“I have stuff to do.”
“I don’t know why you’re mad at me. I told you, I didn’t sneeze on—”
“I’m not mad, but we have to do it again, the ritual. I think I know what we did wrong.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly. “What if Rachel and Gia don’t want to?”
“I already told them.”
I traced circles on the wall. She’d called them first? In the background, there was a yell and a thump, then the sound muffled as Becca covered the phone. Even so, I heard another yell, definitely her mom.
“I have to go,” Becca said, the words all running together.
“Maybe—”
The phone disconnected with a click.
“Becca?”
My mom came around the corner, saw me frowning, and said, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said, running the pendant back and forth along its chain, the metal whisking with each pass.
* * *
Becca opened her front door, and the skin on her cheek was all purple and red. Not just a little mark, either.
“Holy crap,” I said. “What happened?”
“I banged into the doorway,” she said. “It’s not a big deal. There wasn’t even any blood. Come on up, I want to show you something.”
I followed her upstairs, but it almost felt like she didn’t care that I was there, even though she had called me and said I could come over.
Two steps into her room, I stopped. A bunch of drawings of the Red Lady hung on the wall above her bed. One showed the four of us blindfolded, sitting in a circle, hands clasped together, the Red Lady in the center. Another was of her in a hole, blood dripping from her mouth, dirt covering the lower half of her body. In another, she stood beside the hole, her mouth open in a scream, blood leaking from her wrists. One from the back showed her hair trailing in a long streak of blood.
The last one, hanging in the middle, was Becca with the Red Lady behind her, arms spread wide, blood puddling their feet. I stepped closer. The Red Lady was smiling, but it wasn’t nice at all. Her shark’s eyes bored into mine. From the stories I knew, she was scary, but in this picture she seemed worse. She seemed evil and wrong. Her hair hung in dark vines over her shoulders, and several tendrils were wrapped around Becca’s shoulders, too.
Real Becca had a Mona Lisa face, like she knew a secret. “That’s my favorite,” she said, pointing.
I wanted to rip the picture to pieces, and I backed away until I bumped into her dresser. “Is your mom mad at you for hanging them up?”
She blinked like something hurt. “I don’t let her come in here anymore,” she said.
I knuckled the end of my nose. “What are they?”
“Hel-lo, what do they look like?”
“I know, but when did you draw them?” I said.
“I’ve been working on them for a while,” she said, scratching an earlobe. “Do you like them or not?”
“They’re … I don’t know, scary.”
“Yeah, but I thought you’d like them. You always like my drawings.” Her mouth went Mona Lisa again.
“No, I do like them, but she doesn’t look like I thought.”
“What did you think she looked like?”
“Not so bloody, maybe?” I said, cocking my head.
“They chopped off her hands and cut out her tongue. Of course she’s bloody.”
“I don’t think we should do the ritual again,” I said.
“Why, are you scared?”
I stared at the Red Lady’s face. Her open mouth said she wanted to bite, and it didn’t matter that she was a story. I was scared. “Maybe.”
“She isn’t going to hurt us. And she doesn’t always look so scary. Most of the time she looks sad.” Becca rummaged through a stack of paper on her desk. “See?”
She gave me an unfinished pictured of the Red Lady inside a window. Her lips were closed, her head bowed.
“You should hang this one up instead.”
“But it isn’t done yet.”
“So? It’s better than that one.” I nodded toward the wall.
“What do you think it was like, being buried alive?”
“Awful,” I said. “Ugh. Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. When was the last time we talked about something else? I want to talk about music or the movies or a book.”
“You said you liked the stories. And remember what it was like after you saw Edward Scissorhands? That’s all you talked about forever. I didn’t say anything because we’re friends, and that’s what friends do, right? They don’t tell each other to shut up.”
“That’s not fair,” I said. “I never told you to shut up.”
“Same difference.”
