Possessions (16 page)

“She wasn’t in the office when I went in,” I replied. “But it was creepy.”

“Well, she’s creepy,” Rose returned. She hesitated. “Are we making more out of this than we should?”

“You should see Julie’s mattress,” I replied. I thought a minute. “Is there anyone else we can tell?”

“Shayna Maisel, maybe, but she’d probably stomp off to Ehrlenbach. And that would be the end of that.” She took another sip. “People like Mandy never get busted. Jeez, if she can have sex with her own brother at the White House . . . ”

“We don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “But she
is
really into him. She’s freaking out that he’s in rehab.”

“And she talks to herself like a schizophrenic and destroys school property while girls are sleeping on it.” She shivered. “What if she had
hurt
Julie? And blamed you?”

I cared less about the getting-blamed part than the Julie-getting-hurt part.

I sighed. “This sucks.”

“Verily.” She cocked her head. “You’re staying over break, right?”

Of course I was. I had made it clear when I came here that there was no way I was going back to San Diego so soon after escaping.

“I’m staying, too,” Rose said. “My parents are so dysfunctional I’d rather stay here.”

I knew where she was headed. Rose waited a dramatic beat, and then she grinned and said, “Guess what I have.”

“Herpes,” I said.

Her face didn’t change.

“Shia LaBeouf’s phone number.”

“Jessel’s front door key,” she replied slyly.

“No way,” I blurted. “How did . . . did you
steal
it?”

She raised her chin with pride. “During the séance. They were so wasted, no one even noticed,” she crowed. “I figure once they leave, we can sneak in there and do some investigating. Locate the skeletons. Figure out if Mandy needs to increase her meds.”

“They
will
notice,” I argued. “Or they’ll change the locks or something.”

“Nah, there are a bunch of copies. Anyway, I’m willing to take that chance.” She blew on her coffee. “How about you, Lindsay? They snuck into your room and vandalized Julie’s mattress. Are you going to stand by and let something else happen?”

My heart pounded. “No, I’m not,” I said.

“Good.” I reached for her coffee. She let me take it. I raised it in salute, and took a sip. It was mostly creamer.

“We could get in big trouble,” she reminded me. Then she smiled grimly. “Expelled, at the very least. Not that I plan on it.”

“Still in,” I told her.

“Okay, then.” She took the coffee back. “Let the countdown begin.”

We had seventeen days until Thanksgiving break.

seventeen

I didn’t tell Julie
about my nightmare.

Or the one after it.

Or the one after that.

Nearly one every night for the next two weeks. She knew that I wasn’t sleeping well, but that was all she knew.

I didn’t tell her that I still saw the face—sometimes in the window, sometimes in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t tell anyone. I pretended not to see it more often than not.

Mandy invited her over to Jessel nearly every day. The first couple of times, Julie would come back and try to be cool and restrained about what she’d seen over there. From what I could tell, it seemed all Mandy had to do was snap her fingers (via the internet or the landline) and fabulous things made their way up our mountain—such as chocolate madeleines from Knipschildt Chocolatier for $250 apiece.

But it was all vicarious, and precarious—Mandy could cut Julie off at any point. Maybe she knew that; or that was why she stopped talking about it, and got quiet and vague when I asked her what she’d done over there—they’d hung out; they’d watched TV. I tried to look at her eyes without being obvious, to see if she’d taken anything. I felt like her mother.

Then, she told me that Mandy had taken her to the operating theater a few times to see Spider. He and Troy rowed over together and hung out. I was sorry that she hadn’t told me right away. That was the kind of thing you told your best friend. Unless there was something you didn’t want your best friend to know. I wondered if she had done the deed with Spider. Did I need to give her the birth control lecture? The “he could be using you” lecture? Or would she stuff my mouth full of mattress guts?

No one came forward about the ripped mattress. Julie collected all the stuffing and put it in a plastic bag, which she kept in her underwear drawer.

