Finally, a real welcome.
“Do you approve?”
The voice startled me. It came from behind—the throaty voice of an older woman, one who probably smoked about a thousand unfiltered cigarettes a day. I turned around. She was smaller than her voice. Tiny, in fact. And ancient, but with that cool, weathered, I’ve-seen-the-world look of Georgia O’Keeffe or Louise Bourgeois. She was dressed like a bohemian—patterned stuff from India, Central America, Africa—nothing resembling anyone else I’d seen around here.
“I was saving your portfolios for your arrival,” she said. “I decided I should celebrate the work.”
I smiled, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen my stuff hanging up anywhere except my own wall. This was like a real gallery. It was exhilarating. But also overwhelming and terrifying. I felt exposed.
She could sense my discomfort. “Your art should be up there, Liv, for all to see,” she stressed. “But, unfortunately hardly anyone ever comes in here.” And it was true. This magnificent building was weirdly deserted.
“I’m Ms. Benson, the head of Wickham’s art department.”
“I’m Liv Bloom. But I guess you know that.”
“Yes. May I take you to your studio?”
“Yes, please. I’ve only been waiting sixteen years for this moment.”
MY STUDIO. IT WAS perfect. It was the kind of studio you dream about having someday, after you make it big—with high glass ceilings and natural light and a sturdy wooden easel and flat files where I could store my work.
“It’s all mine?” It really didn’t seem possible, but she nodded.
Ms. Benson pointed out all the materials she’d stocked for me: several different inks, every variety of charcoal and pastel, a set of oil paints, a complete double-ended Bristol marker set, and some discarded magazines and newspapers for collage. There was even an old typewriter—just like the one I’d used at home but left behind because it was too heavy.
“I looked at your work carefully and tried to anticipate your needs.”
I had to prevent myself from bursting into spontaneous laughter. No one had ever been quite so thoughtful or generous with me. Not even Santa. I’d made out painstakingly detailed lists every year asking for each of the specific pigments I needed—phthalo green is expensive!—but my parents had always ended up grabbing something like a Crayola paint kit from Target, thinking that was close enough.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll work. Hard. Say you’ll push yourself and try things that are uncomfortable … like making a big mess. Drawing with your left hand. Losing control. Breathe life into your work. Put yourself out there. I’d like to see you try bigger canvases that would make your art—and you—really seen.” She turned to leave but then paused by the door. “And … say you’ll keep your eyes open and be safe. Don’t find yourself alone at night.”
“They’re pretty strict about that around here, huh?”
“Yes, they are,” she croaked. But I could tell that hadn’t been what she meant.
I WAS SO ENGROSSED in my drawing I almost missed my 5 P.M. scholarship meeting. I had to rush across campus clutching the Wickham Hall map with my dirty hands. When I finally arrived, I discovered the work-study advisor was Mrs. Mulford, my dorm mistress (aka Pitchfork Lady). She snapped at me; I was eleven minutes late. She reminded me that my scholarship at Wickham Hall was dependent upon successful completion of my work shifts. Then she informed me with near glee that my work-study job partner was Gabriel Nichols.
I looked over. Of course. Gabe from First Dinner.
“The students paired off, choosing partners they felt were well suited. Mr. Nichols was not yet selected.”
Gabe: the weirdo in the corner no one picked. Imagine, even the scholarship students were this judgmental. He gave me a little wave from the corner of the room, then held up his arms triumphantly, shaping his thumbs and pointer fingers into Ls: the universal symbol for “loser.” I smiled.
“Great,” I chirped to Mrs. Mulford. “That’s who I would’ve picked anyway.”
Part of me wanted to let her know she hadn’t won, part of me felt sorry for him, and part of me meant it. He kind of scared me, but he also seemed more real than anyone else around here. At least he owned his weirdness. It was brave. Being at Wickham Hall kind of made me feel like a loser, too, but I’d never wear it as a badge.
