I went into one of the showers. The walls were slick and white; I turned on the water and let the heat sluice down on me. I thought I would never be warm again.
I burst into tears, and slid to the bottom of the stall. I couldn’t kill Mandy. I wouldn’t. I . . .
There was a dim impression of a face on the blinding white tile floor. I covered my mouth with both hands to hold in the scream. Celia had followed me in. I violently shook my head as water dripped off my hair in hard, heavy, unnatural droplets. My spine seemed to melt; and then I was falling somewhere, struggling and screaming and falling and wet and . . .
“HOLD HER DOWN until she swears,” Belle told Pearl and Martha. Belle’s blonde braid had come uncoiled from the top of her head and hung over her shoulder like a snake. Her ruffled blouse was undone to the top of her corset; her sleeves were folded back. “She will never go near him again.”
Celia was kneeling in her white gown in one of the hydrotherapy tubs, filled to the brim with icy water. Headmaster Marlwood would order the treatment for the most willful girls—first into the tub, then the wooden lid locked tight in place, so that only their heads were visible. They had to rest quietly or they might drown. But the lid was off now, and there were no matrons or doctors to see what was being done.
“For the love of God, Belle,” Celia pleaded, up to her breasts in the water.
“She will never go near him again,” Belle shouted, as Pearl clutched Celia’s right arm, and Martha dug her fingers into the left. Their clothes were disheveled; there were spatters of blood on Pearl’s pinafore. Belle darted forward and grabbed Celia’s hair in her fist, pushing on the back of her neck with her other hand and forcing Celia’s face under the water.
Bubbles escaped her mouth; her lungs began to ache. She wasn’t afraid, not yet. Belle was mean and vindictive, but she wasn’t insane. She wouldn’t murder a fellow student; if she did, she would suffer for it, as surely as Edwin Marlwood held all their lives in his hands. For others had paid horribly, and for lesser crimes. . . .
. . . The ice pick . . . the ice pick . . .
Celia was out of air. She’ll let me back up now, Celia thought.
But Belle didn’t.
Celia’s strained body was beginning to convulse. She pushed against the hand that restrained her head, and moaned; and bucked. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
She panicked. She had to inhale, had to—
—And just as she was about to draw in a fatal breath of ice water—
—Belle yanked up her head. Celia drew in air, her aching lungs searing, her back arching. Pearl had backed away, sobbing, while Martha was hitting Belle’s shoulders, shouting, “Let her go, Belle! You’re killing her!”
“She will not love him!” Belle screamed, her voice echoing on the tile walls of the hydrotherapy room. “She will not!”
“Let her go,” Pearl shouted.
“She will not!” Belle shrieked.
“Belle, I’m here,” Celia said, dazed. Why was Belle speaking of her as if she were not there? “Belle, please, listen, I—”
Belle’s face went white. Her dark eyes burned in her face, like bottomless pits. For the first time, Celia saw the pure hatred there. The madness. “Back down, back under,” she decreed.
“No, Belle, no, please,” Celia cried. “Someone, help me!”
Down she went, into the ice water . . .
. . . Longer this time—
“GOD,” I gasped. As I panted, Celia’s face, barely visible, stared up at me from the shiny white floor of the shower stall.
“So you see. It’s happened before. Two girls, in love with the same young man. Belle, and me. You, and Amanda Winters. And she’ll kill you for him. Like she killed me.”
The words were in my head, in my own mouth, but it was Celia talking.
“No,” I whispered, but Celia was right: Mandy Winters was every bit as vindictive as Belle. She would kill me rather than give up Troy. She’d already tried to kill me.
“You have to fight fire . . . with fire,” Celia said. “You have to strike first. Or it will be too late.”
I covered my mouth. I didn’t know if I was going to be sick, or to scream. I was losing it. Panic attack. I could feel my mind shutting down.
“Kill or be killed.”
I started to hyperventilate.
“Lindsay? Are you still in there?” It was Elvis, pounding on the stall door. “I forgot my conditioner. Can I borrow yours?”
