Chapter 3
DIFFERENTIAL EDIT:
3.
Freya watched her mother being put in the back of a police car. Lassa mouthed "I love you" and shut her eyes, lowering her head. When she did, the red mark from the headbutt was prominent. The two police cars drove away, taking everyone to jail. Officer Ed was giving her a ride home in his rusted out Volvo.
Back at the house, Officer Ed asked again if she felt safe on her own. Though she hadn’t invited him, he’d followed her inside and he was glancing around the living room. Everything was spotless. Freya had almost have laughed when Mr. Evers advised Lassa the house should be clean for Child Services. Their house could have been a showroom for a design firm. Nothing was out of place. Ever.
Freya was supposed to call Paul to bail Lassa out, but she didn’t. She could already envision him, insisting on coming over to make sure everything was all right. Sitting on the couch in Randall's spot where he didn't belong. His eyes roaming where they shouldn't be, that creepy smirk.
Instead she called the jail and asked for the procedure to bail someone out. The man on the phone was surprisingly friendly and helpful for someone who worked at a jail. He estimated the bail would probably be set at something like five hundred dollars, and she could pay in cash, certified check, or money order. If she didn't have the money, she would need a bail bondsman, and he apologized that he wasn't allowed to recommend one. It wasn't a sure thing that Lassa would have a bail hearing tonight, he gave her the number to call and check.
Freya had enough money. She hadn't bought really anything since Randall died. Lassa gave her a hundred dollars a week, Freya just put the money in her sock drawer. There was a credit card on file at the school for lunch so the hundreds just piled up. She had over twenty five hundred dollars saved.
Had it been twenty five weeks since Randall died? Half a year. It didn't feel like it had been that long. She waited and watched the TV and called the number every hour on the hour.
The woman at the bail hearing number wasn't as nice as the first man she'd called. She told Freya not to bother trying to visit, she couldn't see her mother until she was bailed out. The hearing wouldn’t be until morning for sure, it was already almost six PM.
Freya wondered if they would tell Lassa she’d tried to bail her out. Maybe she would just sit there all night in the drunk tank wondering why no one had come for her, getting madder and madder.
Maybe it was better if she stayed in.
Freya remembered the way Lassa had looked at Patricia the moment before she pounced. When she got that look, something terrible always happened. Freya had spent years trying to avoid it. She was still getting good grades, though not as good as they had been. She always came home on time, stayed out of trouble. That was the real reason for not saying anything about Tammy before. Not what Tammy or the School might do, but what Lassa would. She’d been right.
Freya used to have a lot of friends. Some girls talked a big game about staying out past curfew, talking back, doing whatever they wanted. They were defiant and proud, and it it made Freya nervous just thinking about it. How could they do that? She smiled and went along with them, knowing she would never dare. It felt like they could tell.
She got along better with the other cowards. Girls like Freya, who didn't cut class or smoke pot, they kept their heads down and silently excelled. Her best friends, Jane Yang and Betty Nguyen were just like her, driven forward by an unspoken terror.
In freshman English, Freya wrote a poem about the quiet girls, entitled “The Flock.” It got a good grade, and she was surprised when Mr. Rutteridge asked if he could submit the piece to a poetry journal. She’d agreed, thinking there was no chance and forgot about it. Three months later he brought her a tiny gray booklet published by the University of Maine. On page 33 of Standing Stone was The Flock by Freya Jokela, Grayson HS.
She’d been afraid her friends would realize the poem was about them and be angry, but few of them even read it. The ones who bothered mostly thought The Flock was about other girls. Only Betty really got it. She was Freya’s favorite, and the only reason Freya could hold it together. Then two months after Randall died, her family moved to Wisconsin. Everything fell apart.
Without Betty, Freya and Jane weren't really as close as she had thought. Jane started hanging out more with a group of girls that Freya thought were stupid and mean.
The transition from having friends to being alone was gradual. One by one, people fell off, disappearing over the horizon as she drifted deeper into solitude. Freya knew it was her own fault. It got too hard to talk to people, when they would say hello, she'd just give a quick smile and say “hi”. Then it got too hard to smile and she could only nod, and people stopped saying hello. She passed through them like a ghost.
It was dark outside and she realized she'd been sitting at the kitchen table without moving for almost an hour. She pressed her fingers against the hurt eye, probing the swollen skin. It was already a serious black eye, wherever she went people were going to ask her about it. It hurt but it didn't matter. She glanced towards her room, wishing it was late enough to sleep.
Hanging in the hallway was a corkboard map of the world, her mother's one concession to clutter. All over the map, there were silver pins in the cities they'd visited. The routes they’d taken were tied with lines of thread between pins. The center of Europe looked like a crimson spiderweb, they'd gone to Amsterdam and Düsseldorf and Frankfurt and Zurich. There was a blue threaded line weaving through northern Italy and a pink one on the coast of France. In the oceans and in the areas where there were no pins there were pictures of the three of them, standing in front of the Eiffel tower or on the steps of the Prado.
