“What’s that?”
“I stole Taylor’s bag from the library last year. With her laptop in it. After Jocelyn left.”
I nodded. “You were looking for the Jocelyn and Charlie video. To prove she’d taken it.”
“No. Not really. I mean, not just that.” Star wound her sweatshirt drawstring around her forefinger—so tight it looked like it hurt. “Everyone knew she’d taken the video. I was looking for something—anything—to humiliate her with. To give her some of what Jocelyn had gotten. Emails, pictures, videos. Anything personal. It was a spur-of-the-moment move. I was watching her in this little corner spot of the library, and she just got up and wandered off, leaving her stuff. And I just couldn’t help it. I grabbed it and brought everything back to my room. I checked her trash folder first, thinking that was where she’d put stuff like the Jocelyn video.”
“And did you find anything?”
Star shook her head. “Not what I was looking for, no. Not the Jocelyn video, and no embarrassing pictures of her without a shirt or whatever, or incriminating emails about term papers she’d bought online—everyone knows she did that kind of stuff, too. I thought there might be something—anything—like that. To burn her with. And I might have if I’d had a little more time. I only had that laptop for an hour.”
Star bit her lip, then peered up at me.
“There was a video of you, though. In her trash folder.”
I sucked in my breath. A familiar sensation started to come over me. Sinking.
“You were lying on a bed singing a little, wearing your track uniform, saying the room was spinning,” Star continued. “Pretty drunk, I think. And then you were like, Fingers crossed I don’t pee the bed.”
“What?” I said, stunned. I had no recollection of this.
“And then you were like, Hey, did you know that? I was so fucked up in the head I used to pee the bed. Hey, that’s a poem! And Taylor was just like, Oh God, Haley. You are soooo drunk!”
“You seem to remember this video very well,” I remarked.
Star pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head—hiding, it seemed, from vicarious embarrassment.
“I watched it a couple times. I thought it was interesting that she’d put it in the trash. I couldn’t find the Jocelyn thing in the trash folder.”
“I…see,” I muttered.
“It’s strange to me that you never talk about Taylor like she was your best friend. Because she obviously was. You guys were in a fight and she kept that god-awful video to herself.”
I was quiet for a minute, considering this.
“My very own pee tape,” I said.
Star, surprised, cracked a smile. “Yup.”
“And you returned her bag to the library Lost and Found?”
Star shook her head. “No. Like I said, I only had her laptop for like an hour. Then someone came knocking and told me they saw me steal her bag, and said they wouldn’t tell the administration and get me expelled as long as I handed it over right then and there.”
“Who was that?” I demanded.
“You really don’t know?”
“No,” I whispered. “Tell me.”
I was waiting for her to say Lily Bruno.
“Rhea,” she said.
“Rhea,” I repeated, stunned.
Laid-back, pulled-together Rhea with the red hair. Who’d shown me the old heart in the laundry room and asked me gently why I was asking about the hearts, who I’d heard about them from. Chloe’s roommate.
“I get the feeling she must’ve been spying on Taylor, too. That’s the only way she could’ve caught me. Because there was no one else around. Or so I thought.”
I shook my head.
“She didn’t tell you, then, I guess?” Star said, looking sheepish.
“No,” I breathed.
“And I saw her talking to Anna the day I left Dearborn—I was getting all paranoid that she was finally telling about my theft. Why now, I wasn’t sure.”
“Curious,” I said.
But it was more than curious. Rhea spying on Taylor shortly before she died. Rhea talking to Anna just days ago.
“It’ll be the 10th after midnight,” Star murmured. “I’ll probably get kicked out of here tomorrow because my fever’s gone.”
“It’ll be good to have you back.”
“Maybe you should fake sick and stay here tonight,” Star whispered.
It was a tempting idea. But I was eager to get back to Dearborn, in a way. To chase down Rhea, at least. I had a lot of questions, and none of the answers were here in this quiet room with Star.
57
I ate by myself at dinner.
There was no Rhea in sight.
Maylin was gone—probably with Wes at Farnswood. Alex was eating with Chloe. They were at their own table. Chloe was staring at Alex kind of goony-eyed, giggling at whatever Alex was saying, sucking a string of spaghetti into her face. They seemed to be having a good time together—I didn’t want to interrupt what might still possibly be a romantic thing.
I thought about the video of me that Taylor had put in her trash folder. I wondered if she’d intended for it to stay there.
Rolling some buttered pasta onto my fork, I noticed Anna noticing I was alone. I took out my Friendship Is Magic and flipped through a few pages to look busy. I stared at the big-eyed ponies and felt slightly comforted that something that I’d enjoyed at age ten was still around, and was still somehow the same. Life had gone on, and the world had kept turning, while I’d sunken into myself, then retreated to this weird ivy-covered place.
I thought of Lucia Jackson’s Evie Fleming, snow-angeling until she couldn’t feel her limbs. And I still didn’t know why that passage felt so painfully personal. When I closed the comic, Anna was watching me again. I bused my tray and went upstairs.