Oh my God. Heaving, I fell onto my side; I gathered up my thick dark hair and wiped my face with my hands several times before I connected that it was still wet because the shower was on. Disoriented, I swallowed hard and awkwardly crawled up the wall with my fingertips until I was upright. Then I leaned against the wall, numb.
“Lindsay?” Elvis called. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Conditioner. Hold on.”
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
I MOVED as if I were underwater, floating as I got dressed and brushed my teeth—without looking in the mirror. I swam upstream to our room, to find Julie showered and dressed in fashionable new clothes, even less tweeny and more grown-up. She’d unpacked a few things from her suitcases, and she was holding a scarf in both hands. I had the sudden uncontrollable terror that she was going to strangle me with it. I knew that was crazy . . . unless she was possessed. But her eyes were their usual hazel. Her smile, pleasant and sweet.
“So,” she said, as we left our dorm and joined the dozens of other girls heading for the commons, “how did you sleep?”
There was an edge to her voice, and I knew I couldn’t tell her anything. She obviously still didn’t remember any of the terrors of last semester, including the fact that she herself had been possessed. As before, she thought I had either made up everything, or imagined it, in some twisted attempt to paint Mandy as a villain so that she, Julie, would remain my best friend. Maybe Jane would have been able to pull something like that off, but she wouldn’t have bothered—it was dumb. And ridiculous. And too much work.
I was the proof of that.
As we reached the opened door of the commons, I smelled coffee. And oatmeal. And a hundred different exotic perfumes on the polished, coifed girls who swirled around us.
“Bleah,” Julie said. “I’m a little hung over. Maybe I shouldn’t drink on school nights.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t drink on any nights,” I said. “You know, cut back for a while. Until we’re settled back in.”
She squinted at me. “Who are you and what have you done with Lindsay?”
“My grandmother says that alcohol robs you of your wits,” Shayna said, as she came up behind us. “And you should always keep your wits about you. In case a dybbuk tries to possess you. Then you can talk him out of it.”
“What’s a dybbuk?” Julie asked. Already seated at our table—dorms usually sat together—Marica and Ida waved at us. Julie waved back, but I just stared at Shayna.
“Look at Marica’s sweater. Isn’t it amazing?” Julie chirruped, distracted. Then she hurried over to greet them as if she hadn’t seen them less than seven hours ago.
Shayna gave me a long, measured look. She was so perfect, with her dark, glossy hair, beautifully shaped thick eyebrows, and perfect skin. “A dybbuk is the dislocated soul of a dead person,” she said quietly. “At least, that’s what my grandmother used to say.”
I caught my breath. Felt the blood drain from my face. Shayna? I thought. Shayna knows?
“What do you think?” she asked me.
“Hello? Blocking the door?” Lara snarled, bumping Shayna’s shoulder as she and Mandy sauntered into the room. Mandy was dressed all in black, and Lara wore a red-and-black argyle sweater over black trousers. The red clashed with her hair. It was clear to me that they hadn’t heard our conversation.
“Some people,” Mandy said, sighing melodramatically.
Shayna frowned, then went neutral, and headed for the food lines. I started
to follow, but she gave her head a shake.
“What you just said . . . ” I began.
“Shouldn’t be discussed in public,” she finished.
She looked over at Mandy, then at me. She gave me a nod that I couldn’t interpret precisely, but I was pretty sure I had the gist.
“Come after classes. I’m in Stewart.”
Right. I’d seen her in Stewart, when I went there to plot strategy with last semester’s ally—Rose Hyde-Smith. Rose, who had broken into Jessel with me, and discovered so many secrets . . . and whose eyes had eventually turned black, and who had tried to help Mandy kill me. And who didn’t remember any of it, either.
Rose was seated at the Stewart table, in a wacky outfit that was a combination of Amy Winehouse and I Love Lucy—bouffant hair, red-and-yellow paisley scarf and red hoop earrings, and a black sweater with big red buttons. Spotting me, she waved with both hands, and then blew me kisses.
