It was kind of serendipity that I’d had Taylor’s key. Kind of not. She always left it with me when she got to go away and I didn’t. She would let me hang out in her room if I wanted a break from my roommate, Maya—and let me play with her fancy devices, since she wouldn’t always take them all with her.
So I had the key when she called from New York. I had it when she asked me to go to her room and find the burner phone and get rid of it. The one she’d sent the video to—of Jocelyn and Charlie—before she’d then texted it anonymously to a bunch of kids we knew.
If you have any doubt, just throw all the damn phones away.
She had enough money to cover them all.
They’re not going to break in and search your room, or anyone’s room. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, I had assured her.
I would still feel better knowing that it’s gone. I’ll be able to enjoy my vacation a little better.
It was that line that broke me—that made me decide I hated her.
This wasn’t like the Avon deodorant incident or the girl she called Blobfish or the time she was wailing in the library stacks. This didn’t make me frightened for my fragile self. This made me angry. She’d tried, when I’d first found out that she’d distributed the video, to say that it was a stupid impulse. But the fact that it required her to go into Derby to purchase a burner phone—that proved it had taken some forethought. And while I understood about being jealous—God knows, I understood that—I did not understand how the fact of a nerdy and unassuming girl getting a stupid school-play part over her could bring out such cruelty, or such determination. Since when did she even care about things like school productions?
That weekend I got lots of studying done—and took long walks, crunching endless leaves underfoot, going over my words—my plan—for Taylor so intensely that sometimes I could feel my lips moving dramatically, my eyelids fluttering. I was giving a speech to the biting autumn wind.
But when Taylor returned, I surprised myself. I actually gave the speech to her. And then we weren’t friends.
I thought of these things as I gripped the key in my fingers. We weren’t the kind of friends who wore each other’s clothes—she was way taller, and my clothes were all from Target anyway. We weren’t the kind of friends who gave each other birthday gifts—hers was in the summer, when we were apart, and I always insisted I didn’t want anything when mine came around in March. So I had very little to remember her by, really.
I pulled my coat on, shoved the key and phone into my pocket, and zipped it forcefully. After grabbing my hat, I closed my door behind me and didn’t bother to lock it.
It was still sleeting when I got outside. The tiny ice specks felt like pinpricks on my cheeks.
At first I took a couple of steps toward north campus, intending to walk to Upper Pond. But then I thought better of it. I wanted that key and phone to be farther away—off school grounds, never to be found. I turned in the other direction, heading for the campus gates.
* * *
Cars shushed by on the main road. I thought of my mother’s warning about her old boyfriend and townies like him. I think Heathsburg had become more suburban since then. Practically everyone had a Subaru or a Volvo, it seemed like. Everyone drove respectfully.
I blinked against the driving sleet.
I won’t tell anyone about the burner phone, okay? I told Taylor when she returned at the end of Fall Break.
And then there were my words to Assistant Dean Wickman when she questioned everyone who was at the party—or associated with anyone from the party—two days later:
Well, the party was a long time ago. I remember I wasn’t invited to the party. I remember being kind of sad about it. But Taylor came back early so we could watch a movie. Told me it was lame and I hadn’t missed much.
Cold-blooded. I could lie quite well when I had a lot riding on it. And what I had riding on it was freedom from Taylor.
And then, that night, to Taylor—
This is the only time I’m going to lie for you. Don’t worry about the burner phone. I’m not going to show it to anyone, but I’m keeping it, for now. But I need to take a break, Taylor. A break from all of this. I’m going to eat at my own dorm tonight.
And I’d slithered on home to Barton, feeling bloated with pride—as if I’d just swallowed large prey. Never mind that whenever I saw Taylor after that, I froze and often broke into a sweat—reminding me that I’d been the prey all along, and always would be.
Yes, I’d blackmailed and dumped her. But I was still terrified of her. It had been a gamble. And Taylor jumped before I found out if I’d won.
Yes. Cold-blooded.
So cold-blooded, the words I made her jump just might apply.
* * *
When I got to the 7-Eleven, I fished the key and burner phone out of my pocket and tossed them both into the trash by the front entrance. Then I went inside and bought a hot chocolate—the kind that sputters out of a metal machine. It was too sweet, but it kept me half-warm for the long walk back to my dorm. As I sipped and walked, I thought about what Jayla had told me about Taylor’s temporarily lost laptop, discarded in the library Lost and Found. Was it possible something was on that laptop that someone wanted to get their hands on? Some proof of something? Well, if it was the original Jocelyn and Charlie footage they were looking for, they didn’t find it there.
And no one would ever find it now.
Not that it much mattered. Taylor couldn’t get in trouble anymore.
30
Hard to sleep after the words on Taylor’s door.
No denying them now. No blaming them on my overactive imagination. Half the floor had seen them, and Anna, and the maintenance man.
Shitdamn.
And then there was Anna’s circus of a meeting.
