“They’re usually spirit guides. Helping you to complete a task.” She appraised me. “Are you okay?”
“Define your terms.”
“They possess people who have the same kind of psychic makeup as them,” Shayna said. “So, say you’re a vindictive, insane bitch, like Mandy . . . ”
“No, helping you. How do they help you complete a task?”
She thought a moment. “Well, say you’ve been bullied all your life. Like Kiyoko was. You need to stand up to people. So a dybbuk might come into you to give you courage, and help you. Help you so no one can hurt . . . ” Her voice caught. She picked up her pliers and played with them. “But that didn’t happen to Kiyoko.”
I tried to get Kiyoko to talk to me about Mandy, I thought. She was scared to. And then . . . she died. I could have tried harder. Maybe I could have saved her.
Silence grew between us. I struggled not to see Kiyoko’s frozen face. Her eyes had been unnaturally shiny, as if someone had sprayed silver over her corneas. According to the autopsy results, that shininess was proof that she had drowned, not frozen to death. I didn’t remember how I’d found that out, but it had terrified me.
Now I thought I knew why it scared me so badly. Either Mandy had succeeded in drowning Celia in one of those huge tubs in our bathroom, or had threatened to so many times that Celia’s terror of drowning had become part of our shared nightmare. Then why was I so afraid of fire?
Shayna pulled out the top drawer of her desk and brought out a little white candle in a lavender votive holder and a pack of matches. She lit the candle and we watched the flame for a few moments. The orange flicker made me uneasy for some reason, and I finally broke the silence.
“What do you think happened to Kiyoko?”
“Mandy happened.” Shayna hunched her shoulders. “Mandy’s possessed, that’s for sure. And she’s got some way to convince her little ass-kissers to let themselves be possessed, too.”
Bingo. Shayna knew exactly what was going on.
She looked hard at me, as if daring me to contradict her. I didn’t.
“So,” she said. “You know, too. I thought so.”
“Why?” Had I given myself away?
“You really stood up to Mandy the night of Kiyoko’s prank. I liked you so much for that. So I started watching you. And you were watching Mandy, because you were so protective of Julie. You knew Mandy was dangerous. And you didn’t let her hurt your friend. . . .”
That was all true. It hadn’t even occurred to me that someone outside Mandy’s cabal would be watching me. Like all the other girls at Marlwood, I’d centered my attention on Mandy and never looked anywhere else.
She reached out her left hand, the one with the red string. I took it, startled by how thin it was. It was like encircling a small bundle of sticks.
She began to cry. “I couldn’t help Kiyoko.”
“I couldn’t, either,” I reminded her, welling up. We shared a moment of silence, and as I tried very hard not to see Kiyoko’s blue-white face and frozen hair, I began to feel very panicky.
“I’m not crazy,” she said between sobs. “I’m not.” Her mascara started to smudge and I handed her a tissue from the silver box on her nightstand.
I squeezed her hand just a little harder. “You’re not.” Or else, we both are.
Taking a deep, ragged breath, she forced herself to stop crying almost as quickly as she had begun. Shayna was strong. I could be, too. I would be, too.
“So, how do you get rid of them?” I stared down at the steam rising from my chocolate. “D-do you have to kill the person they’re possessing?”
“What?” Her voice was shrill. She looked at me as if I were crazy.
I didn’t return her gaze. I was afraid that if I did, she would know what I was thinking. So I took a sip of cocoa. “Kiyoko died,” I pointed out.
“No. No, that’s not it at all.” Then she jerked. She got up off her bed and walked quietly to her door, signaling me to be quiet as she pressed her ear up against the door and listened for a second. I watched her. She half-turned her head, and pressed her finger to her lips. Then she put her hand around the knob. As she began to turn it, she looked at me and grimaced, the color draining from her face.
She came back to the bed. “Someone was in the hall,” she whispered. “Maybe Rose. If they know that we know—”
I began to tremble harder.
“You can’t tell Rose about this,” she said. “Swear to me.”
“How do you get rid of it?” I whispered, my voice rising. I had to know if what Celia wanted . . . no.
