When All the Girls Are Sleeping

by Emily Arsenault

  And the shuttle was here anyway. I boarded it with a huff of relief, then heard a couple of other girls tumbling in behind me, giggly and breathless from the effort of running to catch this last shuttle.

  On the ride back home, those two girls—probably sophomores, by my guess—were the only other students riding. They were in the back, laughing and whispering the whole way. I resisted the urge to give them a steely upperclasswoman gaze. They were kind of cute. They reminded me of Taylor and me the time we got drunk one rainy Saturday afternoon, then took the shuttle to the Farnswood campus, sneaking a bottle of Taylor’s vodka with us. We met up with a few of her older guy friends and ended up playing drunken football in the muddy back athletic field. I’d never played real football—with tackling—before, and never had since. Taylor had taken photos of us all in the mud but was smart enough not to post them anywhere. We looked obviously drunk in them. We wore borrowed boys’ clothes home on the last evening shuttle.

  “I’ve never tackled anyone before,” I’d said to Taylor as we sat together on the minibus. “I think I love it.”

  “Of course you love it,” Taylor had snorted. “Josh was being particularly gentle with you, in a manly kind of way.”

  “Oh, shut up. I mean, guys take this opportunity for granted. That they can just join a sport where they can mow other people down, if they feel like it.”

  “And be mowed down. Don’t forget that half of it.”

  “I think I’d consider it pretty seriously, if it was an option for me.”

  “Are you trying to tell me about your repressed anger, hon?”

  Taylor was into the idea of anything repressed. She thought a lot of people were repressed. Our English teacher Ms. Tremblay in particular.

  “No,” I’d said. “I’m trying to tell you that I think I would like an excuse to tackle people.”

  The shuttle pulled up to Windham’s front stone gate, and we all stumbled out single file into the cold. When the other girls reached the sidewalk, they paired up, the first waiting for her friend to hop off the bus before walking toward the dorms. When I stepped onto the curb, I unthinkingly tried to do the same—glancing behind me for a split second for Taylor. And then realizing—in the same moment that I heard one of the girls giggle again—that of course she wasn’t there.

  As I approached Dearborn, teeth chattering, I thought of what Anthony had said about Taylor: You and I know she liked messing with people’s heads.

  13

  Curfew wasn’t for a few minutes. I sat outside on the freezing-cold bench next to Dearborn and willed myself to look up at the window of Taylor’s old room. It was the only dark window on this side of the building at this still-early hour.

  Samuel…

  My chest and stomach felt hollow. Despite the cold and the wind, I was dreading going into the warmth of that building. It wasn’t a warmth I could trust.

  I let my gaze widen to the whole building. You could almost call it cheerful, since most of its lights were on. Sturdy and solid, even. Its castle quality could maybe feel safe and protective instead of bleak and menacing. If you really wanted it to. That was how I had tried to look at Windham’s stodgy buildings when I was young—especially when I first arrived. But not since last year.

  I headed inside and signed in at the front desk but didn’t go upstairs. Instead, I turned on the light of the creaky-floored sitting room where we’d had our meeting last night. I couldn’t bring myself to head on up the stairs yet—to have to pass by Taylor’s door.

  Sitting on a claw-footed couch, I considered my talks with Anthony and Jayla: Taylor’s final moments. The window. The screaming. The scatterbrained quality of her last few days—failing classes, a planned escape to the infirmary, her laptop in the library Lost and Found.

  I opened my last chat with Alex and hoped she was still awake.

  Hey, did you ever have a chance to look up Lily’s #?

  True to her conscientious form, Alex wrote back almost immediately:

  Yeah. Here’s her contact info, altho it’s a year old fyi. Probably still works, but we didn’t keep in touch. Good luck.

  Seeing the icon with Lily’s name and number pop up made me relieved that she didn’t ask what exactly I wanted with Lily.

