Possessions

by Nancy Holder

  But it was all vicarious, and precarious—Mandy could cut Julie off at any point. Maybe she knew that; or that was why she stopped talking about it, and got quiet and vague when I asked her what she’d done over there—they’d hung out; they’d watched TV. I tried to look at her eyes without being obvious, to see if she’d taken anything. I felt like her mother.

  Then, she told me that Mandy had taken her to the operating theater a few times to see Spider. He and Troy rowed over together and hung out. I was sorry that she hadn’t told me right away. That was the kind of thing you told your best friend. Unless there was something you didn’t want your best friend to know. I wondered if she had done the deed with Spider. Did I need to give her the birth control lecture? The “he could be using you” lecture? Or would she stuff my mouth full of mattress guts?

  No one came forward about the ripped mattress. Julie collected all the stuffing and put it in a plastic bag, which she kept in her underwear drawer.

  I wondered if Troy and Mandy did the deed . . . and tried not to wonder. I certainly didn’t ask Julie. He had fallen off the radar; no one seemed to remember the way hunky chainsaw guy had batted his lashes at me. No matter. I hadn’t seen him since the operating theater, and I doubted I ever would.

  Meanwhile, I snuck down to the lake whenever I could. On occasion, Mandy would show, and I could hear her talking to herself in her two voices. But bad weather was rolling in, and most days I couldn’t make out the conversation over the rumbling of thunder and heavy wind. The birds were agitated, dipping toward the lake, then swooping back up as if they were afraid to land on it.

  Rose and I checked in numerous times. She hadn’t been invited back to Jessel since the night of the séance.

  “Maybe they figured out I stole their key,” she said. But no one had confronted her.

  I went over, but I never got to see Mandy’s room. I finally did see Kiyoko’s palace of wicked-modern Asian sleekness, shiny lacquer and old brass. Not a thing was out of place; she even hung her clothes in the closet according to length, color, and function. And what clothes—made just for her, all of them, by famous designers all over the world.

  It sleeted on the seventh day before break. Then it rained for five days in a row after that, and though I braved the downpour every morning to creep down to the lake, Mandy didn’t come. Maybe she was done; maybe it was too cold.

  The rain came down so heavily that I could no longer see the windows in Jessel. Maybe that was why the face moved into the shower stalls when they were misty with steam. In the cold, blue fluorescent light, bouncing off the tiles and the stainless steel sinks, two black eyes, one O of a mouth . . . that no one else seemed to see. I did ask, cautiously, and the others accused me of trying to scare them.

  I remembered what it had felt like back in San Diego, right before I broke down. When I kept asking my “friends” if Riley still liked me. And how they kept telling me that he did. So I told my dorm mates that, yes, I was trying to scare them by asking them about the face in the shower . . . and I stopped looking through the steam as best I could.

  Another weird thing happened before Thanksgiving break—our cell phones started working. But only in a few places, and of course, one of them was Jessel. You could stand on Jessel’s porch or go inside for a signal. But walk across the quad toward Grose, and you couldn’t get through.

  Rose was as intrigued as I was by this change in cell phone fortune, even if she laughed so hard she almost wet her pants when Ida put forth the theory that maybe cell phones worked near ghosts. Since Jessel was so haunted and all.

  Finally, it was the day before break, and Jessel invited Grose over for tea. Wisps of snow powdered the waning sunlight, landing on the foreheads of the white horse heads lining the walk. The tea was a formal girly event, so I had broken down and let Julie fix me up. I had on my black wool skirt and one of her tops. She added a wide black beaded belt. Then she dusted my cheekbones and collarbones with gold body glitter; and I gathered my hair into a messy bun that she held in place with beautiful gold enameled barrettes.

  She was glammed up, too, in pale pink and white. Sweet, non-threatening.

  All eight of us Grose-ites knocked on Jessel’s red door, as if we were Christmas caroling—Ida, Claire, April, Leslie, Elvis, Marica, Julie, and me—and it opened to the scent of ginger-bread and the amplified celestial tune of a music box version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Pine swags laden with matte gold balls and cherubs adorned the balcony and the stair rail.

