But most of the girls had elaborate, professional-looking costumes that had been either ordered from Hollywood or Europe or custom-made. Mandy’s costume had been a favor from someone who used to costume Madonna. Lara’s vampire costume was vintage, from an old Vincent Price movie. Julie’s Tinker Bell costume was studded with hundreds of tiny peridots that she told me were hand-sewn. She wore a crown of intricate silver and gold leaves, and green and silver ribbons trailing down her back. Her wings were silvery, delicate, and heart-shaped.
The carnival swag was amazing. Stewart was giving away beautiful black enamel earrings as their prizes. Hill House was handing out a vast assortment of gift cards for high-end stores like Neiman Marcus. Back home, we made fun of people who wasted good money at Needless Markup. I could see why Marica felt the need to compete with some serious cakes. The carnival prizes were more extravagant than my Christmas presents.
I tried not to do more gawking, even though my mouth was hanging open. I found out that the parents donated the prizes and that Claire’s costume, which was an authentic recreation of Belle’s yellow gown from the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, cost sixteen thousand dollars.
And Jessel was the most extreme of all the extremeness. Of course, the haunted house was the biggest deal, and featured a graveyard, complete with graves that opened to reveal fake corpses. Leaves swirled and crunched as spooky laughter rolled around me on the gusts of autumn wind, rising and falling, growing louder . . . and stopping.
Strobe lights shattered the blackness of Mandy’s turret room; then Mandy herself appeared in the window dressed like a really sexy wicked witch—supershort black skirt, bustier, and a black hat with a trailing veil. She slowly raised her arms as she stared down at us. The lights flickered on, off, on-off-on-off, making her arms jerk-jerk-jerk as she raised them above her head. Ooh, she was holding a knife. The strobe glinted off of it. Good effect.
Julie giggled and waved at her.
My breath caught. The ghost-face was in Mandy’s window again. The one I’d seen before, through our window and in the haunted house, too. Dark holes for eyes, a wide slit for a mouth. The slit grew, as if someone—Mandy—had carved a jack-o’-lantern mouth into its dead-white skin.
“I have to ask them how they do that,” I said aloud, challenging the face to vanish.
“I hope I don’t look stupid,” Julie murmured, shifting her weight off her wrapped foot as steps sounded on the other side of the door.
“You are cuteness defined,” I promised her.
“You have to say that,” she fretted. “You’re my friend.”
“Wahahaha,” an electronic voice blared from a speaker. “Come in . . . and die!”
The door flew open.
Lara stood on the threshold. Vampire teeth jutted from her upper lip. She was wearing a tux and a black velvet cape lined with red satin that looked garish next to her elegant red hair. DracuLara.
“Good evenink.” She beamed at Julie and furled her cape. “Come. I invite you, Tinker Julie and ghostling persink.”
“Thank you, kind vampire,” Julie said, bending her standing leg. I wondered if she’d hoped Mandy would ask her to help with the haunted house, but I figured each dorm had to do their own thing. Julie had been super-extra-nice to Mandy since the prank, hovering around, trying to find a way in that stuck. I’d gone through that, too, when Jane had dangled acceptance in my face.
The open front door was decorated like an enormous bloody mouth; scarlet mist billowed from it, and I thought of that first day, at the hedge. Spiderwebs dangled on either side.
We walked in, or rather, I walked and Julie held onto Lara as she hopped along. It would have been so much easier for her to use crutches.
Rippled black and red veils undulated from the upstairs balcony, allowing for sneak-peeks into the living room. Shadows blossomed behind the sheets; there were screams and rattling chains, laughter and organ music. And they had reupholstered all their furniture in Halloween-themed fabric—actually literally reupholstered it—black roses and skulls against a background of red velvet. A black snack table with jeweled white skulls spiraling down the legs was weighed down with finger sandwiches—thin strips of bread each finished off with half a pimento-olive. The wall by the stairs looked like a torture chamber, with gory fake corpses chained to a blood-encrusted expanse of pitted stone. Whenever anyone went up or down the stairs, the corpses squirmed and groaned. On the way to the downstairs bathroom, a huge stone fountain gushed with red water. Beating hearts floated like lily pads in it.