  Laying down my phone, I closed my eyes. The wind outside battered at the room’s old windows, and one of them gave out a thunk. My eyes popped open, and I thought of something Maylin had said last night.

  Kate Goldberg’s older sister was in Dearborn just two or three years ago, and she was good friends with someone who swore she saw the ghost.

  I hopped up and paced the room a couple of times. The floorboards croaked their approval.

  Someone who swore she saw a ghost would not find it so hard to believe that Taylor heard a phantom whisper, or that I saw something written in window frost. In fact, such a person might rate as crazier than me, and thus be comforting to talk to.

  I switched over to my chat with Maylin:

  Kate Goldberg lives in Barton, right?

  Then I waited—having vague second thoughts. She and Alex were probably together right now, reporting my randomly pestering texts to each other, wondering yet again if I was “okay.”

  Yeah, Maylin wrote back.

  Was it her sister who went to UPenn? I texted back, resisting the urge to ask if Maylin was alone or not right now. If she was answering so readily, I decided it didn’t really matter.

  Maybe? was Maylin’s reply, and I didn’t want to push it, so I switched gears.

  You know what room Kate’s in?

  Not sure but I think the second floor.

  Thanks! I typed, already starting toward the Dearborn dining hall.

  Barton Hall—which is a huge dorm and houses most of the juniors and a fair number of sophomores—is connected to Dearborn by the joint cafeteria. It’s similar to how the two first-year dorms—Shelton Hall and Gregory Hall—are joined. You can move in between them even after curfew, as long as you’re back in your room by ten. (Eleven in Dearborn, so seniors can feel just slightly more like grown-ups.)

  Only the smaller junior and sophomore dorms—called Underhill House and Compton House—are freestanding, unconnected to any other dorm, with their own smaller dining rooms. Some girls prefer those to Barton because the rooms are newer and the heat works better.

  After passing through the vacant hall, I headed toward the stairwell, where a girl—a smiley junior I recognized from cross-country last year—was about to head up. I asked her if she knew where Kate lived and she gave me directions. When I finally knocked on Kate’s room, I saw two names on the door and realized she had a roommate. But it was Kate who answered, already in pajamas.

  “Hey, Kate…I don’t know if you remember me….We were in newspaper together for a little while last year.”

  “Of course.” She opened her door a bit wider and I caught a whiff of incense—which wasn’t allowed. Not that I cared, but it maybe half explained the nervous expression on her face.

  “My friend Maylin was mentioning to me that your sister is at UPenn….Is that true?”

  “No.” Kate cocked her head. “Swarthmore.”

  “Oh! Well, that one is on my list, too. Swarthmore. Does she like it? Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me about it?”

  This was a pack of lies, of course. Luckily, Kate didn’t know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t want to go to a small college, and that I probably didn’t quite have the grades to bother trying for Swarthmore, either.

  “Yeah, Addison likes it okay.” Kate hesitated, apparently deliberating whether to call me on this rather sudden change of heart. “And yeah, I’m sure she’d be willing to talk to you about it.”

  “That’s great. Would it be okay to text her?”

  A few minutes later I had Addison Goldberg’s number in my phone, and was head
ing back through the dining hall to my own dorm. I texted as I walked:

  Hi there. This is Haley Peppler from Windham-Farnswood. I just talked to your sister and wanted to ask if you would be willing to chat with me about Swarthmore? It’s my top choice! Also, there is someone else from your class I’ve been trying to get in touch with and was wondering if you could put me in contact with her.

  Addison’s reply came before I’d even made it all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor:

  Sure. Not having the best semester, so I might not be the person to talk to if you want someone all rah rah. I could probably talk Friday for a bit, though. Who are you trying to get in touch with?

  As I stepped out of the stairwell, I wasn’t able to stop myself from glancing down the side hall that had Taylor’s room at the end of it. The door was closed. I exhaled. The hallway was filled with the usual early-evening quiet. Everyone was studying or plugged into a tablet or phone.

