Possessions

by Nancy Holder

  I’d learned a little about Marlwood from emailing and IMing with my roommate-to-be, Julie Statin. She said Marlwood had reopened that year after decades of being closed. Generations of rich Ehrlenbachs had used the extensive grounds as a family retreat, but Dr. Margot had started up the school again for some unknown reason.

  Both Julie and the brochure had neglected to mention that the campus was located in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by some seriously eerie woods, or that the headmistress, Dr. Margot Ehrlenbach, looked like something out of a wax museum—at least judging by her photograph on page one. Now I was about to find out.

  Julie and I approached the admin building, me watching a cluster of my classmates laughing and strolling to points unknown. They were dressed for a level of upscale success I hadn’t dreamed existed outside dishy, trashy websites. I was gawking so intensely that I nearly ran into a big black door, adorned with a circular door knocker clutched in the mouth of a stern lion. Arched windows swagged in dark green curtains looked like eyes; two stone columns propped up lacy iron-work verandas enclosing the two stories.

  “I have to leave you here,” Julie said. “I’ll check in with coach and see you in a few.” She patted my shoulder. “Ehrlenbach is freaky, but don’t let her get to you.”

  “Words to live by,” I drawled, trying to sound braver than I felt.

  “You’re funny,” Julie said. It was a compliment. “Later.”

  She dashed off and I went inside.

  The scent of ivy seeped through a clogging, old-building smell, and stained glass windows blocked out more light than they let in. It was so gloomy that it took me a moment to see the washed-out receptionist, with gray hair and silver glasses and a gray blouse under a dark green jacket. Dark green was Marlwood’s color. She brought the gray to the party on her own.

  “Lindsay Cavanaugh,” she said. I was a bit taken aback that she knew my name. But of course, I was the only new girl, new defined as starting the semester so late.

  “That’s me,” I blurted.

  She didn’t smile. “Go down the hall. Her door is on the left. She’s waiting,” she told me, gesturing. Her nameplate read ANNE SHELLEY.

  I passed Ms. Shelley’s desk and walked into an even dimmer corridor. At the other end, the marble bust of Our Glorious Founder, Edwin Marlwood, glared at me so hard that I actually took a step back. He had a narrow forehead and a long, hooked nose, and his blank eyes practically narrowed with disapproval. You, he seemed to say, do not belong here.

  Just before I knocked on the heavy mahogany door that said, MARGOT EHRLENBACH, PHD, HEADMISTRESS, Dr. Ehrlenbach opened it herself and invited me to sit down. The office was freezing—even colder than outside—and I was glad I had opted for my high-tops instead of my flip flops. The room was completely bare except for a large cherrywood desk, a bookcase containing a dozen or so thick leather-bound books, her padded leather chair, two upholstered (dark green) chairs in front of it, and some framed watercolor sketches of the Marlwood grounds.

  “So. Lindsay,” Margot Ehrlenbach said unto me.

  My cousin’s boyfriend had dubbed her “Maggot” during the endless family debates we’d had about whether it would drive me even crazier to go away to boarding school. I wondered if she kept her office so cold to keep herself from decomposing. I knew she was on the elderly side, but there were no wrinkles on her sharp-featured face. She was wearing an incredible amount of makeup; maybe she had troweled it into all her lines, like grout. Her skin was pulled so tightly she couldn’t have smiled if she’d wanted to.

  And after seeing me, she obviously didn’t want to. I had thought I was all that—proud of my anti-fashion statement: high-tops, tattered jeans, my mom’s ratty UCSD sweatshirt, no makeup. And the hair that would not die—my black curls flowing like bubbles over my shoulders, contained—not tamed—by a plain tortoiseshell headband. But it wasn’t happening.

  “You’ve arrived,” she continued, in a tone that said We won’t make a mistake like that again.

  I had assumed my first stop would be my room, and I had planned to change into a less ragged pair of jeans and maybe even a sweater and Jason’s peacoat to meet my headmistress. Instead, Dr. Ehrlenbach’s eye-sweep up and down drove home the point that I had blown my first impression, and the silence in the room hung there like a meat cleaver over my head.