“Ah, another wictim,” Kiyoko said in a fake Romanian accent as she leaned over the balcony. She was dressed like a vampire countess in a black dress with a hoop skirt and a crown.
The place was jammed with Gypsies, witches, princesses, hookers, and belly dancers. “Thriller” started up and a bunch of girls squealed and rushed behind the veils. Through the spaces, I saw an entire forest of artificial dancing black trees decorated with silver skulls and owls. Farther back were a guillotine and a mummy case. In full fortune-teller regalia, Ms. Meyerson sat draped in a shawl and made motions around Houdini’s crystal ball.
A girl dressed like Cleopatra walked into the kitchen, and come back out with a bottle of water.
“Want something to drink?” I asked Julie. But she was holding onto the back of a chair and smiling at Mandy as Ye Diva trailed down the stairs in her witch mini-micro. The motorized rubber torture victims on the wall screeched with pain, opening and closing their bloody eyes. “Okay, later,” I said. Julie didn’t respond.
I eased around a dark fairy and another sexy witch and went into the kitchen. A girl dressed like a Renaissance princess was on the landline. A black metal cauldron filled with dry ice and water bottles bubbled on the breakfast bar. More cauldrons, filled with sodas, sat on little three-legged stools. Mechanized bats flapped their wings overhead. The kitchen was wall-to-wall people; I inched through, snagged a can of diet soda, then made my exit out the side door so I could breathe.
Bolts of fog rolled in off the lake. I wondered what everybody back in San Diego was doing tonight. Last year, I had gone to party at Jane’s. Maybe if I had gone all the way with Riley then, I wouldn’t be here now.
“Lindsay? Is that you under there?” It was Kiyoko. She was carrying two glasses of red wine. She handed me one, and we clinked glasses as I pulled my sheet off and wrapped it around my free arm.
“Yes, it’s me. In the ectoplasm.” She smiled. “How did you guess?”
She gestured to my grubby high-tops. “Only one pair of shoes like that.”
“By your shoes shall ye know them,” I said.
“You’re so funny.” She spoke to me over her glass. “We’re having a private party at the operating theater.” Took another sip. “You should show.” She grinned slyly. “There will be guys.”
Don’t you ever worry about being expelled? I asked her silently, but I knew how naïve and bunched up I would sound if I asked her out loud.
“And . . . I think Mandy is going to pull something on Julie there,” she added, practically whispering.
I went on alert. “Like?”
Kiyoko hesitated and looked over her shoulder. She’d been all jerky in lit yesterday, and went into this long, involved explanation about why we had to wait to watch The Crucible. Short version: we all had to get ready for the carnival, duh. But now . . . I figured she was giving me privileged information.
“I heard Mandy talking to Lara in her bedroom.” Kiyoko jerked and rubbed the back of her neck. “Can you check and see if I’ve got anything on my neck?” she asked me. “It feels weird.”
She turned around, and I carefully gathered up her long fine hair and moved it to one side. I touched her skin. Nothing. I remembered that at the Alis-and-Sangeeta prank, I had felt something on the back of my neck, too.
“What do you see?” she asked. She was wearing an overpowering amount of luxurious-smelling perfume. “I can feel something.”
“A vampire bit you,” I informed her as I rearranged her hair. “No, there’s nothing, but the other day I felt just like—”
Just then, Julie and Mandy burst through the kitchen door. Laughing hysterically, they were arm in arm, Julie hopping like a pogo stick as Mandy kept her upright. Julie shrieked and covered her mouth, totally OOC as Mandy let go of her. She limp-bounded over to me, glommed onto my shoulder, and grabbed my wine out of my hand. She chugalugged it in three big gulps.
“Whoa there, easy,” Mandy said, laughing. “Linz, we’re going to the operating theater to party.”
“Spider’s gonna be there, too,” Julie said.
Kiyoko gave me a meaningful look. And I knew there would be no talking Julie out of it, not even if I told her Mandy had a little surprise in store for her.
“No one will miss us for an hour or so,” Mandy went on, as if she had to convince me.
