She nodded and went up the stairs toward the entrance.
The doors were locked, of course. Nic stood back and paused, then went back down the stairs.
For a second, my heart seized—I thought they were going to get back in the car and leave. But then she started around the side of the building. I followed her.
“Good-bye, then,” Theo called to me.
“Oh, sorry—I’ll see you later!” I replied, forgetting all about him as I jogged after Nic.
“Where are you going?” Landon shouted, and for a second I had this brain hiccup where I thought he was talking to me.
“There’s supposed to be another door over here,” Nic said over her shoulder, not slowing down. I stayed close behind her, listening to the crunch of her shoes in the snow. “There should be a key under a flowerpot.”
“A key?” Landon jogged a little to catch up to us, his breath a faint mist in the cold air.
“Yeah,” she said. She stepped onto a slab of concrete and knelt to lift one of the flowerpots, revealing a tarnished key. “Janie said they left a key, in case any lawyers or realtors came by.”
Landon was quiet for a second. “Isn’t Janie a little … ?”
A little what? I waited to hear what he would say about my sister. I wanted news of my family. I wanted to hear every little detail of their lives.
“She gave me the combination to the gate lock,” Nic said. “I think she knows what she’s talking about.”
Landon shrugged and looked up toward the roof. “So are their parents going to sell this place?”
“Not yet,” she said. “But maybe someday. I mean, what else would they do with it? Janie said her dad moved out the day after Thanksgiving. They’re probably going to get divorced.”
What? My parents were getting a divorce? I reeled at the thought. How could that be? They bickered sometimes, but in general they’d been an infuriatingly unstoppable team for my entire childhood.
“They say there are some things that break marriages apart,” Landon said quietly. “I guess losing a kid is probably one of those things.”
“It broke me apart,” Nic said softly, and I realized how selfish I’d been when I’d imagined her reaction to my death and fretted over being replaced by someone new. Losing your best friend would be something you’d never recover from. Even if you moved on, found a new college roommate, chose a new maid of honor … some tiny piece of you would always be missing. I thought of what my life would have been like if Nic died, and the bleak misery of it made my stomach ache.
Nic unlocked the door, Landon pulled it open, and they entered in silence. Then Nic went to the little table by the door and pulled a large key ring from the drawer.
“Right where Janie said it would be.” She turned to Landon and tried to hide a shiver. “Shall we?”
He nodded, unenthused.
“I think she said it was this one …” She opened the door to the main hall, and I slipped through behind them. They’d come prepared—Landon held a huge torch-style flashlight, and Nic carried a little electric camping lantern. Nic moved as if she knew exactly where she was going. I got closer and realized she was looking down at a photo of a hand-drawn map on her phone.
The labels on the map made my stomach clench. They were in Janie’s handwriting, but it seemed, to my eye, less loopy—less like the perky preteen scrawl I knew and more like the writing of a young woman. Like she’d grown up in a hurry.
The map led us to the back stairwell and up to the second-floor day room. I hadn’t been back up there since the day I died. But being with my best friend and boyfriend (all right, my ex) felt almost … normal.
Nic stood in the center of the day room and took in all the details, then strode ahead. Landon watched her, not quite knowing what to do or say. Her single-mindedness seemed to alarm him slightly.
“Through there,” she said, gesturing toward the ward door.
But before she could go forward, Landon blocked her path. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
She was silent for a long time, and then she nodded, her eyes fixed on the door.
“Delia.”
The sound of my name startled me. Eliza stood a few feet away, looking at me anxiously. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Of course I am,” I said, noticing that Nic and Landon had ventured into the ward hall. “But I have to follow them, sorry.”
“No, wait—”
But I left her behind. When I caught up to Nic and Landon, they were standing and staring at the door to Room 1.
It was crisscrossed with police tape: CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.
“We don’t have to go in there,” Landon said.
“Yes, I do,” Nic said. “I really, really do. Don’t you understand? She was my best friend. And her being here was my fault. That stupid trip … I knew she didn’t want to go.”
“Nic, come on,” I said. “It’s nobody’s fault. I mean, if we’re going to start pointing fingers, it’s way more Landon’s fault than yours.”
She tore down the crime scene tape and went inside. Landon tried to tidy the dangling strips of yellow plastic before following her.
Though the prospect of being in that room filled me with dread, I was curious enough to go in after them.
“Delia!” Eliza’s unhappy voice echoed from the hall.
The room was mostly dark, with stripes of dusty sunlight streaming between the boards that covered the window.
Nic shivered. “It’s freezing.”
Landon shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. They looked around for a minute, and then Nic walked the perimeter of the room, trailing her fingers along the wallpaper.
“Do you think she wished we were here with her?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Landon said. “I wish we’d been here.”
Nic nodded, staring at the boarded-up window. “I can’t even remember the last thing I said to her. I think I called her a loser or something.”
“That’s just what you guys did,” Landon said. “You can’t feel bad about that. What was it she always called you?”
“A weenie,” I said.
