The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  I squeezed back. “I actually think I’m going to miss you, just a little,” I said.

  “Live,” she replied. “Oh, Lindsay, live.”

  The light in the water went out. I wiped my hands on my dress as I got back up to a stand position, turned, and saw Riley approaching from a distance.

  “This is where your friend died, isn’t it?” he said. “Kiyoko.”

  I didn’t know he knew about that. It was as if everything that had happened up here had taken place in another dimension.

  “Yes,” I said steadily. “She died in this lake. And I found her.”

  “Damn.” He reached out and pulled me against his chest. I let out a deep breath. “Damn, Lindsay, no wonder you’re wacko.”

  Despite everything, I laughed through my tears and batted him. Then the wonder of what had happened with Celia, and the knowledge that I was no longer possessed, slammed into the nightmare of watching Dr. Morehouse kill himself.

  And Mandy Winters was dead.

  He let me cry while we shivered and trembled, and the sun finally began to rise.

  TWENTY-NINE

  JUST AS CELIA REAVES and I finished our goodbyes, the police pulled up at the edge of Searle Lake. In their headlights, birds skimmed the water, then landed. My nightmare was over.

  With my frantic parents’ permission, I spoke to the police. From the way they framed their questions, I was certain that they believed Dr. Morehouse had killed Mandy. They would never believe that a ghost had roamed Marlwood, and had killed Kiyoko. I remembered when Celia told me that Troy had been pushed, when he had been found unconscious in the woods. I shivered, realizing that the spirit of David Abernathy had nearly killed Troy, too.

  It doesn’t matter anymore, I reminded myself as Riley, Miles, and I drank coffee in the headmistress’s office. Marlwood is free. And so am I.

  We three were wrapped in blankets, shivering. All my dorm mates had surrounded me, hugging me, crying with me. Julie had brought me some clothes. Now they were all sitting in the reception area with Marica, who didn’t remember anything but knew she had somehow been involved in the horror of that night. Miles and Riley were given a change of clothes as well. I wasn’t sure where they came from, but I was grateful that the two guys were sitting quietly—in shock, but not taking swings at each other.

  Riley was ragged, but Miles was in terrible shape. All the color had drained from his face; he had seen his sister dead and her murderer kill himself in a horrible, gruesome way. Did he truly believe that Dr. Morehouse had been possessed? If he did, he didn’t tell the police that, and neither did I.

  His father was on his way, with an army of lawyers and people to “take care of” Mandy’s body. I couldn’t help but bitterly wonder if all her so-called friends were speed-dialing their designers to get them dressed for her funeral. Poor little rich girl.

  Dr. Ehrlenbach arrived at about three in the morning, and I was shocked at the change in her. Her mask-like, wrinkle-free face was sagging and lined, as if all the Botox had been drained from her body. Her black hair, usually slicked back, hung in unkempt lanks around her chin line. It was said that Dr. Ehrlenbach was at least sixty-eight. That morning, she looked it.

  But I had never been gladder to see her. She took charge, ushering us all upstairs. We climbed creaking stairs into a spacious room dominated by a fireplace with a heavily carved wooden mantel. A staff member glided in quietly and laid a fire, which soon crackled and blazed. I didn’t even flinch at the smell of smoke and the sight of the fire.

  A border of two-foot-tall stained glass windows of nature scenes rimmed a bay window that looked out onto the campus. I had no idea how much of the campus would be visible from the second story of the admin building. How much had we really gotten away with, thinking we were sneaking around unobserved? How much did Dr. Ehrlenbach really know?

  Lights were on in all the dorms. Tonight the housemothers couldn’t pretend that their charges were safely snuggled in their beds. No one was asleep. Mandy Winters was dead, and Dr. Morehouse had drilled into his own skull.

  Riley and I sat next to each other on a burgundy leather couch, me in sweats and socks I had knit myself, wrapped in blankets. He put his arm around me and I shuddered hard and leaned my head on his shoulder. Miles stared out the window. We were the survivors. We had made it through.

