WE DECIDE WE SHOULDN’T WORRY because, even though it’s cold and getting colder in here, we have jackets and blankets. If it comes to it, we can pick locks and scavenge for candles. For now, we have a few tea lights from Hannah’s drawer.
Our cell phones still have some charge left, but we’re using them sparingly and there’s no Wi-Fi anyway.
“Remember when the power went out sophomore year?” Mabel asks.
“I made you listen to me read all night.”
“Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.”
“Right. Those were dark poems.”
“Yeah, but they were fun, too.”
“They were defiant,” I say. I remember the sparks in them, I remember how the words made me feel dangerous and strong. “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” and all of Anne Sexton’s reimagined fairy tales.
“In my lit class we listened to a recording of Sylvia Plath. Her voice wasn’t what I thought it would sound like.”
I know those recordings. I used to listen to them online sometimes late at night. Every word she spoke was a dagger.
“What did you think she’d sound like?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “Like you, I guess.”
We drift into silence. The colder it gets, the more difficult it is not to worry. What if we can’t pick locks? What if the electricity doesn’t come back on for days? What if we get too cold while sleeping and don’t wake up in time to save ourselves?
“Maybe we should turn our phones off,” I say. “In case we need them later.”
Mabel nods. She looks at her phone, and I wonder if she’s thinking about calling Jacob before she turns it off. The light of the screen casts across her face, but I can’t read her expression. Then she holds down a button and her face goes dark again.
I cross the room to look for mine. I don’t keep it near me all the time the way she does or the way I used to. I don’t get many texts or calls. I find it next to the bag of Claudia’s pottery. I pick it up, but before I can power it off it buzzes.
“Who is it?” Mabel asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “An area code from here.”
“You should answer it.”
“Hello?”
“Don’t know how long you were planning on sticking it out,” a man says. “But I imagine it’s getting to be pretty chilly in there. And it looks mighty dark.”
I turn to the window. The groundskeeper is standing in the snow. I can barely see him but for the headlights of his truck.
“Mabel,” I whisper. She looks up from her phone and joins me at the window.
I pick up one of the tea lights and wave it in front of the window, a tiny hello I’m not sure he can see from there. He lifts his hand in a wave.
“The power’s out for you, too, though. Isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “But I don’t live in a dormitory.”
We blow out the candles. We pull on our boots and grab our toothbrushes. And then we are out in the impossible cold, leaving trails of footprints in the snow from the dorm entrance to where his truck is idling.
He’s younger up close. Not young, but not old either.
“Tommy,” he says. He sticks out his hand and I shake it.
“Marin,” I say.
“Mabel.”
“Marin. Mabel. You’re in luck, because there’s a fireplace in my living room and also a fold-out couch.”
Even though I’m glad to hear this, it doesn’t hit me until after we step inside his little cottage on the edge of the grounds that this is what we needed. I’d gotten so cold I almost forgot what it felt like to be warm enough. His fireplace is crackling and bright, casting light across the ceiling and the walls.
“I’ve got the oven on, too. This old thing could heat the house on its own—just be careful not to touch it.”
All the walls are wood paneled, and everything is worn in and soft. Rugs upon rugs, sofas and overstuffed chairs, all of them strewn with blankets. He doesn’t offer to show us around, but it’s a small space and we can see most of it from where we stand, waiting for him to show us whether we’ll spend the evening making small talk or if he’ll say good night and retreat to the door at the end of the short hallway.
“It’s just six thirty,” Tommy says. “I assume you didn’t eat.”
“We had some food a couple hours ago,” I say. “But no dinner yet.”
“I’m not big on dinner myself, but I have some pasta and a jar of sauce. . . .”
He shows us how to light the burner with a match on his old-fashioned stove and fills a heavy silver pot with water. He keeps his spaghetti in a canister; there isn’t much inside.
“As I said, I’m not too big on dinner. Hopefully this’ll be enough for the two of you.”
I can’t tell if he’s lying. I should have thought about all the food in the dorm refrigerator before we left, but I can’t fathom going back out into the snow and the dark, walking all that way.