Possessions (19 page)

“It’s so beautiful here,” he said. His chest expanded. “I wish I’d brought my camera.”

Into photography,
my Troy-radar fed into my database.

“I have mine,” I remembered suddenly. I fished it out of my pocket and offered it to him.

“Thanks.” He examined it. I wondered what he thought—that it was a cheap camera, and he was used to so much better. “Stand there,” he directed, gesturing to the cliff. “But don’t go too far,” he added, smiling that electric smile of his.

“I’m a mess,” I protested, remembering how Jane used to drill her followers—including me—on proper “woman etiquette.”
Never apologize to boys; never point out your own flaws.

I smiled. He aimed, depressed the button, and the camera whirred. He studied the picture, and grinned. “Nice,” he said.

“Let me see.”

“Another one,” he insisted. He took it.

I came around and stared into the viewfinder. I was standing with the vast lake behind me. Gack. My crazy hair . . .

“I want to take one of you,” I told him.

He hesitated for the merest second, and I wondered if he was afraid he would get busted by Mandy if there were a picture of him on my camera. Maybe this little interlude wasn’t so romantic after all. Maybe it was kind of skanky.

Then he seemed to make some kind of decision, and smiled at me as he handed back my camera.

I raised the camera and snapped a quick picture. We looked at it together. Oh, yeah. Very nice.

We walked on, exploring, and I heard myself talking to him. I told him a little bit about my mother, and then, somehow, I was telling him private things I had never shared with anyone, not even Dr. Yaeger.

“My mom and I used to read aloud together. She loved poetry, adored Robert Frost. ‘
Whose woods these are, I think I know
.’ Sometimes she would be overcome, and me, too, and our eyes would well with tears because we were just . . . I don’t know. Moved.”

Troy listened.

“After my dad married CJ, I was playing the melody line of
Ode to Joy
on my cello and it was so beautiful. My chest was tight. I couldn’t remember if Beethoven had gone deaf by the time he wrote it. But I was hearing it. I was alive to hear it. And I started to cry.”

He took my hand.

“My stepmom came into the room and saw me crying, and asked me if I was missing my mom. And it wasn’t really that. I told her, ‘It’s just so beautiful it makes me cry.’”

He gave me a squeeze.

“And CJ said, ‘Then why do you play it?’”

Troy was silent for a moment. I glanced at him, mortified that I had revealed so much. “TMI,” I blurted.

“No. That’s why.” He ticked his blue eyes my way.

“Why what?” I asked quietly.

“Why I like you. You’re . . . you’re real.” He stopped walking. “There’s so much phoniness in the world.
My
world, anyway.” He smiled sadly. Then he shook his head, as if
he
had said too much.

I stared out at the lake, and I saw my past in the inky reflection. I saw myself standing in the hall of my parents’ house. I was having a party for Jane; it was her birthday, and people I didn’t know were spilling guacamole on our rug and breaking our glasses. I had cleaned up three shattered glasses so far; I’d refused to buy paper cups because Jane thought they were tacky.

I was looking for Riley; Aimee, one of the cheerleaders, said he had a surprise for me. I
knew
he was going to ask me to go to Homecoming with him. As I walked down the hall, I rehearsed my
yes.

And then I heard . . .

I heard two people, moaning and giggling and . . .

They were in my parents’ room.

I heard them.

Aimee had come up beside me, making a face. “Oh my God,” she’d whispered.

“Who is that? My dad is going to be home any second,” I had whispered back.

“Oh.” Aimee blanched. “Hey, guys?”

There was a lot of fumbling and whispering and the door had opened . . .

I shook my head, snapping out of the uncomfortable memory. I reminded myself that Troy had a girlfriend.

Suddenly thunder echoed across the lake; bluish-white lightning crackled directly overhead and the sky cracked open. Ice-cold rain poured down on us like a waterfall. I yelped, and Troy unwrapped his parka and threw it over my head. We raced back into the cover of the trees. A wind rushed by so hard I felt as though I had been slapped. It caught at my hair, my crazy hair.

“Come on,” he said, moving to the left, more deeply into the trees. I remembered the mist.
Mist, not a ghost.

We found shelter beneath a thick tree and stood close together, panting. Troy pulled me close so we could share the parka—it was waterproof, I realized—and as we huddled, I felt his warmth and smelled his skin.

“Stay close,” he urged me.

The ground was turning into mud and slippery mats of pine needles. I wondered if Ms. Krige would send the cavalry out for me. I was with a boy. That could not be good. On impulse, I whipped open my phone. I had programmed in the Grose landline number before I’d left San Diego.

To my amazement, I had good reception, and she answered on the second ring.

“Hi, it’s Lindsay. I wanted to tell you I’m okay. I’m going to stay put until it stops raining.”

“Tell her you’re at some dorm,” Troy whispered, as I stood in the crook of his arm.

I grimaced. All she had to do was call that dorm’s housemother, and I would be busted.

“I’m at—” I began, and then I froze, as a cold, sick dread clutched at my throat. I recognized the path we were standing on.

I turned my head. The black hulk of the operating theater peered through the pines as if it were crouched, waiting for us to get closer before it sprang, ripping itself off its foundations and crushing us to death.

“I’m with some girls,” I said, and hung up.

“We can go in there,” he said, gesturing to the OT. “Wait it out.”

The operating theater, where Julie and Mandy hooked up with Spider and him.

