Iceling Read online

  Dave must be able to see all of this on my face, because before I can think anything meaner about Mimi, he says, “She just thought you could use a break is all.”

  “That is exactly my thinking here,” Mimi says.

  I look to Callie, who is calmly chomping a cracker. “Ugh,” I sigh. “Fine. How are you getting the booze?”

  “My brother, duh,” Mimi says.

  “Okay, and how many people are coming?”

  “All of them.” She says this as though she is the literal embodiment of nonchalance.

  “All of them?” I say. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means . . . all of them,” Dave says, but he says it like what he really means to say is I’m sorry, and it’s the right thing to do, him saying it like this, and I’m grateful.

  And anyway, even if the whole city shows up, they’re probably right. I do need a break. I’m supposed to know this!

  “Aren’t I supposed to be the one to know if I need a break?” I say.

  “Right, because you’re the queen of going easy on yourself,” says Mimi.

  “You’re too busy looking out for Callie and other people’s feelings is all,” Dave says. “Which is why it’s our job to keep tabs on this kind of stuff.” And once again I feel like a terrible human because I don’t know how to let this sweet boy, who says all kinds of sweet things, into my life.

  And instead of saying that out loud, I just give in. “Well. I guess we’d better get ready?”

  SEVEN

  MIMI WASN’T KIDDING—I’m pretty sure everyone I’ve ever met in my life so far, plus about two dozen strangers, is currently inside my house. Callie’s in the greenhouse, and Dave, Mimi, Mimi’s brother Mark, and I are going to check on her in shifts. I set alarms on everyone’s phones, because I’m basically the world’s best and most reliable big sister. Mimi’s with her right now, which is why I’m out here in the living room, relaxing and having fun, because everybody knows I am the queen of going easy on myself.

  And then I spot a major party foul: This boy I don’t know is in the corner of the dining room, singing a cappella to some girls I do know, and this move just won’t fly.

  “Dave!” I call out, to no response. “DAVE!” I call again, still seemingly in vain. “Will someone please get my man? There’s a party foul that needs attention!”

  That got his attention—though whether it was me calling him “my man” or saying “party foul” I can’t be sure—because here he is now. “Dave! And you’re wearing a . . . football helmet?” Where did he find a football helmet?

  “Babe,” he says to me.

  “Man,” I say to him, and I grab the face cage and pull it down, and I kiss the top of his helmet like they do in shows about football on TV. He grins at me, and I point to the sans-instrument-crooning offender in the corner.

  “Mother of God,” Dave says. “I had no idea it was this bad. Wait here.”

  “Dude,” Dave calls to the boy as he makes his way toward the dining room. But the boy keeps on going, like he maybe thought Dave was talking to someone else, but then Dave just stops and stands there right in between him and the girls.

  “What?” says the boy, pausing his song because he finally gets it now, though still not completely, because it’s clear by what we’ll call the tone of his voice that he’s pretty sure that this interruption is super unwarranted as regards his performance.

  “Dude. Buddy. There is no a cappella serenading at this party unless it’s a joke or you’re asking your girlfriend to dance. And maybe not even then. It’s just the policy. And anyway, Lorna says you should leave.” He points to me, and I point to the boy, and I do the thumbs-down.

  “What? Who’s Lorna?” the boy says, still incredulous.

  “This is Lorna’s party, you jerk! Ugh!” says one of the girls he was singing to, and then another one steps forward and dumps her drink on his head.

  “Oof,” says Dave. “Buddy, you should maybe consider going home and changing into some dry clothes and maybe thinking about your life and the choices you made that led you here.”

  “Here?” the boy says.

  “Here,” says Dave. “Where you got a drink dumped all over you. And where you are now leaving. Come on, let’s go.” Then Dave moves to pick up the boy and sling him over his shoulder.

  “Hey, man, there’s no need for all that,” says the boy, trying to dodge Dave and flinging his eyes around the room in what I recognize as embarrassment.