Mrs. Mulford made us wait until the other teams had their assignments. Then she explained our first job was to catalog all the alumni names carved into the bricks of the catacombs. We were to start immediately. Gabe shuddered. Like, actually shuddered. As if he had some physical reaction to the thought of the catacombs. I asked him what was wrong, but he shrugged it off.
WE STARTED AT THE bottom of the circular stairway, the same one Abigail had led us down the day I arrived. If you looked closely at each brick, there was a name and year carved into it. Supposedly, this had been a tradition for many years, until all the bricks were carved. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the school, they’d decided to log all these names and create a map of their locations so visiting alumni might easily find their ancestors’ bricks. So it was our job to trudge like rats through the dark underground hallway and record these names on a laptop they’d given us. It seemed like an absurd task to me, but compared to what I’d expected—having to do dishes or scrub floors Cinderella-style—it didn’t seem so bad.
I read out names, and Gabe typed them into the laptop, names like Archibald Cumberland and Willfred Pinfolds. I almost giggled a few times. You could just picture these people holding lapdogs or muskets while posing for a somber Gilbert Stuart portrait like that one of George Washington on the one-dollar bill.
But Gabe was edgy, constantly looking over his shoulder. He kept jerking at the tiniest sound.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said unconvincingly as he clicked on the computer. “Did you notice this laptop is completely blank and Internet disabled?”
“So?”
“They obviously don’t trust us.”
“Or it’s a new computer and they didn’t put anything on it yet.”
He huffed but then lurched, apparently hearing something down the hall. His edginess was making me feel uncomfortable, too. I tried to distract him.
“Prudence Goggins. Class of 1939.” I put on a crackly old voice. “I studied needlepoint and tea-making at Wickham Hall and then went on to marry the ketchup baron … Haverford Heinz, Class of 1938.”
Gabe managed a chuckle. We turned the corner into a small nook off the hallway, and he suddenly screamed—at the top of his lungs. He grabbed my shirt and lurched backward, pulling me away from something hideous. Something horrible. The school laptop hit the floor and smashed. I fell right on top of it.
“Run! Now!” he shouted at me. And then he turned back to the darkness, addressing whatever was there. “No! Stop! Go away!”
As I was gathering myself up and pulling away, I couldn’t help but quickly glance back into the dark nook—the way you have to look at a car accident as you pass—and I saw it.
Nothing.
There was nothing there. But nothing has never been so frightening.
THE BROKEN LAPTOP SAT on the table between Mrs. Mulford and us. Needless to say, she wasn’t pleased, especially with Gabe.
“Considering you’re on Final Warning, this incident warrants a conversation with the headmaster and could possibly precipitate your expulsion.”
He stared at his lap, his hair shielding his eyes. But I could tell from his expression that, as much as he despised Wickham Hall, home was worse. I understood. I felt for him. So, without really thinking, I started to talk.
“I dropped the computer.”
She glared at me. “That’s not what you previously reported.”
“He was just trying to be nice. To help me. Because I’m new. And I let him because I didn’t know about Final Whatever.”
“Warning,” she
clarified.
“But he can’t be expelled for something I did. It’s not fair.”
I could feel his eyes on me, but I refused to look over. I was going to stick to this story. I was not on Final Warning. I had nothing to lose.
“Is this the truth?” she demanded, shifting her stare to Gabe.
“Yes,” I said firmly, before Gabe could reply.
“Well, in that case,” she said with a smirk, “You’ll both receive an appropriate punishment.”
OUTSIDE, GABE QUICKLY THANKED me. We walked across the quad silently for a good while. I caught a few glimpses of his face, and he was clearly wrestling with something. Finally, once we were far away from everyone, he stopped. So I stopped, too.
“Do you want to know?” he asked.
I nodded. I was prepared for the worst: A) He was mentally ill, B) He had an imaginary friend, or C) He took bath salts—not that I ever really understood exactly what bath salts were.
“I saw Lydia. She’s gruesome. She was coming at us.”
I nodded again. It was definitely C.