I wondered if Troy and Mandy did the deed . . . and tried not to wonder. I certainly didn’t ask Julie. He had fallen off the radar; no one seemed to remember the way hunky chainsaw guy had batted his lashes at me. No matter. I hadn’t seen him since the operating theater, and I doubted I ever would.

Meanwhile, I snuck down to the lake whenever I could. On occasion, Mandy would show, and I could hear her talking to herself in her two voices. But bad weather was rolling in, and most days I couldn’t make out the conversation over the rumbling of thunder and heavy wind. The birds were agitated, dipping toward the lake, then swooping back up as if they were afraid to land on it.

Rose and I checked in numerous times. She hadn’t been invited back to Jessel since the night of the séance.

“Maybe they figured out I stole their key,” she said. But no one had confronted her.

I went over, but I never got to see Mandy’s room. I finally did see Kiyoko’s palace of wicked-modern Asian sleekness, shiny lacquer and old brass. Not a thing was out of place; she even hung her clothes in the closet according to length, color, and function. And what clothes—made just for her, all of them, by famous designers all over the world.

It sleeted on the seventh day before break. Then it rained for five days in a row after that, and though I braved the downpour every morning to creep down to the lake, Mandy didn’t come. Maybe she was done; maybe it was too cold.

The rain came down so heavily that I could no longer see the windows in Jessel. Maybe that was why the face moved into the shower stalls when they were misty with steam. In the cold, blue fluorescent light, bouncing off the tiles and the stainless steel sinks, two black eyes, one O of a mouth . . . that no one else seemed to see. I did ask, cautiously, and the others accused me of trying to scare them.

I remembered what it had felt like back in San Diego, right before I broke down. When I kept asking my “friends” if Riley still liked me. And how they kept telling me that he did. So I told my dorm mates that, yes, I was trying to scare them by asking them about the face in the shower . . . and I stopped looking through the steam as best I could.

Another weird thing happened before Thanksgiving break—our cell phones started working. But only in a few places, and of course, one of them was Jessel. You could stand on Jessel’s porch or go inside for a signal. But walk across the quad toward Grose, and you couldn’t get through.

Rose was as intrigued as I was by this change in cell phone fortune, even if she laughed so hard she almost wet her pants when Ida put forth the theory that maybe cell phones worked near ghosts. Since Jessel was so haunted and all.

Finally
, it was the day before break, and Jessel invited Grose over for tea. Wisps of snow powdered the waning sunlight, landing on the foreheads of the white horse heads lining the walk. The tea was a formal girly event, so I had broken down and let Julie fix me up. I had on my black wool skirt and one of her tops. She added a wide black beaded belt. Then she dusted my cheekbones and collarbones with gold body glitter; and I gathered my hair into a messy bun that she held in place with beautiful gold enameled barrettes.

She was glammed up, too, in pale pink and white. Sweet, non-threatening.

All eight of us Grose-ites knocked on Jessel’s red door, as if we were Christmas caroling—Ida, Claire, April, Leslie, Elvis, Marica, Julie, and me—and it opened to the scent of ginger-bread and the amplified celestial tune of a music box version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Pine swags laden with matte gold balls and cherubs adorned the balcony and the stair rail.

“Ladies,” Mandy said. She was wearing a rust-colored satin bubble dress trimmed in gold. Her eyes were swollen, and beneath her expertly-applied makeup, her face had broken out. Stress and more stress.

“Hi,” Julie said for all of us. And we all trailed in.

As I passed, Mandy gave me a look.
Oh my God, she knows we’re going to break into her house
, I thought. But of course she didn’t. There was no way she could know, unless she’d planted bugs on Rose and me. Or she was psychic. Or her Ouija board told her.

I cleared my throat. “Hi,’ I said.

