When All the Girls Are Sleeping

by Emily Arsenault

  I really need to talk to you. I knocked on your door and Chloe/Rhea’s. WHERE ARE YOU?

  I closed my eyes. Concentrating, I was pretty sure I heard the click tap tap of Anna’s boots somewhere down the hallway. Anna was nervous. She’d be cruising past my room a few times tonight, for sure. The meeting with the administrators hadn’t gone as planned. Now she had to make sure I didn’t do anything weird until tomorrow. The 10th.

  But I knew her tip-tapping would end around eleven, when everyone went to bed. And I would wait until then.

  * * *

  The question, though, was what to do in my room for the next few hours.

  I paced the floor for about ten minutes. And then I tried Lucia Jackson’s number again.

  “Who’s calling?” was how she answered.

  “It’s Haley Peppler. I’m the one who called you about the ghost the other night.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Of course I know who you are. Have you read my story?”

  “Uh.” I stopped pacing, sat on my bed, and took a breath. “Yeah. It’s really good.”

  Lucia chuckled. “No. It’s not. But thank you. Did you understand it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good,” Lucia said softly. “I’m glad. I’d hoped you would.”

  I raised the window shade next to my bed, daring myself to look into the dark, choosing my next words carefully.

  “You never saw the ghost when you were a senior,” I said. “That wasn’t true. You were telling a story to satisfy those houseparents—to distract them, or kind of diminish what had happened the year before, with the poor girl who had freaked out?”

  “Yes. Right, Haley. Things had gone too far the year before. I lied to shut up those two oddballs, to give them something to chew on. They were way too interested in the ghost. I was afraid of what might come of it—what they might figure out. So there was no haunting that year.”

  Outside, the snow and the crisscross of walkways glowed under the lamplight. Everything held still for a moment. Then a single branch swayed in the wind, and one light shut off in the freshman dorm across the campus lawn.

  “There’s a list of girls,” I said. “Going back a hundred years. You’re on it. I have it here in front of me.”

  Lucia made a sound that might have been a gasp if she’d not recovered herself so quickly. “The list? Who gave it to you?”

  “It wasn’t given to me in person. Someone…sent it to me. Someone on the list who’s at the school now, I’m pretty sure. I’m just not absolutely certain which girl.”

  Lucia was silent for a moment.

  “You really should figure that out,” she said. “I can’t imagine they all want you to know. Which might put you in a dangerous situation.”

  I forced myself to keep looking out the window, willing the darkness to show me something scary: a face, a figure, a real ghost.

  “I’m trying to figure that out.” My pitch rose, like it did sometimes when I was talking to my mother. “What does the list mean?”

  “Well…I think you already know.” Lucia hesitated. “It’s the master list of ghosts. You need to find out who sent it to you and let her tell you everything.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because, Haley, I wasn’t there the night your friend died. So I don’t have the answers you want. But I had a bad feeling, the night you called, that it had something to do with a ghost. It went too far again, sounds like. Like with the girl who broke down in 1985, when I was a junior. It went terribly wrong. I don’t know for sure, but I have a hunch it was the same with your friend.”

  “Me too,” I said, closing the blinds.

  “This is the right time for this to end, I think,” Lucia murmured. “I’m relieved. Caroline Bromley had to know it would all be undone someday, by a girl as smart as the ghosts. But I’m not the right one to end it, honey. I’m sorry for my part. But I haven’t been a ghost for thirty years. I think it’s for a ghost to tell you.”

  “A ghost?” I repeated. It was unsettling the way she kept throwing around that word.

  “Yes. That place really is haunted, you know. It would have to be, for us to do all of the crazy things we did there. I’m sorry, again, about your friend, Haley. I hope I’ve been helpful. I hope uncovering this brings you and her some peace. Talk soon, okay?”

  “Okay?” I said. I half hoped the uncertainty of my reply would keep her on the phone for a little while longer, and maybe delay the things that would have to happen next.