  I stopped short of my room and texted back.

  Thanks! Friday is good. Afternoon? Actually, I don’t know the name of your friend, but someone told me she saw the Dearborn ghost? I am doing a project on campus ghost stories.

  While I waited for a response, I noticed a single piece of popcorn on the floor by our door.

  Maybe around 4, I’ll call if I can. Her name is Bronwyn Spruce and tell her I said hi, we haven’t talked in about a year. I don’t know if she will still want to talk about that, but you can try. Good luck, talk to you Friday.

  I saved the number she’d typed at the bottom of her message. Well, I would cancel before Friday. And I’d heard of Bronwyn Spruce. She’d been a senior when I was a firstie—and kind of a campus celebrity. Girls with names like that tend to be. I remembered her wavy blond hair and striking dark eyebrows, her cute ski clothes, her impressive murals in the art department hallway that annoyed me for the reminder that someone who is pretty and rich and fashionable can’t always be dismissed as shallow.

  I picked up the piece of popcorn before typing Thanks!!! And then I went into my room, which smelled like a movie concession stand. Star was sitting on her bed with a purple ceramic bowl of popcorn and there was a matching bowl, piled high with it, on my desk.

  It was so like Star to prepare these bowls instead of just eating out of the microwave bag like most other girls would.

  “Hey!” Star said. “I thought you might want some popcorn. If you don’t want it, just leave it and I’ll take care of it. I didn’t want to eat the whole bag myself. It’s, like, double butter.”

  “Uhh…well, thanks,” I said, taking a handful of popcorn.

  “I take it you ate dinner…elsewhere?”

  “Yup. At Farnswood with Anthony.”

  “Anthony Ripley?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s cute,” Star remarked.

  “I guess,” I said, not wanting to put myself in a position to explain about Anthony right now. “He’s just a friend.”

  Star turned her attention back to her laptop. I got into my pajamas and then took out my calculus homework. For twenty minutes, our room was silent except for the occasional munching of popcorn. I couldn’t get my mind off Bronwyn—and the text I would need to write to her. Still, I willed myself not to take my phone out again yet.

  When I finished my calculus, I took out my laptop to work on my next English paper. But I found myself staring at the blank screen, then took out my phone.

  While she was rich like Taylor, Bronwyn had been in a different social circle—the more wholesome and athletic type. The Golden Child variety. She wouldn’t remember me, and would probably think I was weird for writing her. But it didn’t really matter. Graduates were kind of like ghosts, too. No one thought much about them once they were gone.

  Hi Bronwyn, I typed. I’m a senior at Windham, and I hope you don’t mind, but Addison Goldberg gave me your name as someone to talk to about the Dearborn ghost. Would you be willing to talk?

  I stared at the message for a couple of minutes. Star announced that she was tired and going to brush her teeth.

  I nodded as she left the room. I took out my European history textbook and read a few lines about Robespierre. Then reread them. My brain refused to absorb anything.

  I picked up my phone. I really wouldn’t have anything to show for my evening if I didn’t contact Bronwyn. I hit Send just as Star came back. She punched her pillow and put on her sleep mask.

  “Good night,” Star sang—so cheerfully I wondered if it was actually sarcastic. Is she annoyed with me for something? I thought before remembering one more thing to text.

  btw Addison says hi!

  “Good night,” I said.

  I hadn’t gotten through the next sentence about Robespierre when my phone vibrated.

  “Sorry,” I whispered to Star, turning the phone’s volume down.

  “No worries,” she mumbled.

  Wait, what’s your name? Bronwyn had written back. Do I know you?

  Maybe I should’ve seen it as comforting that things don’t change—that snide girls stay snide long after they leave Windham.

  No, I’m Haley Peppler.

  Did something happen at Dearborn?

  I considered my response for a couple of minutes before typing simply:

  Yes.

  Nothing really bad like last year, I hope? I just looked it up now and didn’t see anything.