“I hear the voices of ghosts at Wickham Hall. And there are certain places—dark, cursed places—where I can see them, too. They haunt me. All of them. I don’t know what they want.” He bit his lip, seeing I didn’t believe him. “Wickham Hall is haunted. It’s not a ‘silly myth’ like they say. Ask me questions. I’ll tell you about any of them.”
I was silent.
“Lydia’s in the catacombs. She’s the only one whose name I know. Sometimes she repeats it again and again. Her neck’s kind of tweaked like it was broken or something. She wears a Smiths T-shirt, and she’s insane. There’s another one in Main, in the lobby. And there’s one by the weeping willow tree near the well. And there’s a bloody one on top of Skellenger … and …”
He stopped when he saw my face.
“Let’s go to the infirmary,” I managed to say. “Let’s get you help.”
He recoiled. “No!”
“Did you take some drugs?”
“No!”
“Do you have, you know, a medical history?”
He started to almost shake with frustration, but then he paused. Calmly, he said, “I understand why you think I’m crazy. I thought I was crazy, too. But it’s too consistent. Always the same voices, the same faces in the same places. I’m telling you it’s real.”
I paused. How do you even respond to something like that?
His demeanor changed. He was nervous now, almost desperate, and bargaining. “Look, it’s fine if you won’t believe me, but please, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone. I’ve never told anyone else here. I don’t even know why I told you. I was just grateful. I thought you’d understand.”
I couldn’t pretend I believed him, but I did promise I wouldn’t tell anyone. I only hoped he wasn’t dangerous. He didn’t seem the type to ever hurt anyone, but he definitely seemed capable of hurting himself. I’d hate to be the person who failed to report that kid before he snapped.
He didn’t want to let me walk away. I could see he felt vulnerable. But there was nothing more to say.
I’D NEVER THOUGHT MUCH about ghosts. I certainly didn’t believe in them. I’d been taught when you die, you go to heaven—that is, if you’ve accepted Jesus into your heart. So, let’s just say that is true, then what about everyone else? What about the kind man in Timbuktu who never even had a chance to hear about Jesus? My mother never had an answer for that one. My parents’ church had confused me. It’d actually driven me away from God, if there was one.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Gabe’s description of Lydia. What did a ghost look like? I didn’t know. Did it look like a Francis Bacon painting, distorted and ethereal? Or tortured, like Munch’s The Scream? Was a ghost more like the chubby cherubs of Titian or the horrific devils of Hieronymus Bosch?
The thought of her haunted me, so I did what was natural. Alone in my studio, I drew her. I covered the paper in black charcoal and erased her out of the blackness: a ghoulish veil. I was interrupted by a text chime. I looked.
At first it just said:
hi liv. malcolm here.
Just seeing the name made my chest thump. Seriously, like out of a Keith Haring painting—a giant heart, neon and throbbing. Before I could reply, another bubble popped up. He’d been looking for me. He finally got my number from the admissions office. He wanted to meet.
I texted back, told him I was drawing.
He offered to come meet me in the studio.
I told him another day would be better.
I wanted to see him, but my head was full of ghosts, and I couldn’t possibly tell him Gabe’s secret. Plus all that thumping. That rush like I had stood up too fast. Why did he do that to me? Excitement. Fear. I honestly didn’t know. For all I knew, that’s what love felt like. I just hoped I wouldn’t fall over or—God forbid—faint the next time I saw him. Avoiding him seemed the best course of action, at least for the moment.
I made it back to my dorm just in time for Handshaking, the nightly ritual where every student has to shake hands with the dorm mistress and the dorm prefect, who, in my case, was Abigail. When she looked down and saw the charcoal I’d smudged on her palm, she huffed off to the bathroom.
I just smiled and went to get my toothbrush. I was exhausted.
EVERYTHING WAS BLACK. I could feel myself moving through the darkness. It was thicker than water, more like oil. As my eyes adjusted, I could see subtle colors in the murkiness: browns, purples, reds. It felt like I was being born or like I was a piece of film being developed … until I emerged and found I was kissing Malcolm.
