Free Freeze Tag by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

still snowy continuance of this condition. There was simply observation and attention.
    It’s like being a tree, Meghan thought. I’m here. I have my branches. I have my roots. But my sap no longer runs. I weep not. I laugh not. I simply wait. And if the seasons change, I live again, and if the seasons do not, I die.
    She was surprised to feel no fear. She had been so fearful of Lannie before. Perhaps fear, too, froze. Or perhaps there had never been anything to be afraid of.
    West shook his head. “Then it’s off, Lannie.”
    What’s off? thought Meghan. What did I miss, being a tree?
    She could see very little now. The snow lay right on her open eyes. There was only a yellow hole in the black of the night. It was the nightlight shining out of Tuesday’s bedroom window.
    Nightlight, thought Meghan. What a pretty thought. The real night, this night, this night I am going to have forever — it has no lights.
    She would be in the dark very soon.
    The dark always. The dark completely. The dark forever.
    “I don’t want Meghan back,” explained Lannie. “I like her frozen. She’s fun to freeze. She knows it’s coming, you see. It’s much more fun when they see it coming, and they know what’s going to happen.” Lannie chuckled. “I like it when they get scared and you can see it in their eyes.”
    Yes, thought Meghan. I was scared enough for her. I screamed loud enough to bring armies, but armies didn’t come. The snow soaked up my scream. The snow and West’s embrace. I screamed into his chest. I don’t know if he screamed or not. We stopped moving so fast.
    “Now my mother,” continued Lannie, “she didn’t know.” This was clearly a loss to Lannie. She had wanted her mother to know. Meghan found that she could be even colder, that her heart could still shiver, with the horror of Lannie Anveill.
    “And that girl in the cafeteria,” said Lannie sorrowfully, “of course she didn’t know what was coming either.”
    The glaze on Meghan’s eyes was greater. The snow lay on them and didn’t melt. Meghan didn’t blink. The yellow nightlight from Tuesday’s room up on the slope grew dim and vanished completely.
    “But Meghan,” Lannie went on contentedly, “she knew. She watched my finger move closer.”
    Lannie’s voice thickened with pleasure. Tuesday whimpered. Meghan wondered how long she would be able to hear. Were her ears going to freeze now, too?
    “And closer!” breathed Lannie hotly. “My finger moved only an inch and it moved slowly. Like the blade of a guillotine coming down on her throat. And Meghan knew what would happen and she was afraid.”
    Meghan could see nothing at all now, would never see anything again, but she knew that Lannie smiled. She knew the exact shape and texture of that smile. She knew it was the closest Lannie Anveill could come to happiness.
    West’s voice shook. Meghan loved him for that. She wished that West could know he was still loved. West said, “I will like you best, Lannie.” His voice shook even harder. “But not if you leave Meghan out here in the snow.”
    Lannie sniffed. This noise did not fit the dark and the falling snow and the fear. For Lannie, fear and falling were perfectly normal, and so she sniffed, annoyed, calling West Trevor’s bluff.
    “And that’s that,” said West.
    Lannie did not undo Meghan. It had been a forever “No.” West had simply not understood. Meghan had. She lay quietly under her blanket of snow.
    “Come on, Brown,” said West. “Come on, Tuesday. School tomorrow. We have to get some sleep.”
    Meghan heard the snow crunch under their departing feet as West shepherded his younger brother and sister up the hill toward the house.
    She heard no voices.
    Neither Tuesday nor Brown argued with their brother.
    They left her.
    They walked on into the warmth and the safety and light.
    Now the missing emotions came: they slid like a glacier falling off an alp. Meghan fell a great terrible distance into greater fear than