Possessions

  I began to sit down, when I realized that, this time, her desk had something on it . . . a laptop computer and a small, black leather-bound book. Cramped black writing was framed in a yellowed rectangle. I squinted to make out the upside-down words.

  The Science Behind the Lobotomy Procedure, it read.

  Lobotomy? Yeow. Darting a glance at the door, I reached forward and flipped the book open, turning it around as I did so.

  My heart caught. The first thing I saw was an ink sketch of a skull, the top of its head sectioned into numbers—just like the head that sat on my windowsill. There was a large X across the forehead.

  Separation of the frontal lobes produces a calming effect, a note read beneath the sketch. The young women prone to hysteria become biddable.

  “Oh my God,” I murmured.

  I heard footsteps in the hall. I quickly shut the book and returned it to its original place next to the laptop, and sat down. Dr. Ehrlenbach came in. I looked straight at her, not at the book.

  “Lindsay,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said, in a professionally cordial way, “how is it going?” Her mouth didn’t move. It had to be Botox. I remembered Rose’s imitation of her, and nervous giggles threatened to bubble out of me.

  “It’s going great,” I said. “I love . . . I’m enjoying myself.”

  “I’ve spoken to some of your professors and you can expect a couple of Bs coming your way. You need to pull those up,” she said, and I think she was trying to raise her brows, but they were already quite arched.

  I nodded like a bobblehead, sitting there awkwardly in her office, even though I wanted to protest that I had only been there a week. Hardly time to get grades in anything. “Yeah, I mean, yes, I’m doing just that.” I smiled too brightly. “Study, study.”

  “Any concerns? Anything we need to discuss?” She was wearing simple gold earrings and a watch on an expensive leather band. Her nails were buffed. Very elegant and understated. I was mortified by my appearance, even though it was much better than the first time I’d been in there. I shuffled my feet, wondering if I should sit down.

  Yes, yes, yes. We need to discuss the fact that Baby Sports Center is psycho, I wanted to tell her. And what’s up with that book?

  “Everything’s great.” I tried to think of intelligent replies, or questions that would illustrate how brilliant and aware I was. The meeting might be some kind of test, a last chance to impress her. But nothing came to mind.

  Then I took a breath. I should tell her about Mandy. But the architectural drawing was to her immediate left, and I knew that anything I said about Ms. Winters that was negative in the least would seal my fate, not hers. So I pretended to cough.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Marlwood is a very old, very fine school,” she said suddenly. “We have a lot to live up to.”

  “Oh.” That surprised me. I felt like I should have known that. “It was a girls school before the Civil War,” I said frantically. “I mean, after.” I forced myself not to glance at her desk.

  “Yes. A fine school.” She smiled at me. Maybe. “We have a reputation to maintain.”

  “Yeah. Yes. Got it,” I promised.

  She didn’t react. Then she pushed back slightly from her desk, indicating I was dismissed.

  “Thank you for coming to see me,” she said graciously. Ms. Shelley will give you a pass to get you back into class.”

  I turned to go.

  “Lindsay,” she said suddenly.

  I turned back around.

  “I like what you’ve done with your hair,” she said. There was no warmth in her voice, or on her face.

  “Thank you,” I blurted, and fled.

  I came back out just as Rose stood, smoothing her black skirt. I mouthed, Good luck.

  Then Ms. Shelley gave me my pass, and I had to leave. I didn’t know what to think. What was that book doing on her desk? I wished I had had time to check out her laptop . . .

  . . . And to read more of that book.

  There’s so much more going on here than I can even take in, I thought. Secrets and more secrets.

  sixteen

  I spent the rest of the day in knots, rehashing my thirty seconds alone with Dr. Ehrlenbach . . . and wondering about that book . . . and thinking about what Rose had said about Mandy.