  No, nothing like last year. But Taylor Blakey was my friend, and I would appreciate talking to you.

  Bronwyn didn’t reply right away. I watched my phone, half listening to the sound of Star breathing rhythmically. She was already asleep.

  Bronwyn’s reply appeared: Ah, okay. I don’t know how much I can help, but we can talk.

  When? I typed back.

  Now works, Bronwyn offered. It was a generous offer, and I wondered if I should feel bad for assuming she was still snide.

  Thanks, one sec.

  I stepped out of the room and headed toward the stairwell doors.

  “Hey,” Bronwyn answered. “How is old Windham these days?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “It’s getting old for me, I think.”

  “I remember the feeling. Actually, it’s pretty late there, isn’t it? Sorry, I’m in a different time zone.”

  I sat on the floor and leaned back against the stairwell doors.

  “I stay up late. My roommate’s used to it. So…where are you now?” I asked.

  “UC Berkeley. I’m a junior now.”

  “Oh?” That sounded lovely, to be somewhere sunny and far out of reach of bitter New England ghosts. “You like it?”

  “Yeah. I love it. Now, were you good friends with Taylor Blakey? I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and bit my lip for a moment. “So, look…if you don’t mind, I would really like to hear what your experience was in Dearborn. I heard you had a…um, paranormal experience there.”

  “Paranormal. Yeah. It was paranormal, all right.”

  “What happened? Can you talk about it?”

  I heard Bronwyn take a deep breath. “Yeah. I guess. I woke up one night and there was this girl just inside my doorway, staring at me in my bed. Staring at me really maliciously, it felt like. My heart was pounding so fast, it’s hard to remember exactly what happened. I started screaming, jumped out of my bed, and then she was gone.”

  I hesitated, waiting for more. I had questions, but I didn’t want to sound skeptical.

  “I know she was there,” Bronwyn murmured. “Right in the room. It wasn’t a dream.”

  “That sounds so scary,” I said.

  It did sound scary. Even if it didn’t sound real.

  “She was pale and had straggly hair. She was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown.”

  “Oh,” I said, just so Bronwyn wou
ld know I was still listening.

  “The thing is, the night before, and a couple of nights before that, I heard these weird knocks on my door and even, like, in my closet. I didn’t think that much about them, really, until I saw her.”

  “Was it just the one time you saw her?”

  “Once was enough. I refused to sleep in my room for a few nights after that.”

  “What did you do?”

  A few rooms down, a door creaked open. Ursula Gruber came padding down the hallway, headed for the bathroom in a pair of teddy bear boxers and a Windham T-shirt.

  “I slept in Addison’s room for a couple of nights.”

  I paused, waiting for Ursula to pass. We exchanged insincere smiles.

  “And then after that?” I asked.

  “I went back to my room because Addison’s roommate was complaining. I had a plan to get permission to leave campus for a few days if it happened again.”

  I heard the bathroom door clunk shut.

  “But it didn’t,” Bronwyn added.

  I knew more than a little bit about weird sleep issues since I’d had some when I was a kid. Sleepwalking and some other stuff I outgrew a long time ago—with the lingering insomnia. But I used to read about these things, and there is a common form of nightmare where people are kind of half-awake, half dreaming. They are awake enough to see the room around them, but their brain is still dreaming—maybe producing some image that appears to be in the room—a man in the corner, an animal on the bed. Maybe this was what happened to Bronwyn.

  “Did the girl say anything?” I asked.

  “No. Just stared. Now, did something happen to you, Haley? Or are you asking on Taylor’s behalf?”

  “A little bit of both,” I offered, unsure how much I should say.

  I didn’t feel like telling her about the window scrawl. And I didn’t think I should share Taylor’s video with someone I didn’t know very well. But I had an idea of what else I might show her.

  “Can I send you something?”

  “Okay,” Bronwyn said uncertainly.