“So am I.” I swallow hard and look at Amber, hoping for one of her stupid jokes, waiting for Drea to tell me that everything will be fine. But it just remains quiet among us for several seconds.
Finally, Amber feeds the cassette back into the player and hits fast forward a bunch of times, followed by the play button. “Nothing,” she says. She flips the tape over and tries that side as well. “It’s blank except for that one song.”
I take the tape out and press it between my palms, trying my best to concentrate, to sense something. “The letter M,” I say, picturing it pressed behind my eyes. “Like the first time I dreamt about it.”
“Now, would that be M for Maura or M for murder?” Amber asks. “Or maybe it’s M for the ‘Miss Mary Mack’ song.” She over-enunciates the Ms on the title. “I’m a wee bit drained of all this rainy-day clue stuff, Stacey.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your insights,” she says. “They’re all so foggy.”
“This isn’t exactly easy for me.”
“It isn’t easy for any of us,” Drea says.
“I know,” I say, draping my arm around Drea, noticing how watery her eyes look.
She wipes the tears that dribble from the corners of her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “Maybe Amber and I should talk about this someplace else.”
“No,” Drea says, sitting up to straighten her posture. “I want to help. We need to figure this stuff out, like, why an origami snake?”
“It was in my dream,” I say, remembering the detail. “I also sensed it.”
“You sensed origami snakes?” Amber winds the boa around her head, turban-style.
“Well, not exactly,” I correct. “When I got that first weird letter, I was able to sense paper folding.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t paper rolling?” Amber asks.
“Hilarious,” I say.
“Yeah, but why a snake?” Drea asks, ignoring Amber. “Why not a rat or a goat? And why that ‘Miss Mary Mack’ song?”
“That’s easy,” Amber says. “Because when Stacey fell asleep in yoga class she started singing some twisted version of it.”
“And now I have everyone singing that stupid little tune at me.” I sigh. “That and throwing barf bags in my path.”
“Mortifying,” Amber says.
“Were you dreaming about Maura this time as well?” Drea asks.
“No,” I say. “My nightmare this morning was different.” I grab a couple paper towels and a bottle of Windex and begin mopping up the mirror. Between wipes, I tell them all about the banner and the students gathered around it, and then segue into my little run-in with the guy from the woods. I tell them how he was the one who sent me that e-mail and broke into the boiler room.
“He’s also the one who handed me the origami snake in my dream,” I say. “He wants me to meet him later.”
“We’re so there!” Amber declares. “What time?”
“No,” I say. “I think I should go alone. He wants to talk to me alone.”
“Are you crazy?” Drea asks.
“No one’s going anywhere alone,” Amber says. “Not for a good two weeks.”
“No,” I say, scavenging through my spell drawer for a bottle of cinnamon oil. “I’ll be fine.” I dab my finger with a bit of the oil and then touch all four corners of the mirror to help restore positive energy. “Plus,” I continue, “he’ll know if you guys are with me. He’s obviously watching me.”
“Wait,” Drea says. “Is he the one who’s sending you all this stuff?”
“Obviously,” Amber says. “The guy’s a total psycho.”
“Actually, I don’t know who this stuff is from. I need to talk to him about that. But I’m thinking it’s from someone else.”
“Why?” Amber asks, fake-smoking one of the feathers from her boa.
I glance back at the crystal on my night table, wondering if I should explain about its healing qualities, how the person who gave it to me couldn’t possibly be the same person to send me something so menacing. But then I change my mind, considering how ridiculous the words sound in my head—how ridiculous it would be to try and explain such a theory when breaking into the dorm’s boiler room in the middle of the night is nothing less than menacing. When the guy who gave me the crystal was in fact the same person who handed me the origami snake in my nightmare.
“Look,” I say, “I need to go alone. I can’t waste any time here. I only have a week.”
“Less than a week,” Drea says, nibbling at an acrylic nail.
I nod, swallowing down the lump of fear in my throat. “I’ll call you guys as soon as I’m done talking to him. But I can’t afford having you around, having him see you. Deal?”
Amber grits her teeth. She purposefully plucks a handful of feathers from her boa and throws them to the floor, as if they could smash. “So pluckin’ bunk,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I don’t see where I have another choice here.”
“There’s always a choice,” Amber says, retreating to her bed.
“We just don’t want anything to happen to you,” Drea says. “I mean, if you were to go there alone, and something bad happened, how do you think we’d ever be able to forgive ourselves?” Drea bites down so hard on one of her acrylic nails that it makes a loud cracking sound, but still, it doesn’t seem to faze her. She shakes her head and covers over her mouth, as if she could fall apart at any moment.
“I don’t know,” I say, looking down at my amethyst ring. All I know is that right now I have to worry about myself, especially since there’s no point in denying it further. The danger that’s coming in less than one week is definitely pointed at me.
