The Screaming Season

by Nancy Holder

  That was the reason he gave me, anyway.

  “All men are lying bastards,” Celia hissed.

  “You were telling me about the sun,” Dr. Morehouse said.

  “On the water,” I said drowsily. “Riley likes to surf.” I couldn’t remember telling him about Riley.

  “Do you surf?”

  “Body surf.” I felt myself smile. A real smile. The warm ocean water enfolded me; salt water crusted my lips. “We eat dried mangoes from the Asian market. Diet cream soda.”

  Riley and I got busted by a lifeguard for making out. He told us there were too many young kids around for that kind of PDA. I couldn’t believe I had gotten in trouble for kissing the hottest guy at school. It was quite a coup. The sun had beat down so bright and yellow and I dribbled mango juice on my lips. Riley licked it off and it was so fun and so amazing that my school’s first-string quarterback was kissing me that I started laughing.

  I chuckled now, low in my throat. Warmth seeped through me. I felt safe. San Diego. Home. I heard the breakers. I smelled my suntan lotion.

  Home.

  LATER, WHEN I woke up, the dimmer lights were still on, but shadows from the windows threw stripes on the walls. I was curled up in the oversized chair with a goose down pillow under my head and a soft green blanket wrapped around me. I was alone. I had fallen asleep during our ramble and Dr. Morehouse had gone.

  I had slept well. No nightmares had shaken me; there was no sense of being spied, crept in upon. If Celia was still with me, I couldn’t tell.

  That didn’t mean she was gone. But it was the first decent rest I had had in weeks—every night had been a succession of nightmares. To actually sleep, and to wake up normally, not because I was screaming inside . . . it felt as good as body surfing. And sunshine.

  But had I said anything?

  I rode the wave of peacefulness as it began to ebb. It had been mine, for a time.

  A sandwich had been left for me. Turkey and Havarti cheese on a croissant, my favorite lunch item on the Marlwood menu. And two chocolate chip cookies. Had I given Dr. Morehouse my food order, under hypnosis?

  Wind rattled the windows. Ms. Simonet cracked the door open and smiled—genuinely—when she saw that I was awake and eating my meal.

  “You’ve slept for hours,” she told me. “The girls came at noon to help you study. Then they came after classes. But I thought it would be better if you caught up on your sleep.” Before I could ask, she said, “It’s nine-thirty at night.”

  I’d been out for almost twelve hours.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I told her, and she came forward to help me up—which was good, because my left leg had fallen asleep. I stood and let the blood flow back into it, then wobbled into the bathroom and shut the door. I had to cross in front of the mirror over the sink basin to get to the toilet, and my first impulse was to avoid it.

  But tonight, I stopped and looked. And instead of a crazy, possessed lunatic, I saw a fairly good-looking high school sophomore. And that was it.

  I blew that girl a kiss.

  THE NEXT DAY was Sunday, and Troy came to visit me. He had driven over in his ’68 T-bird with Spider, Julie’s boyfriend. Boys weren’t allowed on campus, but Troy the charmer had permission to drop by whenever he wanted. A bribe, I supposed, so his parents wouldn’t sue the school. Or me.

  He was wearing a white T-shirt and over that a thick dark-gray hoodie. He had on jeans and hiking boots—normal person clothes—but somehow he retained his rich-guy air. Maybe it was his perfect hair, or his teeth. His arm was still in a sling; I spun a microfantasy of Troy ten years in the future, overseeing his father’s vast business empire, explaining to people that his hoped-for professional basketball career had ended through a “fluke accident.” Although, thus far, he hadn’t told me about any plans to become a pro ballplayer.

  He must have read the expression on my face. Color crept up his neck and spread across his cheeks.

  “I told Mandy not to say anything. About what happened in the operating theater.” His voice was low.

  Some of the coolness left the moment, like air out of a deflating balloon. Mandy. Of course he had been talking to her. She was his girlfriend, wasn’t she? And I had attacked them both in the operating theater.

  Sitting in one of the plastic chairs, he surveyed the stacks of textbooks and notebooks. Julie had brought my laptop, too. And most of my clothes.

  “Why don’t they just let you out?”