  “Yes,” says Dave. “Yes, there is.” But before he can reach again to hoist him over his shoulder, the boy is gone, out the door and into the night. The only music in the house now is coming from my parents’ fancy speakers, and I sigh in what is actually sweet relief.

  I chance a look at the rest of the party.

  Two of my high school’s most famous couples are sitting on the staircase. Both couples are arguing pretty intensely, but I can tell that only one of the pairs, Gordie and Eve, will be broken up before the party’s over.

  “And another thing!” shouts a voice from above, but then we never get to hear a word about the other thing, because a moment later the owner of the voice—an editor on the student paper named Stephanie—falls down the stairs, her body tumbling between the couples’ arguments, then landing, really impressively, with most of her beer unspilt. She goes for the extra point by proceeding to take a sip from her cup while waiting for someone to help her up, so she can tell them the other thing.

  One unexpected thing about being a little bit drunk at a party in my parents’ house while they’re out of town is that it turns me into a neurotic mother hen whose mind is filled with guilty, fearful thoughts and imaginations of the most awful possible outcomes of the night. Thoughts like how this is maybe a terrible idea that will only end in tears, with the house burning to the ground, and Callie the bride in a shotgun wedding. Or like realizations about how much you hate the idea of disappointing your parents, or being disappointed in yourself for worrying about disappointing your parents. Or about how you could just walk away into the night, right behind the beer-soaked a cappella guy, and start a new life somewhere in, like, New Jersey, where nobody would ever go to find you, because who would ever want to go to New Jersey? But of course I won’t go to New Jersey—Callie would hate it there, and we’d have to find her an all-new doctor and an all-new Jane—so the only thing I can do is say to myself, “Be cool.”

  A kind of quiet LCD Soundsystem song comes on, Dave’s favorite, and I know he must have plugged his music into the speakers. The varsity lacrosse goalie tries to change the song, and Dave runs over and tackles him. I go to high-five Dave and I kiss him on his neck, which is no longer helmeted, and the song picks up right where it left off. It isn’t quiet anymore, and as it crescendos I try to press myself against him as closely as I can, and everyone is dancing.

  In between two weirdly synchronized dancers, I spot a kid sitting on the floor by the fireplace reading Infinite Jest. Ugh, how pretentious. Not to be reading Infinite Jest, I get that that book is important to a lot of people, but to be doing it at a party is just . . . ugh.

  “Stay home next time, kid!” I shout at him. He looks up at me and then around the room, like he’s startled, like he didn’t realize there were people here and a party here and that these things were literally all around him, and then goes right back to his place in the book.

  For some reason the sight of this guy doing something so out of place at a party causes the mother hen mode to kick in again, and now instead of focusing on dancing with Dave, I’m trying so hard to ignore the constant rattling off of things that could go wrong. Shut up, Lorna! We’re having fun! So much fun! Fun like . . . damaged-furniture and cracked-picture-frames fun. Or shameless-strangers-going-upstairs-to-hook-up-in-my-parents’-room fun, or in-my-room or in-Callie’s-room fun. I keep dancing, but my heart’s not in it, because now all my worries
are focused squarely on Callie, even though I know she is still in the greenhouse, with Mimi. But I know I’m still going to go check on her soon because now all I can think about is what if some jerk like Adam or Rick or Dan—oh God, please not Dan, who has not once in his life brushed his teeth—makes a pass at Callie, and then Callie freaks out, and then Adam or Rick or—ugh, God, please not Dan—calls her a freak, or freaks out, or other worse things than that? Or what if some other, even more massive jerk tries to get aggressive with Callie, Callie who can’t consent to anything in any way and maybe doesn’t even understand at all the sorts of things being asked of her . . . and then I stop thinking about anything at all, because I see Mimi on the other side of the room, dancing close with her crush when she’s supposed to be with Callie.

  I stop dancing and shout in Dave’s ear. “Where the hell is Callie?”

  “Huh?” says Dave, not hearing over the noise on the dance floor, which has gotten wild and crowded.

  “Callie!” I scream, trying to make my way toward Mimi.

