Frozen in Time

by Judy Schaefer

Lacey sat in the treehouse bone-tired and half-whole. The wood beneath her was sunbleached but strong – the opposite of what she felt like this summer. Everything had gone so completely wrong. But alone in the treehouse, guilt and shame eased their pressure. Lacey was able to escape – not what she had done – but the crushing pain she felt every time she met someone else’s eyes. Away from her sister, whose unrelenting desire to cheer Lacey up felt like suffocation instead of freedom. Away from her parents, whose worrisome faces made Lacey’s blood boil and rise against her skin. Alone, up here, she dared to think of the future again. A future she wasn’t yet sure she deserved.

It had been nearly ten weeks since the accident.  

Before that afternoon, summer had been ripe with momentum. Momentum toward a future that Lacey had been planning for as long as she could remember. With her brand-new laminated plastic license and hand-me-down car, Lacey’s summer would be full of studying, working, swimming, waffle fries, and milkshakes. Music on and windows down.

Her whole future was supposed to start this summer. That’s what she kept thinking: start.

A sharp ache bloomed in her leg, sudden and deep, like someone had reached inside and twisted a nerve. She sucked in a breath and shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t make her want to scream.

The doctor had said it might happen – that sometimes pain sticks around even when the thing that caused it has gone. She hated how it could sneak up on her – how her own body could trick her into thinking everything was still the way it had been.  

As she leaned her head back against the plywood wall and stared at a corner of the ceiling, she saw a spider spinning something delicate and purposeful. She envied the spider’s certainty. Its single-minded direction. No shame, no questions. Just instinct and thread.

Lacey used to be like that.

Her summer planner, now a useless collection of unrealized ambitions, had been color-coded. She’d mapped everything out in gel pen: internship at the nature center on weekdays, SAT prep on weekends, and a research project on pollinator decline for her college applications. She’d even blocked off “unstructured thinking time,” like some kind of overachieving robot.

She couldn’t wait to work with the bees at the center’s apiary. She secretly hoped she could learn enough about them to make her own hive at home. Maybe even start selling honey at the local farmer’s market next year. Every hour of sunlight was supposed to mean something. Build toward something. Now all of it was unraveling.

Her internship spot had been given to someone else. The nature center director had left a voicemail. They were so proud of how strong she was being, and they’d love to have her next year. Maybe.

A lump rose in her throat before she could stop it. It wasn’t just the pain. Or the hospital. Or the quiet looks from her parents, like they were afraid she’d break if they spoke too loud.

It was what could have been.

Her friends were probably sprawled out on beach towels right now, legs stretched long and golden, complaining about tan lines and posting well-staged selfies with stupid captions: Summer mode = activated. #beachbums

None of them had planners. None of them cared about unstructured thinking time. They were working ice cream jobs and getting sunburns and falling for boys they’d forget by October. Lacey had been so sure she was ahead of all that. And now they were living her summer for her, while she was up in a goddamn treehouse – frozen with uncertainty.  

Lacey sat up straighter and stared at the treehouse ladder. She made it back up here finally. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to go back down and rejoin the world just yet. Then, right on cue, came a voice from below.

“Lacey?” her mom called, gently, like she might scare her off if she was too loud. “It’s getting late, sweetheart. Do you want help getting down for dinner?”

Lacey stared at the ceiling, throat swelling with frustration. No, she didn’t want help. She wanted to rewind.

“No,” Lacey called back, louder than she meant to. Her voice cracked anyway. “I don’t need help.”

A pause. Then, quieter: “I’m not hungry.”

She could picture her mom down there, face tilted up toward the treehouse, trying to decide whether to push or let go.

“I’ll be down in a little bit,” Lacey added.

There was a long silence. Then the soft creak of the screen door closing.

Alone again, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She wasn’t ready.

Not for dinner.
Not for climbing down.
Not for any of it.

Lacey reached for her backpack and unzipped the large pocket. The planner was still there. Pointless thing. Purple cover, glitter gel pen notes inside. She flipped it open.  

June 3: Start internship. Meet with Mrs. Connors at the apiary. Pick up library books.

Her throat tightened again. Her hand hovered over the page. Then, before she could stop herself, she tore a large section of the planner out of the book and began ripping up the pages.  

When the paper could be torn no smaller, Lacey opened her hands and threw the paper away from herself. The pages fluttered like pale wings into the grass.

“God,” she whispered.

All that planning. All that purpose. And it had ended in a left turn and a scream.

***

Lacey’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel in time with the music. The sun was low and gold. She could feel the warmth of it on her left arm, the open window letting in wind and summer and possibility. This was the feeling Lacey had imagined for months: license in her wallet, music playing, road wide open.

The bass thumped in her chest. Her little sister sat in the passenger seat, singing half the lyrics and making up the rest with exaggerated flair. Her sister laughed a big, unfiltered laugh.

“God,” Lacey said, smiling. “Can you not be such a freak in my car?”

“It’s not your car,” her sister shot back. “Mom said I get to share it too in a couple years when I get my license.”

Lacey grinned, her eyes flicking to the mirror. The empty backseat. The winding two-lane road behind them. Trees bending over both shoulders like they were holding up the sky.

“Okay,” she said, “our car.”

