“Attaboy, Rudolph,” Heather said, and Riley groaned.
It’s all right, I told myself. The clouds are not really there.
The buzzing in my ears got louder. Chills like fingertips skittered across my shoulder blades and ran down my spine. I tried to look away, or close my eyes, as I began to realize that the clouds weren’t clouds at all. What I was seeing were billows of smoke.
“You put too much butter on this stuff,” Heather grumbled at Riley.
“No such thing,” Riley shot back.
“Guys?” I murmured. Now I smelled the smoke, and something else I couldn’t place, like oil, something for camping. It was so strong my eyes watered.
“Guys?” I said again. I heard the shrillness in my voice.
“What?” Heather asked.
Heat rose around me, like a bad sunburn—then hotter, too hot. Flames shot to the ceiling of the theater; I saw through them, yellow, red, and orange, crackling around me, and the black smoke, pouring into my lungs. I started choking. My hands began to blister; my face—
“Oh my God, the door is locked!” the scream tore through my parched throat as I dizzily tried to stand, waving smoke from my face. Oh God. I was suffocating. “We’re going to die!”
TWO
COUGHING AND SCREAMING, I bolted, falling over Heather’s legs as she grabbed hold of me. Diet Coke and Jolly Ranchers flew everywhere as I seized her wrists, panicking.
“Fire, there’s a fire!” I shrieked. “We have to get out of here!”
“God, calm down!” Heather shouted into my face. She dug her fingers into me as I tried to crawl over her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
As abruptly as it had happened, it was over. The fire was gone . . . and I was left with no way to explain. As people hooted and two ushers with flashlights darted up the stairs, I clutched my elbows and blinked back tears. The bright yellow beams blazed into my eyes from two directions, and a voice said, “Please come with us. You too.”
Heather jerked, completely freaked. “I didn’t do anything.” The light didn’t get any dimmer, so she grabbed her purse, slipping on hard candy and soda, and followed them down the aisle.
I trailed after, mutely, too mortified to look back over my shoulder at Riley. The ushers led us down the stairs like prisoners while the other moviegoers applauded and laughed—this was more entertaining than the movie—and out the auditorium into the foyer.
A man in a suit glowered down at me—I’m only five-two—while Heather took two steps away from me. My knees were sopping wet.
“I didn’t do anything,” Heather said again, shaking her newly chopped head. “I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
The ushers and the man in the suit—his name tag announced him as R. TELLENHEUSEN, MANAGER—stared stonily at me, as if they were waiting for me to explain myself. How could I? What could I possibly say? I shuffled my feet. There was a Jolly Rancher smashed against the sole of my right flip-flop.
“Do you know that there’s a law against shouting ‘fire’ in a public theater?” Mr. Tellenheusen asked me. “Shall I call the police?”
Shaking my head, which began to throb, I felt like I was going to throw up. Then I let his stern voice and Heather’s protests rush over me as we were taken to the exit and booted out the airlock, into the warm night and canned Christmas carols blaring too merry and bright.
Riley hadn’t come out of the theater. Somehow he’d been granted a reprieve, not been associated with me and my OOC behavior. What was he thinking now? Would he tell Jane?
“Why did you do that?” Heather’s voice was shrill; she was smoothing back her hair, over and over, staring at me as if she had never seen such a freak in her life.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? God. Are you having another breakdown?”
She didn’t sound sympathetic. She was pissed off and embarrassed, and . . . afraid. She was afraid of me.
“No,” I said quickly. But was that it? Should I say that it was?
“No,” I said again. “I thought . . . I was trying to be funny.” If she was still my best friend, she’d know that I was lying. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me; I wanted to let her know how terribly afraid I was. But from the way she was looking at me, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Her mouth dropped and her eyes narrowed, as if she couldn’t believe what a jerk I was.
The Christmas music was past ironic. I thought about taking it back, but honestly, it had been so left field . . . couldn’t she see that there was no way I meant it to be a joke?
“Heather . . . ” I took a deep breath. “Heather, listen . . . ”
She waited.