But she didn’t, not where my best friend was concerned.
twelve
Mandy hunted down her select few and ordered them to come with us. We were a party of seven: Alis, Sangeeta, Kiyoko, Lara, Julie, Mandy, and me. Word spread and more girls tagged along, tentatively, at first, growing bolder when it became clear that Mandy didn’t mind. I minded; I thought about all the cool carnival swag I had yet to collect and flared with a bit of resentment. I didn’t want to party with Mandy at some operating theater. I didn’t even know what an operating theater was. But I didn’t want to leave Julie alone with the Joker, either.
We tiptoed into the woods and up a hill. Julie limped along gamely, panting and grabbing onto tree branches, hanging onto my shoulder, swapping over to Mandy and back to me again. We were moving at a pretty fast clip, considering that Julie was an invalid and Kiyoko and Mandy were wearing three-inch heels. Eventually, they took them off, then complained how cold the ground was.
“If Miles was here, he’d carry me,” Mandy said. “We were in Rome, in some hideous catacomb . . . ” She trailed off. I really wanted her to keep going . . . all the way to the story of the Lincoln Bedroom.
The trees bobbed in the wind, and the moon shone down, the same moon that was shining down on Jane, Riley, and my old best friend Heather. I felt homesickness, not for what was back home, but for my mom. We had always trick-or-treated together, dressing up, laughing and racing down the streets of our neighborhood like perpetual kindergartners. She died before I got old enough to want to go without her.
The year she got sick and couldn’t go, she apologized to me while tears spilled down her face. She clutched her hospital bedsheets until her knuckles turned white and I was afraid her bones would pop through her skin.
But I’d been more afraid that the dam of my own emotions would break, and I would beg her not to die.
Now, as we thundered through the dark woods, I started to feel a little sick. Stress, exhaustion, nerves, no food. Maybe the altitude. Maybe a little breaky-downy-ness.
“The operating theater is from the Victorian era,” Mandy explained to me as we hiked along. “Back before cars, this place was so remote they had to perform their own surgeries here at Marlwood. I’m referring to when it was first opened as a girls school, right after the Civil War ended.”
I was hazy on Marlwood’s glorious past. “But a theater—”
“Medical students could watch. Sometimes just regular people, too.” Mandy nodded as if to assure me that she was telling me the truth.
“That is gross.” I stuck out my tongue.
“Things were different then,” she said, with a little smile. “There’s a story about some girl who died on the operating table, and it wasn’t an accident. It was because she was pregnant and they didn’t want the scandal.” She moved her hands in a spooky-ooky way. “Now she haunts the operating room.”
“Theater,” I corrected.
“I heard this wasn’t really a boarding school. It was a home for wayward girls,” Alis said.
Mandy laughed. “Well, it still is. Right my little ho-babies?”
“Right,” Julie chirped. “We are way wayward.” That snagged her some appreciative chuckles. She glowed.
“And, speaking of ghostly pregnant girls,” Mandy said, with a wave of her hand as we pushed our way out of a thick section of pine trees, “I give you . . . the operating theater.”
“Yeow,” I blurted.
The building was round, like my lit lecture hall—once a height of two stories or more, but now a caved-in heap. The slate-shingled roof had fallen in on itself, and tiny rectangular windows in a row near the top were squashed so that they looked like the narrowed eyes of angry faces rising out of the rubble of bricks and pieces of metal.
Lights glowed beneath the caved-in stairs, through holes in the walls. Shadows of the people inside appeared angular and strange. Pines waved and bowed over the rubble. Music played: cello-based and a little gothy.
“Crap, the boys are already here,” Mandy said. “I hope they didn’t get into the good stuff.”
She sped up, and we watched her go. For a few seconds, Julie and I were a bit apart from the others. She took a deep breath. “Do I look okay?” she asked.
“Yes, Tinker Bell. Spider will die,” I said. I dropped my voice even lower. “Listen, I heard that Mandy’s going to haze you.”
She looked at me long and hard. And then she smiled weakly.
“I know,” she replied. “Wait!” she called to Mandy.
Mandy stopped and held out her arm. Julie hopped up to her and held on tight. Then the two disappeared inside the black hole that was the door.