No.
“Swear to me,” Shayna insisted. “Don’t tell Rose.”
“Okay. I swear.” I waited.
Shayna beckoned me over as she picked up a pen. She grabbed a piece of notebook paper and wrote.
An exorcism.
I blinked at her.
“That’s how you get rid of . . . them.” She let that sink in, nodding faintly as I processed. I wanted to jump up and down. I wanted to make her promise me she was right. If we could do that, then we wouldn’t have to kill Mandy. I could get exorcised. Whatever that meant.
“We need to find out more about this place. About what was going on here when the dybbuks were still living people.” Shayna fell silent and looked at me as if to say, Your turn.
I hesitated. Could I trust her? Could I really?
She narrowed her eyes, her forehead wrinkling, pursing her lips. I gripped my cup; the warmth seeped into my palms, but the rest of me went cold. Very cold.
Can you help with that? she wrote.
Before I could answer—not sure what I would say, how much I would reveal—someone knocked hard on her door.
“Yo,” Rose bellowed. “Chow time.”
Shayna didn’t move, only kept looking at me, and my face prickled. I took the pen from her.
Yes, I wrote. I can help with that.
Shayna took the piece of paper and folded it in half, then half again. Then she dipped one corner in the candle flame. It ignited. I watched the flame and began to lose myself in my fear of fire. I felt the heat, smelled that awful gas odor . . . kerosene, I thought.
I leaped out of the beanbag and staggered backward to the door. I hit it with my back.
“Put it out,” I begged. “Put it out.”
She dumped it into my cup of cocoa. Stared at me.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“Guys, c’mon,” Rose yelled.
“Lindsay, tell me,” Shayna said.
The knob on her door turned. Rose was on the other side. Shayna stared at me with wide eyes.
“Coming,” she yelled back.
“I have these terrible nightmares,” I whispered. That was the truth. Not all of it, but it was something. “About fires. And drowning.”
”Maybe you’re psychic,” she whispered. “Or maybe . . . you have a spirit guide.”
“Maybe.” It was all I could tell her for the moment. I just couldn’t go there. I wasn’t ready.
“Yo, yo ho.” Rose pounded on the door.
Sighing, Shayna dipped her thumb and forefinger into the chocolate and then pinched the candle flame, extinguishing it. Then she pulled a red string out of the same drawer, pushed my Tibetan prayer beads out of the way, and began wrapping it around my wrist.
“We’ll find out,” she promised.
NINE
THE SNOW TURNED TO ICY RAIN as Shayna, Rose, and I shuffled our way to the commons. Last semester, Julie had taught me about black ice, which wasn’t really black, but transparent. It was also especially slippery; combine the two—invisibility and danger—and I thought it should be called ghost ice.
The commons smelled of perfume and wet wool; noisy chatter bounced off the hardwood floors and copper pots dripping with ivy. Our first dinner back. Dressed like Icelandic fashion models, girls were standing in the food lines; parents had been complaining that, at forty grand a year, they did not expect their daughters to fet
ch their own meals. They didn’t care that the menu had been developed by some world-famous chef I had never heard of. They cared that their girls had to get the food themselves.
“That was fun,” Rose declared, as we three surveyed the room. I was flanked by her and Shayna, feeling a bit like a possession they were each trying to claim. “We should do it more often.” She peered through her lashes and made a show of frowning at me. “Haven’t seen you much since we got back.”
“What are you doing?” I heard Mandy shout.
We turned to look. Seated at the Jessel table, Mandy was staring over her shoulder at Charlotte Davidson, who stood slightly behind her. Charlotte was clutching a hunter-green backpack against her chest, her arms through the straps; and a bottle of what appeared to be vodka was sticking out of the top.
“But I thought . . . you said . . . ” Charlotte stammered. Beneath her multi-colored streaked hair, her face was turning purple. “ . . . To bring . . . ”
“Not into the commons, tea leaf.” Mandy made a show of plunking her elbows on the table and burying her face in her hands. “Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte, what am I going to do with you?”
“I smell a prank in progress,” Rose muttered.
