“She was terrified,” he continued, and I listened hard. Could it be that Mandy and I both wanted to be free of the ghosts that were haunting us?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he went on. “That she’s playing me.”
You didn’t really want Riley, Jane had told me after she stole him, or you would have done anything to get him back. I knew she was wrong. Guys weren’t possessions to be fought over. And I wasn’t going to fight over Troy. If he liked girls with issues . . .
. . . Then I am the girl for him. Haha.
Just as with Heather, I had no idea how to respond. He kept gazing at me, then down at his hands, then back at me, and I knew he was expecting something. I just didn’t know what. How did rich girls deal with things like this? Should I give him back the necklace? Tear up my donation card from the Surfrider Foundation? Hitchhike to Marlwood?
“Lindsay,” he said. “I really like you. A lot.”
But let’s just be friends, I mentally filled in, and I wondered what form of insanity I had, that I had actually agreed to riding back to Marlwood with another guy bent on breaking my heart.
“Whatever,” I muttered, trying to keep my voice steady. I hadn’t asked him, specifically, to break up with Mandy.
For a moment I thought I saw Celia’s face staring back at me in the windshield; I shifted my gaze and had a terrible thought, and not for the first time: that maybe she really wasn’t there. Maybe it was stress that made me see her. Maybe back at Marlwood, none of that had really happened. I had awakened on the porch, bruised and sopping wet, so maybe it had all been a terrible dream. Or part of a blackout. Or some kind of hallucination . . .
It did happen.
“I just . . . ” he persisted, “I feel like I have a duty toward her. We’ve been together since we were little kids, and Kiyoko was one of her best friends. It is over between her and me, Lindsay. It really is. But . . . she was so upset. And I didn’t want to do it at Christmas . . . ”
“I’m tired,” I said. It was the truth. “Can we not talk?”
“But we should talk.” He reached out to touch my hair, just like Riley in the theater. I pulled my head back slightly, just like in the theater. “I’m going to do it. I promise. But I haven’t done it yet. I’m just trying . . . ” He fumbled, his blue eyes searching mine for understanding.
I melted a little. He was trying hard to be honorable.
“I can’t help you with that,” was all I said.
“She won’t be there until tomorrow,” he added, and I stopped melting. What was he trying to say? That we were still in the clear to cheat on his girlfriend for another twenty-four hours? Did he think I would? “She has permission to show up late.”
“I know,” I snapped. “Julie’s coming up with her.”
“Oh.” A beat. “So you’ve been talking to Julie.”
“Not really. Just a couple of calls,” I said. “I didn’t tell Julie that you came over, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
He drew back. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I told him, and practically jumped out of the car.
And he didn’t stop me. Which was good, because I couldn’t have held the tears back another second.
FOUR
I HID IN THE CHEVRON bathroom, which was incredibly gross, splashing water on my face to wash away the tears I could not hold back. Then I took several deep breaths, and worked to make my face a mask, so Troy wouldn’t see my misery.
He didn’t break up with her. Stupid—I was so stupid for believing there was a chance this was real.
As I walked across the breezeway, fog washed over my ankles like a low tide, trailing in wisps across the concrete expanse between the mini-mart and the pumps. I studied the mountains, and my stomach clenched as thick waves of fog crept down the tops of the pine trees like wild animals searching for prey. Crossing my arms over my chest, I shuddered, hard. I knew what really lived in that fog . . . crazy, angry dead girls obsessed with revenge.
“Hey,” Troy said behind me, and I jumped. “Whoa, sorry. I thought you saw me at the register.” He held up two Red Bulls and some trail mix. “I just got a couple of things to keep us going.”
Peace offerings.
“Thanks,” I said, as we walked back to the car. The fog billowed with our strides as we climbed in and he turned the engine key; the motor purred to life and the car idled eagerly. I clenched my Red Bull so hard my fingertips went numb.
“Last chance,” he reminded me, gesturing to my phone. I texted Julie, but there was no answer. I pictured her riding up with Mandy, probably in a convertible, talking about Troy and Spider, laughing like BFFs.
