The Screaming Season (5 page)

“What else do you see when you look at Marlwood, walking down the path?”

“Jessel. The other old building in Academy Quad. It has four turrets and a lake view. It’s supposed to be haunted,” I blurted, before I realized what I was saying.

“Do you think it’s haunted?”

“Of course not.”
I don’t think it’s haunted. I know it’s haunted.
“Mandy Winters lives there, with her friends.”

“I’ve met her brother, Miles.”

“They’re twins,” I said. I heard the tremor in my voice. I was sure he could hear it too.

“Go on,” he prompted again. I relaxed a little. He wasn’t going to ask questions about the Winterses. He wouldn’t pry. Not yet, anyway. First he had to gain my trust. That was how it worked in therapy.

“Past Academy Quad, there’s the commons, where we eat. There are around a hundred of us. Then the gym. And the library.”
And the statue garden.
I didn’t mention it. Someone had stalked me there. And it’s where I found Celia’s locket, given to her by David Abernathy a hundred years ago as a token of his love.

Of course, he had given Belle an identical one . . .

“There are some abandoned buildings, but those are off-limits.” Except for parties, and séances, and attempted murders. The lake house. The operating theater.

“Don’t, don’t!”
Celia protested.

“Excuse me, what did you say?” he asked softly.

I pressed my mouth shut. To distract myself, I gazed at the yellow circle of light on the wall, golden and warm as the sun. There were weeks at Marlwood when the sun hadn’t shone even for an hour. Gray, scary days, when the fog boiled off the lake and the birds wouldn’t land on the water. Where Mandy and her ally, Belle, tracked girls for the other ghosts to possess so they could try to kill Celia, through me.

I shifted in my chair, barely able to keep still. I couldn’t tell him about any of that. I stared at the yellow circle.

And suddenly, I was remembering my ride back to school with Troy. Driving up the Pacific Coast Highway as surfers rode the waves and Troy grinned at me, tanned, his eyes an unearthly blue. Dimples. Freckles. And the best kisses, ever. Then he dropped the bomb two hours before we were scheduled to arrive on campus: he was still Mandy’s boyfriend. Despite his promise to break up with her—a promise I had not asked him to make—he hadn’t. Kiyoko had died, and Mandy was so torn up about it that he hadn’t had the heart to add more agony to her life.

That was the reason he gave me, anyway.

“All men are lying bastards,”
Celia hissed.

“You were telling me about the sun,” Dr. Morehouse said.

“On the water,” I said drowsily. “Riley likes to surf.” I couldn’t remember telling him about Riley.

“Do you surf?”

“Body surf.” I felt myself smile. A real smile. The warm ocean water enfolded me; salt water crusted my lips. “We eat dried mangoes from the Asian market. Diet cream soda.”

Riley and I got busted by a lifeguard for making out. He told us there were too many young kids around for that kind of PDA. I couldn’t believe I had gotten in trouble for kissing the hottest guy at school. It was quite a coup. The sun had beat down so bright and yellow and I dribbled mango juice on my lips. Riley licked it off and it was so fun and so amazing that my school’s first-string quarterback was kissing me that I started laughing.

I chuckled now, low in my throat. Warmth seeped through me. I felt safe. San Diego. Home. I heard the breakers. I smelled my suntan lotion.

Home.

LATER, WHEN I woke up, the dimmer lights were still on, but shadows from the windows threw stripes on the walls. I was curled up in the oversized chair with a goose down pillow under my head and a soft green blanket wrapped around me. I was alone. I had fallen asleep during our ramble and Dr. Morehouse had gone.

I had slept well. No nightmares had shaken me; there was no sense of being spied, crept in upon. If Celia was still with me, I couldn’t tell.

That didn’t mean she was gone. But it was the first decent rest I had had in weeks—every night had been a succession of nightmares. To actually sleep, and to wake up normally, not because I was screaming inside . . . it felt as good as body surfing. And sunshine.

But had I
said
anything?

I rode the wave of peacefulness as it began to ebb. It had been mine, for a time.

A sandwich had been left for me. Turkey and Havarti cheese on a croissant, my favorite lunch item on the Marlwood menu. And two chocolate chip cookies. Had I given Dr. Morehouse my food order, under hypnosis?

Wind rattled the windows. Ms. Simonet cracked the door open and smiled—genuinely—when she saw that I was awake and eating my meal.

“You’ve slept for hours,” she told me. “The girls came at noon to help you study. Then they came after classes. But I thought it would be better if you caught up on your sleep.” Before I could ask, she said, “It’s nine-thirty at night.”

I’d been out for almost twelve hours.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I told her, and she came forward to help me up—which was good, because my left leg had fallen asleep. I stood and let the blood flow back into it, then wobbled into the bathroom and shut the door. I had to cross in front of the mirror over the sink basin to get to the toilet, and my first impulse was to avoid it.

But tonight, I stopped and looked. And instead of a crazy, possessed lunatic, I saw a fairly good-looking high school sophomore. And that was
it
.

I blew that girl a kiss.

THE NEXT DAY was Sunday, and Troy came to visit me. He had driven over in his ’68 T-bird with Spider, Julie’s boyfriend. Boys weren’t allowed on campus, but Troy the charmer had permission to drop by whenever he wanted. A bribe, I supposed, so his parents wouldn’t sue the school. Or me.

