Chapter twenty-one

Ghosts of yesteryear

The mall looked just as Elsa had remembered it, standing tall and gleaming against the relative mundanity of the shops and office buildings surrounding it. Aside from a few trees and bushes added to the islands around the surprisingly full parking lot, it was as if she never left.

"Have they added any new stores while I was away?" Elsa asked.

Anna shrugged. "How should I know?"

Elsa sighed. "How indeed," she said to herself.

Still, it was hard to keep her mood down. As they approached the entrance, she felt goosebumps on her skin. She had obviously seen much bigger malls in California, but her nostalgia for this one was stronger than she'd expected it to be. Memories of coming here with her family or some acquaintances were rushing back to her, of exploring what had felt like a sprawling megaplex in her youth. Contrary to Anna's professed apathy, she too now had a smile on her face and a spring in her step, telling Elsa that she'd made the right choice.

Elsa checked her watch. "All right, we should keep this trip to about…four hours," she said. "I started work 3 hours early, so that means I'll work 1 hour later than usual. For all Wes cares, it'll be like one long lunch break."

Anna scowled at the mention of his name. "Oh yeah, wouldn't want to upset that guy, after how well he's been treating you."

Elsa raised her palm. "Not the time," she said, gently but firmly. Anna relented, but still looked grumpy about it. After a few seconds, Elsa turned to her again. "Besides, I never said I told him I was doing this, did I?" she asked with a smirk.

Anna put her hand to her chest. "My goodness, Elsa," she said. "Are you suggesting you did something without asking for explicit permission first? Be still my beating heart!"

"Don't sound that surprised," Elsa said. "Even I can bend the rules when I have to. What Wes doesn't know won't hurt him."

"No kidding," Anna said. "He must be fucking invincible, then."

Elsa, caught off guard by the joke, let out an outright guffaw. Anna jumped at the noise, and Elsa moved to console her, but she couldn't stop giggling for long enough to get the words out. "…Good one," she eventually managed.

"Apparently," Anna said. Still, as they reached the door, she found herself with a grin on her face. Even an offhand compliment from Elsa was still enough to lift her feet off the floor, and she hadn't exactly been stingy with them.

A gust of warm air greeted them as they walked through the foyer, as the mall's overzealous heater blasted them from above like a decontamination shower. The interior doors slid open, and the girls walked in, then gawked.

It really hadn't changed that much. The JCPenney anchor store had been replaced with an arcade, and the floor tiles had been replaced with fake marble looking ones, but other than that, it was just as they remembered. Instantly, they felt like they were children again, memories of days gone by flooding back. Elsa knew she'd knocked it out of the park yet again.

She turned to Anna, their smiles mirror images of one another. "So, where to first?" she asked.

"You tell me," Anna replied. She walked up to the map, the layout of which was already tattooed on both of their brains, and gestured at it with a flourish. "What's your pleasure?"

"Boy, I must be out of shape," Anna panted as she lagged behind Elsa, two bags hanging from either arm. "I used to be able to carry eight of these."

Elsa glanced back at her, shifting her own bags on her arms. "I said that you should've gotten the smaller one," she pointed out, gesturing at the two-foot Lapras plushie sticking out of one of her bags.

"But I wants it, precious," Anna said in her trademark terrible Gollum voice.

Elsa laughed. "Well, can't argue with that, precious."

They were at the west end of the mall, heading towards the food court. Elsa walked past the mall's salon, then did a double-take, causing Anna to almost run into her.

"Anna, look," Elsa said, pointing into the salon. "Jolie and Patricia are still working here. Remember them?"

Anna looked and saw the two familiar stylists. "Yes," she said, with none of Elsa's enthusiasm.

Elsa took her braid in hand, feeling the ends of her hair. "I really could do with a touch-up," she said. "It's been almost a month since I've been to my stylist. I bet you can tell, can't you?"

