I glance back up at Drea, who’s focusing on her plate as though the pasta noodles hold all the answers. I have no idea what she’s more upset about—me and Chad or this whole nightmare business. I just know we need to have a serious talk.
After school, Amber and I end up going straight to yoga class. I figure an hour of mind-centering postures might help melt a bit of the tension I feel building up inside of me. And, for the most part, I think it works. As Keegan, our RD/yoga instructor, leads us through a series of warm-ups and then vinyasas, I feel the tension begin to dissipate.
I cover myself with a wool blanket and lie flat on my back in preparation for Savasana. It’s sort of ironic that this is actually my favorite part of yoga—ironic because Savasana is also sometimes referred to as the corpse pose. I close my eyes and try to forget I know this bit of trivia. I’m beyond tired so it’s actually not so difficult to just let my mind go numb. I concentrate on the musical chanting in the background, mixed with the hum of the aquarium filter, and slowly begin to feel myself drift into lovely space.
But then I remember. I sit up straight and look down at my watch. I forgot about Lecklider’s detention. I peel myself off the sticky mat, grab my bag, and plow through the doors without even bothering to tell Amber to come along with me. Halfway down the hallway, I manage to get my sneakers on, still doing my best to move toward the classroom. But when I get there, there’s an e-mail note tacked up on the door announcing that detention has been moved to the basement.
I hurry my way down two flights of steps and charge through the steel door at the bottom. There’s a wooden sign that reads DETENTION FOR STACEY BROWN hanging on the wall. It points down the long and narrow hallway that faces me.
I begin making my way in that direction, wondering why the sign only lists my name—why I’m the only one with detention down here.
The sparse, yellow overhead lights cast down over a hallway littered with custodial debris—paint cans, rollers, rags, some mixing sticks, a custodial uniform balled up on the floor. The walls and floor are a deep green color, just a layer of paint over bare cement, and there are doors on the right and left. I try the closest door to the left. Locked. I try another. Also locked. I continue down the hallway, listening at a few of the doors, trying the knobs. But it’s like this place is completely deserted.
Like maybe this has been a mistake.
I’m just about to turn around and head back when I hear something coming from the end of the hallway. It’s a slapping sound, like someone’s feet hitting against the cement floor.
“Hello?” I call.
The slapping stops.
The end of the hallway is still several yards away. I take a few steps closer, noticing a large gray door at the very end. “Hello?” I call again.
Still nothing.
I wonder if maybe this whole thing is yet another stupid joke, if maybe someone’s watching me right now, trying to hold in a fit of laughter. I look around, toward the ceiling and then behind me.
“Hello?” I call out again. “This isn’t funny.”
No response.
I turn to leave, walking quickly at first, but then gathering speed.
The slapping sound starts up again; I can hear it echoing off the walls. I hurtle through the steel basement door at full speed and scramble up the stairs in complete darkness, the lights in the stairwell all switched off. There’s a set of doors at the top. I feel for the handles and try pushing them, but it’s like they’re chained. Like I’m trapped.
I pound my fists against the doors, kick at the handles to try and break the lock, yell with all the energy I have for someone to come and help me. But it’s deathly quiet.
The steel door to the basement opens. The sound of footsteps makes its way toward me, up the stairs. I squat down in the corner.
“Stacey?” says a male voice. “Are you here?”
I don’t say anything.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s just me.”
I squint to try and make out a face, like that will make a difference.
“It’s me,” he insists. “I knew I’d find you here.”
“PJ?” I call out.
I wait several seconds before beginning my way back down the stairs. “Where are you?” I walk through the door at the bottom. Still no one. “PJ?” I call out. I can hear someone laughing at the end of the hallway. Why is he doing this? How is this supposed to be funny?
I start down the hallway again, following the sound of laughter. It leads me closer to the slapping sound. Maybe I should just go to it. Maybe the answer to getting out of here is behind it.
Focusing on the weathered gray door at the end, I wonder if it might be the way out. It seems darker the closer I get to it, the yellowy overhead lights more dim and sparse. I keep moving toward the door, the sound of the slapping getting louder, so close now. I take several steps, squinting to make out the shadows that play to the right of the door. They jump back and forth to the beat of the slapping. Like someone’s there. Waiting for me.
“Hello?” I call.
Just a few yards away now, I can make out a looplike shadow against the door. And just to the right of it, scribbled on the ground in a dark red color, is a giant letter M. It’s staring right up at me.
“Stacey,” says a girl’s voice.
I freeze. There’s a walloping inside my chest, pushing through my skin, freezing me in place. I know that voice. I’d recognize it anywhere. But it can’t be. Maura’s dead. She’s been dead for four years.
“Stacey,” Maura’s voice repeats.
Tears roll down the sides of my face. My stomach bubbles up in fear and pain. I want to be sick. I hold my gut and try to calm the quake in my stomach.
