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Still nothing. I looked closer at Frost, thinking he had gone into shock. I wouldn’t have honestly been surprised. I thought of one last approach. “Frost! It’s over! They’re gone! It’s over for them. You and I…we’re still here. You’ve saved my life several times already. Are you going to waste that and get us both killed?”
Finally, he met my eyes. I nearly fell over with the weight of what I saw in those icy pools. There in those eyes was a sadness greater than that of the entire world combined. “Okay,” he whispered so faintly that I scarcely heard him above the crackling flames and creaking house.
I pulled him to his feet, at the same time beating at the flames climbing up my legs.I’ve had worse pain. I’ve had worse pain.We dashed down the stairs, causing the groaning to turn to screeching beneath us now. Sensing what was coming, I screamed, “Jump!”
We jumped the last seven stairs, narrowly avoiding the fall as the stairs collapsed beneath us. At around the second stair, our feet caught the step and we tumbled forward onto the hot carpet. I did a quick few rolls, extinguishing the flames eating away at my legs, but causing a quiet whimper to escape me with the pressure on my burned skin. I stood quickly, refusing to look at the damage, and yanked Frost upright. We would never make it downstairs in time. Unless…
I turned and looked at the floor-to-ceiling window on the wall, recognizing the blue-ish glow. The pool. Sure, it was frozen and we were on the third floor, but there was a chance, right?
It didn’t matter if there was a chance or not. It was better than burning to death either way.
Towing Frost behind me, I ran to the window, veering off course to grab a burning chair and wincing as I singed my fingers. Standing in front of the window, I swung back my arms for momentum, then threw the chair at the window as hard as I could. The glass shattered. Carefully, I stood on the very edge of the window, looking down at the frozen outdoor pool below. The chair had broken the ice, but that didn’t mean the impact would not hurt, especially if we didn’t clear the five-foot-wide stone walkway between the house and the pool.
“I thought we were trying to live,” Frost said, his voice hollow.
I shook my head. “It’s a better shot than staying in here.” I grabbed Frost’s hand and backed up about ten steps, then met his gaze. “Aim for the pool. Do a pencil-jump if you can, it’ll lessen the impact. Bend your knees as soon as you’re in the water in case you hit the bottom so you’re less likely to break something.”
“You’re insane.”
“Go!”
We sprinted forward in unison, leaping off the edge of the house and into the cold December air. Everything seemed to fall into slow-motion the moment we left the ground. Then we began to fall.
We both flailed our arms to aim for the pool. I stared down at the blue and wished I knew we would make it.
Both of us straightened into pencil-jumps just before we hit the water. Ice, slush and barely-above-freezing pool-water exploded around us. The fire was gone in the moment we broke into the pool, but it was replaced by such cold that it felt like a thousand knives were stabbing into my body. Both were horrible, some of the worst pains I had ever felt. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the burning or the freezing.
As I sank rapidly, I barely bent my knees in time. My charred soles hit the bottom of the pool and I winced from the impact in my ankles, knowing that I would have definitely broken something if we hadn’t landed in the deep end of the pool. Quickly, I pushed off the pool floor, shooting upward to the surface.
I broke the surface, gasping and shaking with the cold. I blinked the ice-water out of my eyes and kicked my legs to try to keep afloat, thankful they were mostly numb from the cold. Those burns were going to hurt for a long time.
“Frost?” I could hear sirens around the front of the house and was thankful for that. Mrs. Frost and Ryan had escaped. But where was Frost?
A rush of panic coursed through me as I searched around me, trying to see over the pool wall at the walkway. He’d made it, right? He must’ve. We’d jumped together. He had to have made it.
“Poe.”
I spun in the water and wrapped my arms tightly around Frost’s neck, resting my head on his shoulder and gripping him as tightly as I could. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Frost. I’m so sorry. Oh God….” I struggled with my words for a moment and not just because my teeth were starting to chatter. Just what do you say after something like what we had seen? “Can you hear the sirens? Your mom and Ryan…they’re going to be fine. They’ll probably be better off than you and I.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to tell him it was all going to be okay, that we had gotten out and we were safe and we would be fine. I wanted to tell him that abouteveryone. But I couldn’t. I knew I could not say that about Frost’s dad or his sisters. And I couldn’t really say that about Frost himself either. He had held his little sister’s hand as she burned to death, knowing there was nothing he could do despite all the pain he had caused himself to get that far. To come so close for nothing…I could not imagine the pain he felt and I knew pain like the back of my hand.
I twisted my fingers into his blond hair, holding him as tight as I could, just he had with me when I’d broken down what felt like years ago. The gel he usually put in his hair had been washed out in the pool. The blond spikes stuck not straight up, but in odd haphazard directions. A couple strands hung low over his forehead. I remembered liking his hair better wet like this when he’d rescued me from my near accidental-suicide in the pool and it felt good to tangle my fingers in it, just like it felt good to hold him close and not just because he was warm and I was freezing. It made me feel in control, which was all that was keeping me from screaming in horror and frustration, grief and anger. I hoped he felt even remotely close to the control I felt. That was all I could really hope for.
“Poe…” he whispered, rasped, really. His throat was hollow from the smoke and grief. I could only hear and understand him because he was whispering right in my ear. “I wish I’d hit the walkway.”
“I know,” I rasped back. I wasn’t surprised in the least. In fact, I would have been shocked if he didn’t wish he had hit the walkway. “Frost, I want you to cry.”
“What?”
I shut my eyes tight, remembering the blood. Remembering the bandages around my wrists. Remembering how difficult it was to hold the razor steady in my tiny hand. “Because I wish someone had toldmeto cry after my family died. Before I cut my wrists.” I felt him shiver, but I doubted it was from the pool. “Now scream and cry because it’ll kill you if you don’t.”
So he did. He buried his face in my neck and wept openly, sending tracks of hot tears running over my shoulder. Every now and then a cry of anguish would make me shiver. I had never heard a more agonized sound in my life.
I just floated there in the icy water, holding him tightly against me, and letting him fall to pieces. Falling to pieces was starting to become a common theme among the two of us, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. If we fell apart together like this, we could help each other and regain control when all was said and done. If we had not been there for each other at just the right time like we seemed to always be, God only knew what would have happened. If we had not each been there, we might have both ended up dead.
So I floated there helping Frost regain control and watched the manor burn, along with a fatherly surgeon, an ancient teenage girl who wanted nothing more than to heal, and the most beautiful ballerina that I ever met.
SIXTEEN
When I first came to in the hospital, there was a searing pain across every inch of skin below my knees that made me want to scream, but I held it back and asked the nurse attending to me if they had lived. Mrs. Frost was unharmed, but in a catatonic state. She had not moved, spoken, or looked into anyone’s eyes since she was told who had died. Ryan was under observation, but the damage the smoke had done on his body was minimal. Frost was being treated for second degree burns and was in a less serious catatonic state than his mother, but not by much. The bodies of Jerry Frost, Trina and Maddi could not be recovered. The manor was still smoldering after three days.