I took a few more steps. Then I smelled smoke. And suddenly, I felt kind of woozy. My stomach clenched and the ground rocked. Kiyoko came up beside me.
“You okay?”
“That smoke smell . . . it’s making me kind of nauseated,” I said. I drew back slightly. “What exactly is Mandy planning for Julie? Please, just tell me.” Maybe if it wasn’t anything too bad, I could go back.
“I don’t actually know. I’m not even sure it’s tonight.” She set her teeth together, grimacing for forgiveness.
My mouth dropped open. “But you said—”
“That she might.” She touched the corner of her mouth and dropped her hand to her side. “I don’t smell smoke.”
Then she looked hard at me. “You know, Lindsay, Mandy might pull a trick on Julie at any time. If you stay close, you’re more likely to be there to pick up the pieces.”
“Julie’s pretty tough,” I declared.
“Julie’s a fragile piece of glass,” Kiyoko replied, her gaze hard and flinty.
Lara sidled up to us. “Come on, dark-links,” she urged. “The boys will drink up all the Grey Goose vodka.”
“Do you smell smoke?” Kiyoko asked her.
More girls were catching up to us—so it wasn’t going to be just us seven—although I didn’t see anyone from our dorm. I spotted Rose. She was wearing raggedy jeans and a curly black wig. When she saw me, she posed, and it took me a second to realize that she had come dressed as me.
“You suck,” I said with a grin. The sight of Rose perked me up. “Doesn’t she suck?” I asked Kiyoko, to show her there were no hard feelings. Suddenly, I saw things with more optimism. Kiyoko had made a valid point—Mandy might decide to haze Julie at any time, and Julie would probably set her own hair on fire if Mandy asked her to. So swag-loss or no, it was good that I had come.
I unwadded my sheet and threw it over my head. “There. Now everyone will be able to tell Rose and me apart.”
Rose clasped her hands on either side of her face and drew her skin taught across her cheekbones. “Only now I’m Ehrlen-stein.”
“Oh, I love it,” Alis said, as she came up beside us. “Does Ehrlenbach freak you out? She freaks me out.”
“She scares me to death,” I admitted.
“Well, that settles it. She’s a creepy weirdo.” Rose staggered forward with her skin stretched tight. “Let’s get this party started.”
She led the way int
o the pitch-black interior, and we followed after. The smoke odor was so strong I coughed. I smelled alcohol—not like drinking, but like in a hospital. Disinfectant. My stomach seized, and a sour taste rushed into my mouth.
Everyone crowded around me, yelling and shushing each other, then moved past me into the corridor. They were agog to see what mega-bucks Mandy had in store for them next.
I realized I was hanging back. And suddenly, I couldn’t go on. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to; I couldn’t. It was as if someone had grabbed my shoulders or I had walked into an invisible barrier.
Waves and waves of panic crashed over me. I felt so stupid. But as I stared into the nothingness, I swayed. Sweat beaded my forehead. I couldn’t breathe.
It’s nothing. Go in. You’re making a scene. There is no need for drama.
Get out. Danger. My primitive instincts were taking over. I was afraid I was going to wet my pants. I heard myself whimper, and the weird thing was, I couldn’t even retreat. I couldn’t do anything except stand there and freak out.
I’m in trouble, I thought, standing there in my sheet like an oversized three-year-old. I listened to my fluttering heartbeat and breathed slowly in, out. It felt as if a part of my brain refused to obey me.
A gold circle of light bloomed from behind me, lighting up the darkness just enough for me to see the splintered wood and cobwebs. Just normal, no special effects. Just a little sneak-party, no grand shindig. These people were super-rich, but they were just people. It was just a party.
I turned around.
And there he was, Troy, my knight, dressed in a white doctor’s coat with a stethoscope around his neck. And that jolted me back into normalcy. I was so grateful . . . and so very happy to see him.
I couldn’t see the color of his eyes but I knew they were dark blue. His dark hair curled around his ears and I knew it was streaked with blond. Oh God, I couldn’t stop staring at him. Lucky thing he couldn’t tell since I was wearing my sheet.
He stepped forward and looped his hands around the small of my back, then slid them down to cup my butt. I know I blinked. I probably even gasped.