“You okay?” Ida asked me, approaching me with her tray of practically nothing—just scrambled egg whites and tomato slices—for breakfast. Tea.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just hard to get back into the swing.”
Ida pulled a sad face. “No kidding.” Then she brightened. “But I have a total jewel of gossip, speaking of swinging. Gretchen Cabot has a thing for Mandy’s brother.”
“That is scary,” I opined. In ways you cannot begin to comprehend.
“Well, he is kind of hot, in a savagely mad King Henry VIII kind of way.” When I obviously didn’t connect, she said, “English history? First he boffs them, then he cuts off their heads?”
“You find that attractive?” I jibed.
“Well, actually, Miles Winters is a bit too Aryan for my taste. My parents are modern Iranians, but I wouldn’t push them past their limits.” Her grin turned mischievous. “I mean, I might boff him, but I wouldn’t bring him home.”
“Oh, eeew,” I protested, working overtime to sound only mildly disgusted.
“I’m just kidding. He’s Mandy’s brother.” When I didn’t say anything, she said, “I am not a fan of Mandy’s anything, not since Kiyoko . . . ” She trailed off. “Mandy wasn’t nice to her.”
“No, she wasn’t.” She was so not-nice to her that she killed her.
She killed her. This wasn’t about dead birds and gossip. This was about a frozen body in a lake, and me nearly dying, and Mandy just sitting over there, laughing while she pushed food around her plate. Who knowingly started all this by inviting Belle to possess her. It hadn’t happened to her by accident, as it had with me. She had made it happen.
I clenched my jaw. God, I really did hate Mandy Winters. I hated her down to my soul. And I hated Belle just as much. They were two evil bitches who deserved to die.
But did I hate them enough to kill them?
EIGHT
CLASSES ENDED at three thirty; then there were extracurriculars, which included all the sports teams. So while Julie was busy kicking soccer balls in the powdered-sugar snow, I was at Stewart at three thirty-five, ready to talk about dislocated souls. If Shayna knew about the possessions, maybe she knew some way to get rid of Celia without killing Mandy. I would give anything, everything I had, if that were true.
I was shaking as I rapped on the front door. Stewart was a new dorm, with brick faces and lots of windows trimmed in white, very airy. Very not vintage Marlwood, which was Victorian and dark.
The door opened, and Rose, not Shayna stood on the threshold. Her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she was wearing purple sweats shot through with cheesecloth and a black cashmere dove wrap sweater with the ends dangling around her knees. She had on black socks with white peace signs on them. She threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. My anxiety skyrocketed. I was desperate to talk to Shayna, and I had to do it alone.
“Oh my God, Linz, come in, you’re frozen,” Rose said. “Don’t you remember how to dress for these climes?” She reached forward and shut the door as she urged me inside. “Did you get my Christmas card?”
“No,” I said.
“The one with the puppy in the stocking? No? Maybe I got your address wrong. My parents turned Christmas into the OK Corral. They’re getting divorced. It’s in the tabloids. I’m glad you don’t read them.”
She quickly shook her head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. It’s completely irrelevant to my real life. But how’ve you been? You look tired.”
She walked me into the common room, where three of the other Stewart girls were studying. Shayna was not among them.
“We’re making hot chocolate,” Rose said. “Shayna,” she bellowed, “Linz is here.”
“Coming,” Shayna announced.
“So.” Rose led me down the hall to her bedroom. I looked at her autographed poster from Cirque du Soleil in the red frame and a tie-dyed goose down comforter practically floating on her bed. Matching pillows were squashed into a nest and a book in French lay beside a dirty plate—looked like hummus—and a can of Red Bull on its side. New items were a poster of the rocker David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, very glam and metro, and a vintage yellow rocking chair. She’d threaded strings of yellow and red beads through the arms of her de rigueur Marlwood chandelier. “We’re in my room,” she yelled.
She plopped cross-legged onto her bed and folded her arms over her chest. I perched on the edge. I was very nervous.
“Mandy’s already throwing down,” she said. “You should have heard her rip Gretchen Cabot for talking about Miles. Like no one is even allowed to say the hallowed name of incest boy.”