I’m going back to that, I thought. All of that. My heartbeat jackhammered; beads of sweat tickled my forehead. I began to breathe too shallowly, and I could feel myself pulling away. I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. No, I thought. Not in front of Troy.
Unaware, Troy plugged his phone into a charger connected to the cigarette lighter and put the car in reverse. He looked left into the side mirror, and then up to the rearview mirror. And then, he looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and the soft sadness of his voice seeped into my silent freakout. I held onto those three syllables as if my sanity depended on them.
Then he brushed my cheek with his lips, and then he kissed me on the side of my mouth. The warm, smooth sensation of contact startled me—tempted me—but I didn’t turn my head toward him, which might—or might not have—led to a full, deep kiss. I wanted him to kiss me like that again, even if it was the last time, even if—
—No. I was not like that.
“Okay, on our way,” he said, guiding the T-bird out of the gas station. Then we headed off for Marlwood, and I let the sound of his voice and the touch of his lips warm me like a candle flame.
The higher we drove on the bumpy road, the more fog tumbled down on Troy’s car, until we were inching along and he was swearing under his breath. It was way after nine. We tried calling Marlwood on both our cell phones to check in, but as we expected, there was no reception. We talked about turning around; we talked about just stopping. But there was a good chance we’d drive off the road into the deep ravine on Troy’s left; the other side hugged the mountain face. Since it was the night before classes, other cars would be trailing behind us. If we stopped, we might get hit.
COME TO ME, come to me, come to me, come to me. Get the ice pick. Push it into her brain. She will become biddable, and gentle. A lady. An asset to the name of Marl—
“We’re here,” Troy said to me, jostling me, and I exhaled as I woke up, as if I had had to hold my breath for a long time.
“Don’t worry about being late,” he said. “They’ll understand.”
He didn’t know that my headmistress, Dr. Ehrlenbach, had protested my admission into Marlwood. I had no doubt she was looking for any excuse to boot me.
The fog had thinned very slightly, and I could make out my surroundings. We were in the parking lot next to the creepy three-story Victorian mansion that was the admin building, complete with stone columns and dim lights in a few of the windows. Limos and luxury cars scattered the lot. Golf carts driven by Marlwood staff collected luggage as tired parents and their students walked to their dorms. There were two hundred of us now; there had been two hundred and one last semester. But Kiyoko was dead.
With dark shiny hair fluffing out over her puffy silver jacket, jeans, and boots rimmed with fur, Shayna Maisel was walking down the incline with a heavily bearded man in a yarmulke. Her dad the rabbi, I supposed. Shayna had once been Kiyoko’s best friend. First her BFF, then her ex-BFF. I had met her in my lit class on my first day at Marlwood, when she’d been trying to get Kiyoko to eat a protein bar. But that was before Kiyoko had crossed over to the dark side and hung with Mandy. Before Kiyoko died.
Shayna had stuck up for Kiyoko when Mandy had humiliated her with one of her stupid pranks—forcing Kiyoko to skinny-
dip in Searle Lake. Shayna had wrapped her freezing, anorexic friend in a blanket down at the shore while Mandy laughed uncontrollably. But Kiyoko had dumped her anyway. Shayna had been Kiyoko’s Heather. There were dark rings under her chocolate brown eyes. Part of me wanted to say something to her—but I didn’t.
Trailing slightly behind Shayna, Charlotte Davidson, our closest thing to a goth, tapped each of the white horse heads that held oversized white painted chain links in their mouths with the brass tip of an old-fashioned black umbrella. Her blue-black hair streaked with red, Charlotte had on a long steampunk black coat with a high collar and black gloves with scarlet lace on them. The man and woman walking with her were bland rich parents in London Fog raincoats and boots.
Shayna glanced my way and gave me a wave. I waved back. Troy hadn’t actually believed that our ride together would remain a secret, had he?
“So, thanks,” I said to him now. “For driving me.”
He stepped closer. “I-I . . . you’re welcome.” He searched my face and started to say something else. Closed his mouth. I nodded, and turned away, even though I was hurt that he didn’t kiss me goodbye or say anything about meeting up later. Jane would have been proud of me for keeping my issues to myself.