  “Ladies,” Mandy said. She was wearing a rust-colored satin bubble dress trimmed in gold. Her eyes were swollen, and beneath her expertly-applied makeup, her face had broken out. Stress and more stress.

  “Hi,” Julie said for all of us. And we all trailed in.

  As I passed, Mandy gave me a look. Oh my God, she knows we’re going to break into her house, I thought. But of course she didn’t. There was no way she could know, unless she’d planted bugs on Rose and me. Or she was psychic. Or her Ouija board told her.

  I cleared my throat. “Hi,’ I said.

  Alis, Lara, Sangeeta, and Kiyoko were dressed up, too. I saw some other non-Mandy girls as well. Susi Mateland and Gretchen Cabot. Gretchen smiled at me, then said something to Sienna Thibodaux, who gave me a once-over. I felt myself go chilly. I was embarrassed that I’d even tried to change my image. Then I saw Charlotte Davidson, determinedly goth in an upscale way—black on black on red—and I felt a little better.

  “Let me take your jackets,” Mandy said, like an actual polite person. There were so many more layers of clothes in Northern California than I was used to.

  I heard a ringtone, something vaguely Euro-pop. Mandy caught her breath. Her eyes lit up. With a squeal, she said, “My brother. Excuse me,” and yanked a wafer-thin phone out of a pocket in her dress. She popped it open, scanned, and laughed. Color rose up her neck and fanned across her cheeks. Before I realized what she was doing, she swept beside me and took a picture of us together.

  A second ringtone indicated an actual incoming call. Mandy connected, listened, and said, “You’re a pig.” Then she laughed and held the phone out to me. There was something odd in her expression, more strain around her eyes. She looked bad.

  “My brother wants to talk to you,” she informed me. “His name is Miles. Be very nice to him.”

  Oh my God, I thought. I was actually going to speak to her infamous brother.

  “Miles,” I said, into the phone.

  “Wow,” he replied. His voice was very deep and husky. Sexy. “You wore black to my sister’s frou-frou tea party. You are very, very bad. Be glad I’m locked up.”

  “Why, what would you do?” I asked, and he chuckled.

  There was a pause, then a puff of air. He was smoking. “Let’s just say I’m protective of my little sis.”

  “Uh,” I said, at a loss for words. Was he threatening me?

  “So . . . I like people to be nice to her. I don’t like it when they’re . . . not nice. Are you being naughty or nice?”

  “Say bye,” Mandy told me, with an edge to her voice.

  “I have to go,” I said into the phone.

  “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” he replied. “And . . . ” He lowered his voice. “My bet’s on naughty.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Shaken, I handed Mandy the phone, and she broke into a grin as she put the phone to her ear, half-turning.

  “No,” she said, sliding a glance at me. “No, no, no, you are a thing of evil.” She laughed and put her hand to her hair. “All right. Love you too.”

  She snapped the phone shut. Smiled. At me. Then she said, “Miles would just kill anyone who was mean to me, you know.”

  A chill skittered up my spine. I had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t kidding. Maybe he wasn’t in rehab at all. Maybe he was in jail . . . for murder.

  Stop it, I chided myself. Don’t fall into drama mode.

  Julie glided over to me with an extra brownie on a rus
t-colored cloth napkin that matched Mandy’s dress. I took it.

  “That was Miles,” I said, fishing for a reaction. Maybe Mandy had discussed the exact nature of their relationship with her.

  “He’s so funny,” Julie said.

  My alarm bells went off. “You’ve met him?”

  “Only talked to him. But Mandy says I’ll meet him someday.”

  “Oh.” I smiled weakly at her, but I didn’t like the idea of her getting anywhere near Miles Winters. And I felt bad, not telling her what I was up to. “Let’s get tea.”

  “Spider and I are texting,” she said, showing me her cell phone. Sure enough, Spider had plastered emoticons all over the faceplate. She was all blushy and giggly. “I think he’s going to come see me during break.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, and I meant it. Though I was a little sad, too. Julie’s relationship with Spider was happening so fast, and I was missing it all.