I make a genuine attempt to concentrate in school. I bring all my books, arrive to all my classes on time, and even try my best to listen to what the teachers are saying instead of focusing on the area above their heads, drifting off into space. But, with everything going on in my world, I just can’t stop thinking about tonight—about meeting the guy from the woods, finding out as much as I can, and seeing if any of it helps to piece the details of my nightmares into some sort of place.
I just hope I can squeeze all of that into the hour window I have open before I’m supposed to go meet Chad. I would postpone our date for tonight, even move it back a half-hour or so, but with all the negative energy stacked up between us lately, I’ve decided we can’t afford to put off our much-needed alone time for even five measly minutes.
So, after entire lunch and dinner sessions spent trying to convince Drea, Amber, and PJ to make themselves scarce while I go meet Mystery Boy, I’m thinking things are pretty much a go—that is, until the dinner conversation takes an unexpected turn.
“Are you at least going to tell Chad you’re going?” Drea asks.
“I hadn’t exactly planned on it,” I say.
“I think he should know,” Drea says.
“I could tell him,” PJ says. “I’ve been known to swing by the hockey rink during practice, you know, to offer the boys a pointer or two.”
“Let’s face it,” Amber says, “you don’t exactly have much of a pointer to offer.” Amber raises her pinky finger at him, wiggling it slightly as she sips from her juice box.
PJ fork-flings a glob of mashed potatoes in retaliation, but, instead of hitting her, it hits Donna Tillings, sitting at the empty table behind ours. She turns to us, the dark circles under her eyes highlighted by the blanched color of her skin.
“Oh, sorry,” PJ says, lowering his fork. “Bad aim.”
Donna’s lips part—chalky-white lips with dots of red where they’ve obviously been bleeding. She nods slightly, her gaze dropping toward the floor, and then she turns around to resume her dinner.
> “Freak show,” Amber mouths.
“No,” I whisper, remembering how Donna made an appearance in my nightmare last night. “It’s kind of sad the way she’s changed so much.”
“I agree with Amber,” PJ whispers. “It’s total freak show. I mean, yeah, your best friend croaks . . . it sucks goat cheese big time. But why should that make you turn into some zombie girl? Life goes on. You know what I mean?”
“Have you ever had a best friend die?” I hiss.
He shakes his head.
“Well, come talk to me when you do.”
The table goes library silent.
“What time are you supposed to meet him tonight?” Amber asks after a weighty pause.
“Eight. And like I said, I’m not telling anyone about it. End of story.”
“Except for us,” Amber corrects.
“I still think Chad would want to know,” Drea says.
“I disagree.”
“How can you say that?” Drea asks. “He cares about you.”
“I know he does. And, yeah, I think in theory he’d want to know if I was in any kind of danger.”
“You think?”
“Okay, I know. But I also know he’d think something like this was someone’s idea of a joke, that I should tell the administration or campus police about what’s been happening, and that Veronica Leeman’s appearances in my dreams only cement the fact that I’m post-traumatic-stressing after last year.”
“Maybe you’re not giving him enough credit,” Drea says.
“You’re not going to tell him,” I say.
“What if he calls?” she asks.
“He won’t,” I say. “He’ll be at practice until he comes to pick me up.”
“But what if?” she asks. “And you aren’t back yet?”
“Tell him I just stepped out for a sec.”
Drea shakes her head to show her disapproval and resumes pushing her food around on the plate. I hate asking her to lie for me. But I’d hate it more if Chad and I got into another fight.
I arrive at the library at promptly 7:45—enough time to get settled, have him see that I am indeed by myself, and, most importantly, to run through the list of questions in my head so I don’t leave any out. I’m hoping this won’t take too long since I’m still supposed to be meeting Chad at nine back at the dorm. But just in case, I’ve stocked Drea up with more of my lies. If Chad arrives to pick me up before I get back, she’s going to tell him that I’m finishing up a last-minute group project in the library and will be back ASAP.
I close the study room door behind me and take a seat at the table to wait. The crystal cluster rock rests in my pocket. I take it out and focus on the broken edges, now healed over with smooth slabs of glasslike crystal. I wonder how long the healing process took and what inspired the transformation, why it didn’t instead break up into a million tiny fragments.
After several minutes of waiting, I find myself rapping my fingertips against the smooth mahogany tabletop, just staring at the blank white wall in front of me, at a pair of houseflies lingering there. I imagine them as Amber and Drea—the two doing everything they can, including self-mutating spells, to make sure I’m not alone.
I smile at the thought and then peek at my watch. It’s 8:07, my cue to leave. I stuff the crystal back into my pocket and get up from the table. That’s when the doorknob twists open and he comes in. He closes the door behind him and just stands there, staring right at me, those slate-blue eyes even more lucid under the fluorescent lights.
“You’re late,” I manage. “I was just gonna go.”
“I got caught up in some stuff,” he says, looking toward the table. “Do you want to sit?”
