The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  “It’s okay,” I told her.

  “It’s kind of for me,” she admitted. “I had a bad dream.”

  Oh? “Would you like to talk about it?” I asked her, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. Both of us with bad dreams—what were the odds?

  “Not really. I want to forget about it,” she replied. “You know, if you go over and over things, they make a bigger impression on you. I like to move on.”

  “You’re right.” I smiled at her.

  “When you brood about something, you give it power over yourself,” she continued, in case I wasn’t getting the message.

  “Yes. Well, sweet dreams.”

  She dimpled. “The same to you.”

  IF I DREAMED anything after that, I didn’t remember it. We got up, did the usual tango with all six of us vying for the showers and the sinks, got dressed, and I walked with the group down to breakfast. Claire mentioned something about not sleeping well. Hearing noises. I figured that might have been me, using the bathroom, except Claire’s room was farther down the hall in the opposite direction.

  “You’re just nervous because Dr. Morehouse wants to see you,” Elvis advised her.

  “What does she have to be nervous about?” Ida asked, her voice a little tense. “He’s seeing all of us, to see how we’re coping with things.”

  “Yeah.” Claire gave her head a toss. “It’s not like there’s anything wrong.”

  Elvis cleared her throat, as if to remind everyone that I, a veteran of shrinks, was present, and that there likely was something wrong with me.

  The air pushed down, heavy and filled with moisture, and a morning fog boiled up from the walkways like a smoky, fluffy carpet. Julie swooped her boots through it in a playful gesture. The mist curled around the statues in the garden, dressing them in robes and capes. I thought of Mandy’s white nightgown and the figure in her room.

  We went into the commons, grabbing trays and going through the food line as girls around us laughed and chatted. We had a bet going that when Dr. Ehrlenbach came back (and she’d been gone for a while), they’d close the lines and have people serve us. Many of the parents had complained that their daughters had to fetch their own meals. For the prices they were paying, they expected their children to be a bit more pampered.

  That struck me as ironic, because few of the girls actually ate much of the food. There were a lot of egg-white omelets and cups of organic green tea on the wooden tables beneath hanging copper pots of ferns, washed with soft colors by stained glass windows. Rose, as usual, was getting extra servings of hash browns and grabbing a fistful of creamers for her coffee.

  Seeing me behind her, she smiled and said, “What is the probability that it will rain today?”

  “Did you take the white head out of our room? For some reason?” I replied.

  She raised her brows in mild surprise. “Busted. How did you know? And why do you care?”

  “I had to go to the admin building around the time of your appointment with Dr. Morehouse.” I felt guilty all over again. “Ms. Shelley wanted me to fill out a bunch of paperwork, from when I was in the infirmary.”

  “Probably documentation in case your grades go bad,” Rose said wisely. “Yeah, I hauled it over to show Morehouse. He said they used to be really common about a century ago. Did you know doctors used to measure people’s skulls to find out what personality type they were?”

  “They did a lot of things they don’t do anymore.” I nodded at the breakfast server, who was a young, trim woman who also taught yoga. Her name was Moon. No dumpy lunch ladies at Marlwood. Moon added some cheese and scrambled eggs and a ladle of hash browns on a white china plate embossed with the Marlwood crest. I could have asked for brown rice and an egg-white omelet, but no.

  “I’d sure have hated to be insane when this place first opened up,” Rose agreed.

  “Are you insane now?”

  “Dr. Morehouse says I’m holding up pretty well, considering all the trash that’s being spread all over the internet about my parents’ divorce.” She caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. “My mom was never a hooker.”

  “They said ‘party girl.’”

  She feigned being shot through the heart, pressing her fingertips against her chest and pulling in her shoulders. “Lindsayama, how could you read that stuff ?”

  “How could you take Julie’s head without asking ?”

  “I think she said I could,” Rose shot back in a singsong voice. “I didn’t realize I had to make sure it was okay with you too. Jeez. Did you have it appraised or something? Is it a valuable antique ?”