Troy’s dimpled face popped into my mind. I wonder what he would think of his poor, terrified girlfriend if he’d been there. My heart registered further insult.
“I’m surprised Gretchen didn’t end up dead in the lake this morning,” Rose went on.
I stared at her. She waved her hands.
“I know, sorry, that was tacky. Rest in peace, Kiyoko.”
“Hey,” Shayna said from the door. Stewart girls favored after-class warm-up clothes; she had on beige cashmere and gold hoops that glittered against her perfectly shaped long cut. Her dark eyes took in the scene—me on Rose’s bed, Rose sitting up semi-possessively, angled toward me. She was holding two steaming coffee cups. “The cocoa’s ready.”
“Cool,” Rose said, smiling at Shayna. “Thanks.”
“C’mon, Lindsay.” She looked at Rose. “We’re studying.”
“Oh.” Rose’s face fell. She looked from Shayna to me and back again. “I . . . see.”
Awkwardly, I got up off her bed. Shayna handed me a cup and I passed it to Rose, as if that had been Shayna’s intention. Rose took it, slurping noisily, then smiled at me.
“When you guys are done, we can walk to dinner together,” she announced. “Us three.”
“That’d be great,” I said. “Shayna’s totally helping me catch up in trig.” I sounded like a moron, but I was uncomfortable.
Shayna led me out, down to a room at the end of the hall. She opened the door and I went in, to a room furnished more cheerfully than I had anticipated. She had an abstract oil painting on the wall beside a poster of a gorgeous girl who bore a resemblance to her. The girl was lying on her side, on what appeared to be a sheet of Lucite lit from underneath with blue lights, holding out a shiny red apple. Suggestive shadowing implied that she was naked.
Shayna’s bedspread was white decorated with purple and red tulips. She had covered her chandelier with a large purple paper star decorated with silver wires. On her desk were several plastic containers of silver, black, and green beads, a pair of pliers, and a spool of stringing wire.
And on her nightstand was a five-by-seven picture of Kiyoko and her, wearing matching pink feather boas and cheap rhinestone tiaras over what appeared to be baggy peasant-style dresses. They were blowing kisses at the camera.
She handed me the other hot chocolate and gestured for me to take a beanbag. She was wearing what looked like red thread on her left wrist. I remembered reading an article about a
ll the Hollywood celebs who were wearing them, but I didn’t remember why.
She saw me looking at it and said, “My stepsister got this in Israel. It’s for protection.”
I sank down, flashing for a brief moment on the horrible vision I’d had in the shower. My hands shook, and I silently cleared my throat, struggling to reboot.
“My parents didn’t want me to come back. I’m here for Kiyoko.” She swallowed hard. “They murdered her.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds, struggling to keep it together. Wondering if I could trust Shayna. “They . . . they tried to . . . ” Kill me too, I added silently. I couldn’t say it. I just couldn’t.
She leaned forward and gave me a long, penetrating look. Beneath her perfectly applied makeup, there were deeper, darker circles around her eyes. And I saw that she’d gone heavy on the blush. The actual Shayna was washed out and pale. “Why did you come back?”
I felt Celia’s icy presence flooding through me. Was she warning me not to tell?
“Tell me about the dybbuk,” I said.
“I never really listened to all my grandmother’s old stories. Until . . . now.” She gave me another look. “It’s usually the ghost of a dead person, someone who’s not done here. Earth, I mean.”
“Not done,” I ventured. “Like they have a grudge?”
She smiled her cynical smile, pulling up the left side of her face, her lips pursed tightly together. “I guess you could say that.”
“And . . . they’re evil?”
“Not always. But yeah.” She ran her hands through her hair. “The dybbuk that’s possessing Mandy Winters is most definitely evil.”
The dybbuk that’s possessing Mandy Winters.
“Take it easy,” Shayna said, leaning forward and easing my hot chocolate to my lips. It was an intimate gesture, and it made me more uncomfortable instead of less. I didn’t know Shayna. But who did I know anymore?
“What about the ones that aren’t evil?” I asked.