The McMurdo doctor puts me on a scale first thing and tsks.
“Did you weigh this much when you had your application physical?”
I shrug.
She looks at my chart again. “Ohhh, I see. Scott,” she says, and tosses my file on her desk. “Those irresponsible, bloodline-obsessed…Climb up.”
I hop onto the table in my cotton gown. She listens to my heart, shines a light in my eyes, looks at my teeth, and pulls her wheeled stool to sit before me.
“Harper, I’m a little confused. You’ve got an incredibly athletic build. The muscles in your legs and arms are quite”—my calf tenses in her warm hand—“ropy. But then you’re also pretty skeletal. What’s going on?”
I shrug.
“Okay. Well, here’s the thing. Even inside this building, your core temperature is going to be ten to fifteen degrees lower on The Ice in the winter. You’ve got the gaze, you’re lethargic, you’re not eating. Either you’re depressed, or it’s T3. What do you think?”
“I think…” I’m trying to be honest. I don’t want to feel this way. “Could it be both?”
“For sure. One piggybacking on the other. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
She puts her hand on my bony knee, snatches it back. “Ugh, see?” she says. “That’s not—your poor joints. Yikes.” She shakes her head. “I’m writing you two prescriptions. You follow the instructions for the next two weeks. Come back then, and we’ll see what’s what. Do we have a deal?”
I like her. No lecture. Not bad. She gives me her card.
“Clinic hours are on there. Mine are in blue. Don’t forget—two weeks from today. There are two hundred people here. If you don’t show up, I’ll know where to find you. Got it?”
I trudge off to breakfast, where Aiden sticks his head eagerly out the porthole in the kitchen door. “How was it?”
I hand him the two prescriptions.
He frowns. “I could have told you this,” he says, and hands me back the paper that reads, Gain at least ten to fifteen pounds. But the other note makes his face light up. “The greenhouse! Oh, Harper, you’re my connection! Get me some lettuce and cherry tomatoes, and I’ll propose marriage on the spot!” He folds the paper, hands it back, and says, “Wait—I’ve got something for you.” Foil-wrapped cinnamon rolls.
“Take them to work,” he says. “And don’t share.”
The lab is warm, the New Age massage music is going, and Charlotte nearly tackles me when I open the door.
“What did she say? T3? I could be a doctor; I should have made you bet me cash. T3, right?”
“What would you do with cash?” I sigh, handing her the prescriptions and sliding onto a lab stool. The McMurdo stores sell only cigarettes, booze, McMurdo T-shirts, and postcards. For about fifty million dollars each.
“Ha! I was right! Oh, Harp.” She kneels at my feet and takes my cold hands. “You’ll be okay. I promise.” She reads the prescriptions. “Oh my gosh—greenhouse! I wish I could go with you.”
At her table, Vivian looks up.
“I don’t even get what that has to do with anything,” I grumble.
“It’s amazing. It’s the light and the warmth. They’ve got a hydroponic garden because, you know, no soil. They grow a few lettuces and things between flights with freshies. Allison’s running it this year. She’s really smart and nice—biologist from the East Coast somewhere, I think? Total hippie. You’ll die.” Says the woman wearing the macramé hemp belt and Birkenstocks. “What’s in the foil?”
I unwrap three huge cinnamon rolls. Vivian shocks me by accepting the one I offer. Charlotte plucks one from the foil and attacks it.
“You getting emails to your mom on a good schedule?”
I roll the foil into a ball.
“Harper.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Oh my gosh. How long has it been?”
“You mean since the first one I sent? Which was a really good one?”
“Yes.”
“Um. Six weeks?”
“Harper!”
“I haven’t felt good! And I can only email from your office or in here, and once I’m in my room, I just want to go to sleep….”
She gets up and rummages through a metal cabinet, tosses wires and empty boxes over her shoulder until she retrieves a laptop, a kind of old one. “It’ll get Wi-Fi. You need to be sending them mail daily. Did the doctor talk about that?”
“No.”
