The Evil Within

  A ghost had told me to murder another human being—someone I pretty much hated—but life just went on. Maybe Jane had been right: having a breakdown was a way to bail. You just sat down on the escalator and covered your head. At the moment, I was totally tempted to do just that.

  “Go on in,” Ms. Shelley said, and I nodded at her as I passed. “By the way,” she added, you look nice.”

  That caught me off guard. Besides, I had formed the impression that Ms. Shelley never actually saw me; she just kept track of Dr. Ehrlenbach’s appointments. If it was ten o’clock, it must be Lindsay Cavanaugh.

  But I had dressed to please, so I was grateful for the compliment. Julie and Marica had pulled my “look” together for me. Everyone (except for me, last semester) understood that an appointment with Ehrlenbach demanded good clothes. The first time I’d sat in her office, I’d worn raggedy jeans and had died a thousand deaths under her withering disgust. Now I had on a simple black wool skirt of Marica’s, Ida’s highly polished black riding boots, and Julie’s black wool boyfriend jacket with the sleeves pushed up in an attempt to disguise the fact that it was too big for me. Claire’s black-and-white silk paisley scarf was wound around my neck and loosely knotted. The resultant “look” was total conformity but it was Vogue-style conformity—and I actually savored the feeling of wearing a perfect outfit of clothes I couldn’t hope to afford.

  The ferocious statue of our founder, Edwin Marlwood, stared down at me as I rapped on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s door. There was no answer, but I knew that I was supposed to go into her office anyway. I opened the door into the freezing cold and shut it behind me. It was like stepping into a refrigerator, and I shivered as I sat down in a hunter-green upholstered chair on the visitor side of her desk. As usual, the rich wood surface was immaculate, nothing on it except a desktop monitor facing away from me and her brass nameplate. A watercolor rendition of the Winters Sports Complex was framed on the wall beside her Ph.D. from Harvard.

  I heard a soft ding. Incoming mail, probably. I slumped in the chair and tapped my fingers on the armrests; then pushed my butt to the back of the seat and sat up straight. Then before I was aware I was doing it, I got up and leaned over the desk, craning my neck to look at the screen. There was a nested list of folders. The header on the topmost one, SHAYNA MAISEL, caught my eye.

  It is unfortunate that Shayna’s Generalized Anxiety Disorder has grown so acute as to necessitate withdrawal from Marlwood. She has presented marked deterioration despite increased dosages of prescribed medications including benzodiazepines and her biweekly therapy sessions with Dr. Melton . . .

  Dr. Melton was our school shrink. Generalized Anxiety Disorder? Shayna? I would never have guessed.

  Then I heard Rose’s voice outside the door.

  “I was in the statue garden, and it was laying on the path. All mangled.”

  “It was lying on the path,” Dr. Ehrlenbach replied.

  “Actually, it was all over the path,” Rose said.

  I couldn’t hear Dr. Ehrlenbach’s reply. I crept from behind her desk and crossed to the door, pressing my ear against it. Dr. Ehrlenbach was still speaking: Something something something, Dr. Melton.

  “I don’t need to see a shrink,” Rose insisted. “Whoever messed up that bird does.”

  “Rose,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said, and then her voice trailed away.

  Suddenly, the knob on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s door turned, and the door pushed slightly open. I was in the way, and I took a step back. A short bald man with black eyebrows smiled curiously at me. Dr. Melton. I had met him before, when Kiyoko died.

  “Hello, Lindsay,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, gesturing to the hall.

  His smile stayed put. I was willing to bet that his psych training, not Botox, kept it there. “The girls found a dead bird. Looks like a cat found it first.”

  I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a cat at Marlwood. No. Lots of birds, though.

  “So,” he said, coming into the room. “I’m sure Dr. Ehrlenbach will be here in a minute.” He took the seat next to mine and gave it a half turn, so that when he sat down, he would be facing both Dr. Ehrlenbach and me. “How are things going?”

  “Fine,” I said, too quickly. I saw him file that away. Maybe along with my appearance—black circles, sunken cheeks. “Well, except for Shayna.”