“Run, Charlotte,” I replied. “You’d think Mandy wouldn’t do that anymore, considering.”
“She’s got to replenish her supply of mindless Mandy-bots,” Rose said. “Kiyoko’s gone, and hey, howdy, you’ve brought Julie back to the light side of the force. So she’s low on worshippers.” She gestured to Julie, who was sitting at Grose’s table, tacitly ignoring the drama at Mandy’s table. “How did you manage Julie’s conversion, by the way? She was totally Mandy’s poodle last semester.”
“Mandy ditched her at break,” I told her. “They were supposed to drive back together, but Julie came up with her parents instead.”
“It never gets old, demeaning the less fortunate,” Rose muttered, as Mandy continued to berate Charlotte for bringing forbidden alcohol into the commons.
Rose was right, though. Mandy did need to replenish her followers. Last semester, she—or Belle—had worked hard to find six girls for her and her dead friends to possess. They had been: Mandy, Lara, Kiyoko, Sangeeta, Alis, and Rose. And after Kiyoko died . . . Julie.
Seven girls had died in that fire. Celia was the seventh. And Celia was . . . me. If Julie was out, Belle would need another. If Rose was free, she’d need two. There was something about having all of the spirits back—Belle wanted to recreate the past, to change it maybe . . . to get her revenge on Celia. She blamed Celia for the fire. She was jealous that the guy she loved had loved Celia instead. So she had tortured Celia. And now she was back from the dead, trying to torture Celia—to torture me—all over again.
And along the way, that meant Mandy also got to torture as many other girls as she wanted. It was sick. And now Charlotte was the next target.
I knew that a few intriguing details of the prank would spread through the room during dinner. That was how Mandy maintained interest—our own Marlwood version of Twitter. Girls got status by being in the know and sharing what they knew . . . selectively. By dessert, even the outer rings of the least cool would have learned the nature of Mandy’s challenge to gauge Charlotte’s willingness to suffer for the privilege of being considered for entry into Mandyland. And even if Charlotte passed her ordeal, it was still no guarantee that she was in. It seemed unlikely. Charlotte was a goth, after all. Plus, chubby. Mandy was far too wise in the ways of the world to put out the welcome mat for someone who was so blatantly an outcast. Even if she did need more followers for Belle’s secret cabal.
Fashionably possessed, I thought. I hoped Charlotte would fail. I hoped I could restrain myself from leaping onto a table and yelling out everything I knew.
Weighed down by too much to deal with, I went to the food line and got the pasta with vegetables, and some milk, and approached my table. Julie scooted over, making sure I knew she wanted me to sit beside her. She was so sweet.
As I put down my tray, Elvis said, “You are not going to believe this. The prank is going to involve swimming. Au naturel.”
My mouth dropped. “Mandy wants Charlotte to skinny-dip? After Kiyoko drowned?”
“Yeppers,” Ida confirmed. It was the exact same thing she’d made Kiyoko do last semester.
“Oh my God, that is unbelievable.” I couldn’t fathom it. Not even Mandy could be so callous. It had to be Belle’s idea.
“You going?” Julie asked me, taking a bite of chicken. She turned to the group. “Linz is a lifeguard.”
“Then you should go,” Claire said.
Images, sensations of the vision in the shower stall swirled around me. Drowning. That frigid body floating on the surface of the lake . . . I couldn’t stop the visual of Kiyoko’s ghastly blue-white face from blossoming in my mind, so like Celia’s. It was the first time I had connected those dots—Celia’s face looked like a victim of drowning’s.
I tried to force myself to speak, but I couldn’t. I stared down at my plate.
“I think someone should tell Dr. Ehrlenbach about this prank,” Marica declared.
Elvis snorted. “Like she’d do anything. Did you read the newsletter Marlwood sent out over break? Mandy’s parents are donating a new sports center.”
“They’ve already had one dead student,” Marica countered.
I clenched my jaw and gripped my hands together in my lap. Did I really live in a world where girls like Mandy could do things like this to girls like Charlotte because they were rich? Yes, I did. My hands shook. I was livid. Watching the gossip spread, sensing the eagerness in the room. The thrill of the danger and drama, provided by Mandy and her victim.