“Weenie,” Nic said, half laughing and half crying. “She always loved Halloween because for a whole day she got to call me Halloweenie.”
Landon snorted, and then they dissolved into low laughter.
“I could never think of anything for loser,” she said. “So I just said March seventeenth was St. Loser’s Day. But it wasn’t the same.”
“Yeah, not as good,” Landon said.
Nic let out a long sigh, and the audible expression of her pain made me want to curl up and die. Again.
“Let’s go outside,” she said suddenly.
“Come on,” Landon said, scratching his chin unhappily. “Why torture yourself?”
“Because I want to. I need to see … the place where she fell.”
“But why?”
“Because if I don’t see it,” Nic said desperately, “I’ll never believe it actually happened. I’ll never believe that she’s not just hiding someplace. You know how desperate she was to get away from her parents.” Her whole face lit up. “What if she was here now? Like, hiding in the closet or something? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?”
Landon looked doubtful. “Not sure that’s the word I’d choose.”
“You know what I mean. It would just be so … so Delia. If there were a cupboard under some stairs, I’d just about put money on her being in there.”
He didn’t look convinced, but she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s an exit through the kitchen.”
Apparently, Janie had learned more about the house than I knew, because her map clearly showed a door leading out through the industrial kitchen. I trailed behind them, past the shelves piled high with stacks of giant pots and pans, past the hulking ancient stoves, and out a door with a thin coating of rust covering its entire surface. From the dark kitchen,
we emerged into the crisp winter air.
Nic marched to the space under the boarded-up window. The ground was covered with snow, but she nudged her boot through it, kicking the white powder out of the way, until a patch of muddy, dead earth became visible.
Then she knelt, touched her hand to her mouth in a gentle kiss, and set her fingers in the mud.
“I miss you so much, you stupid loser,” she whispered.
“You too, Weenie,” I said.
Then her pain came pouring out, flooding the air with sobs. Her sorrow seemed to cut me in two, leaving me feeling pinned and helpless, weakened by my own reflection of her feelings.
Landon leaned over to touch her shoulder, but she pushed his hand away. Her sobs were gasping, choking sounds, echoing in the cold, empty air. Gradually they subsided, and she tried to speak.
“What?” Landon asked.
“I—I said … How could she?” Nic sat herself up. She looked terrible (and I can say that because I’m her best friend). “How could she?” She jumped to her feet. “How could you?!” she shouted up at the window. “How could you do this to me, Delia?!”
It took a second for the words to sink in. And then our shared sorrow melted away, leaving me feeling … angry.
“Do this to you?” I yelled back. “To you? Are you kidding? I didn’t do anything! I’m the victim here!”
“It’s okay,” Landon said, trying to grab her arm. “Nic, it’s okay. Come on, let’s go inside. You’re gonna freeze to death out here.”
Grudgingly, she let him guide her back into the kitchen and through the maze of rooms to the superintendent’s apartment, where she sat on the couch, sniffling and wiping her nose with a well-used tissue.
Landon flicked on the lights, then walked over and sat on the same couch, leaving a good-sized space between them. I hovered nearby, still hurt by her words but hungry for more conversation. I wanted to hear about my parents, my sister, the school year. I yearned for delicious, inconsequential little details—who won Homecoming Queen, what were the new trends, what books people were reading, which teachers were being extra strict this year, where our friends were applying to college. They were halfway through senior year. I wondered if Nic had to lie to her parents to be allowed to come here.
Landon fidgeted, his fingers tapping out an irregular rhythm on the arm of the couch, his eyes darting around the room. He’d always fidgeted. I wondered how many times I’d leaned against his warm chest, my eyes closed, thinking he was enjoying our time together—when really he was just looking around, wanting to be somewhere else.
“So …” he said finally. “Should we get going?”
“No,” Nic said. “Not yet.”
“Listen, you can’t do this to yourself,” he said. “You know that whatever she was going through wasn’t your fault. Any more than it was mine.”
“But what if she—”
“Delia, come here right now.” Eliza’s voice rang out from the opposite side of the room, urgent enough that I actually went to see what she wanted. But when I reached her, she simply shook her head. “You don’t need to see this.”
“See what?” I repeated. Was she jealous because my friends actually came to look for me? “See my best friend, who came to look for me and get closure? Don’t I get a little closure?”
She stared at me incredulously. “You honestly think that’s what you’re going to get by watching those two—closure?”
“Those two”? What did that mean … ?
Then I turned to look at them.
Landon had edged closer to Nic.
My heart stopped.
No way.
I couldn’t keep myself from walking back toward the couch.
“Nicola,” Landon whispered.
My whole body went stiff. “Since when do you call her that?” I asked. “Nobody calls her that except her grandma. She hates it.”
But instead of correcting him, Nic angled her head … and rested it on his shoulder.
Then he reached for her hand, wrapping her fingers in his own.
Come on.
She pulled her hand away. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Oh,” I said, “you think?”
I stared at them, a hundred horrible thoughts invading my brain at once.