  “You did fine,” Julie kept saying over and over. It was late, and we were both in our pajamas. She sat with her sore leg stretched out on her bed, cradling Caspian, while I paced, ignoring the white head, whose angle had changed again, and the face that might or might not be in Mandy’s window. Her drapes were open, and so were ours, but I refused to look in her direction. I just didn’t have the nerve. But I needed to have the nerve, if I was going to find out what she was doing. And I needed to know. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night until I figured it out.

  Julie continued. “I’m sure she knew how nervous you were.”

  Julie would be devastated if she knew Rose had been invited to a séance and she hadn’t. She’d defend Mandy in a duel to the death if I told her about my—our—suspicions that Mandy was on her way to bonkersville. After all, we were the two scholarship students. What did we know?

  We’re outsiders, I thought. We’re on the outside looking in.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said, yawning.

  My shoulders sagged dejectedly. “I’m a wreck.”

  “I have something that will help you sleep. Do you want it?” She was curling Caspian’s eyelashes with her fingers.

  “It’s not anything weird, right? I mean, it’s over the counter, or something I could take if I have allergies,” I ventured.

  She gave me a look. “No, Mandy didn’t give it to me.”

  Mandy, Mandy everywhere. I hadn’t even told Julie about the one-sided conversation at the lake. I kept telling myself I didn’t know how to go about it, but the truth was, I was afraid she’d tell Mandy. The result being that Mandy would be more careful, and then all future opportunities to find out what was up with her would be lost.

  Julie reached into her dresser and rummaged around, then came back with something blue in her hand. “It’s mild,” she said. “We got them in France. It’s very safe. If you want, I’ll take one, too.”

  “You’re sure they’re the ones you brought with you?”

  “Light blue, with a D on them,” Julie said, holding it up.

  I still hesitated. She popped it into her mouth, dry-swallowing.

  “I didn’t mean to imply—” But of course I had.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “So I’d like one,” I told her.

  She got me another and handed it to me.

  “I’m going to get some water,” I said.

  I went down the hall and flicked on the bathroom light. I looked at the stalls and the row of sinks, the showers and the claw-footed bathtubs. The tubs were so enormous. And there were marks on the rims, as if at one time there had been some kind of fastener or lid that went over each one. Were they the original hot tubs?

  The moon glowed on them; I could almost imagine girls lounging in them, chatting.

  Come to me.

  I dropped the pill in a toilet, flushed. I looked at my hands—not at the mirror—and cupped some water. Drank. Left.

  Julie was waiting for my return; when I crawled into my bed, she turned off her lamp, throwing the room into moonlit gloom. I thought about getting up to close the curtains, but I could feel myself going soft if not from medication, then exhaustion.

  I began to sink into sleep, letting go, floating along as if I were on a river . . . or a lake. Spinning in a slow circle, as the cold water washed over my head . . . as my nightgown weighted me down . . . going deeper . . . down, down . . . and someone was calling my name . . . looking for me . . . if only someone would look down, look! into the lake, the black, cold grave of a lake . . .

  And I forced myself up from the dregs of the dream, pushing like a drowning woman through the currents and the icy hands that tried t
o keep me there.

  Keep me there.

  I couldn’t sleep after that. I got up and went into our common area and sat in one of the overstuffed nice-hotel-chain chairs, pulling a lap robe around myself, jumping at every creak of the building. The floor moaned and I thought of Julie’s ghosts, the ones who walked up and down the halls past all the bad art. Maybe I should have taken Julie’s pill after all.

  I watched the clock; on school mornings, the early risers got up at seven thirty. I waited, huddled and miserable, checking and rechecking the clock, glancing at the doorway, jerking each time I began to doze off.

  The shower went on.

  Finally, I thought, surprised that I had actually gotten some sleep. I unfolded myself and toddled down the hall back to our room. Quietly, I pressed the latch and pushed it open. Sunlight was beaming into the room, washing away the traces of things that went bump in the shadows.

  Julie’s arm was thrown across her face, to keep the sun out of her eyes. I walked to her bed, feeling a rush of friend-tenderness, and whispered, “Rise and shine, Jules.”

  She grunted. “I like Jules. Not yet.”