This comment bewildered Anna. At this very moment, Elsa was the spitting image of a radiant goddess. She couldn't see a single flaw in her appearance, least of all in her smooth, gossamer, platinum blonde hair, tied in an immaculate braid which-

She realized she was staring, and snapped herself out of it. "I guess," she said.

"So do you wanna join me?" Elsa asked. "Could be a fun time."

"Uh, I don't think so," Anna said, glancing at Jolie and Patricia again. "I just went to Dad's barber last month."

Elsa looked her over. "Yeah, you look good," she said. "Probably don't even need a spa day, much less the salon."

Now this was truly flabbergasting. Anna couldn't think of a single moment in time when she'd looked better than her sister, in her entire life. Elsa's tone had suggested a genuine evaluation rather than flattery. How could she arrive at such illogical conclusions? She inspected herself, as though she might've walked through some sort of glamorizing funhouse mirror without realizing.

Elsa glanced at her. "Everything okay?" she asked.

Anna looked back at her. "Yeah," she said. "Anyway, I can find something else to do while you're getting your hair done."

"Yeah?" Elsa said. "We did walk by that new arcade. It looked pretty fun."

"Actually," Anna said, "I was thinking about donating blood."

Elsa blinked in surprise. "Really?" she said.

"Yeah, we passed a blood drive on the way in," Anna said. "I haven't donated in almost five months, and it's been long enough since the accident that I should be good to."

"That's a great idea," Elsa said. She scratched the back of her head. "Now I feel bad for picking the salon instead."

"Don't worry," Anna said. "I know you and needles aren't the best of friends."

Elsa blushed, but also nodded. "Yeah," she admitted.

"That's fine," Anna said. "Go have your salon day. Want to meet up at the food court afterwards?"

Elsa nodded. "Sounds like a plan," she said.

"All right, then," Anna said. She surreptitiously kissed Elsa on the cheek, then departed for the blood drive.

Elsa recovered quickly enough to wave her goodbye. "Don't fill up on cookies," she called.

"Don't fill up on lollipops," Anna retorted with a wave.

Elsa chuckled as she headed for the salon. Of course she'd think of the lollipops.

I wonder if they have strawberry, though.

"Have you traveled outside of the United States, Mexico or Canada in the past 18 months?" the lady at the desk asked.

"Nope," Anna said.

"And have you had sexual intercourse with anyone who has been outside the US, Mexico or Canada in that same time period?"

Anna shook her head.

Yeah, I'm just the ideal donor, ain't I? No travel, and no action.

The woman checked the last two boxes. "All right, that appears to be everything," she said. "Take a seat over there, and we'll call you when a bed is ready. Shouldn't be more than a few minutes. In the meantime, feel free to grab a snack."

"Thank you," Anna said. She headed to the refreshment table and grabbed a box of grape juice, roughly the volume of a matchbox. She punctured a hole in the foil patch with her straw and quickly sucked it dry, in a crude simulacrum of what would be happening to her in just a few minutes.

She was quite surprised that Elsa was so eager to see Pat and Jo again. Yes, they were old friends of Mom's, but they were also catty bitches with the preternatural ability to find any and every flaw in your physical appearance and pick at it until it was impossible to ignore. As soon as Dad had offered to take her to his barber, she had leapt at the opportunity.

"Miss," called the desk lady after a couple of minutes. "Station #3 is open." She gestured to a now empty cot behind her.

Anna stood up. "Thank you, ma'am," she said as she headed to the cot. She hopped up onto it and waited for the nurse, a big burly guy with a mess of blond hair, to turn his attention to her.

"Hello, nice to meet you," the man said, still focused on putting away the blood bag from the last donor. "Left arm or right?"

Anna shrugged. "Surprise me," she said.

"Well, that bed's set up for the left arm, so-" The man glanced at her, then did a double take. "Well, hey there, Anna," he said. "Didn't expect this on a Tuesday morning." His voice was muffled by a face mask, and a thick red beard peeked out from all sides of it. But there was no mistaking his eyes.

