Chapter 10
Frost Bites, II
Below lies the tenth chapter of the full-length novel, The Girl with the Strawberry Eyes. If you’ve not read the first ten parts, I strongly suggest you go back and do so. You’ve the option of choosing either an EPUB file or a PDF, or reading the work in the space below. New chapters will be added every Wednesday. Cheers and Happy Reading.
Frost Bites, II
“I’m … not sure I know what you’re talking about,” said Frost. “Professor Lancaster seemed interested in conversing after class, and I saw no problem with indulging him.”
Ofelia didn’t look impressed. “You decided to give up your lunch so you could converse with the dustiest of a whole cadre of dusty professors? Why? Out of the kindness of your heart? Does he really seem that lonely?”
“I’m not trying to be any kind of charity,” said Frost. “Professor Lancaster is a wealth of knowledge!”
“He also has contacts in prestigious universities all over the world. Are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with it?”
Frost cleared her throat. “Ah, I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t at least aware—”
“Which one, Frost?” Ofelia asked with a little sigh.
“Which what? What are you talking about?”
“Which university are you trying to get into?”
“University?” Frost said with a shallow chuckle. “This is only the start of my sophomore year. Why would I be thinking about—?”
“Enough of the nonsense, Frost. Most Vauxhall’s girls know which university they want to go to by the time they’re seven. So? Which is it? Yale? Oxford? Holyrotts?”
“Saint Pollux’s,” Frost all but blurted.
Ofelia let out a low whistle. “My my, you really are the ambitious one, aren’t you.”
“Saint Pollux’s is where my parents met and fell in love,” Frost said before she could stop herself.
“Ah, so that’s why you want to go there,” Ofelia said with a wink. “You want to find somebody and fall in love.”
“That’s not true!” Though Frost couldn’t help but wonder if, in some ways, it was.
“Whatever your reasons may be,” said Ofelia, “you’ve lucked out because Professor Lancaster teaches at Saint Pollux’s as well. But I’m sure you already knew that.”
“I, um … I did already know. But,” Frost added quickly, “that doesn’t mean I’m an obsessive.”
“Look, kid, everybody knows that, in a school filled with clever girls, you’re one of the cleverest. And I know you think what you’re doing with Professor is pretty clever, too.”
“What I’m … doing?”
“Becoming his favorite pupil,” Ofelia said matter-of-factly. “So he’ll put in a good word when application season comes during your senior year.”
“I also genuinely want to talk to him,” Frost said. “I wasn’t exactly lying when I said he was a wealth of knowledge.”
“Frost,” Ofelia said, leaning a little closer, “let me clue you in on something: I’m also one of the cleverest at a school filled with very clever girls, and I had the exact same idea as yours when I was a freshman.”
“And?” said Frost eagerly. “What was the result?”
“It’s not a question of results, Frost. You need to understand that Professor Lancaster’s help doesn’t come without a cost.”
“Meaning … what?”
“Meaning you ought to start networking with somebody else. Or, even better, forget about networking, and rely on the fact that you’re a brilliant student to get you into Saint Pollux’s. Unless you’d like to get your alum parents to help you?”
Frost shook her head. “No can do, sadly. My parents hold nepotism on the same level as syphilis.”
“Very well, then, you’ll just have to keep being your brilliant self. Which is for the best. Trust me.”
“I just can’t imagine it,” said Frost with a frustrated wheeze. “You’re suggesting Professor Lancaster is dangerous—”
“Not exactly, though somewhere along those lines.”
“—but he seems like such a … like a such a reciprocal person.”
“Not the adjective I thought you would use, but go ahead.”
“He’s pedantic, for sure,” Frost went on, speaking more to herself than Ofelia, “and more than a little pedagogical, but … but the sense of loneliness on the man is almost palpable.”