  “And you’re ready to get to work,” she said icily, continuing the pleasantries. “Because you have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Yeah, I mean yes. Ma’am,” I replied.

  She could smile, thinly, and arch a brow, doing both as she handed me a schedule, a map, and some syllabi, and then told me all my books had been delivered to my room with the rest of my things.

  She said “things” like my things were things. Things that should not be there. Things that were suspect, and probably infected. Then she went on to remind me that my roommate was going above and beyond, because everyone else in my dorm had a single, and Julie Statin had actually offered to share with me.

  I smiled and at some point I completely fuzzed out and lost track, which is what happens to people with anxiety problems. So I smiled harder and felt sweat icing over my clavicles, and wondered if it was really so bad back home in San Diego.

  Big problem: it was.

  “So we’ll check back in with each other in a week, yes?” she concluded.

  “Yes, yes, that would be so . . . yes,” I bumbled. I could feel the clock ticking. On your mark, get set. I had seven days to prove myself.

  I could see both our reflections on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s desk; the room was so cold I could see my breath, too. Each “yes” was like a hiss of steam.

  “Then you may go,” she said, each word distinct, as if I were either an idiot or couldn’t speak English.

  She placed her hands on her desk. I swore she had put makeup on them and I tried very hard not to stare. No rings. I was wearing a ring on my thumb. I wondered if that made me look like I was in a gang or something.

  I got to my feet, my nerves making me awkward. Or maybe I was just naturally awkward. She cocked her head and I had a crazy (bad word choice, maybe . . . “unsettling”) moment where I thought she was going to tell me that she’d changed her mind and I couldn’t stay. I knew she had protested my admission, and someone on the board had overruled her. I’d heard my stepmom, CJ, talking about it on the phone. I wondered if Dr. Ehrlenbach could tell by looking that I wasn’t completely over my nervous breakdown.

  Yes, yes I am, I told myself.

  Then she blew me out of the water. “You know, you have such a pretty face. Maybe with a little grooming . . . ” She trailed off.

  I knew that one. It was the way people told you that something about your appearance sucked. She could be commenting on my crazy hair, which was a huge mass of ringlets that fell to my shoulders. Or the lack of makeup on my face, which my mom used to say was shaped like a heart. I was born on Valentine’s Day. “Grooming” in the current situation probably meant appropriate clothes, though. I felt like such a dork.

  “Thanks,” I said, which made me feel even dorkier.

  Then her face sort of . . . altered, and I couldn’t really tell if she was smiling more widely or experiencing intense pain. I didn’t know how to read her, but I had a sinking feeling that she was enjoying watching me squirm. How did a person become the headmistress of a very expensive private boarding school for girls? She had to have a lot of ambition, and cut-throat skills.

  I was suddenly very scared of her. We were up here in the mountains and she held my fate in her hands. She could make my life a living hell and—

  Stop it. You are falling into drama mode, I chastised myself.

  “All right, then,” she said.

  I knew I had stayed too long. I turned and fled, forcing myself to walk at a normal pace as I went back down the hall, past the receptionist, and out the front door.

  Then I was free, half-stumbling down the brick steps in a mild state of shock, shaking with cold
and tension, and wondering if maybe I could whip out the old cell phone and request a rescue. But my dad was probably already halfway to the forlorn little town of San Covino, the closest outpost of civilization to Marlwood. San Covino was two hours away, and the winding mountain road back up to Marlwood had sorely taxed our old Suby.

  And I had just spent two weeks convincing him; my stepmom; the administration at Grossmont, my old school; and Dr. Yaeger, my therapist, that I was ready for this fantastic opportunity.

  Plus, I had no cell phone reception. No bars. No texting. Just . . . my thoughts.

  I was on my own.

  three

  Julie met me halfway between the admin building and our door. Her cheeks were rosy from dashing all over campus, and I was grateful that she working overtime to make me feel welcome.