“Whatsa matter?” she asks. “Tummy ache?”
The shadow of the loop continues in a perpetual motion, from top to bottom, and then rotates around, like a jump rope. I move up to the door. But no one’s there, just the jumping shadow. And I can hear her voice, singing that “Miss Mary Mack” song I taught her—except the words are much different:
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. That’s why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die, die.
“Who’s there?” I cry out. “Who’s doing this? Why is this happening?”
The singing stops, but then I hear Maura scream. I pound and kick against the door, but I’m going to be sick. I can’t hold it in.
“Stacey,” a male voice whispers through the door crack. “Will you keep your promise?”
“What?” I shriek. “What are you talking about?”
“In less than one week,” the voice says.
My mouth arches to scream but instead fills with bile. Vomit. Spurting out my mouth.
“Stacey!” I feel a tug at my arm.
“She’s in there!” I blurt out when my throat clears. “Jumping rope.”
“Stacey!” Amber repeats, shaking me out of dreamland, to my senses.
I look around, finally coming to, my heart thrashing in my chest. We’re still in yoga class.
Keegan hovers over me, the silver ends of her long, dark corkscrew hair hitting against my arm, giving me the chills. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I wipe the vomit from the corners of my mouth and see a puddle of it on the sticky mat beside me. “I guess something just didn’t agree with me.”
She nods. “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and clean yourself up?”
“It’s like I always say,” Amber begins, “cafeteria food mixed with body contortions is so not a good idea.”
I get up and make my way to the bathroom, noticing I’ve interrupted even the most dedicated yoga practitioners from their corps
elike Savasana. I close the door behind me and splash some water on my face, doing my best to ease my senses, to wash out my mouth with my finger. I look in the mirror and stare deeply into my golden-brown eyes—eyes just like my grandmother’s. Hers held strength and courage, and weren’t afraid to see. But mine are simply covered over with redness, angry veins stretching across the pupils. I look down at the amethyst ring she gave me—a square and chunky stone that almost reaches my knuckle. And then it hits me.
I have less than a week to figure out why I’m dreaming about old ghosts. Because if I don’t, someone could end up dead.
Amber and I are back in our room, sitting crosslegged on my bed, and I’ve just guzzled down practically a whole two-liter bottle of ginger ale.
Amber refolds the dampened rag and hands it to me. “So—we need to talk. Drea’s not here. What’s going on for real?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, Stacey,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m not stupid. I know you fell asleep in yoga class. And I know that sleep plus weird bodily functions equals some serious bad kitty for you.”
“Huh?” I rub at the throb in my head.
“Don’t go getting all denial on me about it. Between this afternoon and this morning’s freak show in the common room . . . What’s going on? And what, can I ask, was up with that twisted little song you were singing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“In yoga class . . . I assume when you fell asleep. You were singing some dirgeful version of ‘Miss Mary Mack.’”
“I was?”
She nods. “Like straight out of the Addams Family show tunes.”
This time I tell her everything—all the details about the nightmare I had in yoga class and how, yes, it’s true, my nightmares have been making me sick to my stomach.
Contrary to her earlier behavior in the cafeteria with PJ, Amber looks about as disappointed as I feel. She grabs her feather-fringed pillow off the floor and begins plucking away at the individual quills.
“What happened to ‘a quest for a killer’?” I ask. “You seemed so into it earlier.”
“That was BP,” she says.
“BP?”
“Yeah, you know,” she holds up a feather for emphasis. “Before the Puke. The purposeful puking changes everything. Now I know it’s bad kitty. It’s just like last year, with your icky bedwetting.”
“Yeah, well, if it hadn’t been for that bedwetting, I may have never saved Drea; I may never have been able to find her.”
“So how’s the puking supposed to help us?” She sighs. “And who’s in trouble this time?”
“I don’t know. But like I said before, I think it’s better to be dreaming about people who are already dead than people who are going to die, don’t you?”
“All I know is that it so sucks for you,” she says. “I mean, I can’t even handle the Monthly Marvin, never mind bedwetting one year and impromptu puking the next. How do you do it, Stacey? How do you even manage to get out of bed each day?”
I blot my eyes with the rag, finally noticing that it’s actually a dampened thong with a scowling, buxom Wonder Woman silkscreened on the front. “What is this?”
“It was the only clean thing I could find.”
At that, the door to our room opens. It’s Drea. I quickly stuff the thong-rag under my covers.
“What’s up?” She deposits her backpack on the floor and sits down on the edge of her bed, facing us.
“Not much,” I say.
“Really?” Drea purses her lips together. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“I don’t know.” Amber pokes a feather behind her ear. “Maybe it’s because you’re paranoid.”
“Maybe,” Drea says. “Or maybe it’s because Stacey up-chucked in yoga class. You don’t think people aren’t talking about it?”
“Great.” I flop back against my pillow, grab the thong-rag from under the covers, and lay it over my eyes in a futile attempt to block everything out.
