Possessions

by Nancy Holder

  But as I headed for the kitchen door, I felt that awful coldness on the back of my neck again. I clapped my hand down and . . .

  Did I feel someone’s hand beneath mine?

  I whimpered and whirled around. There was nothing there.

  “Of course. There never is,” I said aloud. “But it’s still a trick.”

  And just like in the operating theater, I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I was so afraid. Something washed over me, cold and terrifying, and suddenly I wanted more than anything to go home and stay home and never come back here.

  eighteen

  November 20

  Rain was washing away the snow when Julie’s parents pulled into the lot and her strapping older brother hoisted her suitcases and boxes into the gigantic trunk of their Mercedes station wagon. The Statins were very nice people. Beneath umbrellas, they thanked me for taking care of their girl during her first semester at a boarding school.

  “She’s told us so much about you,” Julie’s mother said, beaming.

  “I’m a keeper,” I joshed, and then Julie darted forward on her crutches and hugged me. In the wake of parting, she had forgotten her anger toward me.

  “I’ll miss you this week,” she said. “Hang around Jessel and I’ll text you.”

  “Okay, I will,” I promised. I would be hanging around Jessel a lot. Then whispering, I added, “Keep me posted on Spider.”

  She giggled, then bounded over to the car like a happy-go-lucky, beloved little girl. Her father took her crutches as she slid in and her brother put them in the trunk. All the Statins waved at me as I stood beneath my umbrella, and they joined the departing parade of luxury vehicles as the rainy sky grew darker, and darker, and darker.

  The lights winked on in the admin building as I turned and headed back toward Grose. Through the drizzle the horse heads stared blankly at me, holding their chains in their mouths.

  Did one clank?

  Clank like the chain of a ghost?

  I chuckled aloud at my jumpiness to show that I wasn’t really scared, and concentrated on other things, like the pungent aroma of dinner: in the commons, to be served in less than an hour. Rose would be there. If I trotted onto Jessel’s porch, I could text her. But as I walked along, the rain turned into hail, pelting me with painful stones of ice, and I ducked into Grose, which was closer.

  I shut the door and leaned against it, listening to the tick-tick-tick on the roof two stories above me and the snick-snick-snick against the windows. The howl of a gust of wind rattled the door as if someone were trying to get in.

  “At least she took that stupid head with her,” I said aloud. I had watched her pack it myself, in a cardboard box we scrounged from the commons recyclables. She’d surrounded it with socks and underwear.

  Ms. Krige was in the kitchen. Christmas carols played on the music system in the common room. I listened for a few seconds, reminding myself that I wasn’t alone.

  We weren’t alone when someone tore up Julie’s mattress, either. She still hadn’t told Ms. Krige about it, and I thought that was a mistake. If anything happened to my mattress, I was going to raise holy hell. I was not a victim, not a wimp. I had never been either of those things, and I wasn’t going to start now.

  Tick-tick-tick, snick-snick-snick.

  And the wind blew against the door again.

  Snorting, I walked through the gloom of our hallway and opened the door to our room.

  The white head sat on Julie’s windowsill, hollow-eyed and blank, and staring at me.

  nineteen

  I blasted out of Grose and raced through the wet to Jessel’s front porch, punching in Julie’s cell phone number as I went.

  “Hello?” Julie said.

  “The. Head,” I managed. I was panting.

  “Oh, you’re so sweet,” she said, and I didn’t even register her explanation of what it was doing in our room until after she had said it: she was worried that her mom would make her throw it out or that one of her brothers would take it, so she had left it with me for safekeeping. Of course, she had no idea how afraid of it I was. “So I left it.”

  God, God, God, God, I thought, shutting my eyes.

  She fuzzed out; I figured they were hitting a dead spot and I waited for about a minute. Then I gave up and disconnected.

  Sheltered from the hail, I stood on the porch and looked down at Jessel’s doorknob. I wasn’t sure who was still in Jessel. Girls had been leaving in a steady stream all day. The coast was not yet clear for sneaking in.