It wasn’t at all, but I didn’t know how to make her understand. The eyes of the Red Lady on the wall followed me the way the ones in the dolls did.
“Maybe she’s the only thing I want to talk about,” Becca said. “If you were really my friend, you wouldn’t be mad.”
“I am your friend.”
The corner of a box stuck out from beneath her bed, and I said, “What’s that?”
“Go look.”
Inside were a bunch of the construction-paper books we’d made when we were little. I snickered at the titles: The Ghost. The Witch’s House. The Ice Dog. The Fire Cat.
“We were such dorks.” I pushed the box back and sat on the edge of her bed with my back to the Red Lady. “So where did you get all her stories?”
“Oh,” she said. “That book at the mall.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “I don’t remember seeing her in it.”
“You didn’t read it all, but I did.”
But she said it without looking at me, and I knew she was lying. She was making it all up herself. For one thing, there was no way she’d had time to read all those stories and remember them while we were at the bookstore. For another, it was all too weird to be anything but made-up.
“I won’t tell Rachel and Gia,” I said.
“Won’t tell them what?”
“That you’re making it up.”
“I’m not. I don’t understand why you don’t believe me.”
I didn’t want to call her a liar, so I said, “Want to watch a movie or something?”
“Yeah, sure.”
We went in her basement and watched MTV for a while, but every time I talked to her, even to say something silly, she only sort of dipped her head. She kept rubbing the bruise, her face turning angry and then kind of sad. When I lied and said I had to go home and check the dryer for my mom, she just said, “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out,” and didn’t even walk with me upstairs.
* * *
“I know what we did wrong,” Becca said.
The candles were in a circle in the basement again, and she was in the middle holding the matches. The mark on her cheek was still dark. She caught me looking and flipped some of her hair forward, not that it hid much, but I got the point. “We weren’t sitting the right way,” she said, lighting the candles.
I thought she was joking, because how could that make any difference, but her face was serious. Once again, Rachel was scared, twisting her fingers and biting her lip. Gia was all wide-eyed and excited.
We sat the same way we did before, Rachel next to me with Gia on her other side. But after Becca pricked our fingers again and put on our blindfolds, she said, “Turn so you’re facing out, with your legs crossed, and leave room for me.”
Once Becca sat down, I had to scoot again. Our folded legs were squished, Rachel’s knee practically on top of mine. Everyone, even Becca, moved a little bit, trying to get comfortable as we linked hands. Because of the way we were sitting, our arms from shoulder to elbow were pressed tight to our bodies, and from elbow to fingers rested on our thighs, like dolls stuck in wrong poses. I wrinkled my nose. If they wanted to do this a third time, I was going to say no, no ma
tter how angry they got. They could do it without me.
“Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face,” Becca said.
We joined in, my voice not nearly as loud. I waited for Becca to knock my leg or something, but she didn’t. After a while, her voice got faster and so did Rachel’s and Gia’s. Mine, too, until the words were oatmeal in my mouth. It sounded like there were more than four of us here, like we weren’t even speaking English anymore, and goose bumps pebbled my arms.
The room grew warmer. The candles smelled even worse this time, all flowery and fruity and Christmas trees. It made me feel queasy, but if I threw up Becca would never forgive me. Rachel started shaking. I tipped my head back, peeking under the blindfold’s bottom edge. The light flickered and a shadow moved past. I jerked my hands, but Becca held tighter. Rachel’s slipped a little, but she held on too. I turned my head from right to left but saw only the candles. Past them, the candles made dark shapes flit on the walls.
The air grew thick, and I smelled something other than the candles, something meaty and rich. Something moved on the carpet with a soft rasp. I knew it was only my imagination; there was no such thing as the Red Lady. But I saw her in my mind. Fierce and terrifying with her black, black eyes; her mouth, open and bloody; her arms and the empty places below her wrists. Her rage burned me with its heat.
“Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face.”
