Freeze Tag (15 page)

Barely, way down the sloping yard, Meghan could see the mounded tops of a row of cedars that had grown up near the truck. You could not quite see down as low as the truck. The white spires of the cedars marked the spot.

How peacefully the snow lay. Snow covers all ugliness, thought Meghan.

Tuesday coaxed Lannie around the house. Tuesday even went with her partway, although Tuesday had neither coat nor boots on. “He’ll be there soon,” Tuesday said twice.

Lannie waded down the sloping yard, past the snow covered vines and hedges and underbrush. Meghan turned off the kitchen lights so that Lannie would not see her, illuminated next to the cookie dough. She could hardly see Lannie. In fact, Lannie’s shadow was clearer than the real Lannie.

Lannie’s little body, forcing itself against the high drifts and packed snow, dipped down and disappeared from sight.

Meghan pulled the shade over the kitchen window before she turned the light back on.

“Now let’s set the table,” said Tuesday briskly. “Mom’s exhausted from her new job. I’ve promised to do dinner twice a week. She cut a seafood recipe out of
Family Circle
. Doesn’t this look yummy? You chop the onions and sauté them, and I’ll start the biscuits.”

“What does sauté mean?” said Meghan uneasily. She was not familiar with kitchens. Her own family had take-out, or fixed meals that involved heating rather than recipes, like steak and baked potatoes.

In the end, Tuesday even had to demonstrate the purpose of the chopping board. Had to show Meghan how to dice the onion without also dicing her fingertips. How to scrape the onions into the skillet without dumping half of them in the crack between the stove and the counter. “This is work,” said Meghan. “I’m exhausted from a single onion.”

She and Tuesday giggled.

“Now you’ve got to prepare the scallops,” said Tuesday. She took a wrapped package out of the meat compartment of the refrigerator and ripped it open.

“Those horrible mushy white things? We’re going to eat those?” Meghan was horrified.

“Yes. We’re going to love them. Now here’s what you do.”

And then she had to do things with garlic as well, and parsley had to be torn, and then she was given a tiny little broom, or paintbrush, with which to slather melted butter on the tops of the almost-baked biscuits. When they came out of the oven again, minutes later, they were crusty and golden and smelled of heaven.

There was quite a rush as everybody else got home, and the table had to be set, and her parents had to be telephoned for permission for Meghan to eat at the Trevors’ again, and Meghan had to work through her guilt for once again not being home with her own family.

The real treat was sitting next to West again.

His smile was normal, his laugh was genuine.

Mr. Trevor had had a great day at work and regaled them with stories. “This is the best dinner I’ve had in years!” he kept saying. “Meghan, you did the garlic and onion?”

“I taught her how, Dad,” said Tuesday.

He shook his head proudly. “What a pair!”

“I’ll have seconds,” said West.

Meghan was beaming.

“Excellent dinner,” pronounced Mrs. Trevor. Then she giggled in that special Trevor way. “Of course, I’d like any meal that somebody else fixed, so my standards are pretty low.”

“You guys would not believe,” said Tuesday, “what I had to teach old Meggie-Megs here. Good grief. She doesn’t know an onion from a potato.”

“What’s for dessert?” said Mr. Trevor, holding a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other, ready for any eating style.

“Drop that silver,” said Meghan.

“Cookies,” said Tuesday, bringing out a tray lined with a Christmas napkin she’d dug up from somewhere.

“Santa Clauses!” shouted Mr. Trevor. He bit off a Santa head and declared it the tastiest cookie he’d had in his life.

Meghan had never dreamed that the mere cooking of food could bring so many compliments. She would have to tell her parents. Perhaps the Moores would try cooking, too, one day.

West cleared the table, scraped the dishes, loaded the dishwasher, ran hot soapy water for the pots. Dishes had always been his job. And he had never complained. His mother put on the coffee. Mr. and Mrs. Trevor always liked to sit around the table sipping that awful stuff after a big meal.

“So,” said Mrs. Trevor, smiling broadly at her son, and then equally broadly at Meghan, “you two are back together again? Lannie’s out of the picture?”

I forgot Lannie! She’s still waiting for him down in the truck! Meghan swerved to look at Tuesday, so Tuesday would give West the message. Certainly Meghan didn’t want to deliver it. She was as full of happiness as the night was full of dark. She didn’t even want to utter the name, because it would break her happy spell like an icicle hitting the pavement.

