Freeze Tag (2 page)

But she didn’t say it out loud.

“Get off of there, Brown,” said Lannie sharply to the five year old. “It’s my turn.”

“Actually, I’m not giving turns,” said West mildly. “Sorry, Lannie. But this really isn’t safe and —”

“Get off, Brown,” said Lannie. Her voice was flat like a table.

Brown got off.

“Stop the mower, West,” said Lannie, spreading her voice.

Meghan tucked herself behind the morning glory vines that had climbed to the top of the trellis and were stretching into the sky, looking for more trellis. Their little green tentacles were more alive than a plant should be, as if they were really eye stalks, like some creepy underwater jellyfish.

“Lannie,” said West, “it’s getting dark and — ”

“Take me for a ride,” said Lannie in her voice as cold as sleet, “or I will freeze Meghan.”

There was a strange silence in the yard: a silence you could hear and feel in spite of the running engine.

They expected West to sigh and shrug and tell Lannie to go on home, but he did not. West obeyed Lannie, and she got on behind him as Brown had.

How could West stand to have Lannie touching him? Her long thin fingers gripping his shoulders like insect legs?

It seemed to Meghan that West and Lannie circled the lawn forever, while hours and seasons passed, and the grass remained uncut and the darkness remained incomplete.

“Stop the mower, West,” said Lannie in her flat voice. “I’ve decided we’re going to play Freeze Tag.”

Brown fled. He hated Freeze Tag. Too scary. Brown usually decided to watch television instead.

“There aren’t enough of us,” objected West.

“Stop the mower, West,” repeated Lannie. She did not change her voice at all. “I’ve decided we’re going to play Freeze Tag.”

West stopped the mower.

“I,” said Lannie, “will be It.”

“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Tuesday, getting up and dusting her shorts.

Meghan loved Freeze Tag.

Whoever was It had to tag everybody. Once you were tagged, you froze into an ice statue, and didn’t move a muscle for the remainder of the game. Eventually the whole neighborhood would be frozen in place.

You tried to impress people by freezing in the strangest position. It was best to freeze as if you were still running, with one leg in the air. It was difficult to balance while the rest screamed and ran and tried not to get tagged. But that was the challenge. Another good freeze was half-fallen on the ground, back arched, one arm frozen in a desperate wave. Good freezers didn’t even blink.

At some point in the game, Meghan would get to touch West.

Or he would touch her. Meghan yearned to hold West’s hand and run with him, but tag was a solo effort.

You ran alone.

You caught alone.

You froze alone
.

Meghan tried to cry out, and run away, but no sound came from her throat and no movement entered her legs.

“Brown!” called Lannie.

He came instantly. Lannie’s orders pulled like magnets.

“I could call my brother all my life and not get him to come,” said Tuesday.

Lannie smiled at the three Trevors and the one Moore.

She still had her baby teeth, but her smile was ancient and knowing. Her eyes stretched out ahead of her fingers, which were pre-frozen, like a grocery item.

“Run!” she whispered gleefully.

They stumbled away.

The sky was purple and black, like a great bruise.

“
Run!
” Lannie shouted.

Meghan could not seem to run. She could only stagger.

Lannie laughed. “Try to get away from me,” she said to Meghan. “You never will,” she added.

This is not a game
, thought Meghan Moore.

Her feet found themselves and ran, while her mind and heart went along for the ride. She kept looking down at those strange bare white sticks pumping frantically over the blackened grass. Those are my legs, she thought.

A queer terror settled over the flat ordinary yard. The children ran as if their lives depended on it.

Nobody screamed. Silence as complete as death invaded Dark Fern Lane.

They ran behind the house. They doubled back over the paved driveway. They tried to keep the parked lawnmower between them and Lannie.

One by one, Lannie froze them all.

She froze Brown first, and easily, because he was so little.

She froze West second, and just as easily as if West had surrendered. As if West, although oldest and strongest, was also weakest.

Tuesday uttered the only scream of the night, as terror-struck as if her throat were being slit.

Lannie touched her, and the scream ended, and Tuesday froze with her mouth open and her face contorted.

Lannie closed in on Meghan, fingers pointed like rows of little daggers.