  I moved off the porch and lifted up my sweatshirt hood because I hadn’t brought my umbrella. Then I stared out over the blackened rooftop silhouettes of Marlwood. The rain had turned to snow and it made me feel claustrophobic; I had the thought that it would fall and fall until it filled up our bowl of a campus and smothered us all.

  I had the landline for Rose’s dorm, and I punched it in. Rose was my ally, my fellow lifeguard. Hearing her voice would help me stay afloat.

  “Stewart.” That was Kim, another girl who lived there.

  “Is Rose there?”

  “She’s in her room. There’s a DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door,” Kim said.

  “Oh.” I hadn’t expected that. “Thanks. This is Lindsay,” I added.

  “We’re going to watch a movie after dinner. You can come over if you want.”

  “Thanks.” I was already racing through the snow.

  I went to Stewart and knocked on Rose’s door. I opened it slightly. We didn’t have locks on our doors at Marlwood.

  “Rose?” I whispered.

  “Lindsay, I’m sick,” she grunted.

  I crept into her room. It smelled like incense. A nightlight was on and Rose was a big lump in her bed. There was a poster from Cirque du Soleil in a wooden red frame over her bed. There were a lot of signatures on it.

  “Sick like how?” I asked, bending over her. It frightened me that I couldn’t see her face. I half-expected her to pull her coverlet back and I would see . . .

  She threw back her covers. It was Rose. Her eyes were normal, but her face was swollen. “I think I’m having an allergic reaction.”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or Mandy put the whammy on you.”

  She chuckled wanly. “I thought of that. But get this: it’s most likely because they just changed the brand of creamer they use in the commons.”

  “What?”

  She actually laughed. “I went to the infirmary and that’s what Dr. Steinberg said. Can you believe it? So I took some allergy stuff and it’s making me sleepy.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I won’t be sleepy tomorrow, I promise.”

  A beat. “So you think we should do it that soon?”

  She hesitated, too. “Let’s see how it plays.”

  “Okay.”

  “No offense, but I want to go back to sleep.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  I went back out to watch the movie with the other Stewart girls, but I realized I would have to walk back to Grose in the dark if I finished it, so I left. The wind blew snow in my face. The horse heads stared and rattled their chains.

  I was cold, and tired, and scared.

  See on the model.

  The center of the forehead.

  Section number seven.

  Try it on Number One.

  Tomorrow.

  Skip the back of the neck.

  It causes too much damage.

  I bolted upright. I was panting and covered in sweat in the grayish darkness of my room. I avoided the head as I looked over at Julie’s empty bed. She had taken Caspian with her. Taken him and left me the head.

  The room was freezing. I stepped onto the floor in thick wool socks and fished for my bathrobe from my wadded covers. The head was a blur of white in my peripheral vision; before I knew what I was doing, I looked at it straight on. The forehead was not one of the numbered sections. There was no big X on it, like there was in Dr. Ehrlenbach’s litt
le black notebook.

  A pain shot across my own forehead. I started to pant again. Oh God, oh God, I was losing it. I was having a panic attack. I had to stop it.

  Give yourself some air. That was what Dr. Yaeger had taught me. If you filled your lungs with air, you would cut down the adrenaline.

  I dropped my bathrobe and stripped off my pajamas, threw on a jog bra and sweats. Slipped on my athletic shoes and grabbed my army jacket. My cell phone was in the pocket. I had stashed the digital camera Jason had given me in the same pocket, and I unwrapped a stick of sugarless cinnamon gum and popped into my mouth.

  I scribbled, “Running” on the little whiteboard beneath the statue of our saint in the lobby and blasted outside, into a frigid, dark morning. Clouds smothered the sky, almost as dark as the lake. They billowed and moved, became shapes, rolled into new shapes.

  I didn’t look at Jessel as I ran down the hill, then past it, unsure where I was going. I smelled breakfast cooking and wondered how Rose was feeling.

  I ran. I had to calm down. God, what a nightmare. That I didn’t remember.

