CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
IF YOU’RE ABSENT FROM school for more than three days in a row, you need a doctor’s note when you go back. I read that in the student handbook before I started at Jefferson. That’s why I knew I’d be okay if I stayed home the rest of the week. I told myself I was giving Dani space to be mad at me. Giving myself space to work things out in my head.
The thing I didn’t count on while pretending to be sick was actually getting sick.
Maybe it’s karma, or contrapasso, or whatever, coming back to bite me in the ass. For stealing, for skipping school, for lying, for being mean and crazy, or for any number of things. Maybe that’s why Callie leaves. I can’t put up a fight, or at least not much of one, not when I’m laid up on the couch, half-empty bottle of NyQuil nestled in the crook of my arm, a steady pounding in my head, alternating between chills and fever that turn my blood to ice, then fire, alternately.
“Where are you going?” I croak, my throat raw from all the coughing I’ve been doing. I lift my head from the pillow to see her walk across the living room with her coat and scarf and backpack. At first I think maybe I’ve slept through the entire night out here, but no—I look around, the streetlights are shining in through the windows—it’s still nighttime.
She turns toward me and states matter-of-factly, “It’s been a week. He’s not back. I’m not staying here anymore. I’m going to Jackie’s.”
“What?” I struggle to sit upright. “Callie, he’ll be back. He said he’ll be back. We can manage until then.”
She shakes her head. “I’d rather stay at Jackie’s.”
“He’s coming back, though. He’ll be back and then things will be . . .” I stop short because I hear my voice, though it’s so sore it barely works; it’s close to pleading again, sounding just like Mom, the way she’d beg Dad not to leave.
She squares herself, plants her feet into the floor, and stands in front of me. “I’m. Not. Staying.” Her words are so firm, her voice so commanding, as if it’s taking a lot of resolve, almost like she’s standing up to me. Then I realize that’s exactly what she’s doing.
So I watch her leave. And though it takes all my strength, I manage to twist my body around on the couch, my muscles aching and strained from whatever illness has seized my body. I watch as she gets into Jackie’s car. I watch as the red taillights fade fast into the falling snow, like static. I turn the TV off and sit in the dark for a while—I don’t know how long—and I watch as the snow comes down faster and faster, the light from the street reflecting against the blanket of microscopic crystals, casting a cool blue glow inside the apartment, so that I don’t even need any lights to see.
I get up to go to the bathroom and make myself some more honey lemon tea, in hopes of repairing the damage to my throat, in hopes that with enough of it I might get my voice back in time for work tomorrow afternoon—even with the extra cash I accidentally brought home, I can’t afford to miss a day of pay. I put my mug into the microwave and press start. And then I stand there in the kitchen and try not to think of all the terrible things that have happened in here.
I find my feet moving away, taking me to my room. I turn on the light and look around. “What did I come in here for?” I whisper, my voice seeming to echo and bounce back at me. That’s when I spot the snowflake book—the gift from Caroline. It’s been sitting in the same place on my desk since I brought it home from the courthouse. I pick it up and it feels heavier than it should, but I know that’s just because I’m sick and weak and all drugged up. I hear the beep-beep-beep of the microwave—two minutes and thirty seconds have passed, yet all I did was walk to my bedroom and stare at the book.
I shuffle back out in my slippers and pajamas and the blanket I have draped around my shoulders. By the time I reach the couch, carrying my tea in one hand and the book in the other, it feels like I’ve run a marathon.
I open the book and see that faded blue ink in the top corner again: This book belongs to Caroline. I flip to a section: “Crystallography of the Snow Crystal.” All about the observation and classification and properties, the crystalline structure of snow, and temperature and humidity—who knew there was even such a thing as crystallography? My eyes strain to read in the dim glow of snow light. So I flip through page after page of black-and-white images of individual snowflakes. They look ghostly, otherworldly, beautiful. Some are like stars and flowers, others like shattered glass or spiderwebs, fossilized remains of something forgotten and extinct, some kind of organism in between plants and animals. Thousands of them, like Caroline said—they’re obsessive, mesmerizing, unsettling, all in this weirdly tame way.
Maybe this Bentley guy had the right idea. I study the picture of him on the inside cover. Snow dusts his coat and hat and gloves—he’s cold but smiling, hunched over the camera. Yes, I think he was onto something. Living alone. Just him and his snowflakes and his obsession. Not hurting anyone. Simple. Maybe the Winters family was meant to be alone like that—isn’t that when we all seem to run into trouble, when there are other people involved?
I close the book and turn my attention to the real snowflakes that get stuck to the outside window screen, like insects in a web. One by one they get caught. They stay there, frozen in place for a little while, before they begin melting and freezing all over again, the heat emanating through the window from inside the apartment, warping them. Watching it happen, over and over, lulls me into a state of peace, a rare calmness settling over me.
Maybe I’ll be a crystallographer, I think as my eyes close. I’ll learn all about snow and microscopes and cameras—I’ll learn how to be cold, how to be alone. Someday.