  “Sorry,” I said, fully aware that I had overstepped, not really caring if she answered my question.

  “Whatever.” She smiled crookedly. “Anyway, I like Morehouse. He’s not starstruck, the way Melton was. Melton just loved listening to the lifestyles of the rich and infamous. But Morehouse is Harvard. Less to prove.” She leaned toward me and gave me a noisy kiss on my cheek. “We should hang. Later, babe.”

  “By our necks until dead,” I promised her as she pirouetted away.

  Starstruck. Yes, it would be easy to be that way at Marlwood. I hoped the divorce wouldn’t shake up her world too badly. Rose hardly ever saw her parents, and she didn’t seem to like them very much. Maybe her life post-divorce would just be more of the same, with a few subtle twists.

  I poured myself some coffee and carried my tray to my table. Smiles all around; a few yawns.

  “We’re deconstructing Claire’s nightmare,” Elvis informed me.

  “Yes.” She mocked-shivered. “Bad nightmare. Did you happen to open my door last night, Lindsay?” she asked. “I woke up and—”

  Whatever she had planned to say was ignored as the door to the commons burst open. Lara walked Mandy in, holding her up as if she would collapse to the floor under her own steam. Swathed all in black—black turtleneck sweater, black maxicoat, black trousers and boots—Mandy had a huge bandage wrapped around her head, identical to the one I’d had. There were huge dark circles under her eyes, like purple bruises, and a gauze bandage on her chin.

  “Whoa,” Elvis said.

  The last time I had seen Mandy was when she was shutting her curtains and a guy was walking up behind her. I put two and two together . . . and didn’t like the conclusion I was drawing. At all.

  “God, God,” Mandy wailed, and Lara patted her shoulder. She walked Mandy over to their table and the rest of Jessel gathered around her. They bent around her like football players huddling around their quarterback.

  “Nothing!” she bellowed. “I can’t eat!”

  Everyone in the room stopped pretending they weren’t watching and stared quietly at her. She looked around as if she were suddenly aware of that fact, and she raised her chin and stared us down.

  “I was in an accident, okay?” she shouted.

  Approaching our table, Elvis set down her Diet Coke and piece of dry rye bread. “Yikes. What is up with that? She looks like she’s copying your head injury.”

  “Lindsay had hers first,” Claire declared. “She wins.”

  Mandy cradled her head in her hands. Then she pushed back her chair and stood. Lara hadn’t yet sat down; she took Mandy’s arm and spoke to her softly. Mandy burst into tears and Lara put her arm around her.

  They both turned to go. As they did, Mandy craned her neck over her shoulder and looked at me. Our gazes met. Locked. Held. With tears rolling down her cheeks, she looked just as frightened as she had last night, when she had closed the curtains.

  The room was hushed. Lara opened the door, ushered Mandy out, and shut it behind her. We all heard the click.

  “What the heck?” Elvis said.

  Everybody began talking at once. Except me. I kept staring at the door, my heart pounding.

  THIRTEEN

  “I HAVE TO go back to the dorm to get my antibiotic out of the fridge,” I told the table. It was only a partial lie. I did have to get it, but not until dinner. My timing was
beyond obvious; Mandy and Lara had left the commons just minutes before. But I didn’t really care what anybody thought. I just wanted answers.

  “If you find out anything, you have to share,” Claire said.

  “I’ll tweet,” I promised, with a tinge of sarcasm.

  “Also because I think Mandy was in my nightmare,” Claire added.

  I started. Looked at her.

  “Figures,” Elvis said. “She is highly scary.”

  Ears buzzing, I pulled on my army jacket as I left the commons. Claire was having nightmares about Mandy? This warranted a discussion. Later.

  More fog blanketed the blacktop pathway; the horse heads floated, staring at me. The oversized white chain links in their mouths glistened, as if they were bobbing, moving. As I forked left and walked toward Jessel, I thought I heard a clink. I looked.

  Nothing.

