Freeze Tag Read Online Free PDF

headlights of a car. Perhaps Lannie could freeze you with her eyes.
    West murmured, “She’s over by the windows.”
    Meghan forced herself to look over by the windows.
    Lannie stood alone, her little wispy frame very still. As Meghan had soaked up the sunshine of West’s greeting, Lannie soaked up the darkness of Jessica’s freezing. Her smile was tender. Her head was tilted to the side, an artist admiring her exhibit.
    West mumbled something unintelligible. He shoved both hands deep into his jeans’ pockets.
    He was separating himself from Meghan, and from the disaster, and even from the future.
    Meghan stared at those wrists, at those pockets, and saw a different West: a West who did not want to face this. A West who was going to stand very still and hope it all went away.
    She was aware of a deep disappointment in West. His broad shoulders and his fine mind did not match his strength of soul.
    It was a thought too terrible to allow. Meghan knocked it away.
    Lannie slid between them, materializing as completely and silently as a chemistry experiment. Meghan’s body jerked with fear. Lannie was so close, Meghan flinched. Don’t touch me!
    She gave Lannie another inch and Lannie smiled into the air, but did not bother to look at Meghan. She did not bother with greetings or small talk either. She never had. “We are going out now, West,” she said firmly. As if West were a lottery ticket, and Lannie wanted to buy in.
    West jammed his hands deeper into the pockets.
    “This is your fault, anyway,” Lannie said. “You should have discussed this last night, after I talked to you. I warned you this would happen.”
    Meghan was afraid, and fear made her stupid, and stupidity made her rude. “Lannie,” she said sharply, “we had better things to talk about than you.”
    In the short space of time before Lannie retaliated, Meghan saw that Lannie actually experienced emotion. It had hurt Lannie’s feelings that West and Meghan had not talked about her last night. Lannie looked up at West with a kind of grief and sorrow.
    Lannie knew nothing of love. Yet she ached for it; all the world ached for love. Somehow Lannie could not understand why she couldn’t just take West and walk off with him. Sort of like shoplifting a lipstick.
    In the distance came the peculiar rise and fall of an ambulance siren, as harsh and upsetting as chalk on a blackboard.
    “Lannie,” said Meghan, “undo her. Jessica didn’t do anything to you.”
    The revolving lights on top of the ambulance cast on-and-off rainbows through the slanted cafeteria windows. When a backboard was slid under Jessica, the body remained stiff and splayed.
    “Get out of here, Meghan,” said Lannie calmly. “West is mine now.”
    She’s in love with him, thought Meghan. She always has been. How could I have forgotten that? We marched our love up and down Dark Fern Lane, showing off for the world. We forgot that Lannie is part of our world. “You can’t do that to Jessica,” said Meghan softly. “Undo her.”
    “It isn’t a true demonstration if I undo her,” said Lannie. “You would relax. You must never relax around me, Meghan. Now go away. West is mine.”
    “Lannie,” hissed West, “what did Jessica do to deserve that?”
    “She didn’t do anything.”
    “You can’t go around freezing people!” said West.
    “Of course I can,” said Lannie, with the annoyed air of one having to point out the obvious. “Now if this was not enough for you, I’ll do another.”
    “No!”
    “Actually,” said Lannie, “I could freeze lots of people. They would close the school down. They would think they had a weird epidemic.”
    “I would tell them what you were doing,” said West.
    Lannie put her thin little arm around his big waist. She hugged him affectionately. “Would they believe it?” she said, smiling.
    Across the silent frightened room a teacher said, “It must be some kind of virus. One of those new diseases. Like Legionnaire’s