We take our seats across from one another. “So?” I say. “What’s all this about?”
“You,” he says.
“Me?”
He nods.
“What about me?”
He looks down at his fingers, as though not quite ready to tell me. His hands are bony but strong, the individual muscles outlined in smooth, olive skin. “It’s kind of hard to say,” he begins, “since we barely even know each other.”
“Just say it,” I tell him. “I’ve waited long enough.”
“Could we maybe just talk a bit first?” he asks. “Get to know each other a little? You don’t even know what my name is, do you?”
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Jacob.”
“Okay, then, Jacob, what do you have to tell me?”
“Were you maybe wondering what I was doing in the woods last night?” He locks his eyes on mine, forcing me to look somewhere—anywhere—else. I focus on his chin and the contour of his cheeks, the way the angles of his face square off at a strong, defined jaw line.
“Maybe a little,” I say, looking away entirely.
“Maybe you already know.” He scoots in closer, enabling me to smell him. He smells like wheat grass and candle wax.
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask, leaning back, hooking my feet around the legs of my chair.
“I want you to tell me,” he says.
I take a deep breath and remind myself why I’m here—how he might be able to help me, how it’s possible he could offer some bit of information that would help glue the pieces of this puzzle together. “Are you the one who’s been leaving me stuff?” I ask.
“What stuff?”
“The letters and the cassette,” I say, somewhat reluctantly. “And the message on the window in the boiler room of my dorm.”
He shakes his head.
“But you know who did,” I say, more of a statement than a question.
“No.”
“Then what?” I ask. “What am I doing here?”
“I think you already know the answer to that. Don’t you?” He leans in closer and looks at me hard, his eyes almost challenging me.
“I think I’ve wasted enough time,” I say, my voice cracking over the words. I get up from the table and make my way to the door.
“Who’s Maura?” he asks, just before I have the chance to turn the knob. “And why is she haunting your nightmares?”
I turn back around. “What did you just say?”
“I think you heard me.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I know a lot about you, Stacey.”
I plunk back down on the seat across from him. “You obviously heard about the trial last year. How I told everyone about my experience with nightmares.”
“I’m talking about the nightmares you’re having about Maura now,” he says.
I feel my chin tremble. I’m not sure what to say or how to respond.
“You’re having nightmares about Veronica Leeman as well,” he continues. “You’re scared you’ll end up just like her. That’s why you dream about her, you know. She represents death for you.”
How does he know these things? Did Amber or Drea let it leak out? Did PJ? I think back to the nightmare I had about Veronica Leeman, how all the girls on the floor gathered around, including Trish Cabone, who asked me about it later.
“Who told you about that?” I ask.
“No one told me,” he says. “No one had to.”
“What do you mean no one?”
“I mean, I’m having nightmares about you, Stacey.”
It takes me a couple seconds to regain my breath. Jacob is staring at me intensely, awaiting my response. But I’m not sure where to begin. I look down into my hands to avoid his gaze. “What kind of nightmares?” I ask, finally.
“Like the ones you have. Like the kind you had about Maura before she died. Like the ones last year, with Drea.”
I bite my lip to stop the trembling. Everything he’s saying is just so hard to swallow. He do
esn’t even know me, and yet he seems to know so much about me.
“What happens when you dream?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, does anything happen to you?”
“Happen? Like what?”
I continue to stare into my hands as though they hold all the answers. I’m not sure there’s a nonchalant sort of way to ask him if his nightmares cause freakish side effects like bedwetting or puking, so I just shrug it off.
“I’m more like you than you think,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I can see things in my dreams.”
“And what have you seen?” I ask, feeling myself swallow.
But instead of telling me outright, he takes his time and starts from the very beginning. He tells me that sometime at the end of last year, just before summer vacation, he started having nightmares about me—only he didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know where I lived, or what my name was, or if I was just a figment of his dreams. But the nightmares became more intense, more telling, revealing to him where I went to school. And so he started doing the research, which supposedly led him to the details of last year. He claims he then got a gnawing urge to transfer to Hillcrest from his private school in Colorado.
“And your parents didn’t mind?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, they were against it at first, but then they kind of got used to the idea.”
“Why? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because I’m different from them. And maybe they’re a little bit tired of that. I think it was almost easy for them to send me across the country—convenient. I think maybethey hope I’ll come back as some soccer jock or prom king. Maybe they think some all-inspiring teacher can make me stand on a desk or listen to Mozart—transform me into the next dead-poet-loving-society member.”
I nod, knowing full well what he means.
“All I know is that I had to follow what my nightmares were warning me,” he continues. “Regardless of what my parents wanted. I’ve had stuff like this happen to me before—nightmares, I mean. Maybe not as intense as this, but still they came true. I just wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if something happened to you and I did nothing to try and stop it. Even though I didn’t know who you were . . . I know it sounds crazy, but I had to do something. I had to try and find you.”