“How hilarious,” I muttered.
“Charlotte was a good sport about it. Then she had to jump in the pool. Well you were there. Mandy’s so pissed about that locket. Maybe it’s back in the statue garden.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t care.
I remembered the image on my camera and the light in the window. The footfalls. Had that really been Shayna, sneaking up to spook me?
If it hadn’t been, who was it? Did Shayna see? Is that what had pushed her over the edge? I could almost hear her voice in my brain, ricocheting like an echo.
Suddenly, the light in Mandy’s turret room went on. The door was open and she walked in, holding something under her arm. A white head. Lara brought up the rear, and when they turned sideways, I realized they were carrying a mannequin between them. They set it up at the window, positioning it just so. It was the figure I had seen, now wrapped in some kind of plaster-looking Grecian robe.
They waved at me again. I felt coldness seeping through me.
Mandy blew me a kiss.
A little while later, the lights finally went out in Mandy’s room. I don’t know how long I stood staring out the window. I thought it was only for a minute but maybe it was more, because when I turned and faced Julie, she was curled up around Panda, fast asleep.
TAKE CARE of the worst ones first. The ones who will try to escape. And then . . .
I woke up with Julie standing over me, gently shaking my shoulder. It was still the middle of the night, pitch-black through the windows.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re having another bad dream.” She looked tired and freaked out. “Again.”
“Sorry,” I said. Everyone had nightmares, I wanted to remind her, but coming so fast after Shayna’s meltdown—and with Julie’s knowledge of my own emotional shattering—a Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh nightmare took on special significance. Especially if it recurred at least a dozen times in the same night.
I couldn’t keep doing it, or Julie would walk me down to the infirmary. Maybe I should pretend to have “an episode” of my own, so I could see Shayna and make sure she was all right—a relative term, if there ever was one.
But there was no guarantee a scheme like that would work—and so many possibilities for it to backfire all over me.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“Maybe it would help if you talked about it,” Julie ventured. She sat on the edge of my bed and smoothed a corkscrew of hair off my cheek. Staring down at it, she pushed at it with the palm of her hand, fascinated.
“Hey,” I teased.
“Sorry. It’s just so springy,” she said. Her weary, worn-out smile was kind. “So, what do you keep dreaming about?”
I could never tell her.
“I’m in Paris, at a fashion show,” I said. She listened carefully. “And my platinum American Express card is denied. And Paris Hilton sees it happen.”
I smiled, and Julie batted me. “You freak! I almost believed you.”
“And yet, you got better grades than me last term. How can that possibly be?”
She yawned, and I patted her on the shoulder. “I promise not to have any more nightmares tonight,” I said. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She gave my hair another pat, but I could see the worry in her eyes. She honestly cared about me. But she really did think I was a whack job. Julie had been very sheltered—until she came to Marlwood, anyway. I wondered if her parents, like mine, pictured Marlwood as a protective cocoon where their little silkworm would metamorphose into a butterfly. We would have been safer in the Middle East.
After she got back in bed, she whispered, “Good night,” turned out the light and settled in. Soon her soft breathing told me she was asleep. I lay staring at the ceiling, praying for the dawn, wanting so badly for the night to end. I tried to keep my eyes open, force myself to stay awake.
But I was exhausted. Before I knew it, I could feel myself falling asleep . . .
Take care of the worst ones first. The ones who will try to escape. And then . . .
THIRTEEN
January 16
“H’lo,” Troy said, yawning, and I clutched the landline tightly. I was in the kitchen, sneaking a call to him before anyone else got up. I had tried to get reception on my cell, but my technology failed me. It was six in the morning. I wanted to be sure not to miss him.
“I need you,” I said, then cleared my throat, because that wasn’t what I had planned to say. “I need help,” I amended.