“Lindsay,” he said.
I stopped without turning around. “Yes?”
“I thought I saw something. In the fog.”
Oh, God.
Now I did turn around. His hands were in his pockets, and his head was lowered slightly as he gazed down at me. He was grinning. “You were asleep. I almost woke you but it happened so fast. Just a split-second—”
I kept my voice neutral. “What did you see?”
He waggled his brows. “I was tired. I was thinking about that old story about the ghost that runs down the bypass. The girl who’s on fire. And . . . I thought I saw her.”
I felt as if someone had pushed me into the lake; that I was so frozen my hair might break off—
“I think it was just some light bouncing off the fog, but it was freaky,” he finished, looking a little abashed.
“Do you think she was really there?” I asked him.
He laughed. “Naw. But it would have been cool if she had been.”
“You’re wrong,” I blurted.
He blinked. “Excuse me?” He slung his thumbs in his jacket pockets and tilted his head. “You don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said stiffly. “Thanks again for the ride. Bye.”
“Wait,” he said, but I knew it was time to go. “Thanks for not farting in the car—you know, like your brother said . . . ” he added, searching, I knew, for a way to make me laugh, to recapture the magic.
I grunted sadly to myself, and headed for Grose, my dorm and one of the oldest buildings on campus, staring down at Jessel, where Mandy lived, on the hill below us. With its four turrets tiled in slate and its hunchbacked shape, Jessel was far more interesting than Grose—and said to be the most haunted. I knew for a fact that that was true.
The curtains of Jessel were open, but all the windows were dark, except for one—the large, arched window of the turret room that was Mandy’s single. Candlelight flickered dimly, and someone was standing in the window, head bent, staring straight at me. My blood ran cold.
Mandy Winters was already here.
Behind Jessel, the inky blackness of Searle Lake winked through the fog. The thick promotional booklet about Marlwood (eighty-four pages) showed glossy pictures of pine trees and wildflowers, extolling the virtues of the campus: three hundred acres of forested land, hiking and biking trails, seventeen dorms, the quaint bell tower of Founder’s Hall, and excellence in education. It failed to mention the nearly thirty condemned buildings where students held all-night parties and occult planning sessions about whom to murder next.
“Hey.” Shayna came up beside me now, and I nearly leaped out of my skin.
“God, Shayna,” I said, trying to force out a laugh instead of a scream. “You scared me half to death.”
“Sorry.” Shayna was gaunt, her cheekbones too prominent, her eyes deep in their sockets. She toyed with a large abstract pendant dotted with diamonds—I had no cause to believe they were anything but real—as she began to walk toward my dorm, then stopped when I didn’t immediately follow.
“How have you been?” I asked, catching up to her. There were lines of tension around her mouth. I realized that in the two weeks between Kiyoko’s death and our winter break, I had never said a word to Shayna, never comforted her. I had been lost in my own angst. And too busy trying to stay alive.
“Well, you know.” She looked at her dad, who had stopped to wait for her about twenty yards ahead of us. She lowered her voice. “There’s a welcome-back party,” she said. “At that creepy lake house. You know the one?”
I nodded. “Who’s going?” I looked over at Jessel. The figure in the turret room hadn’t moved.
“Whoever can sneak out.” She smiled cynically. “It’s the Marlwood way.”
“Are you going?” I asked her.
She gave me a long, measured look, as if trying to decide something about me. Her expression didn’t change as she stopped playing with her necklace and dropped her hands to her side.
“Oh, yeah, I’m going,” she told me. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
I had the sense that she was trying to tell me more than I was hearing, but I just flashed her a quick smile as we reached the door to Grose. The Marlwood Academy crest, a carved M surrounded by leaves, jutted from the center. Like a stop sign, I thought. But I opened the door, wondering if Shayna wanted me to invite her in. Shayna had never hung out with me before. Maybe none of her friends had arrived yet. The fog had messed up everyone’s schedule.