  But she hung up. Like the ghost she’d just confessed to being: here and then gone.

  * * *

  It was past midnight. It was February 10 now.

  I slipped out of my room at 12:45.

  I’d texted Alex’s number a couple of times.

  I’m coming to your room.

  You need to open the door.

  A response to that came: Don’t bother. I’m not there. Come to Chloe’s.

  Grateful for the reply, I crept down the stairs, list in hand, through the dining hall into Barton Hall, and then up two flights of stairs to Rhea and Chloe’s room. When I knocked softly on their door, I heard movement in the room. A shuffling, and then a creak of floorboards. I knocked again—though still softly—to let the mover know I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The door opened.

  And then a pasty white face was there looking at me. I gasped but didn’t scream.

  It was Chloe. Her face was smeared unevenly with white makeup, and she was wearing a white nightgown.

  “I was waiting for you,” she whispered. “I got your texts.”

  She let me in without turning the light on. I turned on my phone to give us a bit of light.

  I stared at her for a moment. Her eyes seemed unfocused, looking through me.

  “Are…you okay?” I whispered. “What’s on your face?”

  Chloe’s eyes narrowed in on me.

  “At least the girls are sleeping,” she said.

  I turned on my phone and flashed it around the room. Rhea was on one of the beds, slumped over a closed laptop. Alex was curled up under the covers of the other bed. Apparently neither of them had awoken when I’d knocked.

  “I need to talk to both of them. Rhea and Alex,” I said.

  “Not until you talk to me,” Chloe whispered. “I’m the one who sent you the book so you could get the list.”

  I hesitated. I considered how quickly she had answered the door. She must have been sitting awake in the dark with that makeup and nightgown on. Sitting silently, waiting for me, looking very much like a ghost. My heart began to flutter.

  “I’m the one who’s helping you,” she said softly. “I’m the one you’ve been writing to tonight. Rhea and Lily are trying to get you expelled before it’s too late. Not Alex, but the other two.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “We talk first.”

  Chloe pointed her chin toward the list tucked under my elbow.

  “You figured out what this is?” she asked.

  “The Fleming scholarship?” I whispered.

  “Well. Yes. Since the ’70s, the girls have called it that, like code. We’re Flemings. It’s more than that, of course. It’s been around for longer than Norma Fleming. They used to call each other Sunnies. Because it’s the opposite of Windies, I guess.”

  “Did it start with Caroline Bromley?” I asked.

  Chloe nodded, her eyes widening a little. “You know a lot. More than they thought, even.”

  “Who’s they?” I demanded.

  “Oh…you know. The other ghosts.”

  I shuddered at the word.

  “Everyone on the list is a ‘ghost’?” I asked, my heart sinking, my gaze creeping across Alex’s sleeping form again.

  Chloe stared at me. Her eyes were wild,
and still I wanted to reach out and spit-clean that makeup off her face, like my mom used to do when I got chocolate smudges.

  “In theory. But really only the starred ones have performed any kind of haunting. And really…truly…only me. Do you like my ghost outfit? Exact same as I used last year.”

  Her last words sent a chill up my spine.

  “Yes. But…who picks who gets on the list?” I asked.

  “The senior ghost always picks the first-year ghost. With suggestions from the sophomore and junior ghost, if they want.”

  “So…Lily picked you.”

  “Yes.”

  I glanced over at Rhea, wondering why our conversation wasn’t waking her up, either.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Chloe shrugged. “Same reason she was into having a February 10th haunting. The day of Sarah Black’s death. She’s a traditionalist. Obnoxiously so.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Well…I look the part.” Chloe smiled, twirling her hands up to her gluey white face. “Don’t I?”

  “I…um…how do you mean?”