“Okay, listen to me. You too, Vivian. It was nearly impossible to persuade the NSF to let underage people on The Ice, everyone drunk and crazy and especially in winter. I understand it’s ridiculous, but I would have died to be here at your age, and I think it’s an amazing program, and we have to prove it’s possible by having you people learn some stuff and also not die. Viv, you write your family, don’t you?”
“Every Sunday.”
Kiss-ass.
“I send both your parents my dorky Daily Update, but, Harp, they need to hear from you. And hearing from them will help with this.” She puts the prescriptions on the table before me. I fold them into little triangles.
“Have they mentioned me not writing?”
“Not yet.”
I nod.
“Okay. So. Communicating with family. Eating. Let’s not die. In the name of our brave forefathers, in the name of the Adélies, let’s not lose our minds here, okay?”
I smile. “I love the Adélies.”
She sits in her chair. “They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?”
Across the room, Vivian huffs.
I can see the ice, their little faces, as if they’re three feet from me now. The waves on the ice, the rocks…
“Harper.”
I snap to attention, my gaze fixed on the middle distance. Good grief.
Charlotte sighs. “Oh, babe—you’ve really got it. When do you start the greenhouse?”
I unfold the prescription. “Um…this afternoon.”
“Okay. Take the laptop. It’s a thousand years old, but it works. Use it. And, Vivian, if the office and lab are locked, you can use it, too….You know where Harper’s room is, right—Oh my God, I have the answer!”
Vivian and I exchange an uneasy glance.
“You two are sharing a room. This is perfect.”
“What?” Vivian practically chokes.
“Help each other out! You’ll get to know one another, I’ll feel better knowing you’re never alone, and, Harp—this’ll pull you out of T3 for sure. Ooh, and you can share the laptop!”
“I have a laptop,” Vivian says darkly.
“She’s got a laptop…,” I echo weakly. “And I treasure time alone….”
“That is the last thing either of you needs,” she says. “You’re fading on my watch. You’re my responsibility. Whose room is bigger?”
I raise my hand and sigh. Charlotte is immovable.
“Okay!” She beams. “Now, go get me another two or three cinnamon rolls, and we can get to work.”
Charlotte is right about one thing: The greenhouse is amazing.
It has rows of tiny sprouts and the misty, clean scent of green leaves and water. It’s warm and humid, and I instantly love it.
“Harper!” Allison calls from behind a mass of vines. “Right?”
I smile and offer her my hand, but she moves in for a full-body hug instead. “Oh—oh gosh,” I stammer. “Okay…”
She’s wearing denim overalls (Antarctic farmer!), and a clip secures her blond hair. She holds me out and gives me a once-over, looks into my eyes.
“I’m starting to feel real self-conscious when people do that,” I say. “Are my eyes doing a cartoon pinwheely thing?”
“Poor thing. No, it’s just your gaze we’re all looking at. If it’s unfocused and, you know, a little all-over, it’s not a great sign.”
“Oh. Okay. So how’s my gaze?”
“Unfocused. A little all-over.”
“Fantastic.”
“The good news is,” she says, brightening, “it’s nothing we can’t fix! Cold’s doing a number on your brain, but with all this warmth and oxygen, it’ll learn to tell the cold to knock it off.” Among the rows of sunlamps and budding green leaves, there are hammocks swinging empty. Five of them.
“Anyone can come in anytime and get a tune-up, but I’ll keep one set aside special for you. Doctor’s orders.”
I smile.
“How are you liking it so far? Having fun?”
I nod. “Except for…” I gesture around my eyeballs.
“Good!” she says. She’s near Mom’s age and reminds me of her. Except blond. And softer in her overalls. And shorter—Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I miss Mom so much, any lady who is nice to me is going to make it worse.
I choose the hammock farthest from the door, ease myself into it, and close my eyes.
This is even better than my millions-of-kittens bed.
I swing a little and breathe the clean, warm, living air. It’s weird to realize it’s been weeks since I’ve seen a plant. Grass. Trees.
“I’ll be in and out. Call out if need me. You mind a little music?”
“I’d love it,” I murmur.