Anna's eyes went wide. "Kristoff?" she said incredulously. "What are you doing here?"

Even with the mask and the beard, she could tell he was smiling. "My job, what else?" he said.

"Really?" Anna asked. "I thought you were going to be a vet tech."

Kristoff shrugged. "Figured I'd aim a little higher," he said. "Nobody's stopped me yet."

Anna shrugged back. "Guess that's fair."

Kristoff swabbed down her wrist with an alcohol-soaked cloth. "All right, ready to get going?"

Anna nodded. "Jab me up, man."

Kristoff picked up the needle. "Just as a warning, this might hurt even if you're used to these things, it's a lot bigger than most." A wry grin appeared on his lips. "And I know I've said that before, but this time I mean it."

Anna howled with laughter, and Kristoff inserted the needle, the jab itself eliciting almost no reaction. Kristoff couldn't help but giggle along with her until she was finished.

"Good one, Kris," she said. "And good technique too, I barely felt a thing." She grinned again. "I know I've said that before, and I mean it this time too."

They both enjoyed a good-natured laugh.

"So, how have you been?" Kristoff asked. "How's life?"

"Life's been…a lot," Anna said. "But I'm doing okay."

"Right," Kristoff said. "I heard about your folks. How are you holding up?"

"It's been rough, I won't lie," Anna said. "But my sister's helped a lot."

"Oh, Elsa's back in town?" Kristoff asked.

Anna nodded. "She came back a few weeks ago. She's in this very mall, getting her hair done. We've reconnected in a big way. Like, a big way."

"That's good," Kristoff said. "It's nice to see you with a smile on your face."

"Thanks," Anna said. "Wish I could say the same, but…" She gestured at the mask on his face. "I know, protocols be protocols. I barely recognized you at first."

"I'll be honest, I wasn't sure you were you at first either," Kristoff admitted. "Have you lost weight?"

This took Anna aback. She looked down at her body. "Have I?" she asked, bewildered.

Kristoff looked again. "Looks that way to me," he said with a shrug.

"Not to me," Anna said. "But Elsa has been saying the same thing…"

"Well, be careful," Kristoff said with a grin. "If thirty or forty more people start saying it, you might have to believe them."

"Yeah, it'd probably take that many," Anna said. Looking at her blood bag, it seemed about a quarter of the way filled, meaning it would probably be done before she'd run out of things to talk about. "Hey, when do you take lunch?"

Kristoff checked his watch. "Ten, twenty minutes," he said. "Why, want to grab a bite?"

"Yeah," Anna said. "Not like a date or anything – I've got a girlfriend now – but I'd love to catch up."

"Sure, sounds good to-" He did a double take. "Girlfriend?"

Anna nodded. "Yep," she said.

"Hell yeah, girl, congrats!" He started to go for a high five, caught himself, then offered a fist bump to her non-needled hand. "And, uh, apologies for ruining the entirety of my gender for you."

Anna laughed. "You did nothing of the sort," she said. "Hans would've done that, if anything."

"Then surely I was our last chance at redemption, and I failed all of malekind," he said, putting the back of his wrist to his forehead.

"Surely," Anna said. "You oughta beat yourself up over that."

"Eh, I'll get over it," he said. "So, what's she like? You gotta give me some deets!"

"Her name is Rebecca," Anna said, launching into her practiced narrative. "You probably don't know her, she used to sit behind Elsa in chemistry."

"Ah, so did Elsa introduce you to her?" he asked.

Anna smiled. "Something like that," she said. "Hey, speaking of old classmates, how's Sven doing? Still making those suits?"

"He sure is," Kristoff said. "Doing it full time now."

"Really?" Anna asked. "You can make a living selling those suits?"

"Well, he's doing his best…" Kristoff said. "But anyway, wow, that's super great for you. You got Elsa back, and you got a girlfriend – no wonder you seemed to have a little hitch in your giddy-up."