  “I look like Sarah Black. Small and pale. Some ghosts are into that shit. Although Norma Fleming frowns upon it because she doesn’t want just white girls to get the scholarship money. Wants everyone to have a chance at it, encourages breaking tradition, and doing more creative hauntings. Cell phones taped under the bed and whatnot. Etching hearts for girls to find. Technology, psychology. Plus visual hauntings are risky. Only a handful of ghosts have ever tried it.”

  “Real scholarship money?” I said.

  “Yeah. After the senior ghost graduates, she mails her name and a written account of that year’s haunting—or an explanation of why she chose not to do one—to Norma, and then she gets her scholarship money. Supposedly she’s more generous, though, if you actually haunt.”

  “But…I thought you said this thing was started by Caroline Bromley?” I said.

  “Yes,” Chloe sighed, settling into a desk chair. “The tradition itself. But Norma added the scholarship to the tradition because she was sad to see it dying off in the ’70s. Time-honored tradition started by Caroline Bromley and Leonora Black, to avenge Leonora’s poor, sweet older sister who couldn’t stand up for herself. She went home because she couldn’t hack it, and died a couple of months after that. She got sick—pneumonia—it wasn’t anyone’s fault. But Caroline and Leonora were so sad, so bitter about how some of those snotty rich girls, the daughters of oil barons and whatnot, had treated Sarah, this is what they came up with. To scare the shit out of one of those girls. Whispering ‘God sees the heart’ down the pipes or banging doors or whatever other kinds of hauntings they came up with. Maybe visual hauntings, too, we don’t know for sure. I guess to make them feel some sort of remorse or make them feel like assholes. Caroline and Leonora were very creative, the story goes.”

  “I get that Leonora and Caroline were grieving…they were influenced by Leonora’s spiritualist aunt, but…”

  “Look at you, doing your research,” Chloe murmured.

  “My roommate, more like,” I admitted. “But why did they ask girls to continue the tradition after the girls they hated were gone? After they were gone?”

  Chloe scoffed. “I wish I knew. There’s always some girl or other to hate or resent, right? The freshman ghost haunts whoever the senior ghost says deserves it. The choice is made by the senior ghost—and her alone. She can choose to haunt no one. But if she haunts, she is supposed to haunt the meanest of the girls, whoever deserves a good shake or to be taken down a peg. But it doesn’t always work out that way.”

  “Why Taylor?” I asked softly. A stupid question. I knew why. Taylor was never nice.

  “The Jocelyn Rose bullying was the main reason. Not that Lily needed to justify it. The senior ghost has absolute power to pick. The sophomore and the junior support the operation. Stealing keys or setting up sound tricks or whatever. The sophomore keeps the list, and the junior keeps the other documents and Sarah Black’s picture, so they’re always separate.”

  I was speechless. Senior ghost. Junior ghost. Sophomore ghost. Alex, Rhea, Chloe.

  “Who is the first-year ghost this year?”

  I shone my phone flashlight on Rhea again. Something about her posture disturbed me. It seemed like an awkward position to fall asleep in.

  “Alex didn’t even pick one. Alex wants it to end. Because of last year. Because thanks to tradition, I killed your friend by accident.”

  “I…” I couldn’t find the words to reply to this. I started to protest—she was “on drugs,” she was suicidal—but none of these theories had ever felt authentic to me. Which was what had brought me here.

  “One year ago tonight,” Chloe said sharply, her face expressionless. “I made her jump.”

  The words filled up the room like a noxious smell. I couldn’t breathe. It felt surreal to hear her say them, when I had been for so many days making them my own.

  I did too, I thought.

  “How?” I breathed.

  Chloe’s lip started to wobble.

  “I didn’t mean to. Lily wanted a traditional haunting…on the traditional day. And the riskiest kind. A real ghost visit. They had me all dressed up in the nightgown and everything.” Chloe’s face contorted, and she started to let out a sob but gasped it back in. “But Taylor…the second she saw me, she flung open the window and…”

  Chloe was sobbing for real now. Loudly.