  Through this, and through my past. Riley had seen me at my worst—when I had completely lost it in the theater at Christmas; when I had dissed my best friend, Heather Martinez, to impress Jane. And I had seen him at his worst—when he had had sex with Jane in my parents’ bedroom, during a party Jane had pressured me to throw.

  He’d jumped in his car and driven fourteen hours to find me, and help me, without a real explanation as to why. All he’d known was that I needed someone. And he had come because he wanted that someone to be him, Riley Kincaid. For the crazy girl in the torn jeans and the army jacket and the ripped, oversized sweatshirt that she wore because it had belonged to her dead mother.

  My mother who came back to me, and saved me.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, in a voice so low only I could hear it. “If anything had happened to you, I would have died.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.” For one sharp moment I was afraid that if I loved Riley . . . if I let myself feel the love I felt for him, that I would lose him. Maybe that was something to talk to a good therapist about.

  Riley kissed me very gently, as if I were a fragile creature. Which I was. But ramrod strong, too. Bowed but not broken.

  After I had finished my fourth or fifth statement for the police detectives, Dr. Ehrlenbach sat across from me in an uncomfortable chair, her back to the fire. Miles was on his phone to his father. Riley was watching me protectively.

  “I’m leaving,” I said, before she could speak. She opened her mouth, and then she nodded.

  “I think . . . ” She looked off as if in the distance and slipped a lank of her hair behind her ear. “I think we might all be leaving,” she murmured. “But if for some reason . . . ”

  She took a breath. “You know that we consider you part of our Marlwood family, and we always will. Our resources are available to you as you continue your education, Lindsay. If you reconsider . . . ”

  Are you insane? I almost blurted, but I gave my head a little shake.

  “I won’t be back.”

  “Yes, of course. But we can still help you. And we will. Letters of recommendation from us will go a long way in your college applications.”

  Her voice broke. Her lips trembled; she slid a glance at Miles, who had turned his back as he spoke quietly, grimly. Would there still be an “us”? The Winters Sports Complex was probably going to transform into the Winters lawsuit. I wondered if the scandal would shut down the school. Two student deaths, a horrendous suicide. The rich parents would be yanking their daughters out of here. For all I knew, the parking lot was already full of limousines and Mercedes-Benzes, chauffeurs, nannies, and the occasional actual parent.

  I lost track after a while, and Dr. Ehrlenbach and Ms. Simonet discussed putting Riley, Miles, and me in the infirmary for the night. Finally it was decided that Riley and Miles would stay in one of the guest cottages reserved for visitors, and I would be permitted to sleep one last night in my dorm.

  I was escorted to the dorm. Of course none of us slept. Mostly we cried, and hugged each other, and went over what had happened, obsessively. We couldn’t stop talking about it, reliving it.

  “It’s going to haunt us forever,” Julie whispered, sitting the closest to me. And the white faces of my friends floated in the darkness, like ghosts.

  I PACKED THAT night; in the morning, Julie brought me breakfast so I wouldn’t have to face everyone in the commons. Marica, Elvis, Claire, and Ida were crying, hard. No one tried to smile through their tears.

  I walked down the hall and into the bathroom with the tubs where the insane had been tormented. Ms. Krige, my housemother, came over and gave me a hug.
I remembered returning from Christmas break, when she shared her homemade gingerbread with us and we watched TV together. She had seemed like a regular person, like me. Would she have to find another job if the school closed? Would she be able to, if it was discovered that we snuck out on a routine basis, drinking and partying?

  “I’ll miss you,” Julie told me, and it seemed that she wanted to say something more but thought the better of it.

  “I’ll miss all of you,” I told my dormies. They didn’t know that I had spied on them, addicted to learning their secrets. Which one would have been next, after Dr. Morehouse killed Mandy? Had any of them—or all of them—been taken over by a dead girl, as Marica had been, and marched all over campus like a puppet?

  Did one of you push Kiyoko in the lake, possessed by the spirit of David Abernathy?

  “It’s not goodbye,” Julie said as I took one last look around our room. “We’ll see each other this summer, promise?”