  I took the nearest hiking trail, which was on an incline, running past more horse heads and drifts of snow frosting brown grass and bushes. I saw my breath, and kept going past walls of pine trees. Their branches hung over the trail; someone needed to cut them back.

  I heard the rumble of thunder, and was surprised. Could it rain while it was snowing? The weather here was very different from the weather at home. The birds were cawing like crazy. Maybe the thunder bothered them, too.

  My path forked to the right, and I took it. I had a hitch in my side; I was out of shape. I hadn’t gone running much while I’d been at Marlwood, and it showed. If I had had to run away from . . . something . . .

  “Stop it,” I whispered to myself. The thunder rumbled again, more faintly, and I listened to the rhythm of my footfalls.

  Then I realized that the birds had gone silent. I cocked my head. Not a sound. The world was still, hushed. Holding its breath.

  About ten feet ahead, something white and misty drifted across my path, like a wisp of smoke. Chills washed over me as I stopped, tripping over my own feet. Had I just seen a ghost?

  “Oh my God,” I said aloud. My voice sounded unnaturally loud.

  I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to turn around . . .

  Turn my back.

  So I ran kind of sideways, wild to get away, unsure where to go. I crashed through the trees; if I had wanted to hide, I was definitely out of luck.

  Then I finally burst through, to find myself on a cliff, looking down on Searle Lake. Black on black on black; but farther out—was something moving beneath the surface?

  “Boo,” said a voice behind me, and I screamed.

  twenty

  My scream echoed off the mountains as I almost leaped off the cliff, but two strong arms grabbed me around the waist and pulled me backward, against a hard chest.

  “God, I’m sorry,” Troy said, as I whirled around. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know if I was angry or relieved, or both. I covered my eyes for a second so he wouldn’t see my tears, then lowered my shoulders and dropped my hands to my sides.

  Troy’s hands were still around my waist. He was wearing his Lakewood sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. It was unzipped; beneath, an oatmeal-colored T-shirt clung to his body, damp with sweat. He was wearing a pair of dark breakaway running pants. A navy blue parka was wrapped around his waist. A dusting of snow frosted his dark brown hair.

  “I’m okay, hi,” I said. I looked up at him. His blue eyes were focused like lasers on me. His face was broad across the cheekbones, then tapered to an angular chin, where a third dimple created a cleft. It struck me all over again that he was really handsome, like movie-star handsome, and he was still touching me although he really didn’t need to.

  My adrenaline was spiking again, but in a good way. I could hear the background chatter in my mind convincing me that what I had seen was some mist. Because Troy was here, and there was no such thing as ghosts. Suddenly all of it, from the faces to Mandy, seemed like a bad dream . . . or an equally bad movie.

  Down, Lindsay, down.

  “So . . . do you just happen to be stalking me or something?” I asked him.

  He grinned mischievously. “I told you, I like to explore around here. To find new and exciting places to hide the bodies.” He rubbed his nose. “And . . . Julie told Spider that you were staying over the break.”

  What? I gaped at him.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but she gave Spider your cell phone number for me. I called you but the reception over here is really bad.”

  My mind rocketed into fantasyland, punctuated by mini-reminders that he was spoken for. Or not. Maybe they had had a fight. Maybe they had broken up.

  My hair is wet with sweat. I didn’t even shower. Oh God.

  I was horrified and exhilarated.

  I pulled out my cell phone. I had no bars, so I couldn’t tell if I had any messages. It was eight thirty in the morning. Breakfast would be served from nine until ten. It wasn’t mandatory.

  “So you’re just wandering about?” I asked.

  “I signed out for the day. Upperclassman. We have more privileges. You will too, I’m betting.”

  “Cool.” I nodded. And then I realized he was looking over my shoulder. I turned.

  From where we stood, he had a clear view of the back of Jessel. I saw the forbidden fourth turret, casting a long shadow that reached for the lake.

  Then he was looking at me, at me only.

  I didn’t ask about Mandy. He didn’t say anything.