“Frost—”
“I’ll admit that, Saint Pollux-wise, I’m hoping to gain some advantage through him, yes, but I’m not some—some cold, opportunistic automaton. I think it’s a genuine, absolute shame that somebody as learned as him doesn’t have another with whom he can consistently share his knowledge.”
Ofelia crossed her arms over her chest. “Aside from his dozens of students?”
“I—I meant within a personal context! Look, I understand that many—most—Scholars like to wear their solitude as a sort of badge, but I think … I think that solitude transitions into loneliness so naturally that most people don’t even notice until it’s too late.”
“I suppose you of all people would know.”
Frost frowned. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you are possibly the loneliest girl on this campus.”
“What! No, I’m not!”
“So says the girl without a friend to her name.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Frost as her cheeks burned. “I have friends.”
“Oh?” said Ofelia. “Which ones?”
“You honestly expect me to stand here and name every friend in my life?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with doing so,” Ofelia said with a shrug. “I’d certainly do it in a heartbeat.”
“This,” said Frost after a small sigh, “has changed from an exercise in ostensible protection to one of outright humiliation.”
“I’m not trying to humiliate you,” said Ofelia. “It would just be nice if you dropped the pretense. There’s nobody to impress here.”
Frost looked down at the toes of her shoes. “But it really is quite pathetic, isn’t it. Vauxhall’s girls are supposed to be both academically and socially adept. Perhaps I’m missing a piece—the piece that requires friends for happiness and peace of mind.”
“‘Missing a piece’?” said Ofelia. “Frost, you weren’t assembled in a factory.”
“Perhaps I ought to ship myself back to my country of manufacture.”
“You don’t think we’ve run with the robot metaphor long enough?”
“I’m not sure what to think anymore, to be honest.”
“Then, I shall tell you some things to take into consideration,” said Ofelia. “First of all, you don’t have to get embarrassed about what everybody already knows.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you aren’t known as the Gray Ghost without good reason.”
“The Gray Ghost?” said Frost shrilly. “That’s what people call me behind my back?”
“It isn’t as if it doesn’t make sense,” said Ofelia with another shrug. “You’re wearing the Vauxhall’s gray, are you not? And you don’t really talk outside of the classroom. You just drift from place to place. Like a ghost.”
“This is such nonsense,” Frost fumed. “I speak in Fencing Club!”
“And do you have any friends in Fencing Club?”
“Um.”
“I rest my case.”
“Fencing Club is for fencing, not making friends!”
“I won’t argue the point,” Ofelia said patiently, “but just know, to the majority of the girls in this school, you are the Gray Ghost.”
“Noted,” Frost grumbled.
“The other thing I need to tell you,” Ofelia went on, “is that your suspicions are correct: Professor Lancaster is indeed lonely. However, nothing says you are obligated to feel sympathy for him. He’s a grown man. He shouldn’t be seeking companionship from schoolgirls. Here”—Ofelia reached into one of her jacket’s inside pockets and tugged out a pen and pad. She scribbled something down, ripped off a sheet and handed it to Frost—“take this.”
“And what is this?”
“My telephone number,” said Ofelia. “If you’re ever feeling lonely, or … or if you’d just like to talk about something, call me. Don’t hesitate. Don’t run to Professor Lancaster’s room. Just … call me.”
Frost shot her a skeptical glance. “And we can talk about anything?”
“Anything.”
“What if I’m in the mood for a discussion about, say, Russian opera?”
“Then I would say, be prepared to be argued into the ground about why Borodin is far superior than Tchaikovsky.”
“Wow. Marry Me?”
“I think we may have skipped a few steps there,” Ofelia said with a little smile. “Why not try calling me first, hm? Let’s start with that. At least you’ll have my undivided attention.”
Frost tried to stop smiling as she folded the paper and slid it inside of her own jacket, but she couldn’t quite manage to do so. “I’m going to hold you to this, Ortiz,” she said. “If I call and you just fob me off, you can expect a very severe dip in reputation—as facilitated by me.”