  We hugged tightly. I wasn’t certain I would ever see her again. I didn’t know if I could leave the nightmare parts behind, yet keep the gift of our friendship.

  IN THE MORNING, there were more rounds of goodbyes and confused reactions from Mandy’s clique—Lara, Sangeeta, and Alis. They were cast adrift. None of them could take over for Mandy to keep the group together.

  Outside the admin building, Riley was waiting for me, alone. I walked steadily toward him as the sunshine glowed on his tanned but bruised face. His lower lip was swollen.

  “Your parents are going to start the drive up the coast,” he said, “and we’ll meet them. And we’ll start over.” He ducked down and peered into my eyes. “Right?”

  “Right,” I replied. I was done, gratefully done. The ghosts of Marlwood had been laid to rest, once and for all. The hauntings were over.

  I felt eyes on me and glanced over my shoulder as Riley led me to the parking lot. Miles slouched beneath a pine tree, face shrouded by the shadow of the admin building. My cheeks felt hot. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of a long black leather duster. He wore jeans and boots, and there was a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  When he saw that I was looking at him, half his mouth quirked in a sad smile that didn’t reach his blackened eyes. He looked lonely, and sad, and . . . unfinished.

  My heart tugged and a sharp thrill rattled my insides. I didn’t understand him. He fascinated me, and I didn’t even know if I liked him. But I owed him. I wasn’t sure it was a debt I could ever pay. Whatever it would took to make things, if not better, then bearable for him—whatever it was that Miles needed—I wasn’t sure I had it. Mandy was dead, and I was leaving, and he was still whoever he was.

  Wrapped in the folds of the coat, he shrugged as he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it onto the cold dirt. He tamped it out beneath his boot, a cigarette in the dirt.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw other cigarettes on the ground. A sharp, icy fear seized hold of me, and doubts rushed in.

  Could Miles have ever been possessed by Dr. Abernathy? Had he played me all along? How could he have not known what Mandy was doing? He was her twin brother. And he loved her.

  He loved her.

  He was staring at me.

  “Linz?” Riley asked softly, giving my hand a little wag.

  And I was staring at Miles.

  “Just a sec,” I said. Then, tearing my gaze away from Miles to reassure Riley, I reached up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Don’t get weird.”

  I let go of his hand and walked over to Miles, aware that we weren’t alone and probably never would be again. He blinked and pulled back slightly, as if bracing himself for a blow. I saw in him the same hurt I had seen in Mandy and my heart broke a little more for him.

  “Hey,” I said quietly, “you’re going to be okay.”

  His brows began to rise; then he caught himself and brought out his lazy, mocking Miles Winters smile. I knew that smile well. I used to be so intimidated by it. Now I knew it was a mask, and I had seen what lay beneath it.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said again.

  “Thank you, Dr. Cavanaugh.” He didn’t have it in him to force some snarkiness into his tone. Instead, he dropped the act entirely and searched my face, as if I had the answers and he didn’t. I saw longing there, and not having. He wanted me.

  I saw Miles Charles Winters coming up empty.

  The wind ruffled his white-blond hair as he ticked his head in Riley’s direction. A sunbeam caught the blue of his eyes.

  “He’s going to let you down.”

  “Maybe. But maybe not.”

  “Oh, my God. You drank the Kool-Aid.”

  You can’t stop doing it, can you? I thought. Push away with sarcasm, blot out the truth of what someone else was saying with a joke. I wanted to touch him, give him some comfort, some contact, as we had last night, but I was Riley’s girlfriend now. And I was just another ghost in Miles’s past. Or would be, soon.

  “Gotta go,” I said, swallowing. I was suddenly unsure if it had been such a good idea to push this moment on both of us . . . and on Riley, who would have no idea what I was saying to a guy he’d tried to beat up on my behalf—a guy who had saved my life.

  “Keep in touch,” Miles said. Then he stepped away, pulled his pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his duster, and drew one out with his mouth. I heard the click-sss of his lighter. “I will,” he added.

  “Smoking is repulsive,” I informed him.

  “Run away, little moth. To your dim bulb.”