“I fell asleep in the theater. I was having a nightmare.”
She made a show of widening her eyes. “Oh my God! Jane taught you how to lie better than that.”
“No—”
“I was supposed to drive home. Come on.” She turned to go without even checking to see if I was following her. Without another word, she took the breezeway to the parking structure.
Her silver Corolla was on the topmost level, and I climbed in. I felt sick, humiliated. My face was hot. She punched in Tori Amos and the singer’s goth-drama voice reverberated off the windshield as she backed out of the space and drove too quickly toward the exit. Heather and I had never listened to Tori Amos together in our lives. Gripping the armrest, I heard my heart beating too fast as we merged onto the 8. The terrifying clouds gathered above the freeway, smothering the moon. Not supernatural smoke, just stupid clouds, real ones this time.
“Did you do it to get attention?” she finally asked. “Because Riley was there?”
When I was with Jane, we did insane things to get attention. We demanded it. Sometimes Jane would count to three and then we would shriek at the top of our lungs. It had seemed so funny, because it was us doing it. We all got makeovers at Macy’s, and then no one bought anything; we just skipped away in hysterics. We were awful. We were bitches. I didn’t care. I was with Jane.
Heather never was with Jane, never could be; and maybe that was why I had been mean to her when Jane wanted me to be. When it first started happening, Heather would text me, or call me, and say, “This isn’t you. I know it’s not.”
But she didn’t know me anymore.
I shook my head again, unable to speak. Anything I said would just sound like more craziness. More attention-getting.
We got home fast; it was Christmas Eve, and the streets were clearing.
Heather jerked to a stop at the curb in front of my house. She didn’t say a word.
“I want . . . ” I began, but I knew what that must sound like to her. Me, wanting. Like Jane, always wanting. Like Mandy and nearly every other girl at Marlwood. Endlessly needing more—so much so that they were willing to conspire with the dead to get it.
“Listen,” I said, but that was about me again, me talking. So I reached over and touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”
Her face broke, and her eyes welled. She exhaled, took another breath and started to say something. I swallowed hard, waiting; I could tell she was making a decision.
“You aren’t the old Lindsay I used to know,” she said, giving her head a shake. I was stabbed through the heart: she was breaking off our friendship.
“I am sorry,” I insisted.
“I have to go.” She sounded defeated; she’d had hopes for our friendship, too, and she was letting go of them. Of us.
I got out and watched her Corolla peel away. Panic rose inside me, as if she was taking my last chance of a normal life away with her. I had blown it. Badly.
I opened the front door to darkness and immediately flicked on the lights in the foyer. There was the candy dish I had raided for the movie, half-empty now. Trudging down the hall, I made it to the family room and turned on those lights, too. The house was deserted; there was a note on the breakfast bar:
Hi Baby,
Gone to see Santa. Back by ten. Hope the movie was fun!
br /> Love,
Daddy
With my bag still over my shoulder, I crossed to the sliding glass door that led to the yard, stepped outside and turned on the porch light. I saw Casals, our tortoiseshell cat, named for the famous cellist Pablo Casals. He was slinking through the grass, stalking something, in a trajectory toward our black-bottom pool.
Something white glittered on the water.
No, I silently begged. Please, no.
I thought it was over. I thought I was free.
I thought she was gone.
A deep, dark, soul-piercing iciness washed over my entire body, as if someone had just dropped me into the same frozen lake where Kiyoko Yamato had died; and I shuddered, hard. I staggered to the left, bumping one of our aluminum chaise lounges with my leg. It made a scraping noise that seemed to echo in my head, as if it were a far distance away, as if I weren’t standing right beside it.
I lurched forward and confirmed the whiteness floating on the water. I gasped and went deadly still; and then I peered over the edge of the pool.
I saw her. White oval, hollows in her cheeks, black, eyeless sockets. More a skull than a face.