And yet Meghan slowed down. In some primitive way, like a mouse in the field beneath the shadow of a hawk’s talons, she wanted it to be over.

Want what to be over? Meghan thought. My life?

“I won’t be rude again!” cried Meghan. “I’m sorry! You can spend the night at the Trevors’ instead of me.”

Lannie smiled her smile of ice and snow.

Meghan’s knees buckled and she went down in front of Lannie like a sacrifice. How real, how cool, how green the grass was. She wanted to embrace it, and lie safely in the arms of the earth, and never look into Lannie’s endless eyes again.

Lannie stood for a moment, savoring Meghan’s collapse, and then her fingers stabbed Meghan’s arm.

Meghan froze.

The air was fat with waiting.

Lannie surveyed her four statues.

None of them moved.

None of them blinked.

None of them tipped.

Lannie chuckled.

She rocked back and forth in her little pink sneakers, admiring her frozen children.

Then she went home.

The soft warmth of evening enveloped Dark Fern Lane. No child shrieked, no engine whined, no dog barked. The air was sweet with the smell of new-mown grass. All was peaceful.

Mrs. Trevor came to the front door and called through the screen. “Game’s up! Come on, everybody. One cookie each and then it’s home for bed.” Mrs. Trevor was accustomed to obedience and did not stay to be sure the children did as they were told; of course they would do as they were told.

But only the fireflies moved in the yard.

Meghan’s eyes were frosty.

Her thoughts moved as slowly as glaciers.

As if through window panes tipping forward, Meghan saw Lannie leaving the yard. Lannie was happy. Meghan knew that she had never before seen Lannie Anveill in a state of happiness. Her smile shone on Meghan, as she lay crooked and stiff on the grass.

Time to go in, thought Meghan. Her expression did not change, her muscles did not sag. Her mouth was still twisted in fear, her eyes still wide with desperation.

Time to go in! thought Meghan.

But she was frozen. Time was something she no longer possessed and going in was something she would no longer do.

Lannie stepped down off the curb, contentedly glancing back at the statues of Brown and Tuesday. She headed for her house.

Mrs. Trevor came back to the screened door. “I am getting annoyed,” she said, and she sounded it. “Everybody up and get going, please. I’m tired of all these grass-stained shirts. Now move it.”

She returned to the interior of the house. The lights and music of the Trevors’ living room seemed as distant from the dark yard as Antarctica.

Lannie stood invisibly in her own front yard.

The dark swirled around her and Lannie, too, went dark, her usual ghostly paleness pierced by night as it had been pierced by sun.

After a few minutes, she walked back across the street. Gently as a falling leaf, Lannie brushed the rigid shoulder of West Trevor.

West went limp, hitting the ground mushily, like a dumped bag of birdseed. Then he scrabbled to his feet. He shook himself, doglike, as if his hair were wet.

Meghan wanted to call out to him, but nothing in her moved. When he walked forward, she tried to see where he was going but her eyes would not follow him. Her neck would not turn.

“Come on, Brown,” said West to his brother. “Come on, Tues.” His voice was trembling.

Brown and Tuesday stayed statues.

“You guys are freezing so well I can’t even see you breathe,” their brother said. A laugh stuck in his throat.

“They’re
not
breathing,” explained Lannie.

West sucked in his breath. He stood so still he seemed to have been tagged again. In a way, he was. Lannie had placed him in that tiny space after understanding, and just before panic.

Through the frost over her eyes, Meghan saw Lannie’s smile, how slowly she reached forward, savoring her power, being sure that West understood. Then, making a gift to West, Lannie touched first Tuesday and next Brown.

Tuesday whimpered.

Brown moaned, “
Mommy
.”

“I froze them,” said Lannie softly, as if she were writing West a love letter.

Meghan could see her own hair, sticking away from her head without regard to gravity, carved from ice.

“I can do it whenever I want,” said Lannie. She seemed to be waiting for West to give her a prize.

West, Brown, and Tuesday drew together, staring at Lannie. In a queer tight voice, as if he had borrowed it from somebody, West said, “Undo Meghan.”