  “Oh, shoot, I forgot to tell you,” says Dave, pulling me out of the living room and into a quieter hallway. “She’s with Mark! Mimi told me to tell you, but I totally forgot. I’m so sorry, Lorna.”

  I sigh and press my palm to my racing heart, feeling a little relieved but not quite calm yet. Mark is a very nice guy, and since he brought the booze and is the only one here who’s technically an adult, he’s more or less our chaperone tonight.

  Dave goes to get me some water, and then the song changes to the highly danceable anthem everyone’s been belting out of their cars all summer. The dance floor is really flooded now, louder and sweatier than I ever thought my parents’ living room could get.

  And then I hear someone shout: “WHOA, WHAT THE HELL!”

  And the whole night is shattered.

  Callie, I think, my voice in my head getting worked up past mother-hen level and straight to human-mother-worried-about-her-baby-trapped-under-a-car-that-is-on-fire-level. Dave is at my side before I can even turn my head to lock eyes with him, and he strong-arms us a path straight though the loud, sweaty, messy crowd to the greenhouse. We get there and why the hell are there people in the greenhouse? I will call the cops on my own party just to get them out of here if I have to, and what the hell. Oh. Oh no.

  Callie. Standing in front of something there isn’t a word to describe. First all I see is a massive amount of Popsicle sticks that had been, I’m guessing, intended for use as splints to prop up some plants. I get closer, pushing past the last few people standing in the way of me and my sister, and then I’m standing right there in front of this thing, and my cup falls out of my hand to the floor.

  Because Callie has built what I can only refer to as an island. An island of Popsicle sticks and blades of that super-strong grass she grows, intricately braided into whole sheets on top of this island the size of a small sofa.

  “Holy shit,” says, of all goddamn people, Dan. Now he’s going over to it or to Callie, who is still working, layering in more sheets of woven grass, her hands trembling and then not trembling, not at all. Dan’s leaning down to touch the island, or Callie, and that voice in my head snaps to attention and forces its way out of my mouth.

  “OUT!” I shout at him, and he just puts his palms out toward me and spits out a string of “Whoa, bro, cool down, bro.”

  “Get the hell out of my house, bro!” I shout again, pointing at the door, giving him the meanest eyes I can. He’s frozen where he is, in anger or confusion or both, and I shout, “Get. The hell. OUT.”

  Callie keeps flinching at the noise: from the party, from the people, from the world, from me. But still she keeps weaving blades of grass into those sheets and layering them up and up. I forget about Dan for the moment, because then I see there’s a part of the island that looks like it’s shaking, like something is loose and trembling, or trembling to be loosed. And then I realize that Callie has bent some of the Popsicle sticks supporting that section, and there are these tiny little blossoms peeking out in between the trembling and the shaking. Without thinking, without taking my eyes off the miracle or curse unfolding before me, I take out my phone and start texting Stan.

  callie is building a goddamn island??????

  I send him a picture, which is when I see that everyone else has their phones out too, taking photos of Callie and her island.

  “WHAT PART OF ‘GET OUT’ DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?” I scream. Dave starts physically moving people out and asks Mark to call a whole fleet of Ubers, because the party’s over. Mimi’s back here now too, helping Dave with crowd control, and slowly the greenhouse empties until all that’s left is me, Callie, and her island.

  Stan texts me back: I know, and then a blurry photo of what looks like an island, like this island, but way uglier, and Ted looming over it.

  come over, I text him. bring ted.

  OK, Stan texts. And then a couple of seconds later: What the hell, texts Stan.

  “Who are you texting?” Dave asks, returning from the house.

  “Is it Stan?” Mimi asks.

  “Who’s Stan?” Dave asks, and I don’t totally know what to tell him. All I can do is just look from Callie to him to Mimi and then back to Callie, who is still weaving grass, building her little world up layer by layer.

  “No. Seriously. Who’s Stan?”

  EIGHT

  I EXPLAIN TO Dave that Stan is a guy whose brother is also an Arctic Recovery Orphan sibling while we wait for him to show up.