Vandalism of school property is a serious offense. Vandalism in the dormitory is especially egregious because this is a safe space, a sanctuary.
Fuck your sanctuary. My friend died here.
And Anna didn’t say exactly what the punishment would be. Which was odd. She just basically said “No more funny business” in ten different SAT word-salad ways.
But forget all that. Forget ALL of that, for now, Haley.
Try to sleep.
You need to go to sleep.
You know what kind of things happen when you don’t sleep.
The sleepwalking was bad enough. But the bed-wetting was the really horrific problem. My frantic online research had informed me that this problem was extremely uncommon in girls. And that nonetheless I would probably outgrow it. When I arrived at Windham-Farnswood, it had not happened in over a year. And still, the possibility terrified me.
Possibility became reality one October morning of my first year, when Alex was my roommate. I woke up to the shamefully familiar sensation of a squishy bed. I did some panicked calculations in my head. I had three full sets of sheets. So I could maybe throw these ones out if that was the easiest way to get rid of them quickly. I could have my mom send another set, or I could catch the next bus to the shopping center on the weekend. But what if I wet the extra sheets in the meantime? It was only Monday, I didn’t really want to involve my mother, and these things seemed to happen in bunches.
No, I would need to wash them. I would skip dinner to do it discreetly, if I had to. For now, I just had to get them hidden away and sealed somewhere they wouldn’t smell.
I hopped up and changed my pajamas. Then I tackled the sheets, balling up the top sheet tight and cramming it into a plastic grocery store bag since I didn’t have a larger garbage bag. I started to do the same with the fitted sheet when I heard movement behind me—the rustling of Alex’s sheets. My crinkling of the plastic bags had awoken her.
With my heart thudding, I finished shoving my second sheet into a plastic bag before turning around. Alex’s gaz
e was fixed on my bare mattress, but then darted to the wall, avoiding eye contact.
“What…time is it?” she murmured, stretching in an exaggerated way. It felt for a moment like she was a cartoon character, delivering a predictable line.
I stared at her, paralyzed by indecision, uncertain of the meaning of her groggy expression. We could both ignore the reality of what I was doing, and go on with our morning as if nothing had happened. We could. But there was no way to be sure Alex would. And her silence rattled me.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” I whispered.
“Tell anyone what?” She looked genuinely confused. “Bad period?”
I glanced at the plastic bag hanging from my hand. I didn’t know what to say. Were we both pretending she couldn’t pick up the pee smell in the stale air of this tiny room? Was a heavy period less embarrassing? Yes. A little.
“Just…don’t tell anyone,” I repeated.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Alex said, her voice lowering almost to a growl. “What the fuck do you take me for?”
“Thanks,” I murmured, stunned. I had never heard her talk that way before then.
We barely spoke for the rest of the week.
31
Six Nights Left
But the story doesn’t stop there.
Because I am her and she is me.
I used to know the difference. Until that window opened and that cold gust of death swirled us together.
32
Monday, February 4
Star and I got to the archive room early on Monday, and waited for Ms. Noceno to come and unlock it.
“I’m glad to see Star is making a believer out of you,” Ms. Noceno said to me, pulling her keys out of her sensible corduroy skirt pocket with a forceful jangle. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”
“We’re looking up that girl together,” Star said, talking fast. “The girl I mentioned in my email to you yesterday? Did you get it? A girl named Sarah Black or Sally Black. From Caroline’s time.”
“Yes, dear. I got it.” Ms. Noceno turned the key and pushed the door open. “You mentioned you were both curious about the old Sarah Dearborn portrait, too, no? Let me just get settled here. Was this Sarah Black person in Caroline Bromley’s class? Class of 1892?”
“Probably. We’re not sure. Maybe a different class, but attending roughly the same time.”
After we’d waited a few minutes at the long tables, Ms. Noceno came out from behind the partition with two binders.
“Well, here are the student registration rosters from 1880–1890. And here are the lists from 1890–1900. That should pretty much cover it.”
We started with the first year that Caroline had attended—which was the 1888–1889 school year.
I let Star look in the first binder while I sat twirling my pencil.
“Ms. Noceno,” I said. “Did you go to Windham?”
Ms. Noceno looked up from her computer and smiled broadly.
“Oh no,” she said. “I’d sooner eat glass.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her answer correctly.
“What?” I murmured.
“Black, Leonora Rose, freshman,” Star read, ignoring us both. “And look! Come here!”
I hopped up and leaned over the binder. The names were all written in black pen on yellowed paper, encapsulated in plastic protectors.
“Black, Sarah Georgetta, sophomore,” I said, reading the next line as Star slid her finger down.
“So that was the year Caroline was a freshman?”
“Yeah. Along with Leonora.” Star flipped ahead to the 1891–1892 school year registrar’s book. “So Sarah was one year older than them. Let’s see…Caroline’s there as a senior, of course. And Black, Leonora…still there.”
“Sarah wouldn’t be there anymore either way, anyway. She’d have graduated by then. She’d have graduated in spring of 1891.”
