The wind howled all night. In the morning, the hills were covered in skeletons. Freya woke up to a sea of bare limbs out her window, and she thought it might still be a dream. But it was just the end of the leaves. It was winter now, no matter what the calendar said, and the trees had accepted this.

She wondered where Lassa was right now. Was she sleeping in her car? Passed out in a motel bed with some stranger? She was probably up already, half-frozen on some desolate trail.

Freya wished she had said something different last night. She hadn’t even asked Lassa to stay. Her mother probably thought Freya was happy to be rid of her. The more Freya thought about it, the more she realized she had been awful to Lassa, even before Randall died.

Freya never did fun things with her mother. She never ran to Lassa to tell her something just because she was excited about it. They didn’t have conversations, they had interrogations.

It couldn’t have always been that way. When did things get so bad? Freya always felt like Lassa was disappointed in her no matter what grades she got or how well she did at anything. Randall had always been the one dragging Lassa along to things. He was the one who could make her laugh, make her forget about being serious all the time.

Is that me? Freya wondered. Remote and cold, only alive when someone else was around so she could suck energy from them? Freya and Lassa were two negative poles, repelling each other. How had Randall done it? Lassa was always giving him grief for lazing around the house and putting things off, but Freya understood he had been the force moving the family, carrying them both. Where did he get all that energy? Why wasn’t she more like him, less like her mother?

Freya was hungry, and they were out of eggs. She’d made an omelet with the last of them for dinner. She’d even left the pan in the sink. Lassa would have lost her mind if she’d seen it, but Lassa was gone. It was such a petty act of rebellion, but it still felt good. When Freya went into the kitchen, she found an empty can of Ensure sitting on the counter next to the sink. A film of grease was floating on top of the dirty frying pan.

“No,” Freya said, but the can could not be denied. She was sleepwalking after all. Lassa had been right.

Last night, Freya dreamed about a huge tower that had a path winding around and around it, rising high into the clouds. All night, she had climbed that spiraling path, sometimes huge slabs of stone would block her way, and she’d have to climb along the edge, feeling all the while like she was about to fall. No part of her dream had taken place in the kitchen. There were no pit stops to drink vanilla Ensure while she was scaling Babel.

Freya went into the bathroom and stepped on the scale for the first time in a while. She was a hundred and seven pounds. She stepped off the scale and back on it, but it read the same. She took off her T-shirt and looked at herself in the mirror. She was filling out. She wondered if she would end up getting fat and hoped it was just a growth spurt and she would get taller. She’d read somewhere children who had a parent die didn’t grow as tall, and it had stuck in her mind.

She put her shirt back on, and then realized she felt gross. She hadn’t taken a shower yesterday, she just hung around the house. That was all she would do today, too, so why bother? Griminess won out over laziness, and she took a shower and felt better afterward.

Freya got dressed and washed the pan in the sink, so she didn’t have to worry about it later. It all felt a little strange, what the hell business did she have feeling okay? She was restless and wanted to get out of the house, even if it was cold and shitty out and the leaves were all gone.

She wondered if anything good was playing at the Dorsey Palace Theater and how much a cab out there and back would cost. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized food was much more of a priority.

Would she be okay if she went to the Six Over Six diner? It was another Randall place but, really, wasn’t everything she liked to go to a Randall place? If she brought a book, nobody would bother her. She could just read.

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That was another thing she wanted to do today, go to the library. She was so low on things to read she’d finished Ethan Frome. It wasn’t quite so bad as she thought. Maybe she would have even liked it if Mr. McCallahan hadn’t forced her to read it.

She rummaged in her desk drawer until she found her library card, she hadn’t been there in almost six months. What had she done in all that time? There were books on Randall’s shelf, but she was saving them. All she had was The Fragile Phoenix. She grimaced but it was better than nothing. Her stomach was growling. She decided on the diner. She was going to order chocolate chip pancakes and a strawberry banana milkshake. Her mouth was wet just thinking about it.

* * *

It took so long for the taxi to show up Freya regret not just riding her bike. But then halfway through the drive, a light rain fell, and she was glad she hadn’t. The driver was very chatty, probably on his second cup of coffee, and he seemed mortally disappointed she didn’t follow college football.

His grandson was a fullback at Bowdoin, and she could tell he told every single person who set foot in his cab all about it. She made polite responses while he yammered on and on about the NCAA, but she barely heard him. Her mind was full of thoughts of extra-crispy bacon and rye toast gleaming with molten butter.

Six over Six was busy, the parking lot full of pickup trucks with ATVs and dirt bikes in their beds. Through the windows, men in camouflage clothes peered at the clouds, drumming their fingers on their jaws at this sudden hitch in their plans.

When she went inside, Freya saw a waitress serving three plates with the diner’s namesake sandwich, a towering triple decker with six eggs and six pieces of bacon. Normally, she found the prospect of eating six eggs at once slightly revolting, but it seemed like a good idea.

“Is it just you?” the hostess asked, and when Freya said yes, she was led to the counter with a menu as big as a newspaper.

Don’t go crazy, she warned herself as she realized she wanted to order everything they had. She agonized over the menu for long minutes. The instant she set it down on the counter, her waiter was there to take her order. A pair of green eyes met hers, and she could only stare back stupidly. It was Dan Gregulus, grinning at her in an apron and a paper hat. Her empty stomach lurched.

“Oh! Hi, Dan,” Freya fumbled, immediately forgetting what she’d meant to order. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Oh, yeah. Jujitsu is just to pay the bills. This is my real passion,” Dan said, giving a little roll of his eyes. He tried to be funny. She should have laughed.

“Is it just you?”

“Um. Yeah. Can I get the steak and eggs and a strawberry banana milkshake, please? Eggs over medium, rye toast, medium rare.”

His eyebrows raised. “It’s a big steak,” he warned.

“I’m hungry,” she said, suddenly feeling a little pissed-off at him. She hadn’t come here to talk to Dan Gregulus. Freya tried not to scowl as she handed him the menu. She just needed to eat something.

“I hope so! I’ll put your order in right away. What are you reading?” He pointed to the midnight blue book that had been under her menu.

“Oh…this is uh, The Fragile Phoenix. It’s a fantasy,” Freya said. She had a snide thought she wasn’t even lying. She didn’t want Dan to know she sat alone in a diner reading some stupid self-help book

“Sounds cool, I’ll have to check it out,” Dan said. His smile dried up, and he drifted away to take someone else’s order.

What was that about? He probably thought Freya was a real loser for being in here on her own, ordering a milkshake like a little kid. Freya dipped her hand in her pocket and touched the Starball, feeling reassured by its warmth. Maybe he was embarrassed, too, for having to spend his Sunday morning slinging hash in a dumb paper hat.

Not everyone was doing as well as Lassa. Randall had had good life insurance, and there was the survivor’s pension from the police department, but those together were a pittance compared to what her mother made.

Freya tried to imagine herself behind the counter in a dumb-looking hat, having to talk to hundreds of people every day, whether she wanted to or not. Getting yelled at for messing up orders, men calling her “Hon” and “Darling” and getting stiffed on tips. It would be awful for her, but Dan didn’t seem to mind, he smiled and laughed as he took orders, even though the place was slammed. How did people do that? It seemed so easy for everyone else.

Freya sighed. It was going to take forever to get food. She opened the book.