“Okay, so, I’ll see you there,” I said. The sooner I got to the business of getting rid of Celia, the better. And maybe seeing all the girls again would give me some idea how.
Just then, the little golf cart with my luggage pulled up on the walk. I wished I didn’t care that Shayna would see my low-rent luggage, but it still embarrassed me.
“I need to call my parents,” I said gently. “Check in. And . . . recharge.”
Her cheeks reddened.
“I won’t tell her,” Shayna said. “That you were talking to Troy in the parking lot.”
So that’s how it looked, I thought. People will assume he and I ran into each other here at school. No one else will know he drove me up here . . . unless he tells them.
“Thanks,” I said. Then I opened the door and went inside the second-most-haunted dorm on campus.
Judging by the beautiful burnished luggage placed beside antique canopy beds, and iPods and cashmere scarves dangling from half-opened cherry wood and ebony dresser drawers, some of my dorm mates had arrived. But there was no one else actually in Grose except for my housemother, Ms. Krige, who greeted me in her bathrobe and told me with a yawn that everyone else had gone to bed. I couldn’t believe she was so naïve; or maybe it just made her life easier to look the other way.
“Be very careful,” she added. “There were some mountain lion attacks over break. They lost a dog at Lakewood.”
She went back into her room and shut the door. I heard the TV go on. She really didn’t want to know what was going on.
I faced the hallway. The overhead chandeliers cast pools of light on the waxed hardwood floor, which I disturbed as I walked toward my room. The walls were covered with offerings from the art classes—a lot of them fairly bad—and the overly large eyes of a poorly painted portrait of a girl with an enormous forehead followed my every move.
I reluctantly changed out of my dad’s socks but I did put my Doc Martens back on. They were a Christmas present from my cousin Jason and his boyfriend Andreas. I also put on the army jacket Jason had given me earlier in the year. I had to choose between it and my mom’s ratty UCSD sweater, which was one of my most treasured objects. After the long day, it was time to switch out the beautiful cashmere s
weater for something else. I put on my black long-underwear top—which was kind of sexy-sheer, not that it mattered—and stuck with my old, ripped jeans.
And I took off the silk crocheted necklace, and put it in the topmost drawer of my dresser.
My Tibetan prayer beads, wrapped around my left wrist, completed mademoiselle’s ensemble. I couldn’t compete with the ultra-high-end designer clothes of the other girls, and I had renewed my commitment to rebellious non-conformity. During my free time, at least. I would never let Dr. Ehrlenbach catch me in jeans like these.
It began to snow as I quietly climbed out the bathroom window. I clicked on my flashlight and took one last look at the figure in the turret room. It still hadn’t moved.
Anxious, I headed for Searle Lake. My breath was a ghost climbing out of my chest. My stomach tightened as my boots crunched on the snow mixed with the mushy, grainy soil of the shore. I walked past the large boulders and the NO TRESPASSING sign, which the Lakewood boys used as a tie-up when they snuck over to our side in rowboats.
Fresh bouquets of store-bought flowers marked the spot where I had found Kiyoko’s body. Roses, chrysanthemums, daisies. My mind flashed to the wreaths and bouquets at my mother’s funeral. Kiyoko’s parents had held a memorial for her in San Francisco, asking for donations to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in lieu of flowers. Kiyoko’s eating disorder was public knowledge.
Memmy, I thought, my pet name for my mom. I wish you were here. I wish I could tell you what is going on. I’m haunted, Mem. I need to get free of Celia Reaves, or I’ll never be safe or normal again. I’ll do anything . . .
But would I really? My stomach clenched and my throat tightened. Could I get free of her?
I picked up my pace.
There it was, as before: a ramshackle hodgepodge of gables and tarps. I climbed gingerly onto the porch and swept the darkness with my flashlight, hesitating before I crossed the threshold into the deserted room. Reggae music provided an ironic backdrop to my high anxiety as I scanned the moldy couch spewing rotten stuffing, the shapes covered with shredded drop cloths. On the walls, shattered glass frames slashed the sepia faces of unsmiling girls in constricted, high-necked blouses from a century ago. Not Celia, or Belle, but other girls, long dead.