* * *
After the dinner hour was over, I pounded on Chloe and Rhea’s door.
Chloe opened the door—and I saw immediately that Alex was camped out on the rug, her laptop in front of her.
“Where’s Rhea?” I asked.
“She’s not here,” said Alex. “Are you okay?”
“Where is she?” I demanded, turning to Chloe.
Chloe bit her lip and shrugged. She was wide-eyed—maybe frightened of me.
“We really don’t know,” Alex said, getting up and stepping between us, sounding apologetic. “Do you want to sit down a second?”
I sat across from her on the rug. “I need to talk to her.”
“Because it’s urgent?” Alex asked.
Chloe turned from me to Alex and back as we spoke, following our conversation like a tennis match.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I wanted to add that I thought Rhea might be trying to get me in trouble, but I didn’t want to say so in front of her roommate.
“And what’s up with your roommate?” Alex asked. “I hear she’s gone?”
“The flu,” I offered. “Infirmary.”
“That sucks. You’re lucky you didn’t get it.”
Chloe seemed to have lost interest in our conversation. She was sitting on her bed now, playing with her phone.
“Have you heard of anyone spreading rumors, saying I…did something? Like, um, vandalism?”
Alex put her hand through her hair—which was looking a little limp and dirty at the moment.
“No,” she said. “Why? Does this have something to do with Rhea?”
“I’ll come back later,” I snapped. “You can warn Rhea or not. I’m going to find her eventually.”
I resisted the urge to slam the door behind me. On my way through the dining hall back to Dearborn, I took out my phone.
There was already a text from Alex:
Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor
That wa
s the whole message.
What? I typed back. This was obviously a book title. Did Alex think a collection of witty essays was going to cheer me up right now? Put things in perspective?
I glanced at the time of the text. It was sent four minutes ago. Right when we were talking. Of course, maybe there had been a lag—maybe Alex had sent it before I came knocking. And maybe it had just now appeared. But then why would Alex not have mentioned it when we talked? Because I had seemed too angry to discuss book recommendations in that moment?
I thought of Chloe, huddled on the bed, eyes down, typing something on her phone.
Her phone? Or someone else’s phone?
Alex’s phone.
Had Chloe been typing on Alex’s phone?
I tried to remember the exact expression on Chloe’s face as she’d listened to Alex and me talking about Rhea.
I Googled the title.
Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor. It was published in 1903.
Back in my room, I searched the school’s online library catalog.
Available, it said, and gave the call number. Maybe this book was shelved in a section of the stacks that the studious Rhea liked to hang out in.
I checked the time. The library was open for eleven more minutes.
I threw my jacket on and ran out into the cold.
* * *
The third floor of the stacks was empty when I arrived.
When I pulled Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor from its high shelf, it was obvious there was something shoved into its front cover. A few papers, folded in half.
The gentle ping of the “Get the hell out of the library” closing bell sounded.
I shoved the papers into my backpack, rushed down the stairs, and then carried the book to the front circulation desk. After I’d checked it out, I raced back to Dearborn in the cold, holding my breath most of the way.
In my room, I knelt on my rug, spreading the papers in front of me. There were five pages in all—the first three quite yellowed, the other two less so. It looked like a list, but with something scrawled across the top of the first page:
God sees the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7.
My heart was pounding as if it could break my rib cage.
I traced a finger down a list of dates and names, some marked with asterisks.
1923 Amelia Hardaker
1924 Ethel Albert*
1925 Helen Wheeler
1926 Emily Quantock
1927 Margaret Campbell*
1928 Sarah Bidwell
1929 Eveline Stoddard
1930 Dorothy Avery
1931 Vera Rainville*
1932 Louise Tackett
1934 Shirley Bishop
1935 Gladys Walker
1936 Erika Clyburn
1937 Phyllis Akerstrom*
1938 Carrie Lovelace*
1939 Muriel Beacham
1940 Rose Cromwell
1941 Anna Lind
1943 Katherine Greenwalt*
1944 Ruth Dierks
1945 Joan Lomis*
1946 Rhoda Scholl
1947 Frances Bleeker
1948 Barbara Strickland*
1949 Patricia Cuttling
1950 Kathleen Fagan*
1951 Mary Vaughan
1952 Elsa Ritter*
1953 Sarah Tabert
1954 Judith Scholl
1955 Sharon Dreyer
1956 Geraldine Tripp*
1957 Norma Wozniak*
1958 Joan Lizotte
1959 Marjorie Dempsey
1960 Katrina Brunswick*
1961 Bonnie Finnell*
1962 Susan Borgeson
1963 Linda Fuller
1964 Janet McCloud
1965 Alice Fusco*
1966 Penny Lebrun
1967 Simone Boucher*
1968 Jane Wetherly
1970 Sabrina Orlando
1971 Paula Bernstein
1972 Gloria Hatfield
1973 Elizabeth Butler*
1974 Grace Lowell
1975 Rosa Hill
1976 Lynn Wentworth
1977 Pauline Harwick*
1978 Erin Copeland
1979 Courtney Greczyn*
1980 Kelly Fabiano*
1981 Kimberley Baum*
1982 Wendy Vargas
1983 Lucia Jackson*
1984 Michelle Moore
1985 Karen Thorn*
1986 Kori Schumacher
1987 Jennifer Garrett*
1988 Megan Holland*
1989 Felicia Hines
1990 Sue Wang*
1991 Maria Zarcone
1992 Jaime Offinowksi*
1993 Nicole Dabbraccio
1994 Jessica Fisher*
1995 Emily Bisset
1996 Rachel Cohen
1997 Shani Green*
1998 Jun Min
1999 Katie McLaughlin
2000 Francesca Morales
2001 Laurel Bouchard*
2003 Summer Wilkos
2004 Cyndi Romero*
2005 Ilma Nehal
2006 Crystal Hemphill
2007 Malinda Jones
2008 Amie Honda*
2009 Helena Martins
2010 Ashley Kuipers*
2011 Angel Anderson
2012 Aretta Lawal*
2013 Skylar Briggs*
2014 Kiara Parker
2015 Lily Bruno
2016 Alexandra Stegall*
2017 Rhea Eggerton
2018 Chloe Schuster
It was apparently the continuation of the list Star had shown me from her files—the one she thought had ended in the early 1920s. It looked exactly the same, with the varying handwriting and the little stars.