  I tried one more time. “We’re not in a play, Miles,” I said. “We’re not here to be clever with each other. This is real life.”

  He drew in the cigarette smoke and held it, picking at a piece of tobacco on his lip. He was wearing a couple of leather thongs around his left wrist and his red thread. “You’re the big Shakespeare buff. You figure it out.” He gave me a wink. “Hamlet.”

  “‘I must be cruel, only to be kind,’” I quoted. “You don’t need to do me any favors. I’m fully capable of moving on when I need to.”

  “Okay.” He turned and faced me. “Then someday, when you least expect it, I’m going to get you back.” I wasn’t sure how he meant that—to get me back, or get back at me?—but I knew I was beginning to lose my nerve. Most of the time I could give as good as I got, but Miles was in a class by himself.

  I turned around. Riley was watching us, and the frown on his face melted as I smiled at him and quickened my pace. Things were simpler for Riley. With Riley. He put his arm around my shoulders and didn’t so much as look in Miles’s direction.

  “We need to get going,” he said. “I don’t want to be on that road if it starts to rain again.”

  “Me neither.” I settled myself against his side. “I never want to be on that road again, period.”

  Then we strolled along, short me and tall Riley, our gait matching perfectly, as if we had covered a lot of ground together and would walk down many more sun-dappled roads. San Diego in March was usually warm. Flip-flop weather.

  Wherever Celia was, I hoped she was at peace.

  Swinging my hand, Riley began singing under his breath, whispery and low. I didn’t know he liked to sing.

  “My love . . . ”

  It sounded like that horrible song that Dr. Abernathy had sung to Belle and Celia. The song I had overheard Troy singing on our Valentine’s Day dinner date and had nearly killed him over. It went like this: “My love is like a red, red rose . . . ”

  “My love . . . ” Riley sang again.

  “Riley?” I blurted, stopping dead in my tracks. “Riley?”

  There was a beat before he answered. “What?” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, smiling down at me. Dimples, check. Warm brown eyes, check. Yummy breath, check. One hundred percent Riley. Just him, just me. “My love is alive,” he sang. “What, you don’t like the song stylings of Chaka Khan?”

  “I have no idea who that is. And you almost got weird,” I accused him, trying to
recover. Hearing him almost sing that horrible song was like making it through the aftershock of a bad earthquake.

  “Naw. I leave weirdness to the pros.” He wrinkled his nose at me, in the event that I didn’t realize he was teasing me. Then he bent over and kissed me on the mouth. Little tingles blossomed at the base of my spine and shot along the tendrils of my nervous system. There was going to be more where that came from.

  Yay.

  And then . . . something else left me.

  I hadn’t really known until that very moment that you could really, truly just let go of something. Whatever it was—bad memories, wounds, tragedies—you didn’t have to spend your whole life dealing with it and endlessly processing it. Until then, I’d always thought of myself as Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh, plus my baggage. Like I had to add some kind of explanation for why I wasn’t . . . more.

  I had pictured myself as a vine—maybe a geranium—pushing up through the dirt, searching for the sun. Then I had hit a rock and grown up and around it, needing light, forever changed. Then another rock fell from the sky, and another, and I’d bent myself like a pretzel to bathe in light.

  I had thought the rocks would always be there. But they could just disappear. That could happen. And it had just happened to me. And you didn’t stay bent. You stretched out, all the kinks gone. Because the light that made you grow wasn’t out there; it was inside you. It was life.

  My life.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and suddenly I couldn’t get away fast enough. “Race you to the car. On your mark, get set . . . ”

  I broke into a run.

  “Ten yards! Cavanaugh makes the first down!” Riley yelled, laughing as he caught up to me in three strides, threw his arms around me, and hoisted me skyward. Throwing back my head, I raised my face to the sunlight. It felt warm, and happy, and good.

  It felt like home.

  I was free. I was leaving. And I was never coming back.

  “Riley, Riley, put me down,” I said, laughing as he jogged effortlessly toward his beat-up old clown car. I pounded on his back, shrieking in protest.