“Celia,” I croaked. Celia Reaves, who had died in a fire at Marlwood in 1889. The ghost who had possessed me at Marlwood, and who possessed me still. The reflection was proof. I could actually feel her shifting restlessly inside me, like layers of ice coating my bones, cracking and refreezing as I trembled. Just as I had experienced the fire that had killed her.
“I’m so sorry, Lindsay,” she said, through my voice but not quite my voice, speaking aloud, through me. I couldn’t feel my lips moving, but the sound was definitely coming out of my mouth.
“What have you done to me?” I demanded, bursting into tears.
Her face rippled, as if someone had dropped something into the pool. “I thought I could leave you in peace.”
“Why—why can’t you?” I was trying, very hard, not to scream.
Moonbeams highlighted the black water as Casals slunk back and forth against my ankles like a caressing, comforting hand. Sparkles danced beneath Celia’s hollow eyes. Were they tears?
“Because we have to go back,” she said. “To Marlwood.”
Then my cell phone rang. I plunged my hand into my bag, too panicky to remember where I’d stashed it. Sucking in my breath, I tipped my bag upside down; my wallet and pens and keys and wadded up receipts and notes and sticks of gum tumbled to the ground and where the hell was my phone—
“Heather?” I cried, as I grabbed it and I accepted the call. “I’m so sorry—”
“No,” said a low, raspy voice. “It’s me, Lindsay. Troy.”
Troy. Who had gone missing after that horrible night. Lost, in the woods, in the snow. I sank to the ground.
“Julie gave me your new number. She said you can’t find your old cell and—”
“Oh, God, oh my God,” I yelled, gripping the phone with both hands. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay. Okay now,” he said. “I’ve been in the hospital. I had a concussion. They found me in the woods. By the lake.”
“A concussion?”
“I don’t remember what happened. I guess I fell.”
“Fell,” I echoed.
“Yeah, they said I was lucky. I could’ve died. It was so cold that night.”
I closed my eyes. I tried to swallow but my throat was closed. I didn’t realize until that moment that I thought he had died.
“Listen, we’re staying in La Jolla. I want to see you,” he went on.
I could barely keep myself from shrieking with joy. He was in San Diego. La Jolla was only a forty-minute drive from my house.
“Yes,” I managed.
“Is tomorrow okay? I know it’s Christmas, but—”
“Yes.” I wanted him here. Now. “It’s okay.” More than okay.
“Great.” His voice was warm. He was alive. “So. Merry Christmas, Lindsay.”
We disconnected and I was so happy that for a moment I forgot about the dead girl inside me, whose white face floated on our swimming pool. I forgot I had lost my mind in the movie theater, and that I was afraid for my life.
“He didn’t fall,” Celia said, her voice echoing inside my head as I collected all the things I had dumped out of my purse. “He was pushed.”
Shaking, I got to my feet; moving stiff-legged, I walked closer to the edge of the pool and looked down. Her white face, her black, eyeless sockets, her mouth an endless scream. Bubbles popped on the surface of the water, and I stiffened. Was she coming out?
More bubbles dotted the surface, like something rising from somewhere very deep. Very cold. As they churned, I screamed and raced back into the house. I slammed the sliding glass door shut, turned on every light, and huddled on the couch with my knees beneath my chin, trembling, until everyone came back from visiting Santa. Hah, I thought. I wasn’t going to get what I wanted this year.
“I have to go back,” I said to myself, over and over again, making it real, forcing myself to accept it. If I wanted this over, if I wanted to live a normal life—if I wanted to stay alive—I had to go back.
THREE
I DIDN’T SLEEP all night. I sat in my bed, breathing too hard, avoiding the dresser mirror. And the bathroom mirror. And any shiny object in our house that might cast a reflection. I didn’t want to see Celia. I didn’t know how the possession worked—if that cold feeling on the back of my neck meant she was taking me over, or if she was somehow inside me all the time. I didn’t know if there were other times she possessed me that I was unaware of. I wondered if other people who got labeled as crazy were actually possessed, like back in the Middle Ages—possessed by ghosts.