“I’ll make a mental note of that. Now get thee to the Dining Hall. I think you might be able to salvage the latter half of the lunch period.”
“That tends to be the better half, anyhow,” Frost said with a shrug.
“Then it seems the afternoon has worked out quite well for you.”
“Oh, it’s been splendid.” Frost still hadn’t been able to stop smiling. “Far better than I could have ever imagined.”
“Off with you, then. Go bask in your good fortune.” And with that, the older girl spun elegantly on her heel and started off in direction of Professor Lancaster’s classroom.
Frost, had she made her way to the Dining Hall, could have still enjoyed a sizable lunch period. However, she did not go to the Dining Hall. Rather, she hurried down to the first floor—all the way to the northwestern corner of the school, to the Infirmary. And it was here that she informed Nurse Krankenmutter that she had a rotten stomach, and was enduring a severe migraine, and—whoof—actually felt pretty lightheaded as well. It would, therefore, probably be best if she took the rest of the afternoon off.
“And I really do feel terrible, Nurse Krankenmutter,” she said. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is drop dead in the middle of the corridor, and then, subsequently, haunt and harass and disturb diligent Vauxhallians for decades to come.”
Nurse Krankenmutter, who was baggy-eyed and body-sore from years of having to deal with an endless stream of burnt-out Vauxhall’s girls, said, “Did anybody ever tell you that you speak like a storybook? All of you girls do. Which I guess adds to the charm of this place? I don’t know.”
Nurse Krankenmutter didn’t have much else to say about that subject or anything else. If anything, she seemed more than a little relieved that Frost had opted to return home rather than take up another Infirmary bed. So Frost was allowed to call for her family’s long, blue sedan, and once it arrived, she, making sure to look ever queasy, climbed into the back. Of course, she wasn’t sick at all. She felt fine—more than fine, actually, for her body hummed with energy. The plan was to sneak back home and take her Cloudskipper on its maiden flight before her parents returned home.
However, as the car pulled away, piloting the Cloudskipper wasn’t at the forefront of her mind.
She twisted around in her seat and gazed at Veronica Vauxhall’s as the school grew smaller and smaller. It had always struck her as a lonely building—like an old, gray-bricked church. It sat by itself atop tall, vibrantly green Vauxhall’s Hill, and was almost always beneath a thick layer of clouds. Such a melancholic sight in the middle of such a gray, melancholic town. It was a wonder so many fiery, bright girls bustled about within its walls.
But during that car ride, Frost thought about the productivity of her schoolmates almost as little as she thought about her new Cloudskipper. She did have one specific schoolmate in mind, and that was Ofelia Ortiz.
Frost had previously known who she was, of course, and had, like most underclassmen, admired her from a distance. There was a lot to admire: not only was Ofelia one of the top students in her class, but she was a brilliant tennis player (in singles; not so much in doubles), and she had been the sole playwright and director of the Cheese & Chibbits Drama Society for all four of her Vauxhall’s years. Her most recent production, If Leaves were Blue, had even snagged the attention of legendary playwright Clifton Nash, and he had travelled all the way from London the previous year to see it.
And even with all of her accomplishments, even with her high status at school, Ofelia had seen fit to speak to Frost—to not only warn her, but offer further time and conversation. If they talked every day, why, they might become actual friends.
The thought of it made Frost warm in all the right places. She became so relaxed that she fell asleep and didn’t wake until she returned home.
If she had known what awaited her, perhaps she would have kept sleeping.
Many thanks for reading(!) And now, on to Chapter 11….
Or,
if you liked what you read, and would like to devour a completed work in one go, why not give my romantic novella, Knits, a gander? Get it here.
But
if you want to give a proper saga a go, filled with memorable characters, twists and turns, and knotty nesting narratives, then please do consider the book where it all began, the first volume in the Season of Clocks story: The Many Perfect Midnights of Meredith Hill, available here.