  “Shayna’s home, and she’s doing much better. She just needs a little break.”

  “Oh. What’s her diagnosis?” I asked, because after you’ve had a nervous breakdown, you learn to talk like that.

  He raised a brow. “You know I can’t share that. Directly, at any rate. What do you know about schizophrenia?”

  I felt the walls of the room closing in, and my body temperature plummeted as if we were sitting outside in the snow. Schizophrenia and anxiety?

  “One symptom of schizophrenia is the manifestation of hallucinations,” he said.

  My face prickled. I fiddled with my Tibetan prayer beads, caught myself, stopped.

  “When people are under extreme stress, sometimes they see things that aren’t really there.”

  Not like at Marlwood. Like at my mother’s funeral, when I was sure she was still breathing. When I went to my father and begged him to tell the funeral director that they had to get the formaldehyde out of her body immediately, or she would truly die. I got a Xanax for my trouble; later, Dr. Yaeger asked me about it, and I wanted to kill my father for telling him. Not literally kill him, of course. But it had been my own private moment of losing my mom to the ground, and Dr. Yaeger wanted to dissect it like a biology specimen. And maybe he wrote it up in the report—the same report that I was even surer he had sent on to Marlwood. Maybe that was the real reason Dr. Ehrlenbach hadn’t wanted me to come to Marlwood in the first place.

  “Schizophrenics hallucinate even when they’re not stressed,” he went on.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t like where he was going.

  At that precise moment, Dr. Ehrlenbach entered the room. She was carrying a wafer-thin hunter-green folder, which she handed to him. Her face betrayed no emotion; my school was being run by Vulcans.

  Dr. Melton opened the folder while Dr. Ehrlenbach seated herself behind her desk. He scanned some papers, then flipped it shut. They exchanged glances; I couldn’t read their non-expressions. But at nearly the same instant, they both looked at me.

  “I asked Dr. Melton to stop by to see if there is anything we can do for you, Lindsay,” Dr. Ehrlenbach informed me. “You were the one who found Kiyoko Yamato, and I know that had to be very difficult for you. Now another classmate you were fond of has left suddenly.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to understand if she was actually linking dying with “suddenly leaving.” Abandonment issues. “But I just started to get to know Shayna,” I added defensively. “We didn’t move past fond.” I was talking too much. I had to shut up.

  “You’ve had nightmares. Frequent ones,” Dr. Ehrlenbach continued.

  Julie, how could you? I thought, gripping the arms of my chair. They would probably notice that. But then again, they already knew I had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder last September. That I had come to Marlwood partly because word had spread all over Grossmont High that I was a quivering mass of cuckoo.

  “I’ve had some nightmares,” I allowed.

  “Yet despite this, you’re doing very well in your classes. This is most impressive,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said. “If you continue to do this well, I believe Marlwood may be in a position to extend your scholarship for next year.”

  “No way,” I said, stunned. The last I had heard, I had too many Bs. Dr. Ehrlenbach stared at me, and I shifted and cleared my throat. “I mean, thank you.”

  “It appears that the Board of Trustees has found some funds to cover an extracurricular for you as well,” she went on. Her desk was so highly polished that I could see a vague reflection of her face in the wood. I dared not look down. If I saw Celia, there would be no more t
alk of how well I was doing.

  “I think, given your position, you should think strategically about what extracurricular to take. Something that will elevate your transcript.” She tapped on her keyboard. “Have you given any thought to where you’ll go?”

  “Go?”

  “You need to think differently,” she continued. “Marlwood is going to open doors for you. You need to get ready. For college.”

  I fidgeted, even more bewildered. I felt completely out of my element.

  She tapped some keys. “Your current foreign language is Spanish. We might want to talk about that. There are other languages that are more desirable. It’s a little too late to put you into the international relations club. Let’s schedule some sessions with Dr. Rahmani.” She glanced past her screen at me. “She’ll organize your admissions portfolio and help you investigate financial aid.”

  “Portfolio,” I said, and she looked at me as if I were speaking a less desirable language.

  “You should have begun this process last year. We need to catch up. I’ll have Dr. Rahmani available for you as soon as she has an opening.”