  I chuckled and crossed the room to stand at the foot of her bed. I shook the mattress with my knee.

  She moaned.

  “Come on,” I began. “You’re going to—”

  I stopped when I noticed the pile of thick white material on the side of her bed facing the wall. Frowning, I walked over to it and gathered up a piece. It was thick and there were pieces of a satiny beige fabric mixed in with it.

  “Julie,” I said.

  Something in my voice must have told her I needed her. She pulled back her arm and opened her eyes, looking up at me as I silently showed her what I’d found. She took it from me as I knelt beside her bed. A wad of it hung from beneath the fitted top sheet of her cloud sheets.

  I pulled up the sheet.

  Four deep gouges ran through the side of her mattress, as if someone had taken some kind of gardening tool and raked it. The stuff I’d found was the innards.

  “Look at this,” I said.

  She leaned over the side of her bed, gasped, and scrabbled off in the opposite direction. Then she limp-hopped around to my side, standing beside me, as together we surveyed the damage.

  “Oh God, do we have rats?” She landed hard on my bed and yanked up her feet, groaning as she clutched her injured ankle.

  “It’s not rats. They did it,” I said. “They must have come in here while we were . . . asleep.”

  “They.” She frowned at me.

  “Julie. You know it’s them. They’re hazing you.” I gathered up more wadding. “Messing with your head.” And possibly escalating the violence, just like Rose said.

  Her gaze went from the fluff in my hands to my face and back again. “Are you that desperate to keep me from being friends with her?”

  “Julie.” I was stunned. “I would never do something like this. Are you kidding? I’m here on scholarship. The last thing I would do is ruin school property for a prank.”

  She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Julie, come on.”

  But you did fall asleep in the common room, I reminded myself. Maybe you sleepwalked in here and—did something kind of crazy yourself.

  I’m not crazy, I told myself. I never was. I just had a little breakdown.

  Still, my hands were shaking; and she was scared, too. She stared at the mattress, then glanced at Jessel through our open curtains.

  “Okay, maybe she—they did. But it doesn’t mean anything. They’re just . . . letting me know I’m part of the gang.”

  “Nice. You could get in trouble for this,” I pointed out.

  She sniffed. “I have to get ready for breakfast.” Looking away, she skirted around me and left the room.

  I walked to Julie’s window and looked out at Mandy’s turret. The curtains were open.

  I saw the face. A white oval in the center of the window, with two dark eyes. The mouth was a smaller circle of black.

  And it was there, right? Or . . . was I losing it? Was I seeing things?

  “Hey, Julie,” I said, when she came back into the room, tow eling her hair. And then I realized I was afraid to ask her. If she didn’t see it . . . she might think I’d ripped up her mattress. My best friend. While she was knocked out from her French sleeping pill.

  “Yes?” Her voice was clipped, formal.

  I looked out the window. “Do you think it’s going to rain? Should we take our umbrellas?”

  I counted off the seconds before she reacted. She came up beside me. She cocked her head. And then she waved.

  I glanced sharply at her. She was looking down. I followed her eyeline. April, our dorm mate, was standing below us in the quad. Dressed in black jogging clothes striped with dark pink, she bounced around in a little circle, then headed toward our front door.

  I looked back at the face. Please, Julie, look, I pleaded.

  “Maybe we’ll see what Mandy’s going to wear,” I said, gesturing to the window. The face. See the face.

  “You shouldn’t spy on her like that,” Julie snapped. Then she turned her back and went to her closet, pulling out clothes without another word.

  “I didn’t do it,” I said. “To your mattress, I mean.”

  “Okay,” she replied.

  I dressed as fast as I could, faster than Julie. I stomped to the commons; it was starting to drizzle, and I hadn’t brought my umbrella.

  I walked in, taking attendance at the various oval tables with dark-green wood chairs. Brass pots spewed green houseplants.

  Mandy and the others weren’t there yet, but Rose was, getting some coffee. She was wearing brighter colors again—purple, orange, chartreuse.