  “They’re going to,” I said defensively. “I have pneumonia.”

  I couldn’t stop looking at the sling. He had sat by my bedside after they had brought me in, me raving that he was going to kill me, kill all of us. But after they drugged me, I heard him whispering to me that he loved me. I had clung to that. Now here we were face-to-face. I wondered if he would say it, when I was awake.

  “It, um, doesn’t hurt.” He touched it, as if to prove it. “I didn’t really even notice when you hit . . . ” Trailing away, he cleared his throat. “It was stupid of me to set up the operation like that. I knew how upset you were about the lobotomies and all. I’ve got this gore factor streak . . . ”

  “I appreciated the gesture,” I said, although he was right: the idea was pretty bizarre. My big Valentine’s surprise was that he and Marica had lovingly re-created Dr. Abernathy’s lobotomy surgery in the operating theater, down to a hospital bed, an ice pick, and a hammer. “And the dinner was nice.” I was lying. Our dinner at the posh spa marked the moment I had become convinced that Troy had become possessed by the ghost of David Abernathy. Then things had spiraled out of control at the dance, when Spider had accused him of attacking Julie.

  But he hadn’t. And we still didn’t know who had. We called our scary, unidentified bad guy the Marlwood Stalker.

  Maybe it was something that lives in the woods, waiting for us, to hurt us and kill us. Maybe it was one of us, possessed. Maybe me. I was there when she was attacked. I was the one who found her with her skirt torn off, and she was half out of her mind.

  I knew someone else who was half out of her mind—Celia. There were hours I couldn’t account for, when I found myself in places I had no memory of going: the operating theater, the haunted library, the lake. I didn’t know what I had done—or what Celia had made me do—had I killed the birds, and the cat? Had I made slash marks in the trees and followed people in the fog? Had I attacked Julie?

  Did I—no, Celia—have anything to do with Kiyoko’s death?

  Had I told Dr. Morehouse any of that?

  My chest tightened and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t, wouldn’t lose it in front of Troy again. But I could feel myself pulling apart, like a dropped stitch in a knitting project, not noticed, unraveling.

  I began panicking about panicking—that was how anxiety attacks worked—and bitter cold spread through me. Celia. Oh, God, she was going to say something, do something . . .

  “Hey, are you okay?” he asked me. “Sorry to bring up a sore subject.”

  It seemed like the most bizarre thing he could say. Hitting him with a hammer was “a sore subject.” Hitting him. I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid I would cry.

  Suddenly, the scent of geraniums wafted across my nose. Earthy, lemony. I inhaled it; my lungs were working again. I thought of my mom, and my panic weakened its death grip on me. Memmy. Was she here? Was she where Celia was? Maybe I was the unfinished business that kept her earthbound. Maybe she’d been waiting in case I needed her. And I did need her. Terribly.

  “I’m okay,” Troy said as he jerked and pulled his cell phone out of his jacket. He looked at the faceplate and blinked. I knew by his expression that it was Mandy.

  How convenient; he could come over to Marlwood whenever he wanted to, because of me. Then he could see Mandy too. Rich and gorgeous, Mandy was just mean. Poor and less than gorgeous, I was crazy.

  He probably figured he’d stuck with the right girl.

  “Hey, you know what? I’m really tired,” I said, so he w
ouldn’t tell me to my face that he had to go now. Firing him before he fired me.

  “Oh.” He sounded surprised. “I thought maybe we could go for a walk or something.”

  So you’re weren’t going to bail? I kept the question to myself. Confident girls didn’t beg. Jane had taught me that.

  “Maybe another time,” I said. I basked in his disappointment and reveled in the knowledge that all was not lost when it came to matters of Troy’s heart. And now that he’d mentioned going on a walk, claustrophobia welled inside me. In the past, when I was stressed, I had two modes—extreme burrowing or running it off. Exercise was good for panic. It burned off the adrenaline.

  “Okay.” He got to his feet. “So, um, take care.” He turned to go, paused, turned back. My traitorous heart skipped a couple of beats as he looked hard at me and licked his just-as-sweetas-mango lips.