The next day I went through the motions of Christmas—the presents, the dinner—forcing myself to stay calm, even though I was becoming more and more afraid that I would do or say something crazy, the way I had in the theater. No one seemed to notice how exhausted and edgy I was. Over the summer, I had knitted CJ and my father matching Aran sweaters—nubby Aran wool, one very petite for CJ, and the other long, with long arms, for my gangly dad—and it struck me how much I used to love to knit, and how I never did it anymore. My redheaded seven-year-old stepbrother Sam was over the moon with the vast additions to his Lego empire. My parents heaved a sigh of relief that Tom, who was nine, very tall, very thin, was content with more games for his Wii—they had been afraid he was going to ask Santa for a new game system.
They’re just things, I wanted to tell them. Things won’t keep the monsters away.
Exactly at seven, just as we’d cleared dinner, Troy pulled up in his vintage T-bird. My Dad and CJ had given permission for him to come over; maybe they sensed that my reunion with Heather had not gone very well, and they wanted me to have someone my own age to spend Christmas with.
He must have driven the car down from Lakewood, his private boys’ prep school across the lake from my all-girl school, and it was clean and shiny, like a Christmas ornament; my dad couldn’t keep away from it. CJ was startled by how great-looking Troy was, turning to me when Troy was out of the room, raising her brows and fluttering her lashes. He was tall, with soft, chestnut-brown hair that curled around his ears, and the darkest, deepest blue eyes I had ever seen. He wore a navy blue hoodie, a San Diego Padres T-shirt, and jeans, but even in his regular-person clothes there was something about him, some kind of polish, that revealed just how wealthy he was.
“So you live in La Jolla,” CJ said.
“We have a house there,” Troy replied, and I wondered if CJ understood what he was really saying. How many months out of the year did you have to stay in a house to qualify as “living” in it? How many houses did the Minears own?
“Look at the sweaters Lindsay made for us,” she added, posing a little.
“Nice,” Troy said sincerely. “My mom knits.”
I wasn’t sure if I liked having the same hobby as his mother, but he was so charming when he said it that I decided I didn’t care. I’d
thought I would be embarrassed when he saw our little house, but he seemed so happy to see me that I let it go.
“So, that T-bird,” my dad piped up, leaning his elbows on the fake wood counter of our breakfast bar. The overhead lights gleamed on his semi-bald head. Troy’s brown hair was thick and shiny. “Sixty-eight?”
“Yup,” Troy said.
“Floating Caliper brakes?”
Troy nodded, and my dad whistled. “And a 390 Special V-8,” Troy added.
“Oh, man.” My dad groaned and looked at CJ and me. “Sixtyeight was the last year for the 390.”
“Dang,” I said.
“They were right to stop using it,” Troy said. “My car’s really heavy. My gas mileage is a joke.”
My dad’s face softened, as if he were looking at a younger version of himself. Or at his younger self’s dreams, maybe. “I had big plans for a ’70 Mustang. Got too busy, though.”
Too busy taking care of my mom. I remembered when he’d had the Mustang towed home and he had begun work on it. A year into her illness, he’d sold it to some guy who knew our next-door neighbors, the Hansens.
“Well, I’m sure you two want to catch up,” CJ said, giving my dad a pat. He got the hint and they headed for the living room.
I took Troy to the backyard for some privacy. We bounded into the darkness, me avoiding the pool, and threw our arms around each other. We kissed, hard, and it was like body surfing at high tide—shocking and wonderful, thrilling, a little scary. My knees gave way but he held me so tightly he wouldn’t have been able to tell. He was alive. And he was here. I rode the waves of joy and relief, pressing myself against him. We clung to each other, fingers moving tentatively, exploring, believing. I wanted to kiss him for years.
“Oh, Troy,” I said, and then I was sobbing, hard, and he reached around the back of my head and eased my face against his chest. He leaned his chin on the crown of my head and stroked my hair, soothing me, letting me finally get it out. I’d had no one to talk to, no one to hold me while I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.