Lacey reached for the dial and turned the music up. And then…

A shape.
Too close.
Too fast.
The flash of headlights.

A scream that might’ve been hers.
Metal ripping like paper.

***

The memory snapped shut like a trapdoor.

Lacey sat, frozen still. Her breath was caught high in her chest, the echo of the scream still ringing somewhere just behind her eyes.

She blinked hard, willing the present to settle back around her: the bleached wood beneath her, the rustle of wind through the tree branches, the smell of a grill and some family’s dinner.

Her hands moved without thinking, reaching for her backpack. From the small front pocket, she pulled out the article. She didn’t read it anymore. She didn’t have to. She knew every word.

Local Woman Killed in Route 8 Collision

Her thumb traced the name: Margaret Halpern, 34.
There was a photo, too. The woman was smiling.

Lacey had stared at that smile so long the ink had started to blur.

The article said it wasn’t alcohol. That speed wasn’t a factor. That the crash was “unfortunate.”

“Tragic.”

What it didn’t say: Lacey had been singing. Laughing. Turning up the radio.
What it didn’t say: Her sister had walked away with nothing but a bruised shoulder.
What it didn’t say: Margaret Halpern had been on her way to try on wedding dresses.

Another surge through her hip. Lacey pressed the paper against her chest and wondered when the pain would stop showing up out of nowhere. She hadn’t told anyone she’d kept the article. Not even her therapist. Especially not her parents.

Somehow having it felt right, like it proved Lacey was still sorry and could keep her from forgetting what she had done. Because whatever the police reports said, whatever the insurance settled, Lacey knew the truth. And it lived on that piece of paper. Embedded in Lacey’s chest. In the silence that came after the music.

***

“She’s here, sweetie.”

Lacey reluctantly came out of her room to find the woman at the kitchen table. She introduced herself – Elizabeth. Margaret Halpern’s little sister.

“I hope it’s ok that I came,” Elizabeth began. “I tried writing, but I tore the papers up every time. There’s so much I want to say, to get out, but it never feels like I can write enough to make it all complete.

I don’t know if any of us will get closure – not sure I believe in that. And I won’t pretend I’m not sad. I miss my sister. But more than that, I need to know, and I need you to know, that I’m not angry. My sister had her whole life ahead of her. But, now, you and I still do.

I can’t imagine how you must feel, Lacey, but I want you to know that Maggie would hate for this to ruin your life too. I would hate that. Life is so precious. And I guess, I thought you should have this.”

She pressed something into Lacey’s hand.  

“It was hers. Maggie’s. She got it when she graduated college. I thought it could help remind you to live your life big and with purpose. It is my dearest wish that my sister’s … death (the word almost got stuck coming out) doesn’t cut off your future.”  

Lacey just sat there motionless – unable to speak. She wanted to explain how sorry she was. She wanted to run away, close herself off, and not face any of this. She wanted to tell this woman that she didn’t deserve her forgiveness. To yell at her for being so kind.

But she just sat there, took the gift – a necklace – and managed a quiet, “thank you” and an “I don’t know what to say” through the tears. It was all too much.

***

A noise rose from the base of the tree.

Lacey looked down. Her little sister, barefoot.

She didn’t say anything at first. Just stood beneath the treehouse, shifting from one foot to the other. Then she sat cross-legged at the base of the ladder like she’d done a hundred times before. Like it was any other summer afternoon.

“You don’t have to come down,” she added. “I just didn’t want you to be up there alone all day.”

Lacey’s eyes welled.

“I’m fine,” she said – a little too fast.

“Okay,” her sister said softly. “I still think about it,” she continued after a pause, turning to look up at the treehouse.

Lacey closed her eyes. “Don’t.”

“I remember we were singing. I was making up dumb lyrics and laughing while I sang the wrong words on purpose.”

“I said don’t,” Lacey whispered to herself.

“I liked it,” her sister said. “That’s the part I remember the most. That I liked it. Does that mean I’m a bad person?” her sister asked.

Lacey’s hand trembled where it rested on her knee. She gripped it tight, like she was trying to keep herself from disappearing.

“Bad people don’t ask themselves if they’re bad,” Lacey found herself replying. “They don’t care.”

-

Lacey sat for a while longer after her sister left.

Life for a life, she thought. That’s how it felt. Like some unspoken trade had been made the moment metal collided with metal, crumpling like paper: one future stolen, one fractured but returned.

Bad people don’t ask themselves if they’re bad. Maybe the cost wasn’t that she had to put her life on permanent suspension to prove she was sorry. Maybe the cost was carrying it and learning how to live with it.

She folded the article carefully, tucking it back into her backpack. Then she shifted forward, swung her leg over the edge, and reached for the ladder.

Her descent was slow and uneven. One rung at a time. Wood warm under her palms, the setting sun golden on her shoulders.

When she reached the bottom, the light caught the line of her prosthetic — dull metal and molded plastic just under her knee where her leg used to be.

She stood for a moment. Eyes closed. Breathing.

Then she touched her hand to the charm around her neck. What are the odds that Maggie’s necklace was a bee fossilized in amber? Lacey thought of how cruel and small and big and surprising the world could be. And she turned toward her house – softened just a little more – heading toward an unplanned future.