“Lindsay?” His fuzzy voice was suddenly less fuzzy.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. The light from the kitchen spilled into the dark, empty hall. Bad art on the wall stared accusingly at me. Troy Minear was still officially Mandy’s boyfriend, and no one at Marlwood would condone stealing another girl’s guy, no matter how they felt about the girls involved. That hadn’t been my experience in San Diego; no one leaped to my defense when Jane stole Riley. It was assumed that she should have him if she wanted him because she was Jane and I was not. Jane was entitled to have a cool boyfriend. I had just been amazingly—and temporarily—lucky.
I ran my hand along the marble kitchen countertop. I didn’t need a boyfriend. I needed an ally.
“Things have been . . . ” I began, and then, to my horror, I started to cry.
“What’s wrong? Did she find out?”
That we drove up together, he meant. I didn’t know if Mandy knew.
“Did she . . . do something to you?” he pressed. His voice was tense, angry.
“Troy, don’t say anything about it to her. Please, don’t,” I said. “I-I didn’t call you because of Mandy.” That wasn’t true, but I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I began to cry again, covering my mouth so I wouldn’t wake anyone up. I pressed my forehead against the wooden cabinet where we kept our candles and flashlights in case of a power outage. Distractedly opened and closed a door. Saw all the shiny, sharp kitchen knives.
“No. This entire situation is my fault. I’ve let it go on too long. Let me at least do something. I’m coming over there,” he informed me.
“No,” I blurted, but of course, that was exactly what I wanted. I pressed my fingers against my forehead. “Yes,” I said. “Please.”
“We’ll get together tonight,” he said.
We made a plan, and I was so relieved I cried some more. I felt like someone in the middle of the ocean who knew exactly when the rescue ship would arrive, and had only to keep treading water until then. I didn’t know how I managed to get through all my classes. I fuzzed out a dozen times; I couldn’t keep track. More than once, a teacher would dismiss us and I’d realized I hadn’t heard a word she or he had said during the entire period.
More than once, Mandy caught my eye, narrowing her gaze at me, pursing her lips as if I smelled bad. Did she know Troy was going to meet me? Had he told her, out of a misplaced need to be honest and true?
I worried what she might do to me. Really worried. I worried about Shayna. And I pushed through the long hours; then, when Mandy and the others attended their extracurriculars, I loped back toward the abandoned library, staring at the disintegrating building in the light of day, and finding it no less terrifying. I had half an hour until Troy was due; I had brought my digital camera and I shot dozens of shots of the library exterior, holding my breath, listening to my heartbeat roaring in my ears. I didn’t know what I was looking for—ectoplasm? Ghostly residue? I was afraid to look through the viewfinder—or at the picture on my cell phone. Maybe I’d have the courage to look when I was with Troy.
A weak sun blinked through tattered gray clouds, and the pines bobbed their branches at me as I kept taking pictures, raising the lens toward the window where I had seen the light.
I gasped. It was boarded up, moss-covered planks of gray wood nailed criss-cross over the frame. I lowered the camera and looked with my eyes. The moss traced patterns from the boards to the frame in an unbroken path. There was no way I could have s
een anything through it, unless someone had come in last night to nail it shut, and smear moss over it.
As the wind blew, I could almost hear a voice I knew from my endless night of bad dreams: Take care of the worst ones first.
Fear fell over me like a net made of icicles; chills skittered up and down my spine. Had they “taken care” of Shayna? Were they going to take care of me next? Because we knew?
What had she seen? What had made her go crazy? Something slammed inside the building; I nearly jumped out of my skin. Wood on wood, hard. Maybe not a foot slamming into a wall; maybe a shutter, slamming in the wind.
But the wind was not that strong.
I turned half away, not willing to show my back, too afraid to look again. I raced to the chain-link fence, quickly locating the hole I’d first seen last semester. I had to drop to my hands and knees to crawl through, and I froze for a few seconds. I couldn’t help imagining something racing up behind me while my back was turned, and grabbing me . . ..
“No,” I said aloud.
Then I scuttled through the hole like a weird little crab. Fog swirled around me, and as I straightened, I saw Troy’s T-bird at the bottom of the hill. I began to slip-slide down the hill, through the mud and the snow, straining my eyes to see if he was sitting inside the car.
