Frost

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BEFORE I LIVED THERE, before any of this happened, I imagined Frost House as a sanctuary. It crouches on the northern edge of Barcroft Academy in a tangle of lilac and evergreen bushes, shadowed by oaks and sugar maples. Hidden enough that I didn’t even know it existed until junior year, when I chased a field hockey ball through the underbrush into its backyard. I assumed the white-clapboard cottage was a faculty member’s house. Most Barcroft dorms are three-story brick buildings; this was a weathered old Victorian, small and squat, with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof hugging the second floor. The kind of place a family would live. The first time I saw it, I could almost hear a whispered call mingling with the soft rattle of leaves: Come inside, come inside….

When I realized that the house was actually a tiny dorm, that my friends and I could be that family for our final semesters, I knew I’d discovered our school’s very own Shangri-La. I couldn’t escape the reality of senior year at ultracompetitive Barcroft, but at least my home life could be a fantasy.

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