Free The Snow by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

Vicki. It was perfect.”
    “I was asking about Christina’s limp,” Jonah said, turning his back on Gretch.
    Gretch and Vicki threw back their heads and howled with laughter. “When we played Murder, Mr. Shevvington said the only rule was, ‘Don’t go near the cellar.’ So who goes into the cellar? Christina!”
    Jonah knew Christina’s cellar stories. He knew she would never have gone into the cellar again in her life. Jonah put a brotherly arm around her and said, “Chrissie, are you all right?”
    It was comfort, not romance, but Vicki and Gretch were furious with jealousy. “She just skinned her knees,” said Vicki, brushing it off. “Anyhow it was her own fault. She opened the bolt on the cellar door herself.”
    “I did not!” cried Christina. “The door was wide open when I got there! I was trying to save Anya.”
    “Save Anya?” they repeated. Vicki and Gretch fell on each other, laughing. “Christina, it was a game. Nobody needed saving. We were all having a good time screaming. Anya’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top anyhow, you know. Her mind melted last year. Only the world’s best shrink could save her now.”
    Christina was trembling. “Somebody opened the cellar door on purpose, Jonah.”
    “Oh, right,” Vicki said. “You’re always trying to blame somebody, Christina Romney. You tell people you have this terrible life, but it’s all lies. The Shevvingtons are fabulous. And no matter how rotten you are to your guests, like poor Katy, and no matter how demanding you are and how you try to force Dolly into stuff — the Shevvingtons forgive you and try to help you. Now you’re even trying to blame somebody else because you went and opened the cellar door, which you’re not allowed to do.” They flounced away.
    Jonah asked, “Did you fall, Chrissie? Or were you pushed?”
    He believes me, Christina thought.
    At the party not even Anya had believed her!
    She had felt the thing’s fingers on her skin. They were cold, and they stank of the sea. It was like being stroked by a fish.
    But the crash of her body on the stairs had saved her. The noise brought Katy, Jennie, Amanda, and Linda running. The slimy fingers retreated to the shadows in the back of the cellar. Christina lay in a crumpled pile at the bottom of the rickety stairs.
    Every guest at the party gathered in the door to tell her what an idiot she was, falling down the steps in her own house.
    “Jonah,” Christina whispered now. “It was there. It’s real. It lives. It touched me.” Everything granite in Christina disintegrated. She put her arms around Jonah, hung her troubles around his neck, and wept.
    But they were too young, and it was too soon. Jonah was appalled. His friends would see; it was too intimate; they were in public; what was she doing? He forgot the cellar and the giggle and the Shevvingtons and pulled back, trying to disassociate himself from all that affection and need. “I — um — I’ll see you in — uh — class,” he said desperately. “And — I’m busy this afternoon — I — I hope your knees are okay.” And he fled.
    Christina snapped an icicle off the row that lined the school and threw it like a tiny javelin into a drift of snow. When she turned around, Jonah, Vicki, and Gretchen had disappeared. Christina stood alone.
    It was seventeen below. The cold chewed her fingers. By the time the last warning bell rang and she forced herself into the building, her fingers were stiff and blue.
    In homeroom they had to fill out forms for statewide testing, which would take place later in the month. When she tried to write, the letters came out looking like Egyptian hieroglyphics. My mind feels like that, thought Christina. Meaningless curves and twitches.
    The day passed in a similar fashion, twitching and curving.
    Who was the next victim of the Shevvingtons? Did they want Dolly or Anya or Christina? Who was the thing? What did he want?
    “The essay,” said Mrs. Shevvington in