Rachel moaned softly around her words. Sweat stuck my hair to my scalp. Gia’s voice was husky, Becca’s excited and higher-pitched than normal. I wanted to stop, to run away, but I couldn’t pull free. It was as if our skin was glued together.
This wasn’t real. She was a story, nothing more. But I couldn’t move anything except my mouth, my voice a thousand miles away. Like the rest of me, I had no control. My ears went stuffy and my tongue stilled, clogged by something felt and not felt at the same time. Behind the blindfold, the world grew darker. A weight pushed against my chest, my belly ached, and my mouth, wrists, and side hurt. Someone laughed, sharp and cruel. The carpet beneath me felt wrong. It was cold and damp and rough, and from far away, there was a soft thumping sound. Something moved in front of me again, rustling slow and soft, and I heard my name whispered—not with my ears, but in my head.
Then, in the space of a heartbeat, the sound was gone and the carpet was carpet again. I yanked off my blindfold. The others were doing the same. I blinked, confused by the darkness.
“Why are the candles out?” Rachel said, her voice quivering. “Who blew them out?”
“Hold on, I have a flashlight,” Becca said.
There was a click and a beam of light appeared. Rachel had her knees tucked up to her chin, Gia was crouched in front of her.
“Can we put the light on?” Rachel said. “Please?”
The darkness returned as Becca crept up the stairs, flashlight sweeping from side to side. When the overhead light came on, I shielded my eyes. Rachel burst into weird hiccup-like tears. Gia giggled. Something, maybe a sob, built in my throat, but I gulped it down. Becca wasn’t angry, which surprised me. As she gathered the candles and blindfolds, she said, “It worked this time. The Red Lady was here. I felt her.”
Rachel said, “I felt her, too.”
“Me too,” Gia said.
“What about you?” Becca said to me.
The weight of their gazes was crushing. All I had to do was say yes, but I couldn’t. No matter what I’d thought I heard or felt, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The Red Lady wasn’t real. It was Becca, tricking me somehow. Tricking us all. “I didn’t feel anything.”
Gia frowned. “You didn’t?”
I shook my head. Inside, I was numb.
“How do you explain the candles all going out, then?” Gia said.
“I don’t know. A breeze?” I said.
“Inside the house?” Gia said.
“But the rest of us felt her,” Rachel said. “And you were the first one to let go.”
“I was afraid I was going to puke from the candle smell. That’s all,” I said.
Becca narrowed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Maybe the Red Lady didn’t want Heather to know she was here for some reason, but the rest of us felt her. Help me clean up, okay?”
While we put the rest of the stuff in the backpack, they didn’t talk to me, only to each other.
“I felt her right in front of me,” Gia said. “She touched my arm.”
“She touched my face. What about you, Becca?” Rachel asked.
Becca said, “I smelled her, too. She smelled like blood.”
“Me too,” Gia said.
“Me three,” Rachel said. “It was gross. But sad, too.”
They had to be lying. There was no way anything had happened for real. It was only our imaginations. And the pain I’d felt in my belly was probably just a cramp.
They were still talking after we crossed the field. We passed Gia’s house first, then Rachel’s. On the way to mine, Becca stayed quiet. I did, too. I had one foot on the sidewalk leading to my front porch when she said, “Tell me the truth. What did you see?”
“Nothing. We had blindfolds on, remember?”
She blew hair out of her face. “You know what I mean.”
“I told you,” I said, crossing my arms. “I didn’t feel anything, and all I heard was the chant.”
“I don’t believe you. You let go first.”
“Because I thought I was going to get sick.” I scraped the heel of my shoe on the pavement. “Anyway, nothing happened. There was no one else in the basement. Don’t know why you’re making it such a big deal.”
She stepped close enough for me to feel her breath. “Because it’s important. I wanted you to feel her, too.”
“Gia and Rachel did. Isn’t that good enough?”
She got even closer; this time I pulled back a little so our noses wouldn’t bump. “But they’re not my best friend. You are.”