  “Hey,” I said. “They . . . she . . . is pumping up the volume.” I told her what had happened with the mattress. “And Julie thinks I did it,” I concluded.

  “She was knocked out. And you were out of the room.” She opened up a little plastic creamer and dumped it in her coffee. There were three such packages on the stainless steel coffee warmer.

  “What?” she said when I raised an eyebrow. “I like creamer.” She stirred and sipped her coffee, her eyes hooded. “I wonder what they would have done if you’d been in the room.”

  I made a face. She made one back.

  “Plus there was this book on Ehrlenbach’s desk,” I said. “Did you see it?”

  She shook her head. “Wasn’t looking.”

  “It was about lobotomies. And there was a sketch of that head Julie found.”

  “Lobotomies. Brain surgery. Ehrlen-stein showed it to you?” Rose asked, taking another sip.

  “She wasn’t in the office when I went in,” I replied. “But it was creepy.”

  “Well, she’s creepy,” Rose returned. She hesitated. “Are we making more out of this than we should?”

  “You should see Julie’s mattress,” I replied. I thought a minute. “Is there anyone else we can tell?”

  “Shayna Maisel, maybe, but she’d probably stomp off to Ehrlenbach. And that would be the end of that.” She took another sip. “People like Mandy never get busted. Jeez, if she can have sex with her own brother at the White House . . . ”

  “We don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “But she is really into him. She’s freaking out that he’s in rehab.”

  “And she talks to herself like a schizophrenic and destroys school property while girls are sleeping on it.” She shivered. “What if she had hurt Julie? And blamed you?”

  I cared less about the getting-blamed part than the Julie-getting-hurt part.

  I sighed. “This sucks.”

  “Verily.” She cocked her head. “You’re staying over break, right?”

  Of course I was. I had made it clear when I came here that there was no way I was going back to San Diego so soon after escaping.

  “I’m staying, too,” Rose said. “My parents are so dysfunctional I’d rather stay here.”

  I knew where she wa
s headed. Rose waited a dramatic beat, and then she grinned and said, “Guess what I have.”

  “Herpes,” I said.

  Her face didn’t change.

  “Shia LaBeouf’s phone number.”

  “Jessel’s front door key,” she replied slyly.

  “No way,” I blurted. “How did . . . did you steal it?”

  She raised her chin with pride. “During the séance. They were so wasted, no one even noticed,” she crowed. “I figure once they leave, we can sneak in there and do some investigating. Locate the skeletons. Figure out if Mandy needs to increase her meds.”

  “They will notice,” I argued. “Or they’ll change the locks or something.”

  “Nah, there are a bunch of copies. Anyway, I’m willing to take that chance.” She blew on her coffee. “How about you, Lindsay? They snuck into your room and vandalized Julie’s mattress. Are you going to stand by and let something else happen?”

  My heart pounded. “No, I’m not,” I said.

  “Good.” I reached for her coffee. She let me take it. I raised it in salute, and took a sip. It was mostly creamer.

  “We could get in big trouble,” she reminded me. Then she smiled grimly. “Expelled, at the very least. Not that I plan on it.”

  “Still in,” I told her.

  “Okay, then.” She took the coffee back. “Let the countdown begin.”

  We had seventeen days until Thanksgiving break.

  seventeen

  I didn’t tell Julie about my nightmare.

  Or the one after it.

  Or the one after that.

  Nearly one every night for the next two weeks. She knew that I wasn’t sleeping well, but that was all she knew.

  I didn’t tell her that I still saw the face—sometimes in the window, sometimes in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t tell anyone. I pretended not to see it more often than not.

  Mandy invited her over to Jessel nearly every day. The first couple of times, Julie would come back and try to be cool and restrained about what she’d seen over there. From what I could tell, it seemed all Mandy had to do was snap her fingers (via the internet or the landline) and fabulous things made their way up our mountain—such as chocolate madeleines from Knipschildt Chocolatier for $250 apiece.