Jackals, I thought. And I’d been one of them, back home. I would have been laughing and murmuring right along with them.
So who was I madder at: Mandy or the old me? I didn’t know, but I felt as if I might pop right out of my skin.
“Lindsay? Are you okay?” Julie whispered.
I looked up into her hazel eyes, filled with concern for me. She put her hand over mine and patted me. It brought me back down. Calmed my inner beast. What if I’d lost it the way I had in the movie theater? Stood up and starting yelling craziness about possessions and victims?
I glanced over at Shayna; true to her word, she was watching me. She dipped her head and looked steadily at me, as if to remind me that I wasn’t in this all alone.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I told Julie. Then I couldn’t help myself; I ticked my glance over to Mandy’s table, where she serenely sipped from her water glass, a little smile playing on her face. The center of our universe. Sleek, blonde, beautiful, vicious, evil. A tremor shook me. She had to be stopped.
Yes, Celia agreed. Exactly.
TEN
SHAYNA CAUGHT UP WITH ME as I left the commons with the rest of Grose. I slowed and let my dorm mates go ahead; they didn’t notice because they were too busy discussing whether or not we should attend the prank. Last semester no one would have thought twice.
“Remember that old abandoned library?” Shayna asked under her breath. We’d gone there first semester for another of Mandy’s pranks, when she’d transformed the whole thing into a haunted house. “You ‘got’ to go inside.” She made air quotes. “And you told the rest of us that there were a lot of books still on the shelves. About brain surgeries and reforming bad girls and stuff.”
I thought of the forbidding library, a cavernous room bulging with bookcases that reached into the gloom. The shelves were clogged with moldy books. Some of the titles were still visible. Female Behavioral Reformation. Neurological Science. Psychology of Hysterics.
“At least half of them were rotten,” I replied, but I nodded as I spoke. “Which leaves the other half.”
“Which leaves the other half. Let’s skip Charlotte’s mortification and check them out,” she suggested. “Everyone else will be busy watching. It’ll be the perfect time to start researching the unfinished business of
the dybbuks of Marlwood.”
I considered it. “Maybe I should watch out for Charlotte. Mandy forced Kiyoko to skinny-dip in the lake, and look what happened.”
“She died much later,” Shayna countered. “Not because of the prank. And anyway if we can do something to stop Mandy, everyone will be safe.”
I knew that at least twenty or thirty girls would sneak out to watch Mandy’s cruel hazing ritual. If Charlotte got in trouble, surely someone would have the sense to jump in and rescue her. And if Shayna and I were going to do this thing, we should do it. If I could find some way to placate Celia, to free her and Mandy, too . . . if I could be free of her, forever . . .
Free of all this. It sounded like a wonderful dream.
“Okay,” I said. “What time is the prank?”
“One would assume it’ll be the same as usual. Elevenish. When all the trusting housemothers will be fast asleep.”
When all the housemothers could say they’d been asleep, to deny knowledge that their charges were breaking curfew and risking hypothermia in a pitch-black lake.
“Then we’ll meet in front of the library at eleven,” I said.
We nodded, and parted. I caught up with my dormies, who were complaining about homework—no fair, we were just back—catching up on what they’d done over break, and expressing their disbelief that Charlotte Davidson would actually agree to swim naked in Searle Lake in January.
“Mandy’s just doing it to be mean,” Ida said, and we all nodded, even Julie.
“Charlotte has to know she doesn’t really have a shot at becoming one of Mandy’s elect,” Claire said.
“But why else would she do it?” Marica argued.
“Because no one else has made her the center of attention?” Julie said. “You know she wants to be. She wouldn’t dress like Countess Dracula if she didn’t.”
“How very sad,” Marica said. And then she ticked a quick glance toward me; I realized maybe she thought I dressed like an orphan just to get attention. It was a little embarrassing; she was so rich and exquisitely put together that she truly couldn’t fathom that someone might just opt out of the fashion race because it could not be won, not for someone like me.