If she wanted to, she could stare at that map for the rest of the night and remember. Paris, where gypsies had tried to lift Randall’s wallet on the lock bridge and he almost threw one of them into the Seine. It was scary when it was happening but they laughed about it afterward. The guy looked so funny, kicking his legs and shouting "NO SWIM! NO SWIM!" Seville, where a crooked old man sang from the fountain outside their hotel. His voice was dry and cracked, but his fingers danced on the frets of his nylon guitar faster than anyone she’d ever seen. Rotterdam, the Monkeyman who winked at Freya every morning on their way to breakfast, and then the little monkey on his shoulder would wink too. She always laughed and gave him a two euro coin. She’d been so happy then.
Now Freya was alone in Sillas, the last place she wanted to be. The $2500 in her sock drawer could buy a ticket anywhere in the world. She had a passport and she’d turned 16 in May. There was nothing stopping her.
She could take her guitar out of its case and play a song. She could write down one of the poems that kept bobbing up at the back of her mind, begging to be remembered. She could run away from home and go to New York. She could do anything if she wanted, but she didn't want to.
Instead, Freya kept thinking about the Sillas River. It ran black and swift at this time of year. There was park up Willow Road where you could cross the Sillas by leaping from rock to rock. Downstream from that were dangerous currents, people had died there. When Randall was alive, they'd liked to picnic there on Sundays. Every time she went out on the rocks, he warned her about the current.
Randall used to give her a lot of warnings like that. He was a policeman. Don't run with those kids. Don't get in a car with anyone who's been drinking. Stay far away from the east end of Baymore street, because that’s where people sell drugs and get shot.
When he gave a warning like that it was always because someone died and he'd had to see it. Then afterward, he would have to notify the parent or the spouse. He'd always take her aside, put his hands on her shoulders, and say "Listen darlin’…” He did it so many times it barely registered any more. She’d gotten sick of it.
Freya wasn't sick of it now. She would give just about everything for him to take her by the shoulders and warn her about any stupid thing. He'd always hugged her afterward.
She kept thinking about the river. People might assume she'd slipped in. She wasn't going to leave a note. There was no one to read it.
It was a dangerous thought, like a missing tooth she couldn't stop poking with her tongue. The water would be freezing cold, the shock would force all the air out of her. She’d try to swim for the surface, and the current would pull her down again. Everything would start to get farther and farther away. She'd read that it could be the best way to go; some people experienced euphoria before they drowned. It would be easy to fall into that darkness and never have to come up.
On the corkboard map, there was an old picture of her at Lake Inari, asleep on Randall's lap while he was staring upward with binoculars. She couldn't have been older than six or seven. They'd all hiked into the forest to see a meteor shower. It had been a long walk and she had conked out.
That was one of her earliest memories, being slowly shaken awake by her father.
"Look Freya! Shooting stars!"
She'd woken up, and had squinted, trying to get her eyes to focus, afraid she'd miss them. And then there they were, streak after brilliant streak, burning across the night, faster than any airplane.
She stared at the picture. Randall had been dead for six months. Things were never going to get any better. It wasn't any easier now than it was six months ago, the hole only grown wider. She made a decision.
It was too far to get to the river, she didn't want to wait. She went into her mother's room, looking for Randall's gun. The plastic case was still next to the box of uniforms, on the top shelf of the walk in closet that smelled of cedar. There was a lock on the case, but it was just a little cable lock. She could probably hit it with a hammer and knock it off.
She held the case and considered it. If she broke the lock she was going to have to answer for this, even if she didn't go through with it. She put it back on top of the shelf, then after a moment she changed her mind and and took it down again.
As she took the gun case down the second time, Freya noticed something. Behind Randall's suit coats, there was a flash of red and gold. She swept the suits to one side. Hung on the wall was a tacky calendar from Panda Pete's Chinese Restaurant.
Lassa wouldn't eat Chinese food, so it was always just Freya and Randall at Panda Pete’s. They would get a Pu-Pu platter full of fried dumplings and beef skewers, and she'd order a virgin Shirley Temple. The calendar was the type of cheap thing Lassa would never let him hang up anywhere in the house where anyone might see it. It had an illustration of the great wall and the Chinese Zodiac on it.
The calendar was marked with Randall’s handwriting in black marker. ANNIVERSARY was written on October 9th, the square was circled three times. LASSA BIRTHDAY was circled on January 3rd. FREYA BIRTHDAY with a heart around it on May 23rd. Her eyes began to get wet. FREYA FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, September 9th. VACATION, MALDIVES written over the Christmas break. SOLAR ECLIPSE W/ FREYA was written just a few weeks after he'd died. She remembered Randall telling her about it. He'd wanted to drive up to Kearsarge North and hike up to the fire tower for the spectacular view. With sinking feeling, Freya recalled she’d been a little bitchy about losing a Saturday. At least she had agreed to go. She had completely forgotten about that until now, the hike they never took. She clutched the case tightly, tears were running down her face.
Her eyes sought today's date, November 4th. Another circle. TAURIDS WITH FREYA was written there. Her mouth moved, those were some of her favorite times with Randall. They stayed out late and brought sandwiches and hot soup in a thermos. He would smoke a cigar while they waited, after extracting a promise she wouldn't tell her mother. She could still remember the smell of tobacco, sweet and potent.
There was another black case on the other side of the shelf. Freya returned the one she held and pulled down the other. Then she slid the coats back in place so the secret calendar was hidden again.