Anna nodded. "Yeah, it's pretty fucking great, not gonna lie," she said.

"I'll bet," Kristoff said, beaming. "And you know something? You deserve it. I mean it – you've been through a lot, you really deserve a W."

Anna smiled a deep, warm smile that came from within. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'm starting to think I do."

"My goodness, where did you say this stylist of yours was trained?" Jolie asked. "Just look at the atrocities he's committed to your gorgeous hair!"

"I…never had a problem with him," Elsa said cautiously.

"Yes, well, you were always more forgiving in that regard, weren't you?" Patricia said. "It's a good thing you came to us when you did! Never fear, though, dearie, we'll have you looking as beautiful as you once were before long!"

"Um, thank you?" Elsa said. She was beginning to wonder if the blood drive might've been the less painful of her two options.

"As close as possible, anyways," Jolie added on. "Time makes fools of us all, as you know."

"…Right," Elsa said. She scanned around the room, looking for something to distract her from the conversation at hand. The only other patron was several chairs away, head deep in a shampoo bowl, leaving little to divert other than the various dryers, brushes, and blades scattered around the place.

That last one sounds promising. Why not ask for a few minutes alone with one of the razors? Tell them why you need it, and they'll probably hand it right to you.

Oh god, there it was again. She pinched the bridge of her nose and grunted in frustration, which at least made the two ladies take a hint and clam up.

Come on, it'll be just like old times. Except instead of punishing yourself for your thoughts, it'll be directly for your actions! Maybe then it'll fucking stick!

It was only getting worse these days. Whenever she was separated from Anna for any extended period of time, the sugar high ended within minutes and the intrusive thoughts were right back at full volume. Working occupied her mental bandwidth enough to drown it out, but little else did, which…what, was she sixteen or something? No grown woman should be that dependent on their SO, right?

Especially when she happens to be your sister, or didja forget?

She scanned around the salon again, praying to whatever patron gods of incest were out there that she'd find some manner of diversion.

Then the woman at the shampoo bowl lifted her head, and…well, damn. Maybe there was just such a god out there.

Elsa's eyes went wide. "Mrs. Un?!" she exclaimed.

Mrs. Unverferth cautiously opened her eyes and blinked. "Elsa?" she said.

Elsa leapt up from her seat, earning an irritated tsk from Jolie, and dashed over to the nearest open chair to her old teacher. "It is you!" she said. "Oh my god, it's so good to see you, how have you been?"

"I've been well," Mrs. Un said. "How have you been?"

"Oh, things have been fine," Elsa said.

"That's wonderful to hear," Mrs. Un said. "How long have you been back in town?"

"A few weeks," Elsa said. "I came back to…to see Anna again."

"Oh yes, I read about your parents in the obituary," Mrs. Un said morosely. "I'm so sorry about what happened. How are you holding up?"

"Well enough," Elsa said. "Being with Anna really does make all the difference."

"Of course," Mrs. Un said. "And how is she doing?"

"Pretty we-" Elsa said, before Mrs. Un's stylist turned on her hair dryer, drowning them out. Elsa sighed, then continued. "Pretty well. In fact, she's here, on a date with me right now."

When the hair dryer had turned off, Mrs. Un cupped a hand to her ear. "Sorry, what was that, dear?"

"I said she's doing pretty well. In fact, she's here, and donating blood right now," Elsa clarified.

Mrs. Un clapped her hands together. "Splendid," she said. "She always was the selfless type, your sister."

"She sure is," Elsa said. "It's so…buoying, being around her. The way she manages to see the bright side of things, against all odds – I've never seen anybody else half as good at it."

"Oh, don't I know it." Mrs. Un said. "The other teachers and I used to joke that if Anna was in our first period class, there'd be no need for coffee that morning."

Elsa laughed. "True, true."