“Hey,” Troy said behind me. “I went to look for you.”
As I stopped and looked back up the hill, he picked his way down to me. He was wearing a dark brown bomber jacket, a brown sweater, and jeans. His blue eyes gazed straight into mine. The wind was ruffling his dark hair, and he opened his arms as he reached for me. He was warm, and when I slid myself inside his jacket and pressed my face against his chest, I felt safe for the first time since getting back to Marlwood.
“Lindsay,” he said, wrapping himself around me, cradling me. I shut my eyes and smelled clean cotton and a bit of sweat. I inhaled him, and whimpered and clung to him, feeling his athlete’s muscles and the hardness of his chest. He was strong; he could fight off demons.
His lips kissed the crown of my crazy hair. And I wanted like anything to tip back my head and kiss him. It was so tempting . . . but I made myself step backward, giving my head a little shake as he reached for me.
“Troy, listen,” I said. Shayna’s gone, and I’m alone, I thought. And I have no one except Celia. And what she’s telling me, what she’s saying . . .
Taking my hand, he led me to a fallen log, and eased me down, carefully, as if I might shatter. “What’s going on?”
I had rehearsed a dozen different things to say, and I still didn’t have it right. “Everything is wrong here.”
“Wrong?” he repeated, smoothing back my hair, looking, really looking at me. Listening hard.
How much could I tell him? “Things are happening over here. Bad things that are tied to the past. Something from a long time ago.” I shook my head. I knew I wasn’t making any sense. To him, anyway.
“Troy, please, just . . . just believe me,” I said. “I need to find out what exactly . . . ”
“I heard about Shayna,” he said. After a beat, he added, “From Mandy.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “I know Shayna was Kiyoko’s best friend.”
I nodded. Of course he was talking to Mandy. She was his girlfriend. I couldn’t forget that, couldn’t assume anything. Slowly, gently, I eased my hand away and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Please, don’t be mad at me,” he said, misreading my body language. “You know how I feel, Linz.” When I didn’t reply, he stood up and combed his hands through his hair. “Why should you know? I don’t even know how I feel. No, wait, I do. I do.” His eyebrows wrinkled over his sea-blue eyes, as he peered through his heavy lashes at me. His mouth was pulled tight in misery, revealing his dimples, making him, if anything, harder to resist. I want to be with you.”
I still didn’t answer. I knew we were in a triangle; I could almost hear Celia saying, “You see? You, Mandy, and Troy . . . Belle, me, and . . . ” And who? Celia had not said a name. “She’ll kill you before she gives him up. Like Belle killed me.”
“How can I help?” he asked, coming back to the log, sitting down. He touched my cheek, examining my scratch. I felt his fingertips on my cheek, and I was sorry I had made such a point of extricating my hand from his grip. “How did this happen?”
“Do you think I’ll have a scar?” I asked, touching it with my free hand. He ran his knuckles along my finger, then cradled my cheek.
He frowned. “Mandy didn’t . . . ?”
It surprised me that he’d sense she was capable of hurting me. How could he know this, and still date her? Yet it gave me hope, in a twisted way. He was realizing how truly screwed up she was. That she was the unhinged one. Not me.
“The help that I need,” I said carefully, wiping my eyes and trying hard to take care of my nose without his noticing, “is for us to do some research on Marlwood. It was a home for wayward girls a century ago, and then it closed.”
“Really?” He smiled faintly, and I saw those amazing dimples, which deepened as he cocked his head, studying me. He reached in a pocket and handed me a paper napkin. “That’s cause for tears.”
I didn’t join in his amusement. “Seriously. They did terrible things to the girls. I-I think they performed lobotomies on them.”
He blinked and almost let go of me. “Here?”
At fancy Marlwood, I translated. “It’s not exactly in the brochure,” I drawled, and I could feel my snarky self coming back to life.
“Unless you flip through all the pages backward. Then the secret is revealed on page 666,” he explained, nodding wisely. “Every thirteenth word—”
He was my friend, and my snarkmate. I couldn’t help myself; I glommed onto him and gave him a tight hug.