  “You and I will set up an appointment, too,” Dr. Melton informed me. “Some colleges are administering Meyers-Briggs or other psychological tests. I’ll have your housemother notify you.”

  “Ms. Krige,” Dr. Ehrlenbach told him.

  He took out a flat silver smart phone and typed into it, then put it back in his blazer pocket.

  “Lindsay, I hope you’ll take full advantage of these opportunities,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said. “Marlwood intends to prepare students for a life quite unlike the one you would have led, if you had not come here.”

  “Okay. I mean, thank you,” I said.

  She kept looking at me. Then she blinked. Dr. Melton pushed back his chair, so I did, too. Dr. Ehrlenbach made no move to stop me so I figured we were done.

  I followed Dr. Melton out of the room. He turned to the left, toward the statue of Edwin Marlwood, and I hovered, unsure what to do. He smiled and pointed in the opposite direction, where the reception was, and I nodded, reviewing what had just happened as I headed out.

  Are they bribing me? To do what? Or not to do what? Not to say anything?

  In the foyer, the light through the leaded windows was glum and gray, and shone down on four heads seated on the couch: Rose, Julie, Susi, and Gretchen. Julie’s face was puffy and blotched. Ms. Shelley was behind her desk on the phone, speaking softly. Susi and Gretchen were pressing their shoulders together, and Rose and Julie looked up as I came in.

  “Oh, Lindsay,” Julie said, leaping off the couch, rushing toward me, and throwing her arms around me. “It was so icky!”

  I looked from her to Rose, who seemed to be the chick in charge. Susi and Gretchen got up like old ladies. Dark circles like mine ringed Susi’s eyes; beneath a mask of makeup, Gretchen’s skin was dry and flaky. Signs of stress. They were slouchy and long-faced; yet, except for Rose, they were dressed like baronesses or at the very least, contestants on Project Runway. Rose was still stridently Rose; she was wearing purple high-tops, a long, ruffled skirt, and an oversized dark gray peacoat with a long lavender-and-olive scarf wound several times around her neck, like my black-and-white paisley. Her silver tube earrings were big enough to qualify as wind chimes.

  “Here’s your late slip, Lindsay,” Ms. Shelley told me. “Girls, you need to go to your next class.”

  I took the note and we all turned to go. Rose pushed out the front door, holding it open as Susi and Gretchen filed out, followed by Julie. I was last.

  “What was icky?” I asked, as I shut the door.

  “We found these animals,” Julie said. “A little black bird. And then Gretchen and Susi found some more, too. In the snow.”

  “Chilly con carnage,” Rose chimed in.

  Susi made a sort of groaning, growling sound and looked down at her feet. Gretchen gave her arm a pat.

  “But the worst was a cat,” Julie told me. She grimaced. “A black cat. It was horrible.”

  “Ms. Krige said there’s a mountain lion in the woods,” I ventured. Dr. Melton had downplayed all of this. He’d only mentioned one single bird. Did he think we didn’t talk to each other about the things that went on? Was calming them down part of my new open-door job?

  Rose traded looks with Susi, who looked positively green. Susi shrugged as if to say go ahead.

  “Maybe a mountain lion got it,” Rose allowed. “But we don’t think so. Because, wouldn’t a mountain lion eat the whole thing? This kitty was pretty much all there. Pretty much. We’re not sure what exactly got taken, but puss-puss was disemboweled, which I know from dissecting in biology. Gutted, but most of the guts were still there.”

  “God, Rose,” Gretchen snapped.

  “So someone . . . hurt it?” I said. “Whose cat was it?”

  Julie shook her head, weeping. Gretchen unconsciously twirled her hair. Her nail polish was chipped, a major offense among some. A sign of anxiety among others. Girls were stressing out. It hadn’t been like this last semester. Before our break, most of the student population had been blissfully unaware that there were some things that huge amounts of money could not fix.

  “So who did it?” I asked.

  “It’s the Marlwood Stalker,” Gretchen said.

  I jerked. That was the same phrase Troy had used.

  “Did you make that up?” I asked.