My eyes were closed, but I knew it was him. I could feel it. He was warm and gentle. And it felt good. I wanted it, but I felt out of control. I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.
I separated from myself, imagining what we looked like. From above, I could see we were lying on a deep red velvet blanket, two teenagers making out in the dark Founders Tomb. But then images started to emerge from the darkness around us. At first they were pleasant: a Titian cherub, a Chagall angel. But then one of Bosch’s devils appeared. And Munch’s screaming terror. Francis Bacon’s agonizing Pope. And one of Basquiat’s jagged skulls. We were surrounded by ghouls and ghosts, yet we were still kissing, oblivious.
Then another ghost appeared. She was from a painting I didn’t recall ever having seen—glamorous but haunted. She could have been painted by Kirchner or Emil Nolde. She was so vivid, a beautiful girl about my age with her copper red hair in pin curls and a beaded flapper dress. But the dress was caked with dark blood that had clearly drained from a slim wound across her neck.
She leaned down and tapped my shoulder. “Stop yourself!” she whispered to me. But I kept kissing Malcolm. So she shook me harder until finally I pulled away. At once, I was back in my body, and I looked directly at her as she warned me, “Stop yourself or they’ll get you, too!”
Suddenly I realized what was happening. It was a nightmare. I was plagued by nightmares as a child and had learned long ago how to wake myself from one. I blinked my eyes several times—that usually did the trick. And it worked.
I bolted upright in bed, panting with thrill and fear. It had seemed so real. But it wasn’t. I flipped on the light, grabbed my notebook, and started to draw what I’d seen.
I should’ve known something was horribly wrong when Cyrus Huckle came to the woods with us to sneak a cigarette. Cyrus Huckle didn’t smoke. None of the Preps smoked, at least not with us.
At first he kept to himself, pacing, but then he sat next to me. I ignored him until he offered me a swig from his flask. I didn’t even know what it was. I didn’t care. I had two. I played Echo and the Bunnymen on my boombox—“The Killing Moon.” I remember he laughed when I told him the name.
It was unusually cold for October, and someone had a blanket so we all shared it. Under the blanket, his hand reached out for mine. Our fingertips touched. And even though he was a Prep whom I despised on princip
le, I held his hand secretly. All my friends—the Freaks (at least that’s what the Preps called us)—were sitting right there, and none of them had a clue.
As we all walked back to campus for curfew, he quietly asked me to meet him at the nook in the catacombs under Main. At midnight.
I checked into my dorm. I had to fake out even my roommate. I couldn’t tell anyone I was meeting Cyrus Huckle. No one would’ve believed it. Not possible. Not real. So, I put on my pajamas. I even ate a Tastykake like I did every night, just so no one would think anything was off. That was my last meal. A butterscotch Tastykake because Katie Milton was out of chocolate.
I hid an outfit in the shower. At eleven forty, I slipped into the bathroom and put it on—my crimson Doc Martens, well-worn Dickies, my favorite Smiths T-shirt, and a flannel. I grabbed my Walkman and listened to more Echo and the Bunnymen while I stole across campus.
When I got to the nook, he wasn’t there. I started to think it was a joke. Of course. Just as I was about to leave, he walked up. He grabbed my waist and pulled me deeper into the nook. We kissed, but I didn’t stop the music. I really wanted to finish the song because I kind of felt like I was in a music video.
He jammed his tongue into my mouth forcefully. I noticed a bitter taste as he put his hand down my shirt. The music was so loud, I didn’t hear what came up behind me. But I heard the snap of my neck while Ian McCulloch sang:
… the killing time
unwilling mine …
It was weird how little I saw Malcolm during those first weeks. Considering we were confined within the walls of the campus, you’d think we might have collided more often. But we had no classes together. His dorm, Pitman, was at the other end of Dorm Row from mine. And boys and girls ate all meals in separate dining halls except for Saturday Supper. And I just might’ve skipped most of those to work in the Art Center.
Liv, Forever Page 4