The Snow by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page A

storm, and the Atlantic Ocean was pounding and the wind shrieking. She came to the Singing Bridge, whose open iron fretwork made the car tires hum when they passed over. The iron was solid with ice. With each splash of the extremely high tide, another slick layer was added.
    To get to Schooner Inne she had to cross the Singing Bridge.
    It will sweep me away, thought Christina Romney. The sea will take me down into Candle Cove and take me out with the tide. I will be frozen solid, like a maiden in an old poem: all ice. Even my heart and soul.
    Exactly what the Shevvingtons want.
    They planned this.
    They knew.
    They’re inside even now.
    Laughing.

Chapter 8
    S HE CLUNG TO A steel cable.
    The mittens her mother had knit her were double layered: black with white angora stars. The yarn froze to the steel, and the leaping seawater soaked the mittens, freezing them into hand-shaped curls.
    I was wrong, thought Christina Romney, her hands frozen to the bridge. It was not Dolly they were after. It was me.
    The air from the ocean was so full, of salt and snow that she could actually see the wind.
    Christina was lashed to the bridge by the very mittens her mother had knitted her. She pulled her hands out of the mittens, leaving them frozen to the steel. “You won’t win!” she shouted to the wind. “I am Christina of granite. So there!”
    She fought the wind like a wrestler until she got off the Singing Bridge. She turned her back on the wind and half crawled up Breakneck Hill Road. She reached the huge green double doors of Schooner Inne. She found her key in her pocket. Her frozen blue fingers forced it into the lock. She opened the door, slipped in, and shut it behind her. The wallpaper was flocked and formal, put up by the sea captain of so long ago. But the air in the house was chilled, infected by the Shevvingtons.
    Christina’s throbbing heart did not supply enough energy for the climb to her room. I am old, thought Christina. Perhaps my hair is gray now, instead of silver and gold and chocolate.
    She touched her hair, but all she felt was melting snow. I don’t have the briefcase. I dropped it somewhere.
    She stared at her empty hands. How, oh how could she have done this? Gone through such torture, only to have lost the documents — the proof?
    She began crying.
    She hung up her coat. She took off her sneakers and set them to dry over the heating vent. She peeled off her soaking socks. The ice that clung to them melted in her hands. She looked up the whirling stairs and the white banisters that blurred like a forest. The first flight was not so bad. Thick plush carpet softened the way for her frozen toes.
    The second flight, bare and slippery wood, was cruel and unwelcoming. This is home? Christina Romney thought. This is where I live?
    At the top of the stairs, out of the dark behind the balcony came a waft of white. White that swirled like snow or ghosts. Christina was enveloped in white.
    She tried to scream, but the white smothered her.
    “It’s me, Anya,” whispered the white. “Where have you been, Chrissie? The Shevvingtons came up and checked your bed, and when they saw you weren’t in it, they laughed and went back to their room. Where have you been? Are you all right?”
    Anya’s swirling lacy nightgown, like a bride’s trousseau, folded around Christina. “You’re freezing,” Anya whispered. “Come, I’ll get in bed with you. Body heat will help.” They tiptoed to Christina’s room. It was tiny and dark, with bare floors and cracked plaster. Christina had added flower pictures and her mother’s vivid quilt and a little white rug, but the room stayed dark. There were times when Christina and The Dark were like best friends, huddled together under the covers. But tonight The Dark was laughing, ready to bring out its real friends, creatures of the shadows and the sea.
    Anya peeled away Christina’s soaking jeans and hung them to dry. The wind came through the electrical outlets in prong-shaped