Elsa felt her own spirits rising. The nostalgia of seeing her old English teacher combined with the placebo effect of her 'confession' had managed to quiet the obnoxious voices in her head, if only for moments.

"So, what brings you here on a Wednesday morning?" Elsa asked.

"Well, I saw a commercial for a sale at Penney's, not realizing this one closed down two years ago," Mrs. Un said, putting a hand to the side of her forehead.

"You went a whole two plus years without going there?" Elsa asked.

Mrs. Un nodded. "Just haven't had the need."

"Apparently, neither has anyone else," Elsa pointed out.

Mrs. Un laughed. The two kept chatting away, and Elsa relished it all. It wasn't common for her to have a chat with someone that wasn't related to work or family these days, and she intended to enjoy every second of it.

"So, he was in detention," Mrs. Un continued, "but he asked Mr. Vinson if he could bring his laptop, to work on some homework."

"Oh no," Kristoff said, already seeing where this was going.

"And Mr. Vinson, he says yes, of course. You know how he is," Mrs. Un said. Her former students nodded. "Well, the boy opens his laptop, sets everything like normal…and then a few minutes later, Vinson hears the Halo music blaring out of his speakers."

Anna almost choked on her soda. "No way!"

"That's incredible," Elsa said.

"Oh yes," Mrs. Un said. "You should've seen the look on Vinson's face."

"I can only imagine," Elsa said.

The four of them were sat around a small plastic table in the food court. Anna was devouring a plate of spaghetti, Kristoff had two huge slices of pizza, Mrs. Un had grabbed a salad, and Elsa had a plate of orange chicken and was subtly-not-subtly showing off how good she had gotten at using chopsticks.

"I gotta admit, that's pretty impressive," Kristoff said. "You have to respect the boldness."

"Vinson did tell me he was almost impressed," Mrs. Un said. "But he did not say that at the time, to that kid."

"It's all about knowing which boundaries to push, I suppose," Elsa said. "What to follow, and what to rebel against."

Anna raised her soda. "I'll drink to that," she said.

Kristoff glanced at his watch. "Ooh, speaking of boundaries, I'd better get back to work," he said. He began folding his pizza over itself and guzzling it down.

"We've got to get going, too," Elsa said.

"All right," Mrs. Un said. "But it was lovely running into you all again."

"Yeah," Kristoff mumbled through his pizza. "See ya."

Elsa nodded. "I'm glad we could catch up," she said.

"Me too!" Anna agreed.

Kristoff hurried off, half a pizza still in hand, and the girls said their goodbyes to their old teacher and went their separate ways. With their bags full of merch, they headed for the nearest exit.

"Well, that was a nice surprise," Elsa said.

"No kidding," Anna said. "What are the odds we'd run into those two on the very same trip?"

"Those two specifically? Pretty small," Elsa allowed. "But this mall's always been a hotspot, and there's not a lot of those around here. Odds were good we'd meet somebody we knew."

"I guess," Anna said.

They made it to the car without incident. Despite Kristoff assuring them that Anna appeared to have recovered completely, Elsa couldn't help but keep an eye on her, constantly glancing at her arm bandage as if blood was soon going to start gushing from it. Anna noticed her concern and smiled. "It's fine," she said. "But I love that you're so concerned."

Once the bags were all in the trunk and the two of them were buckled in, Anna gently took hold of Elsa's chin, turned her head, and kissed her. "It's a damn shame we can't do that in public," she said.

"It really is," Elsa said.

"Still, this was a great idea. Thanks for suggesting it," Anna said.

"Thanks for agreeing to it," Elsa said. "It was nice to get out, just have a normal time, you know?"

Anna raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so you're saying I'm abnormal?" she asked accusatorily.

Elsa just smiled. She was finally regaining her sense for when Anna was messing with her. "Absolutely," she said. "Not a normal bone in your body."

Anna nodded, and rewarded her diagnosis with another kiss. "Damn right!"