  “We see each other at the hospital sometimes. His brother has a lot of the same . . . quirks that Callie does, which means we’ve both been in the hospital more often than usual lately, so we’ve been comparing notes. About them and about what it’s like to be in a family with them.”

  “Oh. You mean you talk to him because there are things you can talk to him about that you can’t talk to me about?”

  I want so badly to just yell the honest real-talk answer: “Yes! But that isn’t a reflection on you, you handsome dummy!” But I’m not rattled enough or drunk enough to mess everything up by being all open and honest, so instead I say this: “Dave, he’s had a hard time of it, way harder than me and my family, and he needs a friend.” And then, because I can’t help myself: “And there’s also the fact that he’s not as cute or smart as you, and he’s never been allowed in my room, unsupervised or otherwise, and the only thing you need to worry about when you meet him is making everything weird by acting all jealous and aggressive, because you are my guy, you dingus.”

  “Hey, that’s adorable, charming, and all-around-dreamboat dingus to you,” Dave says, and how he says it is like he’s almost but not quite convinced that the situation here is fine.

  I put my arms around him and rest my forehead on his chest and say, “Mine.” His muscles loosen up a bit, and he pulls me closer, and I know he’s at least a little happy right now. But this lasts only a moment, because as soon as I’ve made Dave feel better, the part of my brain that doesn’t want me to use the word “boyfriend” or introduce him to my parents wakes up and starts stirring, and now all I can think about is that it’s lame as hell that right now I have to worry about Dave’s feelings while my own feelings and whatever is going on with Callie have to sit quietly until they get called on.

  But before I can let the monster completely take over, the doorbell rings. Mimi jumps up to get it before I can, then returns with Stan behind her, and a looming and lurking Ted bringing up the rear. And then I see it side by side: their identical heights.

  “Hi,” Stan says to me, then turns to look around the house, his 360 gaze making me realize how trashed the place is. “You’re having a party?” he says, his face fallen and sad, and I feel terrible, but then the monster whirls around again to remind me that this is just one more person whose feelings I shouldn’t have to take care of.

  Dave puts his arm around me, which only makes
my cheeks burn hotter. “Had a party. Kinda. Yeah. It was a totally last-minute thing, I didn’t even know it was happening until earlier today.” Stan nods, playing it cool. “Anyway, Dave, this is Stan. Stan, Dave.”

  “We’re together,” Dave says, reaching his hand out to Stan, and my cheeks are completely and totally on fire.

  “Hey. Stan,” says Stan, and then they shake hands without smiling, and it’s at once so masculine and childish that I could throw up.

  “This is at once so masculine and childish that I could throw up,” I say.

  “Um,” says Stan.

  “Uh,” says Dave.

  Mimi falls down laughing, and I smile real fast at both of them. Ted starts shuffling around impatiently behind Stan, and that’s when I see what he’s holding: a ham-fisted sculpture that looks exactly like an uglier and ham-fisteder version of Callie’s.

  “Come on,” I say, and we all go to the greenhouse. Ted leads the way, holding his easy-chair-sized island over his head far more cautiously than anyone would ever hold an actual easy chair over their head. Callie follows, and I’m struck again by the fact that they are exactly the same height, with the same skin and eyes and hair. I’m used to weird, but, like. This is maybe actually weird. At least a little. Right?

  We step inside, quiet and cautious, entering like we would a haunted house. Ted stops short right in front of Callie, and they’re looking at each other like they know each other. Like they know something about each other, like their lives are linked by some sort of shared secret. I don’t mean they’re fawning over each other, and they’re not bristling at each other either. They’re not retreating, not advancing. They’re just . . . they’re sharing something is what it looks like. Like they’re maybe acknowledging this shared thing between them, because I swear I can feel a palpable sense of relief and understanding here in this greenhouse. I look at this, and I’m so happy for Callie. I’m just so happy to see this peace flashing in her eyes, to know I was right: She can feel connected to people, and in a visible, real way. And then I’m immediately sad too. I feel something crushed within my chest as I realize she has never looked at me like that. It takes no time at all for the shame I feel about that thought to crash over me like a wave, washing me with sadness and happiness both.