“Just because nothing happened to me doesn’t mean I’m not your friend. Best friends are more important than stories,” I said.
She had a funny expression, not angry or upset, but a little sad. “She’s not just a story. And you know it. She talks to me sometimes.”
“Who?”
“The Red Lady.”
“You’re so lying.”
“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want, but she is real.”
“Believe whatever you want,” I said, turning on my heel and going inside. When I peeked out the peephole, she was gone.
* * *
I didn’t talk to her again for three days, then she called and told me to come to the elementary school playground. I almost said no but didn’t want to be left out.
Rachel and Gia were sitting on the wood chips beneath the monkey bars; Becca showed up a couple minutes later, blinking a few times when she saw me. I dragged my fingers through the wood chips to the dirt below. If she didn’t want me here, she shouldn’t have told me to come. But she slipped through the metal bars and sat down next to me, so maybe she’d just had the sun in her eyes.
“Did anyone else have a weird dream last night?” Becca asked, pulling strands of her hair over to help cover the bruise, now the color of a plum.
Rachel and Gia both nodded.
I chewed my fingernail. “I don’t know. If I did, I don’t remember.”
Becca’s mouth made a funny shape. She could not believe me all she wanted, but I was telling the truth. I’d woken in the middle of the night, dizzy and with a gross taste in my mouth, but I didn’t remember any dreams.
“If you had one like mine, you’d remember it,” she said. “I was being buried alive.”
Rachel said, “That’s what I dreamed, too.”
Gia nodded a bunch of times. “And there were people laughing.”
“Like it was the best thing they ever did,” Becca said. “I could taste the dirt and I tried to scream—”
“But you couldn’t because …” Rachel twisted the bottom of her T-shirt. “You coul
dn’t talk.”
“Because your tongue was gone?” Becca asked.
“Yeah,” Rachel and Gia said at the same time, their voices too loud.
Rachel scrunched her nose and said, “But how could we have had the same dream?”
Becca traced her teeth over her lower lip. “Because the Red Lady wants us to. She wants us to know how scared she was and how awful it felt. So we don’t forget it, so we don’t forget her.”
“I won’t ever forget,” Gia said.
“I don’t want to dream about it ever again,” Rachel said.
They sounded like soap opera actors and I wanted to laugh, but their faces were serious. Maybe they weren’t lying, but if they had dreamed about her, it was on account of the ritual and what they imagined happened. Nothing magic or mysterious. I remembered the phantom pain in my side and the way the carpet had turned bumpy, but I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Then that reminded me of the smell, and I grimaced.
“What?” Becca said.
“I bit my cheek,” I said. “See?” I stuck out my tongue.
“Gross,” Rachel said.
I hooked my knees over the monkey bars and swung upside down, reaching out and making monster groans with my bloody tongue sticking out. Rachel shrieked and pulled away. Becca hung beside me, fingers bent into pincers, snagging Gia’s shoulders every time she got close. And for a little while, everything seemed normal again.
CHAPTER NINE
NOW
I drive to Silverstone through a mist of rain, the day as gray as my mood. Nicole’s door is open, and when she glances at my empty hands, I say, “I’m sorry. I stayed up too late last night, it was raining when I left, and I wasn’t even thinking.”
All three are truths, two in a manner of speaking. I couldn’t fall asleep, and although I left in time to stop at Starbucks, I was thinking of other things: of strange phone calls, of brunch this Sunday with Gia, of a half-heart necklace that once belonged to my best friend.
She waves me off. “Not a big deal. How has Samantha been for you?”
Samantha? Then it clicks. The girl with the chair. “She’s been fine. A little rough around the edges, but you know how that show is sometimes.”
“Okay, but please watch her with Abby. I’ve heard a few rumors she’s been antagonizing her. No one will confirm it, of course, and Abby says she hasn’t, but she never likes to rock the boat.”
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