The Hell of the Snow Maiden

Jojo did not come into work today guess he must be too busy being surf/skate/snow bum somewhere or was leaping off a cliff doing something dangerous and totally stupid. I shouldn’t call him stupid as I covered for him with Chantal which makes me the stupid one. I had got over the romance Royce just fine but getting over Jojo wasn’t happening because I think this time it was something real and not some girly fantasy. I was angry he was not there, relieved he was not there and missing him when he was gone, worried about him when he was gone doing who knows what and furious at Royce for letting him do who knows what. All in all it was a stupid day full of stupid emotions about stupid people.

Gervais did not come in which was my only bright spot in the day and I left work to go to Djini’s as I didn’t want to go home to face Mother and all her Jojo questions. After I told her that we were fine she decided we were now best friends which of course pleased her to no end which made me wonder if Chantal was as happy about it as Mother obviously was. Djini’s was empty and it was nice to sit there alone and not have to listen to Tiah sprackle about her brothers or parents or watch Coco and Royce act like silly kids over each other.

I was staring in to space, doing a darn good impersonation of a vacant Coco when a sudden blast of cold air hit my back, not a cool breeze or sudden gust but fingers of ice creeping all over me and I didn’t even have to turn around to know who just entered. It was so weird but I have known this feeling ever since I was a child being sensitive to the effect they had such as chilling a room just by looking into it, this peculiar talent held by all the Dubois and one that Elyce had mastered to perfection. I sat looking at her reflection in the window where everyone else might have had a slight blurring in the glass Elyce was as usual, pristine and clear, the product of her Dubois heritage and she represented it in all it’s creepy, insane glory.

I grew up with Elyce, well for part of her life until she had to leave to finish off in Europe, another Dubois tradition, send your troublesome girls far away. When we were young Elyce was a frosty immaculate princess with clothes that would remain as fresh and clean at the beginning of the day as the end, I used to believe she could walk through a hurricane and not hair would rest out of place. Her teen years were unravaged by puberty with her skin always untouched, her hair faultless and her clothes the latest style, fitting to perfection. Yet she was as friendless as she was beautiful, hard to imagine with her porcelain skin, crystal green eyes and shimmering blonde hair, she was the snow maiden to Liselle’s ice queen. She floated through our school years aloof, superior and coldly heartless and it was at fifteen that her manipulations became bold and malicious.

It was a Dubois trait to control situations and people silently from the wings, they were the power behind the power, the money behind the power and the voice behind the money. Elyce did not appear to understand the Dubois convention and soon became the central element to the dramas occurring around us. She broke up relationships for no other reason than boredom and she would make life hell for anyone who was less than perfect, which pretty much included every person at school. She tormented ugly girls, fat girls, silly girls, poor girls, any girls her cold eyes rested upon. She would do it in her sly, sotto voiced Dubois way and just public enough so all the kids knew but none of the teachers caught on or were too afraid to say anything about her. Finally tiring of cheap prey Elyce turned her beautiful cold eyes to something more worthy of her attentions as victory over unarmed opponents must have waned quickly for the hell of Elyce vanished as quickly as it started.

It was not until a few months later when one of our male teachers started acting weird that we all guessed Elyce had moved into making the lives of men hell, any men she could lay her hands on. At fifteen the rest of us were too busy wondering if boys would notice our pimples, Elyce was seducing married male teachers. The scandal had it been allowed to happen would have rocked Bishop Vale but like everything else in the Dubois world it went away quietly. Elyce was packed off to finish her education in the same place that Liselle had been packed off to and we were rescued from her disagreeable presence for a few years.

Elyce is back and although now we are older and some of us wiser she can still show us the difference in our worlds, and how she loves to do that! Elyce returned more beautiful and cold than she left and far more clever in her manipulations. She meant to have Royce despite him being an easy victory and unless he got out from under his mother’s influence she would have him. Suddenly I noticed that Elyce was glaring at my back and I put my cup down nervously wondering if she knew I had set up Coco and Royce. If she did not know she probably suspected I had something to do with it all and I decided to get out of there before she rang Gervais to let him know where I was. My peaceful moment had lasted exactly the length of one cup of coffee and contrary to the lies I had been telling myself about escaping him I now wished Jojo would arrive. I wanted to throw myself in his arms and be anywhere but mixed up in the insanities of Bishop Vale, not that he would have been any help, he’d probably drop a skateboard on my foot or forget my name.

When I got home I found Mother doing her gin thing which was a bit silly as she had run out of gin weeks ago and was in fact drinking plain tonic and ice. I don’t know if Maritka was making it this way or if Mother knew she had run out, either way I did not care. Coco rang me and I held my breath for a second waiting to hear something ominous that Elyce had done but instead she surprised me with questions about Jojo. Coco who had never noticed anything about anyone in her entire life was now asking me why I did not like Jojo. I started to sprackle hoping it would deflect her but Coco was determined to talk about Jojo. I realized Royce must have said something to her so I asked her why the sudden interest in Jojo, what did she care what freak boy and I were doing. Coco gets all fizzy and tells me not to call him freak boy that he was a nice person so now I really am speechless, prying and with opinions-- I knew that Royce had been speaking to her for sure. This meant Jojo had been speaking to Royce, which means Jojo wanted to talk to me but was too stupid to know how. This would take only brutality to solve so I took a deep breath and let Coco know exactly what was bothering me about Jojo.

I explained how he had no respect for others, how he slacked off work, here she interrupted to mention his wretched business so I pointed out to her that millions of people started businesses without handouts from their parents and if the boys were serious at all they needed to start making a plan. Coco interrupted to say they had a plan, of course they do I replied, their plan was to sit about talking about how good it would be but not actually doing anything towards it. They needed to work and save their money and get a loan from the bank and do it properly. Until Jojo started behaving like a grown up I was not interested in him at all this made Coco silent for a second and then she said that was harsh and I had changed a lot lately. She was right I had and maybe if she had a few life experiences like being stalked by Gervais she would grow up as well. I didn’t though, I just told her I was tired and hung up for it was just another day in Eden.

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