.”
I jerked my gaze to him. Jesse’s expression really did look like concern. My world tilted a bit more on its axis.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced down for a moment before meeting my eyes again. “I’m really sorry about Spencer. I know how you must be feeling.”
His words sent a surge of blazing anger through me. “You could never know how I feel,” I spit at him. How could someone like him, whose life didn’t seem to have any bumps beyond a fight with his girlfriend, possibly understand?
Jesse looked startled. He pressed his lips together as if to prevent himself from speaking. His eyes were troubled. For a moment, I felt bad that I’d snapped. It wasn’t his fault. I must seem like Jekyll and Hyde to him.
But hearing him speak Spencer’s name nearly made me cry, even though I knew I should be totally empty by now. I redirected my gaze toward the river, unwilling to show my vulnerability in front of Jesse. We stood like that for a few moments.
“Shouldn’t you be at school?” I asked, wishing he’d go away.
“School can wait.”
I looked away. It made no sense that Jesse was skipping school while Lindsay was there, walking those halls that were empty of Spencer. I stared out across the river to the tundra beyond, but Jesse didn’t make any move to leave.
When I glanced at him, he’d turned his gaze toward the opposite side of the river, too. Something passed across his features, but I couldn’t discern what.
“It’s not hard to figure out why you’re hurting. Spencer’s death hit you hard. That much was clear when you passed out the other night. You didn’t even wake up when you were carried upstairs.”
“Did my dad tell you that?”
“No.”
I let his words soak in for several seconds. Did he mean? . . . “You? You’re the one who carried me upstairs?”
He’d been in my room? No guy had ever been in my room except Spencer. It was wrong to think of Jesse there, seeing my things—privy to more of who I was than almost anyone, Spencer and Lindsay excluded.
Jesse met my eyes with his dark ones. “Yes. Your dad was exhausted, and my dad has a bad back.”
I looked away, unable to face him any longer. “I . . . I’m . . .”
“No need to be embarrassed.”
I wasn’t embarrassed. Okay, so I was, but that wasn’t all of what I was feeling. The whole idea of Jesse lifting me in his arms and carrying me up the stairs to my room felt . . . odd, like something out of some other girl’s dreams. If I had ever dreamed such a scenario, I would have cast Spencer in the role, not Jesse. But Jesse hadn’t had to be at my house that night, especially after we’d run into each other at the cookout. But he had been, and he’d been decent enough to help when I’d needed it.
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