From the speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling come familiar notes on familiar instruments.
“Vivaldi,” Allison says. “Four Seasons. The lettuce seems to like it. That okay?”
I know it as Music for center floor pointe work. My chest tightens and burns.
“It’s nice,” I say.
I close my eyes and breathe through tears. I push against the floor and swing gently with the orchestra, back and forth. Back and forth.
Where is Kate? Is she rehearsing with the company? Is she in class? I should be beside her at the barre, watching her straight spine, following her lead in giving an arabesque more extension, right up to where it hurts and then a bit more past that, and holding it just a little longer than feels possible. Is Simone mad I’m not in summer intensive classes teaching the kindies?…Oh, my kindies. Willa. Will Lindsay expect as much from their tiny backs and limbs as I do? Or not enough? Will she lose patience and be mean to my babies? How could I leave them for this cold?
“You’re not to think about things that way or you’ll never make it back,” a man’s voice says, close.
My eyes fly open, but I lie still. How much of that did I say out loud?
“Allison?”
I hear her nurse shoes softly clip-clop to me. “You okay?”
“What did you say?”
“I asked, are you okay.”
“No, before that.”
She shakes her head. “You’re half asleep.” She puts her hand on my forehead and smiles. “Warm,” she says. “Good!” And she’s back down the rows of plants.
A man is sitting on a pile of ice at my feet. Beard stiff with icicles, face raw and blackened with soot, layers of wool and canvas outer gear. Old-fashioned.
My breath is shallow.
“Robert,” I whisper. “Robert Scott?”
He shakes his head. “But you’re a Scott. Correct?”
“I am. Are you Amundsen? Roald, like Dahl. Right? He’s named for you.”
“Sorry?”
“The writer—James and the Giant Peach? Matilda?”
“No, I meant, sorry, I’m not Amundsen. Not Scott.”
“Oh.” My throat is dry. “Shackleton.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Oh God, that sounded awful. “It’s just, Amundsen…I know every step he took to get there. I’ve studied….And I am a Scott, so why not…”
He shrugs. “I am not here unbidden.”
“What?”
He just sits there, looking at me.
Of course. We who sank in the sea, who have the wrong hips and feet.
My voice is barely audible. “Are you my Ghost of South Pole Past?”
He twirls his finger loosely around his head. “T3.”
“No one mentioned hallucinations!”
“You’re really going to need to eat something,” he says. “Be with some people.”
“Oh my God, if one more person says that…”
“And why haven’t you been writing to your family? Kate? Owen?”
“I will.”
“I mean, this computer business…if I’d had some of that, who knows how things would have gone down? My wife surely wouldn’t have had to worry I was dead so often….”
“Okay!”
“Harper, you need me?” Allison calls.
“No, sorry…sleepy!”
Shackleton frowns. “Keep it down.”
I breathe deeply. Exhale. Just the T3. This will stop. I’m fine with it. It’s fine. I turn over in the hammock to face him. “All right,” I whisper. “Impart your wisdom.”
He holds up his hands. “Just did. Eat some food. Talk to people. Even as we watched the ice crush Endurance and pull her down into the water, my men played football. They put on some plays. When I hired my crew, one of the first questions I asked every single candidate was Can you sing? But that’s just to keep away the…” He gestures to his head once more.
“Yeah, got it.”
“As for the larger issue at hand…I understand your instinct, coming here. And for what it’s worth, I think it was an excellent decision.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely.”
I nod. “Well, thank you. I know how badly you wanted to get there.”
He frowns. “Get where?”
I frown back. “Uh…the South Pole?”
“No,” he says. “See, that’s where you’re losing me; I don’t understand this overwrought determination to make this solely symbolic pilgrimage. So you talk someone into giving you a seat on a helicopter—what is that? Suddenly you’re a ballerina again?”
“It’s not just symbolic! Hardly anyone, barely any humans, ever get there. If I can do that, I’ll feel…I can do anything.”
“How so?”
Oh my God, this guy. “Because!” I whisper-wail. “So many people want to get there so badly all their lives, and they never make it.”