Both Tuesday’s eyelids went down slowly, in a sort of double wink. How like Lannie she suddenly looked. Hooded, evil eyes. Eyes that had seen terrible things. Eyes that had seen through to the other side.

“Lannie’s out of the picture,” agreed Tuesday. She, too, smiled broadly. She met West’s eyes and now his smile came out. Meghan could not move. Out of the corner of her eyes she checked Brown. No smile had ever been wider.

Meghan did not need to be out in the snow to be cold. Her hands, her heart, her thoughts: They chilled as if her friends had refrigerated her.

“All we need now,” said Mr. Trevor, “is ice cream. A really good dinner isn’t done till you’ve had your ice cream. Meghan, dish it out!”

Meghan got up from the table. She circled the big flat dining room table, and crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator.

The inside of the freezer was rimmed with frost crystals. Ice cubes tumbled out of the ice maker and fell into a clear plastic box. They looked like stones for a pyramid. Her fingers grazed the metal edge of the freezer and for a scary moment they stuck to the cold. She peeled herself away and got the ice cream container out.

So cold in there. How chilly the boxes of vegetables and desserts must be. Meghan shut the door, leaving the cold boxes to their dark frozen lives. They had to he there until somebody wanted them. They had no exit without human hands. There were no handles on the insides of refrigerator doors.

Handles.

There are no handles on the inside of the truck doors, either, thought Meghan Moore. Lannie cannot get out of the truck.

Nobody knows she’s there
.

The snow is coming down. The truck is getting colder and colder. Lannie can scream and kick and bite. But she will never get out. There are no handles on the inside.

By morning …

By morning, Lannie Anveill will be frozen.

Like Jason, she will sit behind the wheel. She may sit all winter. Because Mr. and Mrs. Trevor never go down there.

And nobody else knows she’s there.

“I boiled water,” said Mrs. Trevor cheerily. “People who don’t want coffee with their ice cream may have tea, herb tea, spiced cider, or instant hot chocolate.”

West smiled. He would have coffee, please. Cream and sugar.

Tuesday smiled. She would have herb tea, please. With honey.

Brown smiled. He would have hot chocolate, please.

They were not smiling for coffee, tea, or chocolate.

They were smiling because they knew where Lannie was.

Those were not even smiles across their faces.

They were gashes.

Tuesday knew.

West knew.

And Brown, grinning down into his ice cream — Brown knew.

“Meghan?” said Mrs. Trevor.

“Spiced cider,” said Meghan. It’s not my responsibility, she thought. Tuesday sent her down there. Tuesday’s the one letting it happen.

Only three people would know where Lannie Anveill was. How she got there. What happened to her.

No.

Actually, four people.

Three Trevors …
and one Moore
.

Meghan Moore.

Meghan’s cider spilled on the table.

She set the mug down. Then set her trembling hand on her lap.

No
.
West
.
We will not do that
.
We will not even think of doing that
.

Then where will this end
,
Meghan? Where will Lannie take us? Are we going to grow up and reach our twenties and thirties and middle age and old age
,
with Lannie still there threatening us
,
ruining our lives?

You won
,
Lannie
.
You froze him
.

Yes
.
He’s mine
.

Evil can infect
.
Evil can spread
.
Evil has such great and terrible power that it infiltrates even the best of human beings
.

I, thought Meghan Moore, am the one who became evil.

I am the one sitting here with a mug of spiced cider, waiting for the cold and terrible hours of night to pass, so that Lannie Anveill turns to ice and snow.

My heart.

My heart is frozen.

Meghan Moore got up from the table. She walked to the back door. It was difficult. Her feet dragged and she bumped into the jamb. The doorknob did not fit her hand and the wind when she opened the door assaulted her.

She heard voices behind her, but they were Trevor voices. The voices of people to whom things came easily. The voices of people who expected things to work out their way. Meghan did not know if she still loved the Trevors.

The one I have to love most, she thought, is me.

If I don’t love myself, I cannot go on.

The cold was no longer an enemy. Instead it woke her and embraced her with its demands.

This is what it means, thought Meghan Moore, to choose the lesser of two evils. Lannie is evil, but it would be more evil to stand aside and silently let her die.

Meghan had never gone through snow so deep, through darkness so thick. She found the truck by feel. She opened the door of the cab and Lannie fell into her arms,

Meghan helped Lannie walk.

“Come in my house where it’s warm,” said Meghan.

Lannie said nothing.

Perhaps she was too cold to speak.

Or perhaps … she had waited all her life to come in where it was warm.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.