Mandy’s screams and laughter still echoed in my head from that night. I smelled smoke. And burning meat. I smelled them as surely as I smelled the wet cotton of Troy’s sweatshirt.

And he didn’t.

He didn’t.

Or he was pretending he didn’t.

Then
his
cell phone rang, and he looked startled. He pulled the phone out of the front pocket of his parka and stared down at it. Then he put it back in his pocket without answering it.

I knew it was Mandy.

And my suspicious mind started connecting dots—I go jogging; Troy jumps out from behind a tree; he leads me to the operating theater; Mandy checks in.

Prank.

I said, “I want to go back to Grose.”

His face fell.

“I’m going,” I said. My voice shook. I wouldn’t let him see me cry, wouldn’t admit how devastated I was.

“Okay.”

The rain fell, and we half-ran the distance back to Grose. We didn’t speak; we were too cold and wet, running too fast.

When we neared Grose, I saw Ms. Krige standing beside the open door in a red-and-black-plaid parka over a pair of black pants, her kind face wrinkled in concern. I turned to Troy, who saw her, too, and we moved out of her line of vision.

“I have to go,” I said, searching his face, his blue eyes, for some sense of how things stood between us. I wanted to be wrong.

His eyebrows and lashes were dusted with white crystals. “Lindsay, why . . . ?” But he didn’t press. He probably knew why. He licked his lips. “I wasn’t taking you there, y’know, for a
quickie
or anything.”

I blushed awkwardly.

“I’ll text. Or call,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything. I opened the door and flew into Grose. I was trembling. Nearly weeping.

I smelled hot chocolate, and I knew Ms. Krige was nearby. I didn’t want her to ask me what was wrong. “Oh my God,” I called, still breathless from our dash across campus, or from what had passed between Troy and me—I wasn’t sure. “I am sopping wet.”

I listened to my shoes squeaking and squishing on the hardwood floor. I wrenched them off, and my socks, too. Gathering them up, I trotted down the hall, past the kitchen, and into my room.

Swathed in black cashmere lined with white fur, Mandy Winters was sitting on my bed. She smiled pleasantly as I ground to a halt.

“Get caught?” she asked me.

twenty-one

“Caught. In the rain,”
she said. She clicked shut her cell phone and leaned back on her hands.

“I thought you’d left,” I replied, which bordered on rude and awkward. I set down my shoes, pulled off my socks, and stepped into my slippers. “I have to squeeze these out,” I added, as a drop narrowly missed our tapestry rug.

“I’ll leave you to that,” she said. “I just dropped by on my way to the car.” She tilted her chin. “So I passed the time, talking to Miles. He thinks he’ll be able to come home soon. For Christmas.” There was a small smile on her face.

I glanced around the room, saw nothing out of place. Wondered how long she’d been in here, waiting to pounce. I wished she would take that stupid white head with her.

She saw me looking at it, and smiled. “Do you know what that’s for?” She went over and touched her finger to its forehead.

No snarky comeback occurred to me. I shook my head.

“I don’t, either,” she said.

I knew she was lying. A chill rippled up my spine. Why would she lie?

She got up. I almost took a step back, but I caught myself in time. She gazed hard at me. I held my breath. Something was going to happen. I was about to find out what was going on. I was. Right now.

Then Ms. Krige said from the doorway, “The cocoa’s ready, Mandy. Why don’t you ask your driver to wait a few more minutes?”

“No. I really need to get going,” Mandy said. She brushed past me and went out of my room. “Have a nice break . . .
down
,” Mandy whispered as she passed me.

She knows.
I was speechless. How could she know? No one—

Did Dr. Ehrlenbach know? Had my parents told her?

Oh no. I closed my eyes.

“Lindsay? Cocoa?” Ms. Krige asked sweetly.

My heart was pounding
. My face felt numb. I was outed. Not even Julie knew about my breakdown.

So what?
I asked myself. It was practically required to have some kind of issue at Marlwood. Look at Kiyoko. Look at Mandy. And Alis, Sangeeta, and Lara. All of them. The girls with the black eyes.

Has she been setting me up, all this time? Doing things to scare me so I’d snap?

That was stupid. Why would she bother? I was nobody.

Then why had Troy come looking for me? Did Mandy know we’d been together in the woods just then? Would she tell Miles? Mandy had said Miles would kill anyone who ever tried to hurt her. So what would he do to Troy if he found out Mandy’s hot boyfriend had spent all morning sharing his trail mix with
me
?

“Lindsay, phone,” Ms. Krige said, holding the landline portable out to me. I hadn’t heard the phone ring, hadn’t noticed her go into the kitchen to answer it.

Troy
, I thought.

“It’s Rose,” Rose announced. “And I’m feelin’ groovy. You want to break into Jessel after dinner?”

Wait
, I thought.
She conveniently has a key. She’s rushing headlong into going in there.

Was she part of a prank? Or was I totally losing it?

“Oh God,” I blurted aloud. Did I actually think there was a giant conspiracy to drive me insane?

“Yes? God here,” Rose chirped.

“Nothing. I’ll see God at dinner.”

“God knows,” Rose said cryptically.

We hung up, and I looked across the quad toward Jessel. The drapes in Mandy’s room were shut...but I saw a dark oval on the glass. I knew I saw it.

And I trembled as if I had tumbled head-first into the icy blackness of Searle Lake.