“Because they’re not meant to.”
“Because they haven’t tried hard enough!”
His snow-blind eyes laser-beam me. “You were right to come. Especially winter. When the storms are here, you’ll see. There are no landmarks anywhere. Just empty open white. Nothing but possibility. A blank canvas. Best place to stop following the wrong path and make a brand-new one.”
“I loved my path,” I whisper. “I don’t want anything else.”
“Yes, I know,” he says. “Why are you giving up so easily?”
“I’m not giving anything up. I never had it! There’s nothing left to surrender. I worked my entire life. I did everything I was supposed to.”
Shackleton shakes his shaggy head. “You kids. One disappointment, one misstep, and you lie down and cry about it. Throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“What baby?”
He puts his freezing hand on my stockinged feet. “Look at these disgusting things. You ruined them and enjoyed every second of it. Correct?”
I nod.
“Did anyone make you do it? Why dance every single day, every day of your life? Who was forcing you to do that?”
“No one.”
“Because why?”
“Because…it’s everything. It’s all I am or ever want to do or be. Nothing makes me happier. I love it. I love it.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
I put my head in my hands.
“You need to be here to figure out why you heartlessly stopped being a ballerina. What did ballet ever do to you to make you abandon it?”
“It doesn’t love me back!” I hiss at him, sitting there calmly on his ice, beard still frozen in the humid air of the greenhouse.
He sits back. “Well, there’s your problem.”
“What?”
“Entitlement. No person, no thing—not Antarctica, not the universe, not ballet—is ever obligated to love us back. True, honest love for a thing is because you love it, with no expectation or want of reciprocation. You love ballet?”
I nod.
“Why?”
“Because…I do. Why did you keep trying to get to the pole again and again?”
We sit for a while. Vivaldi fills the silence.
Shackleton leans toward me. “Harper Scott,” he says. “Did you eat your dogs?”
In the hammock, my heart thumps. I nod.
“Me too,” he whispers.
I pull my left foot to my knee, my hand over one scarred heel. “I was ten. Simone said my heels weren’t right for pointe shoes. There was extra bone; she told my parents it would screw up my feet. I begged them until they let me have the surgery. Cut the bone off so my feet would work in the shoes.”
He nods. “That’s pushing the river a bit. Don’t you think?”
“No.”
“Still you love to dance?”
I nod.
“Well,” he says, “you’ve just solved your problem.”
“Which one?”
“All of them. You know what to do.”
“No, I don’t! I’m not worthy of ballet. I’m not made for it. My body’s not meant for it….I’m too old. It’s too late.”
“You’re meant for it.”
“No, it’s—You don’t understand. I’m seventeen years old; it is too late. I’ve wasted my entire life for the love of something I can never have, and now I don’t have any idea who I am. But I thought, if I came here, if I get to the pole, I’ll know—it will come to me.”
“What will?”
“The answer!” My eyes sting.
“What do you miss, most of all, besides dancing? What have you given up—what do you regret?”
“Willa,” I whimper instantly. “I miss my kids.”
Shackleton smiles.
“What?”
“You miss teaching them?”
I see right where he’s going and he’s wrong. “I miss them.”
He sighs.
“Harper Scott. The Ice is not to be conquered. It is just ice. You know what to do. Follow the sun. And for God’s sake, pay attention.”
I struggle to sit up in the swinging hammock. “What does that even mean?”
“Do not give in.”
I close my eyes.
Still lost.
“Harper?” Allison’s hand is on mine. “Hey,” she says. “Why the tears?”
I zombie into the dining hall. I’m hungry. And sick of it. Why am I still starving myself? I’ll never be a ballerina. That ship has sailed—and been swallowed by The Ice. I pick up a plate and fill it with the remains of the last of the lettuce until August. Or until Allison’s crop comes in. I pour dressing on it, not lemon.
There is a basket of bread. All kinds. I take a multigrain-looking one, slather it with butter, and instead of water, I pour a glass of milk. Low-fat, not skim.
Take that, T3.
Charlotte walks in, sees me, and darts straight to my table.