While the two discuss the highlights of my vomit, I do my best to concentrate on why my nightmares are making me sick. And then it occurs to me. I didn’t get sick when I dreamt about Veronica. So what makes that nightmare different? I try to think, but I just can’t concentrate.
“Wait,” Amber shouts. “Stacey, maybe you threw up because of morning sickness.”
“Oh, please,” I moan.
“What?” I can hear the smile in Amber’s voice. “It makes total sense, doesn’t it? And it’s completely possible, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
“I don’t feel like talking about this.” I can just picture Drea’s face in my mind—jaw locked, teeth clenched, eyes rolled up toward the ceiling.
“Come on,” Amber pleads.
“Forget it,” I say.
“Well, that answers my question,” she sighs. “If you can’t talk about it, obviously you haven’t done it.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I begin, “but me and Chad are perfectly happy with our PG-13 relationship.”
“Tell him that,” Amber says.
I remove the thong-rag from my eyes and scoot up in bed. Drea has already changed from her uniform into civilian clothes—a pair of low-rise jeans paired with the most basic of basic-blue turtleneck tops, her hair knotted up in one of those big plastic clips. So why does she look so damned perfect?
“Coming to dinner?” she asks, fishing her school ID from the side pocket of her backpack.
But since I definitely need some alone time, I tell them about my grandiose plans to make a microwave version of a grilled-cheese sandwich here—even though there’s a giant part of me that doesn’t want a dolled-up Drea to have such open access to my boyfriend.
After they leave, I roll over in bed and stare at the bright white candle on the night table, wondering if this might be an opportune time to light it—since I feel so alone, since I’d give almost anything to talk to my grandmother right now. But instead I grab the phone and dial my mother.
She answers. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.” I tug the covers up over my cheek and do my best to hold back the tears I feel storming up inside me. We talk for several minutes about normal stuff—about school and my teachers, about the season premiere of Gilmore Girls and the new painting class she’s taking. I almost want to tell her about my Maura nightmares. But I don’t. Because I know she won’t understand. Because we get along best when I don’t talk about my visions—when I’m least like my grandmother, when I try my best to separate myself from witchdom.
After a good twenty-plus minutes of pauseless conversation, we end up saying our goodbyes and hanging up—she, completely pleased with our healthy relationship, and me, completely repressed by it.
In lieu of dinner, I’ve decided to brew up some prophecy tea. I pull the family scrapbook from the back of my closet in hopes of finding a good recipe. The book was given to me by my grandmother just two weeks before she passed away. It’s crammed with all sorts of spells and home remedies, verses of favorite poetry, and secret recipes from those in my family before me.
I don’t use the book very often, frankly, because I feel very strongly that spells come from within, that the most effective spells are those we create ourselves. But sometimes I do like to use it. I like the book’s sense of connection. I like to run my fingers over the handwritten pages and dream about the people who wrote them—what their lives might have been like, what might have prompted them to write a given spell or scribble down a certain recipe in the first place.
I set the weighty book down on my bed and flip through its yellowing pages. On a half-burned piece of tracing paper, I find a recipe for prophecy tea written by great-great-aunt Delia.
I place a bowl of water atop the dresser and add the necessary ingredients: a pinch of cinnamon,
two teaspoons of nutmeg for luck, three squeezes of a lime, and a few dried saffron petals.
I grab a wooden spoon from my spell drawer, mix everything up, and then set the bowl in the microwave for a full five minutes. The water is steaming when I take it out. I sit back on my bed with the bowl positioned in my lap, and allow the curls of steam to lap over my face. The cinnamon scent, like sweet wood, washes over my senses and opens them up. I close my eyes and concentrate on the saffron petals blending with the lime. The juice from the lime will help cleanse away any negative energy that might be looming over me from last year, while the saffron will help increase my psychic awareness.
I open my eyes and mix everything up once more with the spoon, concentrating on the blending of ingredients and what their unification means. I lift the bowl to my lips and take a sip. It tastes like holidays, like licking the batter bowl clean after my mother has made Gram’s recipe for cinnamon twirl puffs. The whole process soothes me, grounds me, makes me feel empowered, like maybe I can do this again.
With just a few sips left, I hear the door squeak open. It’s Drea.
“Hi,” she says, not really looking at me.
“Hi.” I feel my back straighten.
“I just came back for a book,” she says. “I’m meeting a study group in the library.”
“Can we talk?”
“I really don’t have time. They’re already waiting for me.” She grabs a couple textbooks from her desk and stuffs them into her backpack, still avoiding eye contact.
“Please.”
She pauses from packing and purses her lips, focusing on the area above my head. “Amber told me about the puking, Stacey. How it happened after you fell asleep, and how you guys are convinced something else is gonna happen. I just can’t handle it right now.”
“I understand,” I say, practically biting through my tongue. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”