Frost Bite

Chapter 46

Josie

My father doesn't know what to do with me. He doesn't understand as I walk around the house, staring at all the windows, looking for frost that isn't going to be there. He doesn't understand my reluctance to eat or why I go through the medical books I have obsessively, looking for an answer to a problem they could never imagine.

But I don't blame him for that. He's never known what to do with me. And right now? I don't know either.

He gives me a week before I have to go back to school. Seven days to somehow pull myself together and pretend to be a human being again.

But I left all that in the jungle.

Almost, anyway.

Ryan knocks on my door early the next morning, because he knows I won't be asleep. I open it for him and he comes in without a word and leads me up to my room.

I'm beginning to hate it in here. The sheets smelled slightly of Jack and I found one of his shirts in my closet. I wore to bed last night. I can't tell if it made the ache worse or better.

I think I understand why Jack was so cold when I met him. A thousand years of this and I'd be glacial, too.

"You look awful," he says sitting down on my bed and I sit next to him. He wraps a blanket around my shoulders.

I shrug. "I feel awful," I say and I can't help the way my voice breaks. It hasn't even been forty-eight hours.

"I'm so sorry, Josie," he whispers, squeezing my hand and it's like having my Ryan back again.

I stare at him. Something about his sympathy wakes me up. "Why are you comforting me? You hated Jack."

Ryan's expression softens. "But you love him. And as much as I hate to admit it, he loved you. And I love you. And I'd rather see you happy and with someone else — or alone — than miserable."

"I do love you, Ryan," I say, chocked by the thickness of my throat and the depth and breadth and ceaselessness of his love for me. If I get through this, it will be because of him.

"I know," he assures me before kissing my forehead. "And I'm so, so sorry, Jo."
 "Do you think there's a heaven?" I ask because all the Sundays in church, listening to some old man tell me I'm a sinner didn't quite convince me.

Ryan smiles a soft smile. "Yeah, there's a heaven, Jo. And a hell. And a God," Ryan says as picks me up and sets me down so we're both leaning against my headboard and I'm grateful for the warmth coming off his shoulder because I haven't felt warm since Jack died. "Jack saved you but stopped believing in the idea that he could be really good. And so for a while he wasn't until you brought it out of him. So I'm sure even God is having trouble deciding if Jack belongs in heaven or hell."
 I laugh, a choking, gasping laugh between sobs. "That wouldn't surprise me. He stopped believing in God, though. Doesn't that mean he goes to hell?"
 Ryan nudges my shoulder with his. "Nah. I don't think God cares whether or not you believe in Him. I mean, He's there either way, right? I think God just cares whether or not you're a good person, even if you make mistakes." And even though I don't know what to believe, don't know up from down right now, hearing Ryan say those words is a balm — not curing, but treating. Helping.
 "Ryan, I'd be dead without you," I whisper because it's true. Because right now I'm dying and he eases the aching of my broken heart as I long for a man that's not him even as he loves me.

"You saved me, remember? I'd be dead without you," he says as he pulls me toward him until my head is on his shoulder and his arm is wrapped around me. And I feel less un-tethered. It's been eight years since Ryan was my anchor and now he's holding me on earth again.

Because the two people who did it before are both gone.

Tears burn in my eyes and my chest feels heavy. "I'm so tired..."

"Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up," he promises. And that one promise means everything right now.

"Thank you," I breathe as my eyelids flutter shut.

Eventually, I can no longer avoid going back to school. I can't avoid the curious eyes or the mundane life that means so little to me now. Right, left, right, left – marching toward my inevitable end with only Ryan to give it any meaning. And every step, I know what I've lost. I know what I could have had and I bleed with it.

I sit down at my desk and look at the empty notebook in front of me and the ballpoint pen and the school that was always beige is now gray scale – like everything without Jack.

I don't look around at any of the kids sitting next to me or the teacher that types away at her computer. I know what I'll see.

March, march, left right, left right.

Gray, white, black.

I struggle to take in a breath. I don't know if I can do it. I have so long until college, until I can even start taking the entrance exams for medical school. I don't know if I can sit here pretending like I don't know how much more there is to the world than these halls and textbooks. I have to get out of Alaska. There are too many memories here. I'll be a doctor in someplace where it never snows. I'll go to California or Texas or somewhere, anywhere snow is a distant memory.

There are too many memories here.

The counselor — Ms. Gose — calls me into her office. She taps her pen against the desk and looks me up and down. I know how terrible I look right now and that I haven't done much to fix it. I'll have to be better about that.

"Josephine, I brought you here —"

I shake my head and she stops, blinking because I guess I'm not the usual student that comes into the counselor's office. "I know why I'm here."

"Okay, why are you here?"

"You're concerned about my mental health after my time away. You're concerned that you're going to have a depressed student on your hands that you might be liable for. I'm not suicidal. I don't want to talk about what happened. But I do want to go to medical school. University of Washington specifically. Or maybe Johns Hopkins. I haven't really decided yet."

She blinks and purses her lips in a way that makes me keenly aware of where she got her nickname Ms. Goose. "You want to ignore everything that happened to you?"

"No, I said I don't want to talk about it with you. The two aren't mutually exclusive," I snap and I feel something in me threaten to break. "I'm going to medical school. I have dreams. I have friends."

"And that's it?"

"I don't see how this is any of your business. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to class so I can get into UW. Or, I don't know, UCLA. Maybe I'll go to California. Get a tan."

"I didn't dismiss you."

I raise an eyebrow. "I'm one of your best students. Are you really going to try to pick a fight with me?"

Goose narrows her eyes at me. "I'll be watching you Miss Herrmann."

"You'll be very bored," I promise her as I open the door. "There's absolutely nothing to see."