“How was it? Did you love it?”
I nod, my mouth full of balsamic-dressed iceberg lettuce. “You can go in anytime, you know. Allison said so.”
She scrunches her nose. “Was there anyone else besides you?”
“No.”
“See?” She sighs.
“What?”
“It’s more for people who…How do you feel?”
I shrug. “Hungry.”
“Good! Ooh, listen—move Vivian in tonight, okay?”
I shovel more salad and keep chewing.
“Take the rest of the day off. Okay? Harper?”
“No, I’ve got a ton of data to get through. I’ll just finish—”
She puts her arms around me for one tight, strong hug. “Tomorrow. You’re going to be okay, Harp. You’ll be glorious.”
That is debatable. I watch her go and I stand, toss my plate in the wash bin, and walk into the kitchen.
“Aiden!” I call. He turns from the wash sink, suds up to his elbows.
“Hey!”
“I need your help.”
“Have you ever used a computer?” he says later, in the warm Christmas light of what is for the next few hours still my room. “See this thing that says, ‘Connect to network’?” He clicks it. The Internet pops up.
“You fixed it!”
Aiden rolls his eyes, gets up, and sits on the second bed. “How’re you feeling?”
“Tired.” Shackleton’s You know what to do rolls around in my head. “Annoyed.”
“Even after the greenhouse?” He finds a new pile of library books I’ve borrowed. “Still mourning?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty pissed forty-five minutes in a hammock didn’t cure me.”
“Sorry.”
“No,” I sigh. “I am. I’m a boring broken record of…boringness. You tell me things now.”
“What things?”
“All the things. Where in Ireland do you live?”
“Have you been?”
“No.”
“But you know the basic shape?”
“Of Ireland? Sure.”
“Okay. I live at the bottom.”
“Oooh, near Dingle?”
His eyes widen. “Dingle, yes! Did I tell you that?”
“No. My mom watches this travel show on public television, Rick Steves’ Europe—Rick is hilarious. He’s always talking about going to Europe ‘through the back door,’ which I’m not sure he gets what that means….But he loves Ireland. He’s done so many episodes there, and I’ve seen the one in Dingle a million times. I can’t believe you live there!”
Aiden is laughing. “Oh God, Rick Steves. Practically every American I’ve ever met has got a Back Door guide with them. Rick put us on the map.”
“Is there still the music festival? In the churches, all the pubs?”
“Every autumn.”
“Do you play an instrument?”
He nods. “Fiddle.”
“Really.”
“My whole family does. I miss that, definitely.”
“Will you go back after college? To live?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You like your family? Your parents?”
“Love them. A lot.”
“But you won’t go back.”
“I would never have left if I stayed any longer. They’re perfectly happy there, and I was, too. I’ve got three brothers. We know every inch of every field and street, and there’s not a neighbor whose house we’ve not eaten supper at. There are the girls we grew up with we’re supposed to marry and have a gaggle of kids with, and the schoolmates we drink and play music with in the pubs every Saturday, and I did. It was hard to leave. But it wasn’t meant for me. I’ll visit, but I was always…straining against it. You know?”
I don’t. I’ve never strained against my life. I’ve stretched into it. Yearned for it and loved it more, even as I lived it.
At the desk I stare at the screen. Sign into my mail account.
Eleven new messages.
Mom. Mom and Dad. Mom. Kate. Luke. Mom. Owen. Owen. Owen. Owen. Owen.
“That’s a lot of Owen,” Aiden says close to my shoulder. “Relative?”
I close the laptop. “Friend.”
“Huh. Prolific.”
I shrug—and gasp as a sharp pain shoots through my left shoulder, straight into my neck. I reach up and grab the burning spot.
“Whoa,” Aiden says. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know,” I moan. “Stabbing, awful pain…”
“Where?”
“Where I’m rubbing. Oh my God, it hurts….”
“All right, don’t shoot the…person trying to help. Hold still.”
His hands move to the painful shoulder, and I instinctively move away. “I’m fine,” I say. “It’s okaahhh. God, what is wrong with me? I’m broken!” Another bright flash of heat pulses near my neck.