  “I’m on the red team,” she informed me. “In soccer. We’re gonna kill the blues. And here we are,” Julie announced all in one breath, as she pushed open the door to Grose Hall. The door itself was carved with the Marlwood crest—a capital M surrounded by ivy.

  The foyer was dark; on a half-circle table facing us, a foot-high statue of a guy in a robe raised a hand in benediction—speaking of St. Peter—and a jumble of letters was scattered in front of him. He was blessing the correspondence. There was a white board propped beside the statue. It said, “At Stewart. Ida, eat lunch.”

  “Ms. Krige is over at Stewart. There’s a meeting,” Julie translated. “Ida is one of our dormies.”

  I remembered that Ms. Krige was our housemother. She had nice handwriting. “Is this a Catholic school?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Julie said, as she led the way down a hall paneled in nearly-black wood. Small chandelier-style light fixtures hung from the ceiling, which was made of some kind of embossed metal of little rosettes, painted burgundy. The light bouncing off it made Julie’s cheeks look sunburned. Or bloody.

  There were oil paintings on the walls, mostly of vases of flowers or bowls of fruit, and a few landscapes. The hardwood floor beneath our feet was highly polished, revealing our reflections like a shimmering pool would. I passed a watercolor painting of a girl’s head and shoulders. Unsmiling, she had a bizarrely wide forehead and her hair was pulled back tightly in a bun. Her eyes were dark brown, and in the dim red light, they reminded me of Mandy’s eyes, back at the hedge.

  “I think these are student paintings,” Julie said. She made a face. “Not exactly the best advertising for the art department, is it?”

  “The eyes follow you.” I experimentally moved my head back and forth. Sure enough, Wide Forehead’s gaze shifted as I moved. I knew that was a painter’s trick. The Mona Lisa did the same thing. But it was still creepy.

  We passed several half-open doors—people were trusting there—a couple doors revealing dark, ornately carved beds, each with a different bedspread: sky-blue satin with metallic stars, silky black, hippie swirls of raspberry and yellow. A pair of leather riding boots gleamed dully on a hardwood floor.

  “Jessel and Grose are two of the oldest buildings on campus,” Julie informed me. “We’re Academy Quad. We’re the only dorms that have full kitchens. And we have the weirdest bathroom. It’s got, like, five bathtubs. Huge ones.” She wrinkled her nose. “And ghosts. We’re supposed to be haunted.”

  “Eek,” I mocked, ignoring the teeny little shiver that zinged up my spine.

  She held up a finger. “Don’t be so quick to make fun. This place is bizarre at night. I swear someone keeps walking up and down the hall, but when I go and look, there’s no one there.”

  “Double eek.” I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic. I just didn’t know what else to say.

  She huffed but she was still smiling. “Anyway, I’m so glad you’re going to share my room. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since I got here.”

  “Oh.” I was a little crestfallen. It hadn’t dawned on me that she might have had an ulterior motive for wanting a roommate.

  “If you stare at the tiles in the bathroom and say ‘Come to me’ five times in a row, you’re supposed to be able to see a ghost,” she went on, scrunching up her face.

  “Have you tried it?” I asked her.

  “Are you nuts?” she shot back, grabbing her ponytail and making as if to smack me with it. “Jessel’s even more haunted,” she went on. “It’s the most haunted dorm on campus. Also, it’s the coolest one. With the turrets. One of them is locked and no one is allowed in.”

  “That’s where Ehrlenbach keeps her coffin,” I said.

  We both grinned at each other; then she stopped at a door that looked like all the other doors, except that it was closed. She put her hand on the latch.

  “Grose has a very strange layout,” she said. “The rooms on our side of the hall have two windows, but the rooms on the other side have no windows at all. They are hideous caves; mushrooms are probably growing in their closets.”

  “Cool,” I replied, and she clicked open the door.

  Wow. There was a circular tapestry on the floor, of fat roses and leaves, and a larger version of the chandelier light fixtures gleaming above it. The light bulbs in it were shaped like flames.

