Frost

There were dead cockroaches.

On my bed.

 I couldn’t take my eyes off the carcasses. Some as big as two inches long. Legs and antennae and slippery-looking abdomens. A battlefield. I shivered violently, as if all those tiny legs were crawling on my skin, scrabbling up my arms and my spine and my neck.

This was not interesting. It was repulsive.

“Celeste!” I yelled again.

 I heard the flush of the toilet. Celeste came thumping in.

“I know, I know. Sorry,” she said in a blasé voice. “I needed to see if they all arrived okay.”

 “Take them off,” I said. The angry roar in my ears was so loud I was sure she could hear it, too. “Take them off my bed. Now!”

“Okay. Let me just get their box.” She hopped over and grabbed a shoe box off her dresser.

 “Why do you even . . . why do you even have them? This is so disgusting.”

“For a photo project. It’s taken me a really long time to get enough of them. You can’t just buy them anywhere.”

“Really, really disgusting,” I said. “And why didn’t you put them on your bed?”

She gave me a look as if I were the crazy person. “No room.”

I glanced over. Celeste’s bed was covered with ten or so small birds’ nests and what appeared to be an assortment of little bones. God, I wished Dean Shepherd were here to see this—what she was asking of me. David, too, for that matter.

“I’m going to go out for a little while,” I said, not knowing where I’d go, just knowing that I couldn’t be here with her. “When I get back, there will be no dead things in the bedroom. I don’t care what you do with them. I just don’t want them in my bedroom.”

 “Fine. Sorry, I didn’t know you had a phobia.”

“It’s not a phobia!” I said. “It’s perfectly normal! This is not the sort of stuff that should be in my bedroom! Especially not on my bed!”

Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “Okay,” she said. “I get the point. But it’s not like you haven’t touched my stuff, too.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Unless David tried on my skirt,” she said.

 Her skirt? My heart started thumping. How could she . . . ?

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” She put the shoe box down again and hopped over to the closet. She tugged at the doorknob, jiggled it, pulled. “This stupid door won’t let me in. It keeps sticking.”

“The wood’s probably swollen.” I went over and turned the knob. The door opened easily.

As Celeste reached inside, I had the irrational hope that she was going to bring out a skirt I’d never seen before, a skirt I hadn’t touched. But her hand emerged with the pink, bustled one. She held it out so I could see that down one side, on the seam, was a long rip—three or so inches.

I stared at it, momentarily speechless. That rip had not been there after I tried it on. I was sure. And it didn’t even look like it could have happened accidentally. Still, a guilty feeling wrapped around me, as tight as the skirt had been.

“Celeste,” I finally said, “I didn’t rip your skirt. I mean, I did try it on for a minute, but—”

 “You could have at least hung it back up.”

 “Hung it . . . ? I did hang it up.”

“Funny. I found it on the floor.”

 “But I did hang it up. I promise.” I had hung it up well, hadn’t I? And I’d checked the fabric so thoroughly.

“I can fix the rip,” she said, putting the skirt back in the closet. “That’s not a big deal. But is this how it’s going to be? You punishing me for living here? Because if it is, we should forget about it right now. I can tell the dean this isn’t going to work, that I need a room somewhere else.”

 I imagined the scene. “No,” I said. “No, you don’t have to do that.”

“Are you sure?”

 “I’m positive. Why don’t we . . . start fresh?”

“Like, forget this stuff happened?” She gestured at the skirt and the bed.

I nodded.

Celeste seemed to consider this for a moment. She hopped over, delicately picked up one of the roaches, and held it up to her face. “What do you think, little guy?” she said. “Forgive and forget?”

 She turned the roach so his head faced me, turned him back, and wiggled him so he appeared to be nodding at her.

“Okay,” she said. Then she smiled. “Leena! I’m so happy to be living with you.”

When I reached the end of the driveway—still not knowing where I was headed, or what exactly had happened back there, only knowing that there was a great big lump of unpleasantness in my throat—I ran into Abby and Viv, carrying grocery bags.

“Thomas!” Abby called as she bounded up to me. “Check it out!”

Her bags were filled with microwave popcorn, ice cream, pretzels, Diet Coke, protein bars, trail mix. . . .

“Wow,” I said. “That should keep us going.”

 “What’s wrong, Leen?” Viv said, clearly picking up on my lack of enthusiasm. “Was your presentation okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “It’s just . . .” And then, even though I knew I shouldn’t give Abby ammunition against Celeste, I couldn’t help telling them what had happened.

Abby’s mouth dropped open as I spoke. “That’s the foulest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I can’t believe she’d do that to you.”

 “She must have been clueless that you’d mind,” Viv said.