  We hiked beside the lake for a while, not talking much. He knew where there were trails, and a couple of times, he walked in front of me to hold back branches. I couldn’t take my eyes off his wide shoulders, his double-rock butt. My hormones gyrated out of control. He was incredible, adorable. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed having a boyfriend. Losing Riley had hurt, deeply, in a different way than losing my mom; but where I thought I’d formed a scar, it was still an open wound.

  As my euphoria ebbed, I wondered if he knew about Mandy and Miles. Then I wondered if I knew about Mandy and Miles.

  “I have some trail mix,” he said. “And a water bottle.”

  He wiped off a flat rock with the edge of his parka and spread it out, inviting me to sit. He plopped down beside me and opened his bag of nuts and raisins. Opened his bottle and offered the first sip to me.

  I was about to swoon; it was so romantic. Our fingers brushed when he handed me the bag of trail mix, and I worked overtime to keep from reacting. I nibbled, grateful for something to do. He stretched his back and rolled his shoulders. I could smell his cotton-and-sweat scent. His thigh rested so close to mine that I could feel his body heat.

  “So, how’s the first day of break?” he asked.

  “Pretty good,” I allowed. “You?”

  He grinned at me. “No complaints so far. We have a reading list, though. Homework.”

  “That sucks.”

  “That’s Lakewood. I’m sure Yale is worse.”

  “That’s your legacy?”

  “My father’s bribes—I mean donations—are substantial,” he drawled. “I thought maybe I’d go overseas instead. But everyone else says, why fight it?”

  It boggled me that he had an easy entry to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and was thinking of not playing that card. It made me like him more.

  But why did he like me? He barely knew me.

  “My whole life has been pretty much mapped out for me. I’m the rich kid cliché,” he continued. “Mandy’s father and my father do a lot of business. We’ve known each other since before we were born.”

  That would be a hard act to follow.

  He looked from the lake to me. “She’s under pressure, too. She used to be so happy. Her parents expect a lot. And that brother of hers . . . �
� He trailed off.

  “Not a big fan?” I ventured.

  “He’s insane,” Troy said.

  “He’s in rehab,” I ventured.

  He stared at me. “Is that what they’re calling it this time?”

  I waited. He didn’t say anything more.

  “So . . . it’s hard on her. Anyway.” He dropped his gaze to the sprinkling of cashews and peanuts in the center of his palm. A well-bred guy like him must have known it wasn’t very attractive to discuss Mandy Winters during a . . . whatever this was. Encounter in the woods.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” he said. His chest expanded. “I wish I’d brought my camera.”

  Into photography, my Troy-radar fed into my database.

  “I have mine,” I remembered suddenly. I fished it out of my pocket and offered it to him.

  “Thanks.” He examined it. I wondered what he thought—that it was a cheap camera, and he was used to so much better. “Stand there,” he directed, gesturing to the cliff. “But don’t go too far,” he added, smiling that electric smile of his.

  “I’m a mess,” I protested, remembering how Jane used to drill her followers—including me—on proper “woman etiquette.” Never apologize to boys; never point out your own flaws.

  I smiled. He aimed, depressed the button, and the camera whirred. He studied the picture, and grinned. “Nice,” he said.

  “Let me see.”

  “Another one,” he insisted. He took it.

  I came around and stared into the viewfinder. I was standing with the vast lake behind me. Gack. My crazy hair . . .

  “I want to take one of you,” I told him.

  He hesitated for the merest second, and I wondered if he was afraid he would get busted by Mandy if there were a picture of him on my camera. Maybe this little interlude wasn’t so romantic after all. Maybe it was kind of skanky.

  Then he seemed to make some kind of decision, and smiled at me as he handed back my camera.

  I raised the camera and snapped a quick picture. We looked at it together. Oh, yeah. Very nice.

  We walked on, exploring, and I heard myself talking to him. I told him a little bit about my mother, and then, somehow, I was telling him private things I had never shared with anyone, not even Dr. Yaeger.