“Sit still,” Aiden says kindly. “Tell me if this hurts.”
He moves my hundred pounds of hair aside and puts his hands on the muscle, gently pressing his warm fingertips into my skin.
“Gah, okay, ow!”
“Breathe. Just let me do this—”
“It hurts!”
“Yes, you’ve established that. Shut up, and let me help you!”
I whimper pitifully and clench my toes while he massages my shoulder, and the pain explodes, then gradually subsides.
“Are you breathing?”
“Yes,” I snap, and exhale because I have not been breathing.
“Wow,” he says, low. “You’ve got some muscular…muscles.”
The pain is dull.
“Mmm.”
“You work a lot of free weights?”
“Mmm.”
“What could possibly have your poor shoulders so tense? You’re neck’s all jacked up, too.” He kneads my gristly muscles slowly. I breathe.
Wind is sending icy snow past the dark window. Snow will always be Kate dancing. My heart breaking again, and again, and again.
Does Owen wonder why I haven’t written back?
Aiden moves his hands under the shoulder of my T-shirt. I flinch.
“Sorry!” he says. “Sorry…”
“No, it’s okay, I’m…thank you.”
“Harper.”
“It’s fine! Feels better. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. I’m just…” I stand up, immediately get a head rush, and Aiden sees it happen. He takes my arm and sits beside me on what will be Vivian’s bed. I put my head on my knees, and I try so hard but can’t keep the tears from springing out of my eyes. “Sorry,” I tell him. “This is so dumb. I’m tired of being in pain.”
“How long has it been like this? Have you seen the doctor?”
“No, this kind is new. I’m just—sick of myself. Feeling sorry for myself.” I grab a hair tie and wrestle my hair into it.
“Well, if it helps, your neck may be really screwed up, but you’ve still definitely got the best posture of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Great, thanks.” I pile my hair into a giant mass on top of my head.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m driving myself insane.”
I rub my neck and my hair falls, spilling down my back. So heavy.
Outside the window, the blizzard is more insistent. I climb over Aiden beside me on the bed, march to the door, and yank it open.
“Aiden? You coming or not?”
The haircut lady looks like a grandma who’s still determined to keep it together with lots of makeup and a way-too-skimpy tank top. She’s sitting in the makeshift salon across from the laundry room, lights on, reading a two-year-old People magazine. The old headlines make me suddenly nervous. Aiden holds my bare hand. No mittens.
“Hello!” he says. “Open for business?”
Haircut looks at her watch. “Sure,” she says, and tosses People aside. “Who’s up first?”
Aiden looks at me. Huge, encouraging smile. He squeezes my hand.
Butterflies.
“Me.” I sit in the chair before the mirror. She looks us both up and down.
“You the kids?”
We nod.
“I’m Deb,” she says. She hefts my hair up and snaps a plastic cape around me. “What are we doing? Trim? Few layers?”
“Cut it off,” I say to her face in the mirror. “Please.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
Aiden is sitting in a plastic chair. His eyes are wide.
“Honey,” Deb says, “you’re going to have to be more specific.”
I frown. What could be more specific than cut it off…all of it? If she doesn’t start soon, I’ll lose my nerve. I move my fingers over my scalp. “Close. Nothing left.”
“Shaved?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Cropped?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Close.”
“Yes.”
“Like a boy?
“Sure.”
She sighs and lifts the heavy length of my dark hair in both hands. Shiny. Straight. Nearly long enough to sit on. She shakes her head. “What is your name, sweetheart?”
“Harper.”
“Harper. You need to take a minute. Give this some real thought.”
“I have. If you don’t want to, I’ll end up doing it myself in my room with sewing scissors, and it’ll take forever. Deb. Please?”
She sits on the spinny stool beside my chair. “You think on it some. Come see me next week.”
“Please.”
She zeros in sternly on the reflection of my red-rimmed eyes. “You break up with a boy?”
I shake my head.