“Oof, you’re going to make me fart,” he joked, to acknowledge that he was my snarkmate. Because snarkmates knew a snarkmate when they saw one.
Then he wrapped his arms around me again and squeezed me just as hard.
“Go for it, Linz,” he urged. “Let it all out, once and for all.”
He made me smile. And I finally felt just how exhausted I was from my nightmare-filled nights. As if I understood things that hadn’t been clear before. I knew he was still officially Mandy’s boyfriend, and I knew what Celia had shown me about what jealous rages could do. But I also understood why Troy was having trouble letting go of Mandy—he cared that she was hurting, or at any rate pretending to be. Because he was kind. And good.
“Can you look at something?” I asked. He nodded, and I pulled out my cell phone.
“Wait.” He waved his hand at me. “Backtrack for a sec. Why would they perform lobotomies?”
“To make the girls sweet and obedient. That was the fashion, a hundred years ago.”
“Wow, too bad those days are gone, eh?” He smirked. “Seriously, though, how did you find this out?”
“Look at this,” I insisted, holding up my cell phone. I flicked on the photo screen. “It’s not a lobotomy,” I added.
He held the phone. “You look cute. It’s too close up and you’re all washed out, but you’re still cute. Who’s behind you?” He cocked his head, studying the picture.
So you see it, too, I thought, sagging inside with relief. But I was still too afraid to look.
I felt that terrible cold on the back of my neck, then all over inside me, as if my blood was frozen. Celia was with me. Or controlling me, or guiding me. Before I knew what I was doing, I reached for the phone and stared hard at the image. Willing it to be something; but it was a white shape, and nothing more. No features, no hair.
“I don’t know.” My voice was steady. “Who does it look like to you?”
“But . . . didn’t you see him? Didn’t you know he was there?”
He?
“How do you know . . . ?” I began, and then I realized: whoever it was, was much taller than me. I’m only five-two, but the . . . blur . . . was at least six feet tall. Despite the models in our stude
nt population, no girl at Marlwood was that tall. That meant that a guy had snuck up behind me while I was waiting for Shayna. Mandy liked to invite Lakewood boys over to observe her pranks, and sometimes help out with them. Maybe it was one of them?
“Where was this taken?” he asked.
“At an old building,” I hedged, in case he wound up telling Mandy about our meeting after all, “and I thought I was checking the time, but I accidentally took this picture. I didn’t know anyone else was around.”
He was quiet for a moment. I could practically see the wheels turning in his brain, and I wanted to hug him again, and thank him for not dismissing me and telling me I was seeing things. Whatever—whoever—it was, he saw it, too. He took the phone from me again.
I licked my lips. “Remember when we were driving up here, in the fog, and you thought you saw—”
“Miles,” he snapped, shutting my phone. “That’s who that is.” He brought the phone closer to his eyes. “Yeah. I can see that stupid fifties haircut of his. It’s that freak.”
He turned the phone around and showed it to me. All I saw was a blobby, vaguely human shape.
“And now he’s stalking you,” he said, clenching his teeth. A muscle jumped in his cheek and his free hand balled into a fist; his eyes went as cold as I felt. “Like he does with every other girl Mandy tries to be friends with.” His voice was as flat and solid as concrete and I pictured him pushing Miles off a cliff, and Miles landing hard.
Note to self, I thought. Never piss off Troy Minear.
“He does that, isolates her.”
“She has friends here,” I argued.
“Which is my point.” He got up and started pacing. Fast. The change in him was startling. Beyond hurting my feelings, it was scary.
“What he did to her . . . ” Then he shook himself, as if he was saying too much. So maybe he did know about the Lincoln Bedroom rumor.
I looked down at the phone pic again. It still didn’t look like Miles. A wave of desperation roared over me; he wasn’t going to help me after all. He was too busy being outraged on Mandy’s behalf. Closing the flip top, I stuffed it in my pocket, averting my head so that he wouldn’t see fresh tears welling.