  Beneath two narrow rectangular windows, two larger-than-twin-sized beds of carved black wood were placed on either side of a common large nightstand made of dark wood inlaid with what looked like mother-of-pearl. Each bed had another, smaller stand on the other side; these were a little plainer, as if they hadn’t been part of the original grouping. One bed was covered with a very thick pink satin quilted bedspread with fist-sized ivory tassels. I could tell just by looking at it that it had been very expensive. If my family had ever hoped to have things like that, the hope was gone. My dad was still paying off my mom’s medical bills.

  A stuffed unicorn sat on top of a stylish trio of velvet pillows in three different shades of pink bordered with soft gray fringes. The unicorn was lavender with metallic silver hooves and a matching silver horn, and its black curled eyelashes were very long. It looked amazingly cheap, compared to the bedspread and pillows.

  Julie saw me looking at it. Her cheeks went pink as she crossed to the bed, picked it up, and waggled it at me. “Are you going to mock me for having a stuffie?”

  “Only if he has friends,” I said, trying to make a joke. Then, gazing at the oversized trunk at the foot of her bed, I added hastily, “Unless he really does. In which case, I apologize.”

  “No. Caspian is my one and only transitional stuffed animal.”

  She started to put the unicorn on her bed, then picked it up and cradled it against her chest. She made his front right hoof wave at me. “And he is very happy to meet you.”

  Okay, that’s going a little too far, I thought, but I said, “Same here, Caspian.”

  The other bed—mine—was covered with a brocade tapestry bedspread. The circular rug tied in with it, but didn’t quite match it. It dawned on me that these were real antiques, one-of-a-kind items. That was what forty-one thousand dollars a year for tuition and room and board got you. Plus a thousand for fees and a thousand for books. All of which I was getting for free.

  My cheesy brown polka-dot suitcases and plastic bins from Home Depot were grouped around the footboard of the tapestry bed and on top of a study desk with turned legs. A two-shelf bookcase sat beside the desk. There was a row of what appeared to be textbooks lining the top shelf. My chair was wood, with dark green upholstery, and a bazillion levers to adjust the height and such. I also had a dresser, with four drawers, and an oval mirror atop it. The mirror had a grayish tint, as if it were very old, and the frame was carved. Roses.

  My room at home was a jumble of non-matching furniture I had tried and failed to coordinate with purple-and-green drapes, some matching throw pillows, and a lamp with a purple lampshade I had decorated with silver and green beads. My throat tightened for a second with emotions I couldn’t begin to name, even if Dr. Yaeger had been there with his collection of happy, sad, pissed-off, and depressed faces to give me clu
es.

  Until then, I had assumed the pictures in the brochures were exaggerations, and my bed would be a metal frame and a mattress. I’d imagined a stained mattress at that, and a sort of set of cubbies where I would stash my clothes.

  My clothes. My unbelievable rags. What had I done?

  “I think our room used to be two rooms,” Julie went on as I moved on to the textbooks and began examining them one by one. I half-expected them to be written in a secret private-school code, or for each page to be covered in footnotes referring to things I’d never heard of. They looked like regular schoolbooks, nothing too beyond me, and I exhaled with relief.

  “To explain the two windows,” she said. “Two rooms. But they’d have been about as big as prison cells. I mean, this one is pretty cramped as it is.”

  I glanced up from my brand new Spanish book. Was she nuts? Her room—our room—was huge.

  “We can see Jessel,” she said, crossing to the windows. “They hardly ever close their drapes. Mandy Winters lives in Jessel. Mandy came late, too, but not as late as you.”

  Mandy’s last name was Winters. It sounded vaguely familiar. I remembered her black eyes as I came up beside Julie and gazed down at Jessel. The turrets really were amazing. We had a great view of one of them, although the curtains were closed.

  “That’s Mandy’s room,” Julie said, following my line of vision. A beat. “You’ve got to know who the Winters are . . . ”

  I made a little face.