  Kiyoko and Sangeeta were standing like proper hostesses behind a table that had been set perpendicular to the fireplace. Kiyoko’s face was shrunken, gaunt. There were hollows under her eyes, and her cheeks were cavernous. The table was stocked with teacups and little finger sandwiches, but I sincerely doubted Kiyoko would be eating any of them.

  The fire was low and pleasant, and the mantelpiece had been decorated for the holidays. Two white porcelain pots of trailing ivy bookended a cluster of ornate wooden picture frames.

  I stepped closer to the mantel and looked at the brown-and-white photographs, three of the same girl, and one of a trio of girls dressed in black high-necked gowns and light pinafores, like maids.

  The three were seated on a settee holding hands with each other. The one who sat in the middle had long, flowing hair crowned with wildflowers, and she was smiling at the camera, her head tilted to the left. Flirting. She reminded me of Mandy. To her left, a chubby girl had two braids looped around her ears, then twisted into a little crown on top of her head. The other one a long braid, like Julie sometimes wore her hair, held in place by an oversized bow.

  I gazed into the steely eyes of the lone girl, who looked more grown-up than the others in a dark, high-collared dress of lace over a sheeny, solid fabric. The long sleeves encased her arms, and the outfit looked tight and uncomfortable. Her light hair was slicked back in a bun. The skin on her face looked stretched, and her ears stuck out. She was wearing jet bead earrings. A large cameo was pinned to the high collar. It was so big it would have made it difficult for her to lower her chin.

  I couldn’t imagine having to wear anything like that; she was probably imprisoned inside a lace-up corset, too. Her gloved hands were clenched at her sides. She looked like she wanted to scream in each of the three pictures, each one so similar to the others that at first I thought they were duplicates. But in one she held a single rose in her fist, and in another, she had a death grip on a Bible.

  “Are these relatives of someone?” I asked Kiyoko.

  “We think they lived here,” Sangeeta replied. “We found a lot of old pictures in the attic. There was an old trunk. The workmen must have found it and left it there.”

  Lara took over. “Actually, there is no ‘we.’ Mandy found the trunk. Before your time, Sangeeta.” She shot laser beams at Sangeeta, who swallowed, crestfallen.

  “Well, they’re very interesting,” Julie chirruped. “They tie in with your decorating.” She smiled at Sangeeta. “Are you going anywhere special for the break?”

  “Mumbai, maybe,” Sangeeta said, regaining her composure. “We’ll see.”

  “I’d love to go to India,” Julie said.

  We moved on. Ms. Meyerson leaned out of the kitchen and waved at us.

  Once we were out of earshot, I said to Julie, “That was fun.”

  “Lara is a bitch,” she murmured under her breath. “I think she’s in love with Mandy in a gay way. She hates Troy.”

  Then I felt someone watching me, and turned my head. It was Kiyoko. She walked to the panorama window and looked at me again. She wanted me to go outside?

  Just then, Elvis came up to Julie and said, “We need you to settle a bet.” She glanced at me apologetically and added, “It’s a horse thing.”

  “Go, go,” I urged Julie.

  Kiyoko was walking into the kitchen. I sauntered after her. Kiyoko took the side door; I did, too; and we walked out of the kitchen, into falling snow. I halted, admiring it, snow in November. Then she hurried me through the gate to the other side of the privet hedge. We didn’t have on jackets, and she was so incredibly thin I half-expected her bones to snap when she began to shiver.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, glancing at the house. She moved us farther away, so that I could see the empty window above the kitchen. Her teeth were chattering and she rubbed her hands.

  I looked at those hands. Her once-perfect French manicure was a thing of the past. Her nails were ragged, the cuticles bleeding.

  “Do you want to go on a walk?” I asked her. “Or over to Grose?”

  “No.” She stuffed her hands into her armpits and hunched. Then she looked at me, hard. “Something is going on. Something’s not right.”

  “Something . . . ” I said slowly. “Something like . . . ?”

  “I heard noises in our attic last night. And I went up there . . .” She licked her lips. “It was scary. I don’t know how to describe it, except that I didn’t want to stay in there. I had to leave.”