Star and I checked the books for all of the intervening years. While Caroline Bromley and Leonora Black had both attended the school for four years, Sarah had only attended in 1887 and 1888—for her freshman year and half of a sophomore year. Hers was one of a handful of names that had Left at Christmas written next to it in 1888.
“Well, there we have it,” Star said brightly. “A girl named Sarah Black. Who lived in Dearborn. But didn’t stay and graduate like her younger sister, Leonora.”
“I wonder what old Ronald would’ve had to say about that,” I mused softly.
Star shook her head, rolling her eyes pointedly toward Ms. Noceno. Apparently she was committed to keeping the Darkins report our little secret.
“Star?” Ms. Noceno said loudly, as if to telegraph that she knew Star was trying to get something past her.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Holland-Stone is coming to join you today, correct?”
“Oh! Yeah.”
Star turned to me. “Ms. Holland-Stone and I sometimes have our project advisory meeting in here. It makes it easier because then I can show her some of the stuff that I’m finding. But she won’t come for like twenty minutes, so we’ve got time.”
Star turned back to the old registration book. “It’s sweet that the listing has both of their middle names. If I’d realized the registrar’s lists had that, I’d have looked up Leonora sooner, since I’ve been curious about her. That might help us find other stuff. You’d be surprised how many long-dead people come up in Google searches. Genealogy records and census records and stuff.”
“With a name like Sarah Black, don’t get your hopes up,” Ms. Noceno piped up from her desk. “Such a common name, it might be difficult to come up with reliable information.”
“With a middle name like Georgetta, it might not be so hard,” I pointed out.
“If she ever married, that might muddle things, too,” Ms. Noceno chimed back.
“You’re such a party pooper, Noceno,” Star sputtered.
I waited for Ms. Noceno to look stunned, but her face didn’t even twitch. It occurred to me that this was actually how she and Star spoke to each other most of the time, in the quiet familiarity of the archives, just the two of them. They were apparently just breaking me in the last time. And I had a feeling that “Noceno” might even consider party pooper a compliment.
“Let me see,” Star said, typing on her laptop. “Ancestry.com comes up right away…surprise, surprise. And we’ve got something here already. From the public family trees, looks like.”
“I’m going to leave you two to that,” Ms. Noceno said, “while I take a peek in the listing of all of the larger portraits and art pieces on campus. I know the old Sarah Dearborn portrait was damaged—I can’t imagine it’s still on campus, or I would know where it is. I think it was probably damaged beyond repair. Unfortunately, the administration didn’t keep track of these things very well until the 1950s or ’60s, as I’ve mentioned.”
She said this with a sniff of disapproval. While both she and Star were working, I took the registration book and flipped through the pages, admiring the elegant sloping handwriting. And then I remembered someone else I had wanted to look up—someone I’d forgotten about for a few days.
Chase, Sarah. She was class of 1892, like Caroline. And next to her name it said Laundry.
She was one of the hard-luck laundry girls. No wonder she had such an unhappy expression in that old picture. I started to feel a little shitty for blaming all the haunting on her. Now that we had our sights on Sarah Black instead.
Beside me, Star sucked in a breath as she read something on her laptop. I watched her scroll, shake her head, exhale.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She’s giving us a dramatic pause,” Ms. Noceno said to me.
“Fuck,” Star muttered, gaping at the screen.
“Star!” Ms. Noceno snapped, this time
genuinely shocked.
Star shook her head and spun her laptop screen around so it faced me.
Below the Ancestry logo were the words Sarah Georgetta Black.
And beneath that:
Born 12 November 1872 in Rochester, New York
Daughter of Joseph Black and Lucinda (Langworthy) Black
Sister of Thomas Black, Daniel Black, Leonora (Black) Post, and Angelina (Black) Willis
Died 10 February 1889 in Rochester, New York
I gasped at the sight of the death date.
“February of 1889.” Star looked almost as stunned as I felt. “She must have died just a few months after she left the school.”
It took me a moment before I felt like I could breathe again. And a moment more to find my voice.
“I wasn’t really even looking at the year,” I said—so softly only Star could hear.
“Girls?” Ms. Noceno said. “Something interesting?”
Star scowled for a moment, confused. But then I saw her face tighten and then blanch with understanding.
The month and the day.
They were the same as the date Taylor had died.
33
Star and I were still gaping at each other when the heavy archives door swung open and Ms. Holland-Stone walked in—immediately filling the room with the smell of perfume. An expensive Chanel type, like Taylor used to wear.
“I’m a little early,” she announced, dropping her black leather messenger bag in the cubby area before walking to the main tables.
Ms. Noceno’s nose seemed to twitch as she nodded acknowledgment.
“Are you okay?” Star whispered to me.
“What’re we whispering about?” Ms. Holland-Stone asked, smiling as she approached us.
Star closed her computer.
When All the Girls Are Sleeping Page 19