  By then I was walking through Academy Quad. Jessel was on my left, down a slope, its red door flanked by columns. Weak sunlight glinted off the brass knocker of a lion’s head in the center of the crimson wood. I lifted it and let it clang. No one came. I knocked, maybe a little too softly.

  No answer.

  It was possible that their housemother was out—they visited each other, and they had staff meetings and things like that. Maybe Mandy had told Lara not to answer the door. Or maybe whoever had been in her room wouldn’t let her open the door.

  Miles, I thought. King of Freakdonia. I couldn’t believe he was living on campus. And that he and I had hugged each other. And that I hadn’t melted or burst into flames when he kissed me.

  And that I had liked that kiss, the teeniest tiniest bit.

  I am mentally ill, I thought.

  I had to go; classes were due to start and it was hard to explain being tardy when you lived on campus. I walked back off the porch and looked up at Mandy’s turret room. The curtains were closed.

  Did they move?

  I took another step back, studying the drapes, wondering what was going on behind them. Anxiety slid across my shoulders like a wet towel; someone was watching me. Through the peephole? Behind me?

  I looked around, making a little circle. The fog swirled with me, like a miniature tornado, then broke apart as I headed back toward our classroom buildings, on the far side of the commons. Girls were streaming out of the commons; I saw Julie and hurried to catch up with her.

  “Find anything out?” she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s just freaky that she has an injury like yours.” Julie cocked her head. “I wonder if she went to the infirmary. Maybe Ms. Simonet wrapped her up.”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like she’d copy my injury just to get attention.”

  “Copy it?” Julie echoed incredulously.

  “Never mind.”

  It sounded crazy even to say it. Take away the supernatural and we were still in two camps—Mandy and the trendsetters in one and the closest thing to emo we had, that being me, in the other. It had bugged Mandy since the beginning that I had refused to play her games. It still bothered her that I wouldn’t succumb to her charms and join her privileged circle.

  And privileged they were—the dots that connected her life were Paris, Rome, private islands, billionaire kids, the royals—Prince Harry, specifically—and movie stars. Mandy wasn’t old money; her father was a ruthless financial genius and he had taught her well how to make herself powerful. Daddy’s little girl.

  Miles’s sister.

  But she would never resort to something so obvious . . . or so self-destructive as getting hurt to take back the spotlight. She wasn’t the self-destructive kind. Except for willingly getting possessed . . .

  “You’re right. She wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “Well, she’ll be the center of attention all day,” Julie pointed out. “Look at all of us. What are we talking about?”

  She was right. The trek to first period was rife with gossip and innuendo. Mandy, hysterical and injured. What was up with that?

  I went to American Lit, the class where I’d met Kiyoko and Shayna. Neither of them was here anymore. Neither of them had come to a good end. People used to speculate about them. How had Kiyoko wound up in the lake? Did she jump in on purpose? Did she fall? Had she been pushed?

  Had I pushed her ?

  I’d been the one to find her. Somehow, people forgot that. No one had ever accused me of having anything to do with it. But still, I wondered.

  I wondered.

  We had free period, and it was Claire’s turn to see Dr. Morehouse. Other girls had to be going at different times; there weren’t enough free periods left in the school year to see all of us before June. Then lunch, then afternoon classes, then we split up for various activities. Julie was delighted that spring soccer tryouts had commenced. Unlike Julie, I had no sports or extracurriculars, so I went back to our room to get some work done before dinner. The catch-up seemed endless.

  I wondered if someone had called Dr. Ehrlenbach about Mandy’s injury. The school had to keep the Winters family happy. Not to imply that they were happy to start with. Unless he was skulking around us, Miles was always in rehab, and surely they noticed that their little princess was an imperious bitch.

  As I sat at my little study desk, on my side of the room beside my closet, I saw that a message had come in on my cell. It had blipped in during the morning. I’d had a new message all day and hadn’t known it. I’d turned the ringer off in preparation for classes—if your phone went off, you lost it for a week. Not that anyone’s did, with our patchy cell cover. I hadn’t felt it vibrate in my backpack, either. Judging by the time—just after eight—it must have come in when I was on Jessel’s porch. I had always been able to get good reception there.