  Gretchen shook her head. “No. Mandy did.”

  I went cold. So they were talking. He had probably told her about the picture on my cell phone.

  “No one’s saying who the Stalker is,” Rose replied. She gave me a look. I translated: Rose had her suspicions.

  There was a long pause. I glanced over my shoulder at the admin building, as if they could hear every word, and lowered my voice.

  “Tell me who you think it is.”

  Another silence. We began to walk toward classes. It was cold. I could see our collective breaths, rising like fog over our heads.

  “Miles Winters,” Rose announced. Susi and Gretchen nodded; he was their number one suspect as well.

  “Did you tell Dr. Ehrlenbach?” I asked Rose.

  “Winters Sports Complex,” Rose drawled.

  Julie pulled away. “I don’t think it’s Miles. He left. Mandy said he’s in Hawaii.”

  Rose didn’t bother to reply. Of course there was no guarantee that Mandy was telling us the truth. And why was Julie defending him?

  “Ehrlenfreak said she’d ‘look into it.’” Rose made air quotes, then pulled her cheeks back so tightly her eyes went almond-shaped. “Did she give you some lecture about stress, Cinderella? That’s what she told us, that we should try to relax a little more. It seems like part of going to a top-tier boarding school is tons of stress. It’s a known occupational hazard.”

  “I’m under stress,” Susi said. “I was looking out my window last night and I swear I saw something in the trees . . . ”

  “Someone,” Gretchen corrected her. “I saw it too. It was a face.”

  “The Stalker,” Rose declared.

  I stopped walking. “Did you tell Dr. Ehrlenbach about the face? Either of you?”

  “No,” Gretchen replied. Her eyelid twitched. “I didn’t really think it was there . . . until we found the birds.”

  “And the cat,” Susi added. Gretchen nodded, pressing her hand flat against her stomach, as if she were going to be sick.

  I understood why they hadn’t told Ehrlenbach right away. Before I came to Marlwood, I would have dismissed a face in a window as my imagination, or my own reflection, and I wouldn’t have thought it was worth mentioning. That was then; this was now.

  Julie wiped her face as if she were sweating; then she dropped her hands to her sides and said, “I’m going to soccer. I have a responsibility. I’m the goalie.” I nodded, and she trotted away from us. Poor Julie had had enough. Susi and Gretchen hustled it up, too, leaving Rose and me in their snowy dust.

  “Hey,” Rose
said, in a voice meant only for me, “this is bullshit. Why are you avoiding me?”

  I had learned when I hung out with Jane that you didn’t have to explain yourself if you didn’t want to. So I changed the subject.

  “They want to help me get into college.”

  “Listen,” Rose said, making a sort of balletic quarter-turn, taking both my hands in hers, and swinging them. “Here’s my theory. Miles is living on campus. Or near campus. At the lake house or somewhere. And maybe Mandy knows and maybe she doesn’t. He’s hanging around because he’s obsessed with her. But he’s nuts, and he’s killing animals.”

  She swung my hands some more, as if this was the best news ever. “You and I were the school detectives last semester. We found out a bunch of weird shit and then kazinga! Kiyoko is dead and we all go home. It’s time for us to pick up where we left off.”

  It wasn’t like that, Rose, I thought. And I had watched her suck up to Mandy the night of Charlotte’s prank. Still, I looked at it another way: if she was going to do some investigating, I might discover some things I needed to know if I was there alongside her. As long as I didn’t let down my guard and start to trust her, I would probably be okay. If, for example, she invited me to a satanic ritual in the middle of the forest and her eyes were a solid black, I should probably pass. And there was no way that I would let her know I was also working with Troy. If I still was. He must have told Mandy about the Marlwood Stalker; what exactly had he revealed?

  “Is that why you were in the statue garden?” I asked. “Detecting?”

  “Sí.”

  “Did you find Mandy’s locket?”

  “Tell me you’re in and I’ll tell you.”

  I suppressed a sigh. “Yes.”

  She closed one eye and made a show of peering at me out of the other one. “Dude, you can’t be sort of involved in this. You are or you aren’t. It’s like being a virgin.”