  I flashed my light on Alex. She didn’t move in response to the noise.

  “Taylor just…It happened so fast. She wasn’t supposed to be dead. She was just supposed to be haunted. Alex keeps saying that it was probably the strength of those brownies she was eating that made her react that way, but you can’t say she would’ve jumped if I hadn’t scared her to death.” Chloe gulped for air and then kept talking fast. “Right after it happened, Lily shoved me in her closet before she ran to see if Taylor was hurt. I stayed in there for hours. In this dress.”

  Tears were starting to run down Chloe’s cheeks. She thrust open a desk drawer, pulled out a small notebook, and handed it to me.

  “It’s all in there,” she whispered. “I wrote it all down.”

  “Chloe,” I said, heart hammering. “Why aren’t Rhea and Alex waking up?”

  “I just did to them what they’ve been doing to me,” she whispered.

  Absently shoving the notebook and the old list into my fleece pocket, I stepped closer to Alex and nudged her elbow.

  “Alex!” I said. One of Alex’s legs kicked out, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  “They can’t shut me up anymore. They can’t keep me away from that window.”

  “Who wants to shut you up?”

  “The ghosts. The other ghosts. They get to shut up now. They won’t wake up for a while.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded, horrified.

  “I did to them what they’ve been doing to me. I put sleeping pills in their food. Well, Alex’s food. Rhea got hers in her hot chocolate. I think she got a little more. Alex doesn’t eat much lately. She’s all fucked up with worry. She’s been almost as bad as me.”

  “What?”

  “They’ll be fine. Just a good night’s sleep. They both need it. They’ve been trading off watching me all night for days. Weeks, actually. Like I was a bomb that was about to go off. Well, it’s the 10th now and I have something I need to do. And they need their rest.”

  She reached for the door and opened it. Light from the hallway flooded the room. Her face was a mess of tears and runny white makeup. It reminded me of the washed-out portrait in Norma Fleming’s guest room.

  “They were trying to keep me out of Dearborn,” she sobbed. “Away from the doors, away from that window.”

  Her voice quavered as she spoke through another rush of tears. “But I
only exist at that window anymore. I’m a ghost since it happened.”

  Chloe ran out of the room.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  I shook Alex.

  “Wake up!” I screamed.

  She gave a little murmur and shifted her elbow away from me. But I couldn’t wait for Alex.

  As I ran after Chloe down the hallway, I saw she was headed for the stairs. She nearly tumbled down them, she was running so fast. I couldn’t catch up with her.

  “Chloe!” I screamed as she started through the dining hall that linked to Dearborn. “Chloe, it wasn’t your fault!”

  I tried to catch my breath, but now she was headed up the Dearborn stairs. Almost a whole flight ahead of me. Clunk clunk clunk. Up she went, all the way up to the fourth floor. As I came through the fourth-floor doorway, I heard a key in a door. And as I rounded the corner, I saw Chloe swing Taylor’s door open and dash into the room.

  She was flinging the window open when I got to her. The blast of air hit us both. She reached for the screen with both hands. But I was by her side, grasping her arm.

  “Don’t!” I shouted, reaching to pull the window back down, but there was no wax now to make it slide easily—and it was stuck.

  “They wanted me to shut up until they could ‘resolve things quietly,’ ” she wailed. “They don’t know how it feels to really be a ghost.”

  “Tell me,” I whispered. “Chloe. I might be able to understand better than you think.”

  “They don’t understand how it is to keep living with this. To be this. A murderer. A ghoul.”

  She started to claw at the screen. I put my arms around her small waist and pulled her away from the window. She was easy to move, she was so frail.

  “Let me go,” she screamed.

  “I want to hear everything,” I breathed.

  She dug her fingernails into my upper arms and didn’t seem to hear me.

  “I don’t think you really want to go out that window,” I said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me anything. You wouldn’t have sent me to that list.”

  Chloe stopped thrashing for a moment and stared at me.