Had Landon and Nic … had they liked each other all this time? Had my best friend been part of the reason he broke up with me? Did he bail on Daytona because he was afraid to be around us both at once? Was the camp girl just an invention to hide their secret?
“Listen,” Landon said. “Neither of us knew what was going to happen. And we were both devastated. You lost a best friend, I lost a girlfriend—”
“Oh, please!” I snapped. “You lost a girl you dumped. Over text. Like a slimy coward!”
“We both loved her. And she loved us. And the thing is …” He reached up and gently touched her cheek. “She would want us to be happy.”
“But not this way,” Nic said. The pitiful note in her voice wasn’t enough to buy my sympathy. She should have gotten up off the couch, slapped his hand away from her face. Instead, she just sat there like a traitorous lump.
“You’re right, I don’t,” I said. “I don’t want you to be happy this way. Have some respect for the dead!”
“Can’t you feel it, though?” His fingers trailed down to her neck. “She’s at peace. Wherever she is, she’s peaceful and happy.”
Nic’s eyelashes fluttered. “Do you really think so?”
“No,” I said.
“I know so,” he said, starting to lean toward her.
No, no, no, no, NO.
NO.
“No!” I cried out. “NO!”
But then, in front of my eyes, they were kissing—a sweet, soft, slow kiss. The kind Landon and I used to have. The kind I used to describe to Nic, who listened with starry eyes because she hadn’t had a boyfriend of her own yet. The kind that made me believe that Landon and I might be one of those couples who lasted forever.
When the kiss was over, he started to pull away.
But Nic—my best friend—pulled him back.
As I stood there, drinking in the sight of two people who should have, at the very least, had the grace not to kiss in the very place where I had died—something began to vibrate inside of me.
Only when the vibrations became so strong that I had already lost control of them did I understand what the feeling was:
Rage.
MY FAVORITE MEMORY OF NIC
Gym class, first day of sixth grade. As if being eleven years old in a pair of baggy blue gym shorts wasn’t hideously humiliating enough on its own, Coach was calling us up, one by one, to assess our physical fitness level.
I sat a few rows back on the bleachers, listening to the clump of mean girls in front of me verbally eviscerate everyone who wasn’t one of their own.
“Thunder thighs,” they would whisper, or, “Jelly belly. Ugh, that hair. You can tell just by looking at her that she smells.”
I was petrified, waiting for my turn to make the walk of shame and be judged for my shortcomings.
“Pisani, Nicola?” the coach called.
A tall brown-haired girl with thick glasses and rainbow-hued braces stood up next to me. The mean girls’ heads swung around to get an early look at her.
“Excuse me, Coach,” Nic said. “I don’t actually care to walk up there and be mocked and ridiculed by this pack of cackling witches. I already know what’s wrong with me. I have bad teeth, ugly glasses, and a big butt. So … can you just write that down?”
Everyone was speechless.
But one of the mean girls couldn’t resist. “Don’t forget hairy arms,” she said.
And the mean girls spent the rest of the class running laps around the gym.
When Nic came back from talking to the coach, she sat down. “Your butt’s not big,” I said.
“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Not compared to yours.”
From that moment on, we were best f
riends.
I saw Nic and Landon as if I were watching them through a telescope—singled out, in perfect focus, while everything around them melted into darkness.
“STOP!” I roared, plunging forward past a little table with a heavy, old-fashioned phone on it. Without thinking, I swung my arm in its direction. The shock of contact reverberated through me, and the phone went flying and landed heavily on the floor with a discordant crash of its bell.
At the sound, the lovebirds on the sofa jumped apart.
“What was that?” Nic searched the room. When she saw the phone on the floor, her eyes widened with fear.
“Oh, are you scared?” I cried. “Good!”
Nic’s gaze traveled back and forth, as if she was waiting for something else to happen.
I grabbed the little table by one leg and tossed it onto its side. It landed on the floor with a tremendous clatter. Then I stormed over to the dining table, grabbed the closest chair, and hurled it across the floor.
“What’s going on?” Nic wailed. She retreated until her back was pressed against the narrow strip of wall between two large windows, while Landon stood a few feet away, looking around helplessly.
Pathetic.
I swept a decorative bowl off the dinner table and hurled two more chairs in their direction.
Nic’s thin scream of terror echoed through the room. Her fear filled my head … and fed my fury. My anger and the power it gave me were like a drug.
I stalked over to where she stood, made a fist, and propelled it through the panes of the window to her right—
One, two, three, they shattered. Glass showered the floor around her.
“Oh my God!” she cried. “Landon, what’s happening?”
“What’s happening,” I said, “is that you stole my boyfriend!”
Landon was rather un-heroically frozen in place. “Nic, get away from the window!”
She ducked her head and started to run forward, her hands covering her face, but I pushed her back. She hit the wall with a frightened yelp and then tried to escape a second time. Again, I simply reached out and pressed on her shoulders. She couldn’t see me, so she couldn’t dodge or duck away from my touch.
The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall Page 10