“Sure you did. Come here to get away from the mess? You listen to me; this is not the way to do it. Not off The Ice and especially not on it—end up looking like what’s-her-face in Rosemary’s Baby, and plus, didn’t they tell you eighty percent of your body heat escapes through your head? You’re lucky to have all this; no hat could keep you as warm as hair will. Pretty, too. You talk her into this?” she asks Aiden.
“No, ma’am.”
Deb picks up a plastic comb, steps back to sweep it through the full length of my admittedly beautiful hair. “I’ll tell you something else, too; you’re here and he’s not. It’s done. Won’t matter to him either way.
My eyes are starting to sting. “I have to.”
“Oh, come on. Says who?”
“I only grew it because of him. For him.”
In the mirror, Deb’s eyes narrow. Aiden perks up. “How long was your hair when you met him?”
“Shoulders. Trimmed but never cut since.”
Deb sets the comb down. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Takes decades to grow hair this long. What kind of deal are we talking—arranged marriage? Not allowed to cut your hair, walk three steps behind him?”
“No,” I say hoarsely. “I wanted to. I loved him. He wanted it long so I could pin it up. Wanted me skinny, took all my time, took my money, my parents’ money—and now he doesn’t want me. I’m not good enough.”
“How so?”
“Body’s not right. Not good enough.”
“He said that? Your body?”
I nod.
Aiden is slack-faced in the mirror, hanging on every word.
“Where were your parents during all this?”
I shrug. “I loved him.”
She weighs my hair in her hands, exchanges the comb for a brush. She works it all into a low, dense ponytail, holds it tight, and brushes it smooth. “You’re telling me the truth? This was just for him.”
I nod.
“Men are asshats,” she says. “Boys are worse.” She eyeballs Aiden behind her in the mirror. “No offense.”
Aiden nods. “None taken.”
I fold my hands beneath the cape. “It was my own fault. I knew who he was the whole time, from the very start. I knew, but I loved him, and I thought I could make him love me, but nothing worked. Not starving, not growing all this hair. None of it mattered. Years and years for nothing.”
Deb watches me cry for a minute, pulls a tissue from a box beside her hair dryer, and puts her hands on my shoulders. “I know this dummy,” she says. “I married him. Twice. He’s a dime a dozen and, true fact, he’s an idiot. You’re lucky you got away from him, and your folks should’ve never let you near him to begin with.”
“I love him,” I say again.
She puts the brush down. “You going to come crying to me tomorrow when you wake up and wish you hadn’t done this?”
I shake my head. She turns to Aiden.
“You’ll be with her when she does? ’Cause for sure she will.”
Aiden looks to me. “Harp?”
“He’ll be with me.”
Deb picks up a pair of clean silver scissors, hacks off my ponytail, and holds the severed hair, three feet long, up into the fluorescent light.
“Well,” she says, brightening. “Some nice cancer patient will have a gorgeous wig.”
Free haircuts are one more delightful McMurdo perk. Aiden puts a twenty-dollar tip in her jar, takes my hand again, and pulls me out into the hall.
“Was all that true?” he asks.
“Come with me? I want to feel the cold,” I say. “On my head.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do,” I insist. “I really, really do. Please.”
“Was all that true?”
I nod.
We run to the entry hall. Ben lives at that damn desk. He stares at me. At my head.
“What did you do?”
I lean into the door with my shoulder, push with all my might.
“Hey!” he shouts. “You can’t—”
The blast of icy wind is so sharp it burns. It sweeps Ben’s voice aside. I step out into it, into the dark, just to the landing of the steps, Aiden behind me, neither of us wearing cold gear. Immediately it is in my skin, inside me. I am frozen and I love it. I step down onto the snow. No clouds. Beyond the station lights a million stars, more than I ever could imagine.
I am so light. My neck is free. Aiden stands before me, puts both his hands on my head and moves his fingers through my shorn hair. He says something the wind carries away.
“What?” I shout.
“Your eyes are huge!” he says next to my ear. “You are so beautiful.”
He pulls my icy face to his. He kisses me, I kiss him back, and I hold on to him so as not to fall away in this storm.