Lannie smiled and shook her head. “I hate Meghan.”

Tuesday began to cry.

West knelt beside Meghan, putting his hand on her shoulder, Meghan did not feel it, but there must have been pressure, because she tipped over stiffly. Now her eyes stared at the stems and mulch circle of one of the beginner-bushes.

I will be looking at this the rest of my life, thought Meghan Moore. This is what it’s like in a coffin. You stare for all eternity at the wrinkles in the satin lining.

“Meghan?” whispered West.

But Meghan did not speak.

“Lannie,” whispered West, “is she dead?”

“No. I froze her. I hate Meghan. She gets everything.” Lannie chuckled. “Look at her now. No blinking. No tears. Just eyeballs.”

West tried to pick Meghan up. Her elbows did not bend and her ankles did not straighten. “Lannie! Undo Meghan.”

“No. It’s Freeze Tag,” said Lannie. “So I froze her.” She turned a strangely anxious smile upon West. “Did you see me do it, West?”

They were too little to understand boy-girl things, and yet they knew Lannie was showing off for West. He was a boy she wanted, and she was a girl flirting with him, the only way she knew how.

And West, though he was only eleven, knew enough to agree. “Yes, I saw you. I was impressed, Lannie,” he said carefully.

Lannie was pleased.

West wet his lips. He said even more carefully, “It would really impress me if you undid her.”

“I don’t feel like it,” said Lannie.

Meghan stayed as inflexible as a chair, as cold as marble.

West took a deep breath. “Please, Lannie?” he said.

West, the strongest and oldest on the street, the big brother who could mow lawns, and baby-sit on Saturday nights, had to beg. Brown and Tuesday were both crying now.

“Well …” said Lannie.

“Promise her anything,” said Tuesday urgently.

The only one who knew that West must not promise Lannie anything was the one who could not speak.

Meghan, alone and cold and still, thought: No, no, no! Don’t promise, West. Better to be frozen than to be Lannie’s!

The Trevors stood in a row, the three of them as close as blankets on a bed.

“You must always like me best,” said Lannie.

“I will always like you best,” repeated West.

Lannie smiled her smile of ice and snow.

She touched Meghan’s cheek, and Meghan crumpled onto the grass. A normal child, with normal skin, and normal breathing.

“Don’t forget your promise, West,” said Lannie.

They had been whispering. When the screen door opened so sharply it smacked against the porch railings, the children were badly startled and flew apart like birds at the sound of gunshot.

“I am very angry,” said Mrs. Trevor. “You will come in now. West, why is the lawnmower not in the shed? Do you think Freeze Tag comes before responsibility?”

Lannie melted away.

Meghan got up slowly, sweeping the grass cuttings off her shorts and hair.

“Don’t tell,” whispered Tuesday.

Nobody did tell.

Nobody would have known what to say.

Nobody quite believed it had happened.

They never did talk about it.

Not once.

Yard games went into history, like afterschool television reruns.

When Meghan grew up, and remembered the yard games, her memory seemed to be in black and white, flecked with age. Did we really play outside every night after supper? she asked herself.

Meghan could remember how it felt, as the hot summer night turned cool in the early dark.

She could remember how it looked, when fireflies sparkled in the dusk, begging to be caught in jars.

She could remember how it sounded, the giggles turning to screams and the screams turning to silence.

But they never talked.

Were their memories frozen? Or were their fears hot and still able to burn? Did they believe it had happened? Or did they think it was some neighborhood hysteria, some fabricated baby dream?

Meghan never knew if Tuesday remembered that brief death.

She never knew if West woke in the night, cold with the memory of Lannie’s icy fingers.

She never knew if Brown was slow giving up his thumb-sucking because he remembered.

The only thing she knew for sure was that the neighborhood never played Freeze Tag again.

But Lannie …

Lannie played.

F
OR HIS SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY
, West Trevor was given an old Chevy truck. It was badly rusted, but this made West happy. He was taking courses at the auto body shop and would rebuild the exterior himself. The engine ran rough, but West was happy about that, too; he had had two years of small engine repair and, although this was no small engine, he ached to use what knowledge he had, and bring that Chevy truck back to strength.