Chloe, Rhea, Alex, Lily. The last four names. All part of the same thing. The “Fleming scholarship”? But how could it be the Fleming scholarship if this thing started before Norma Fleming was even born? I scanned over the list again—this time backward, and slowly.
1988 caught my eye.
Megan Holland.
Ms. Holland-Stone. I opened my laptop and checked the faculty directory for her first name. Megan. I seethed, thinking of Ms. Holland-Stone opening her folder, producing my damning Western Civ paper. Ms. Holland-Stone, who’d told Star that the early list in the archives was probably a list of on-campus suffragettes. It wasn’t.
My eyes kept moving upward on the list.
1983 was Lucia Jackson.
Was this a list of women who had been haunted? I opened my laptop, clicked on the group, and scanned over the names of the women: Suzie Price, Karen Norcross, Darla Heaney, Jane Villette…I checked the paper list. None of the “Haunteds” women were on it.
But then, Lucia’s description of her own haunting had always seemed rather bloodless, rather matter-of-fact compared to those of the women in the Facebook “Haunteds” group. Hadn’t it?
And Bronwyn wasn’t on this list.
The year Bronwyn was haunted—the year she was a senior—Alex’s name was on the list. With a star next to her name.
But Alex was potentially haunted. This year. Not three years ago. At least, that had been my theory a couple of days ago. But now that theory was feeling a little floppy.
If this was a list of haunted girls, Bronwyn’s name would definitely be on it for 2016. But Alex’s was there for that year, not Bronwyn’s. And there wasn’t a haunting every year anyway.
Alex’s name was there for the year that Bronwyn was haunted.
My mind shifted uneasily to last night—to how I’d felt when I thought I’d heard that knock on my door. And
how it made me feel better to picture the Fox sisters bouncing an apple with a string, or cracking their knees or knuckles. So much better, in fact, that I’d been able to get to sleep. And then I thought of “The Snow Angel,” the girl growing cold and exhausted trying to perform bogus magic for her parents.
Some girls say that she’s looking for her replacement. That she’s tired of being a ghost…
My heart gave a jump and I heard a gasp escape me.
I took out my laptop and clicked through to my old photos, calling up the picture of Alex and me on our first day moving into our freshman dorm. I emailed it to my phone and then texted it to Bronwyn:
The girl on the left is me. The girl on the right—does she look like your ghost?
Bronwyn’s reply came about three minutes later:
WTF???
I wasn’t sure if that was a yes, a no, or a leave me alone. I didn’t have all that long to think about it because I had an incoming call seconds later.
“Hello?” I said.
“That’s her. I…I recognize the eyes. I have goose bumps. Who is that?”
“She’s my friend. The picture is from when we were firsties.”
“I didn’t pay all that much attention to the firsties once I was in the upper grades. That’s probably why I don’t recognize you at all, either.”
Bronwyn was silent. And then I could hear her breathing.
“Is she a legacy student?” she asked.
At first I didn’t understand why this was relevant. But after a moment, I figured she was trying to work out how Alex could look so much like a ghost. Her mind must have jumped to “great-great-great-granddaughter of restless-spirited dead student.” Which was a reasonable jump, under the circumstances. But it wasn’t the right jump.
“I’ll call you again when I know more,” I said. “I just figured something out, and I haven’t talked to my friend about it yet.”
My friend felt weird on my lips. Was Alex my friend, really?
As soon as Bronwyn and I hung up, I ran down the hall and thumped on Alex’s door. No answer.
Same thing when I crept over to Barton and tried Chloe and Rhea’s door.
When I got back to my room, I texted Alex:
When All the Girls Are Sleeping Page 31