  “Hey,” he said, “remember when I told you about seeing that, um, that burning girl on the road when we were driving up here?” That burning ghost? Yes, I did remember. It might have been Celia herself, or the memory of her, lost in the endless loop of failing to save her own life. Or it was just the flash of his headlight on a patch of fog.

  Wordlessly, I nodded.

  “Well, on the way over here, I thought I saw her again.”

  In daylight. That made it scarier. If things went bump in the darkness, at least you could turn the lights on to make them go away. I feigned mild interest, but I twisted my hands together in my lap.

  “Did Spider see her too?” I asked.

  “No. He was texting Julie. Or trying to. Reception around here sucks.” He tried to smile. “I was so scared I nearly ran off the road.”

  “You’ve been to too many séances,” I tossed off. Mandy was famous for them, pulling out all the stops with Ouija boards and candlelight. The irony was, she really could communicate with the dead.

  “I haven’t been to a séance in forever,” he insisted, his expression solemn. Then he smiled tentatively at me. “Anyway, when you’re up for it, I thought we could get back to researching Dr. Abernathy and the lobotomies. Unless you’re done with that. Thanks to me.”

  “I am done, but only because we’ve solved the mystery. He performed them, and he died.” I was sorry to lie to Troy, but the situation had gotten too strained. If I went off again—if Celia went off—he’d dump me for sure.

  “Okay.” He sounded disappointed. I had a moment of doubt; what would we have in common if we didn’t keep looking into the buried history of Marlwood? Mandy?

  “What did your parents say about . . . ?” I gestured to his arm.

  “I didn’t tell them. My mom’s at a retreat,” he said. “And my dad’s in the middle of some big merger deal.”

  “What does your mom have to retreat from?” I asked, and he quirked the right side of his mouth.

  “She’s always got something. Anyway, I told everybody I fell. Coach says I’m a klutz. We all covered for you. Mandy and Miles, too.”

  “That was really nice of her,” I managed to say, even though I thought I might strangle on the words. Either she was covering her own butt or trying to show Troy what a great little gal she was. But for sure she didn’t have my best interests at heart. We had thrown down over Troy. Like he was a bone. Or a toy.

  A possession.

  He turned to go, and I was sorry that I’d pretty much told him to leave. But I knew I couldn’t take it back. That would make me look too eager. Did we always have to play games with guys?

  “I’ll see you soon,” he murmured. “I hope.”

  I gave him a genuine smile, remembering when I’d phoned him at the crack of dawn and begged him to meet me. And he had. He must have thought I was pathetic, weeping and whiny. After that, he kept promising to break up with Mandy, even though I had never asked him to in the first place. Kept promising, and kept not doing it.

  I felt a little pissed off.

  My cell phone rang. We both jumped a foot and laughed.

  “I’ll let you get that.” His voice was a bit strained. Jealousy? That would be nice.

  He turned on his heel and waved over his shoulder. I gave him a wave back, and then he left the room. I looked at the caller ID. Heather. I took a deep breath. Okay.

  It was time.

  FIVE

  I HEARD TROY talking in the hall to Ms. Simonet—her voice was sugar sweet; everyone liked Troy—as I connected to the call and put my phone to my ear.

  “Oh, my God, you’re actually alive,” Heather said, aiming for funny, but sounding nervous. We hadn’t spoken since Christmas Eve. Which was, in part, why I had been avoiding calling her back.

  “Lucky for you,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe.” After a beat, she said, “Hello, fea.” Fea meant “ugly” in Spanish. While the whole world felt obligated to call me “Linz,” she had remained an American original. I knew that by using it, she was trying very hard to relate to the me I had been before I joined Jane’s posse of evil.

  Back in the day; that is, freshman year, we had mocked girls like Jane. Rolled our eyes in pity at all the effort Jane appeared to expend to stay at the top of the social heap—the right clothes, the right music, the right places to hang out. Funny thing was, once I was in, I discovered that for Jane, being number one was fairly effortless. The clothes, music, and loitering spots were right because that was what she wore and where she went, and not vice versa. Coolness was her reality bubble; trendiness was hers for the having. It was enough to make me believe in karma, or fate, like she’d paid for her good fortune by suffering in another life, and she was set. She never, ever fell from grace.

