Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 7

"Well, rats," Mom said around ten o'clock, standing with her hands on her hips in front of the sliding glass doors leading to the deck. She looked out over the white blanket that covered our back yard with a frown.  "I had kind of wanted to drive down to Milwaukee tomorrow to go to the botanical gardens and have a fun day. But it doesn't look like we'll be going anywhere for a while."

I looked up, concerned, from the book I was trying to read without much success on the couch. If the plows didn't clear the streets overnight, there was little chance I'd ostensibly be going to see a movie with Cheryl in Ortonville the next day. Although my ears had been listening closely for approaching cars in the hope that the Emorys would successfully make it back from Osh Kosh that night so that Trey and I could finish our conversation about his discovery of his biological father, it had been hours since the last set of tires I'd heard making their way over the mounds of snow on Martha Road. Mischa had sent me pictures of all of her Christmas presents earlier in the day and had asked me what I'd gotten. She seemed most excited about a lilac leotard and matching dance slippers from her parents, which she was considering for her big gymnastics competition in February. Her girlish enthusiasm about her gifts made me feel all the more panicky about how endangered her life was. It was really urgent that we not lose a day of productivity because of snow blocking the streets.

That night, our house was uncommonly still after the lights went out. The snow continued to fall silently outside our window panes. I pulled up my blankets to my chin even though my room was warm. I only had seven more nights in my own bed to savor before heading back to Dearborn. Even just the thought of that filled my head with images of the faces of the girls in attendance at that school alongside me. I knew little more about them than their names and approximate ages since Trey had advised me, wisely, to keep to myself. There was my roommate, Alecia, whose petty thievery finally caught the attention of a judge when she'd ordered a number of expensive services at a manicure salon without having a single dollar bill in her wallet. There was the petite girl who'd constantly tried to get me to pass notes on her behalf in our shared classes; I didn't know her real name but everyone seemed to call her Hot Stuff. She was at Dearborn for routinely torturing her younger stepsiblings. A towering girl with shoulders like a linebacker named Winnie was at Dearborn for putting her foster mother in a chokehold; I did my best to avoid even making eye-contact with her.

My mental cataloguing of girls at Dearborn was interrupted when I realized that the tip of my nose had become very cold. There hadn't been any ghostly occurrences in my bedroom since I'd arrived home for the break, and I had perhaps taken a little too much comfort in my assumption that the hauntings were over for good. I inhaled cold air deeply and then exhaled to see if the temperature in my bedroom had truly dropped or if I was imagining things, and shuddered as I saw my breath release as steam.

I was not alone, and beneath my blankets, my skin puckered with goose pimples. Knowing a spirit was in my room with me and waiting for it to do something was the worst. I was too afraid to kick back my blankets and simply leave, even though it was a safe assumption that the only spirit in my room was Jennie and she meant me no harm. I held still. My eyes slowly wandered my room, looking for a sign, any indication of activity. I wanted to avoid being taken by surprise, however impossible that might have been.

There was a subtle motion near my window, the one over the radiator through which Trey and I usually climbed when visiting each other, and where I had noticed the house drawn in the condensation on my first night home. Through the window, I could see snow falling, only visible because the Emorys had left their kitchen light on before they'd driven to Osh Kosh. What I could actually see happening in that area with my eyes was subtle and I could only describe it as blurriness, but it seemed as if something was being drawn on the glass of the window. Without condensation on the glass, it was impossible to see the shape of the drawing. Gathering my courage, I pushed back my blanket and tiptoed to my window, thankful for the wall-to-wall carpeting beneath my bare feet to mask my footsteps, keeping my movement quiet.