He was wearing a white T-shirt and over that a thick dark-gray hoodie. He had on jeans and hiking boots—normal person clothes—but somehow he retained his rich-guy air. Maybe it was his perfect hair, or his teeth. His arm was still in a sling; I spun a microfantasy of Troy ten years in the future, overseeing his father’s vast business empire, explaining to people that his hoped-for professional basketball career had ended through a “fluke accident.” Although, thus far, he hadn’t told me about any plans to become a pro ballplayer.

He must have read the expression on my face. Color crept up his neck and spread across his cheeks.

“I told Mandy not to say anything. About what happened in the operating theater.” His voice was low.

Some of the coolness left the moment, like air out of a deflating balloon. Mandy. Of course he had been talking to her. She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she? And I had attacked them both in the operating theater.

Sitting in one of the plastic chairs, he surveyed the stacks of textbooks and notebooks. Julie had brought my laptop, too. And most of my clothes.

“Why don’t they just let you out?”

“They’re going to,” I said defensively. “I have pneumonia.”

I couldn’t stop looking at the sling. He had sat by my bedside after they had brought me in, me raving that he was going to kill me, kill all of us. But after they drugged me, I heard him whispering to me that he loved me. I had clung to that. Now here we were face-to-face. I wondered if he would say it, when I was awake.

“It, um, doesn’t hurt.” He touched it, as if to prove it. “I didn’t really even notice when you hit . . . ” Trailing away, he cleared his throat. “It was stupid of me to set up the operation like that. I knew how upset you were about the lobotomies and all. I’ve got this gore factor streak . . . ”

“I appreciated the gesture,” I said, although he was right: the idea was pretty bizarre. My big Valentine’s surprise was that he and Marica had lovingly re-created Dr. Abernathy’s lobotomy surgery in the operating theater, down to a hospital bed, an ice pick, and a hammer. “And the dinner was nice.” I was lying. Our dinner at the posh spa marked the moment I had become convinced that Troy had become possessed by the ghost of David Abernathy. Then things had spiraled out of control at the dance, when Spider had accused him of attacking Julie.

But he hadn’t. And we still didn’t know who had. We called our scary, unidentified bad guy the Marlwood Stalker.

Maybe it was something that lives in the woods, waiting for us, to hurt us and kill us. Maybe it was one of us, possessed. Maybe me. I was there when she was attacked. I was the one who found her with her skirt torn off, and she was half out of her mind.

I knew someone else who was half out of her mind—Celia. There were hours I couldn’t account for, when I found myself in places I had no memory of going: the operating theater, the haunted library, the lake. I didn’t know what I had done—or what Celia had made me do—had I killed the birds, and the cat? Had I made slash marks in the trees and followed people in the fog? Had I attacked Julie?

Did I—no, Celia—have
anything
to do with Kiyoko’s death?

Had I told Dr. Morehouse any of that?

My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t, wouldn’t lose it in front of Troy again. But I could feel myself pulling apart, like a dropped stitch in a knitting project, not noticed, unraveling.

I began panicking about panicking—that was how anxiety attacks worked—and bitter cold spread through me. Celia. Oh, God, she was going to say something, do something . . .

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked me. “Sorry to bring up a sore subject.”

It seemed like the most bizarre thing he could say. Hitting him with a hammer was “a sore subject.”
Hitting
him. I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid I would cry.

Suddenly, the scent of geraniums wafted across my nose. Earthy, lemony. I inhaled it; my lungs were working again. I thought of my mom, and my panic weakened its death grip on me.
Memmy.
Was she here? Was she where Celia was? Maybe I was the unfinished business that kept her earthbound. Maybe she’d been waiting in case I needed her. And I did need her. Terribly.

“I’m okay,” Troy said as he jerked and pulled his cell phone out of his jacket. He looked at the faceplate and blinked. I knew by his expression that it was Mandy.

How convenient; he could come over to Marlwood whenever he wanted to, because of me. Then he could see Mandy too. Rich and gorgeous, Mandy was just mean. Poor and less than gorgeous, I was crazy.

He probably figured he’d stuck with the right girl.

“Hey, you know what? I’m really tired,” I said, so he wouldn’t tell me to my face that he had to go now. Firing him before he fired me.

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. “I thought maybe we could go for a walk or something.”

So you’re weren’t going to bail?
I kept the question to myself. Confident girls didn’t beg. Jane had taught me that.

“Maybe another time,” I said. I basked in his disappointment and reveled in the knowledge that all was not lost when it came to matters of Troy’s heart. And now that he’d mentioned going on a walk, claustrophobia welled inside me. In the past, when I was stressed, I had two modes—extreme burrowing or running it off. Exercise was good for panic. It burned off the adrenaline.

“Okay.” He got to his feet. “So, um, take care.” He turned to go, paused, turned back. My traitorous heart skipped a couple of beats as he looked hard at me and licked his just-as-sweetas-mango lips.

“Hey,” he said, “remember when I told you about seeing that, um, that burning girl on the road when we were driving up here?” That burning
ghost
? Yes, I did remember. It might have been Celia herself, or the memory of her, lost in the endless loop of failing to save her own life. Or it was just the flash of his headlight on a patch of fog.

Wordlessly, I nodded.

“Well, on the way over here, I thought I saw her again.”

In daylight. That made it scarier. If things went bump in the darkness, at least you could turn the lights on to make them go away. I feigned mild interest, but I twisted my hands together in my lap.