  Then there was me, having not only fallen, but plummeted, and splatted on grace’s sidewalk. I was the one suffering in this life.

  Still, I had acquired skills that had proven useful in keeping me alive at Marlwood . . . such as keeping a safe distance from Mandy. Never letting her get the upper hand when she dangled entrance to her clique as the price for my soul. So not interested.

  But I was interested in having my best friend back.

  “Hola, Martinez.” I kept my tone light.

  “So, how you been?”

  “Fine.” Lie, lie, lie. No, wait. That was true. Ever since my visit from Dr. Morehouse, I was verging on fine. Sporadic bursts of fritz out were nothing compared to what I used to be like.

  “That was . . . terse,” she said.

  “Isn’t that a nice change? Me, kind of quiet?”

  “Huh.” She grunted. “Well.”

  I waited. She’d been the one to call.

  “I’m sorry about the movies,” she said. “I shouldn’t have just booted you out of the car. I should have talked to you. Listened—”

  “It’s okay.” It was too much to ask. I was too high maintenance. I still am.

  “The thing is,” she went on, “I had a nightmare last night. It was awful. And I woke up everybody, and my mom just completely unloaded on me for my drama.”

  “Sweet.”

  “She’s going through menopause. But anyway, I thought about you and how, you know, that can just happen. Screaming without warning.”

  “A nightmare,” I said slowly, tensing. Were they catching?

  “What was it about?” “I don’t remember.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed her.

  “Listen, Riley talks about you all the time. And he’s not hanging out with the Jane-bots much.”

  “Maybe he’ll become a human being someday,” I bit off. “But I’m not betting on it.”

  “Guys do wild stuff. She was all, you know, ‘come and get it, baby.’ When . . . it happened. He’d been drinking.”

  “Whatever.” I didn’t want to forgive him. Maybe I was being hard on him because I had almost forgotten that Troy still hadn’t broken up with Mandy. I’d managed to back-burner Troy’s semi-cheating because he had big blue eyes and he’d very gallantly excused my bad behavior.

  “Are you supposed to report back to Riley what I say?” I
asked her.

  “Not officially.” She took a deep breath. “I miss you too, Lindsay. I’m so sorry I wasted the break. We could have hung out. My mom made the most rockin’ tamales.”

  I loved her mother’s Christmas tamales.

  “Why are you telling me this stuff about Riley?” I asked. “It’s not like I can do much of anything about it.”

  “Text, yo.”

  “He has to start it. And I’m not into long distance. I’m fourteen hours away.”

  “Then come home.”

  I hadn’t expected that. “It’s the second semester. Yo.”

  “So? They’ll make you a study plan.” She hesitated. “I’ve just got this funny feeling. . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “So which is it?” I said. “Riley misses me, you miss me, you’ve got a funny feeling?”

  “Is it okay if he calls?”

  “Did he ask you to ask me that?” In spite of myself, my voice rose, excited. My coolness was evaporating.

  Wait a sec. I’m over him.

  “No. I’m taking some initiative.”

  “Why are you doing this, really?” I asked, and I couldn’t help smiling. It was nice to be wanted.

  “Gotta go,” she said impishly. “Call when you can.”

  We disconnected. It was all so complicated. I had left San Diego so I could leave San Diego. But it wasn’t like an old novel, where once you were gone, no one could find you. Nowadays, if Heathcliff had left Wuthering Heights, he and his great lost love Cathy would have texted.

  Ms. Simonet came in with my iron supplement and commented on the change in me. She left me alone to do some of my mountains of homework. I flipped open my laptop to get to work, but I couldn’t help surfing the net first. The cell and internet reception in the mountains was very spotty, but the infirmary had an excellent signal. There wasn’t much online about the troubles at Marlwood. Kiyoko’s death was old news. Rose had sent me an animated e-card set to the tunes of “Send in the Clowns,” and the ruckus about her parents’ divorce was splashed everywhere. My parents had checked in a lot; I called them and spun the situation, as I was sure it had been spun before me. I was alternately miffed and relieved that they didn’t seem more worried about me.