  I thumbed over to the message in-box on my phone. My heart skipped a beat. Another beat. I stared at the faceplate. The message was from Riley.

  I pressed listen.

  “Hi, Lindsay? If you get this, I hope you’ll call me back...”

  There was a pause.

  “Heather and I were talking today, and she said you and she are in touch. And, well, she misses you as much as . . . as I do, Lindsay.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive me for what I did to you. I’ve regretted it ever since it happened. God, I wish I could go back in time and have a do-over.”

  Was this actually happening?

  “I want you to know that if you could possibly give me another chance, I’d like that. If you’re coming home for spring break, please let me see you. And if you could call me back . . . Heather says your reception is bad. You might not even get this. Please let me know if you do. Bye.”

  I stared at my phone as if it were a foreign object. I was tingling all over. He had broken up with Jane and called me.

  He called me.

  I tried to fully grasp it.

  He called me.

  Troy had broken up with Mandy and called me too. What was the probability of that? And of Riley, who had cheated, turning out to be the happier ending of the two? “ Whoa, slow down,” I said aloud. We weren’t even at the starting gate of a relationship. And what was it they said? Once a cheater, always a cheater.

  What if Troy had been in Mandy’s room last night?

  “Are you talking to yourself ?” Julie asked as she opened the door to our room and chugged on in, still wearing her shin guards and gym uniform—dark green sweatshirt, black shorts. She must be freezing. “God, I have, like, fifteen minutes before I see Dr. Morehouse. I have to take a shower and get dressed and—”

  “This is so amazing. You’re not going to believe this,” I said, registering that she was seeing the good doctor at a time other than free period. I held up the phone.

  “What?” She smiled hopefully. “Did Troy call?”

  As she took off her sweatshirt, revealing her dark green Marlwood T-shirt, she hustled over and perched on the edge of my desk. Maybe someone
less thoughtful would have flopped onto my bed in their muddy clothes, but not Julie.

  I played the message on speakerphone. Julie giggled with pure joy and threw her arms around me. Of course she knew the whole Riley soap opera.

  “That’s so great! Oh, Lindsay, he sounds so nice!”

  “He sounds like a moron,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Miles, wearing all black, like his sister—black sweater and trousers and a long, black coat. With his ducktail in place, he looked like an edgy European model. The unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth only added to the effect.

  Julie looked at him in abject terror. I hadn’t told her he was on campus. Or about our trip to the roadhouse. How could I? She would know without a doubt that I had gone completely insane. And if I told her why I’d done it—talked about possession—she’d probably have me committed.

  “Riley’s not a moron,” I said steadily. “He’s very smart.”

  Did you hurt your sister last night?

  “Riley can’t even string two sentences together. C’mon, Lindsay. That’s the competition?”

  What did he mean by that? Troy’s competition? Miles couldn’t be saying . . . his own competition? No. He was just being snarky. Still, my cheeks went hot and I made a show of setting down my phone.

  “I have to get ready,” Julie said, sounding stricken. She gave Miles a look. “We’re not supposed to have boys in here.” She picked up her sweatshirt and held it against her chest. “She can get expelled for it.”

  “She won’t,” Miles said. “Trust me on that one.”

  All the color drained from Julie’s face as she scowled at him. Miles was on all of our America’s Most Wacko lists.

  “Do you want me to get Ms. Krige?” she asked me.

  “No, it’s okay. Go take your shower. Really, it’s okay,” I added when she shifted her weight from foot to foot, like a soccer goalie preparing to take down the enemy if he just got close enough. I loved her for it. When I first met her, she would never have stared anyone down, least of all Miles Winters.

  Miles made a show of moving away from the door, arching backward like a bullfighter so she could dart past him. He smiled as he did it, not in a mean way, but she didn’t budge.