  Where Mandy found a trunk. I nodded and opened my mouth to say something, but she rushed on.

  “When I came back from the attic, I heard Mandy talking in her room. I thought she was talking to Lara or Alis, but she was talking to herself. Only, in another voice. And she was laughing. And she said something about her luck changing. That things were going to start moving fast.”

  Oh my God. Wait until I tell Rose, I thought.

  “Do you know what she’s talking about?” I asked.

  Kiyoko shook her head. Her face was pale. Her eyes darted left, right, and she leaned toward me. “Have you ever heard her say anything like that?”

  I leaned toward her and said, “As a matter of fact . . . ”

  She crooked her neck, as if to catch every syllable I was about to share. And something stopped me. I looked into her ashen, hungry face and it was almost like an actual voice inside my head warning me, Don’t trust her.

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I haven’t.” It was clumsy. But I stuck to it, clamping my mouth shut.

  Her forehead creased. Then she looked me straight in the eye and pulled up the corners of her mouth, as if she really did want to smile, but couldn’t quite force herself to. I was fascinated, trying to figure out where she was going emotionally—and what part of it was real.

  “It’s okay to tell me,” she said, in a low, confidential tone of voice. “It’ll stay between us.”

  Uh-huh. I had almost forgotten that Kiyoko was a Mandy-minion first, and my project partner second. We’d worked well together, and we’d gotten a great grade. Maybe at another school, we could have become real friends.

  “What did Mandy say?” I asked her, throwing her loyalty back in her face. “I assume you asked her about talking to herself?”

  Kiyoko gave her head a little shake. “She said she was on the phone to her brother.” She took a breath. “And then she asked me why I was spying on her.”

  I waited. Kiyoko’s eyes welled. “Lindsay, everyone says Jessel is haunted. And then this morning, when Mandy decorated our mantel for the party, I think I heard her talking to the pictures. And she called one of them Gilda.”

  She shivered harder. I could practically hear her bones cracking. “We contacted Gilda the other night using our Ouija board. When Rose was over here. Maybe Rose mentioned it?”

  Oh my God, I’m getting the low-rent prank treatment, too, just like Rose, I thought. Or maybe this was just the warm up. Kiyoko knew I was staying here over break. Everyone did. I was ripe for terror and humiliation. Maybe if I played along, Kiyo
ko would throw out some hints—planted or accidental—about what I could expect. If anything. Maybe Kiyoko was truly scared—an unknowing pawn.

  “Kiyoko,” I said kindly, “maybe she was pranking you.”

  “I thought of that.” She took a deep breath. “I . . . sometimes I blank out, and it’s like I’m almost awake, or . . . or aware, or . . . ” She looked down. “Plus, I had a horrible nightmare last night.”

  That pricked my interest. “You did? What about?”

  She stared down at her fancy matte bronze high heels. In the snow. “I don’t remember.”

  I hesitated. “Do you guys do drugs?”

  “No!” She looked horrified.

  “Do you ever slip things into our drinks?”

  “No way, Lindsay. That would be so horrible.” She licked her lips. “But we . . . ”

  She blanched, and whatever she said was lost as I glanced back up at the window over the kitchen and saw Mandy framed in the dying light. She was watching us. Kiyoko saw her, too.

  “You what?” I pushed.

  “We should go in,” she said.

  “Kiyoko . . . ”

  “Forget it.” She lifted her thumb to her mouth, realized what she was doing, and covered her hand with her other hand. Then she turned on her heel and practically ran from me.

  “Kiyoko,” I called after her. She stopped, but didn’t face me.

  “At least . . . try to calm down and eat something,” I said. “Please.” It wasn’t at all what I had planned to say. It sounded stupid.

  But she bobbed her head once before she went into the house. I looked up at the window where Mandy had been standing. She was gone. But the white face with the black eyes was there in her place.

  “You’re a trick,” I said, as I looked down, and away. Glanced back up, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Its lips were moving, and it was staring down at me.

  Special effects, I told myself. Nothing real.