Alis, Lara, Sangeeta, and Kiyoko were dressed up, too. I saw some other non-Mandy girls as well. Susi Mateland and Gretchen Cabot. Gretchen smiled at me, then said something to Sienna Thibodaux, who gave me a once-over. I felt myself go chilly. I was embarrassed that I’d even tried to change my image. Then I saw Charlotte Davidson, determinedly goth in an upscale way—black on black on red—and I felt a little better.

“Let me take your jackets,” Mandy said, like an actual polite person. There were so many more layers of clothes in Northern California than I was used to.

I heard a ringtone, something vaguely Euro-pop. Mandy caught her breath. Her eyes lit up. With a squeal, she said, “My brother. Excuse me,” and yanked a wafer-thin phone out of a pocket in her dress. She popped it open, scanned, and laughed. Color rose up her neck and fanned across her cheeks. Before I realized what she was doing, she swept beside me and took a picture of us together.

A second ringtone indicated an actual incoming call. Mandy connected, listened, and said, “You’re a pig.” Then she laughed and held the phone out to me. There was something odd in her expression, more strain around her eyes. She looked bad.

“My brother wants to talk to you,” she informed me. “His name is Miles. Be very nice to him.”

Oh my God
, I thought. I was actually going to speak to her infamous brother.

“Miles,” I said, into the phone.

“Wow,” he replied. His voice was very deep and husky. Sexy. “You wore black to my sister’s frou-frou tea party. You are very, very bad. Be glad I’m locked up.”

“Why, what would you do?” I asked, and he chuckled.

There was a pause, then a puff of air. He was smoking. “Let’s just say I’m protective of my little sis.”

“Uh,” I said, at a loss for words. Was he threatening me?

“So . . . I like people to be nice to her. I don’t like it when they’re . . . not nice. Are you being naughty or nice?”

“Say bye,” Mandy told me, with an edge to her voice.

“I have to go,” I said into the phone.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” he replied. “And . . . ” He lowered his voice. “My bet’s on
naughty
.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Shaken, I handed Mandy the phone, and she broke into a grin as she put the phone to her ear, half-turning.

“No,” she said, sliding a glance at me. “No, no, no, you are a thing of evil.” She laughed and put her hand to her hair. “All right. Love you too.”

She snapped the phone shut. Smiled. At me. Then she said, “Miles would just
kill
anyone who was mean to me, you know.”

A chill skittered up my spine. I had the distinct feeling that she wasn’t kidding. Maybe he wasn’t in rehab at all. Maybe he was in jail . . . for murder.

Stop it
, I chided myself.
Don’t fall into drama mode.

Julie glided over to me with an extra brownie on a rust-colored cloth napkin that matched Mandy’s dress. I took it.

“That was Miles,” I said, fishing for a reaction. Maybe Mandy had discussed the exact nature of their relationship with her.

“He’s so funny,” Julie said.

My alarm bells went off. “You’ve met him?”

“Only talked to him. But Mandy says I’ll meet him someday.”

“Oh.” I smiled weakly at her, but I didn’t like the idea of her getting anywhere near Miles Winters. And I felt bad, not telling her what I was up to. “Let’s get tea.”

“Spider and I are texting,” she said, showing me her cell phone. Sure enough, Spider had plastered emoticons all over the faceplate. She was all blushy and giggly. “I think he’s going to come see me during break.”

“That’s nice,” I said, and I meant it. Though I was a little sad, too. Julie’s relationship with Spider was happening so fast, and I was missing it all.

Kiyoko and Sangeeta were standing like proper hostesses behind a table that had been set perpendicular to the fireplace. Kiyoko’s face was shrunken, gaunt. There were hollows under her eyes, and her cheeks were cavernous. The table was stocked with teacups and little finger sandwiches, but I sincerely doubted Kiyoko would be eating any of them.

The fire was low and pleasant, and the mantelpiece had been decorated for the holidays. Two white porcelain pots of trailing ivy bookended a cluster of ornate wooden picture frames.