Liv, Forever

by Amy Talkington

  Exactly. I moved next to Malcolm, studying the papers. “And, look, we all died in October.”

  Malcolm echoed the same thing without knowing I’d spoken, adding, “Usually late in the month. He turned to Gabe. “You wanna write this down?”

  “I’m not your personal assistant, Mr. Astor.”

  “Just do it,” I urged, and Gabe grabbed a pen off Malcolm’s desk. He wrote “late October” on the back of some crew-related handout. I couldn’t help but notice the trophies and awards on Malcolm’s desk. I glanced around and saw they were everywhere—trophies, awards, plaques, certificates. Malcolm was a winner. At everything, it seemed. “And look at the years,” Malcolm noticed. “Each death is in the fifth year of a decade!”

  “No way in hell those are all coincidences.” Gabe stood and started pacing.

  “But every death was reported as a suicide.” Malcolm leaned back. “Except Boathouse Clara—I guess her body was never found.”

  “Reported is the key word. Liv’s death was also reported as a suicide, but we know it wasn’t. Come on! There’s a pattern here, some kind of ritualistic killings happening at pre-determined intervals, right?!” Gabe wasn’t taking notes anymore. He was exploding with conspiracy ideas. “Maybe each ghost kills the next one?”

  “Don’t say that to her. It’s not necessarily the case,” Malcolm insisted. “Let’s keep studying the records.” He again bent over the papers, reading. “Help me, Liv.”

  I stood next to him, examining each girl’s file.

  “All good students,” I noted. “Especially Mary.” But something else caught my eye. “Look! Every one of these girls—except Brit—was on scholarship, financial aid, or charity of some kind, including me. Look here at the letter attached to Clara’s file. It’s from her parents, asking the Wickhams for help before Wickham Hall even officially had scholarships.”

  Gabe repeated every word that tumbled out of my mouth for Malcolm, then his focus suddenly shifted. “Wait a minute. What about the Wickhams? We’ve all read that thing about Infinite Intelligence and healing the world. It’s our friggin’ school motto. And weren’t they into some weird occult shit? What if they started all this somehow?”

  I nodded, thinking of the spirit photography. “There are some really strange photos of Elijah Wickham at the Headmaster’s Quarters,” I confirmed. “Creepy pictures of him with spirits. Most of them looked pretty fake, but there was one of Wallace and Minerva that actually looked real.”

  “See?!” Gabe jumped all over it. “What did I say?! They were way into ghosts and shit!”

  “See what?” Malcolm groaned. He was tiring of always being one step behind.

  Gabe repeated what I’d said then asked: “And didn’t Minerva die young?”

  “In an unexplained accident,” Malcolm said. He stood. “Let’s go to Old Homestead.”

  “Now?!” Gabe asked.

  “While we still can. This place is going to be crawling with alumni in about four hours.”

  AS WE CROSSED CAMPUS to Old Homestead, Malcolm told us everything he knew about the Wickhams. They’d come over from England to open the school, supposedly with the idealistic aim of bringing Romanticism to the New World. Malcolm said it was widely known, at least among the Victors, they were into mysticism and the supernatural. He’d heard there was a special room in the basement of Old Homestead where Wallace communed with Minerva after her death.

  “Like a séance room?!” Gabe asked. “I knew it! They did something dark, something weird. A curse or something … we need to get down there.”

  Gabe was energized. Of course he was. After all, he’d spent two miserable years at Wickham labeled a freak—most of all by Malcolm and his friends. Now every paranoid thought he’d had was being vindicated. It was like giving Van Gogh his happy ending—as if everyone had recognized he was a genius (or at least not insane) before he died.

  As we rushed through the cemetery, Gabe stopped. He caught a glimpse of me crossing over a charged headstone. “Stop!” he hissed.

  I halted.

  “What?” Malcolm demanded.

  “She’s changing more,” Gabe told Malcolm, distressed. He stared at me. “You’re fading. You’re disappearing. What did you do at the headmaster’s house?”

  “I had to distract him. I moved the butterflies.”

  “Stop doing that! Stop trying to move things and change things!”

  “Gabe,” Malcolm said, trying to calm him.

  “I don’t want her to become like the others. Or disappear,” he murmured.

  “Neither do I.” Malcolm patted Gabe on the back, gently pushing him to continue on. Together the three of us kept moving.

  WE DEVISED A PLAN of who would do what, but when we arrived at Old Homestead, we discovered Malcolm’s key no longer worked. He looked as agitated as Gabe. He kept shaking his head, shoving the key into the lock. “This is the master prefect key. It should work everywhere, especially here.”

  “What do you mean by especially?”

  “This is where the Victors meet. In that hidden room on the fourth floor.”

  “Yeah, I think I know the one, where Abigail so kindly locked me up.”

  Gabe chuckled. Malcolm just looked at him. Instead of asking him what I’d said, he turned and started walking back toward the dorms. “It’s late. I need sleep. I’ll get us into Old Homestead in the morning.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone, man,” Gabe called after him. “It’s not safe.”

  He looked in my general direction. “I won’t be alone, though. Right, Liv?”

  WHEN WE ARRIVED AT Pitman, Malcolm opened the window and extended his arm, gesturing for me to go first. Always the gentleman, even to invisible me. He climbed into the window after me, closed it, pulled the curtains, and collapsed on his back in bed.

  “It’s so hard not being able to hear you. It’s so unfair.” He paused, then laughed at himself. “I can’t believe this. I’m talking to air.”

  It’s not air. It’s me.

  “But it’s not air. It’s you,” he added, once again seeming to read my thoughts. “I know you’re here. At least I believe you are. Let me know you’re here.”

  I looked around, desperate to show him a sign but knowing I shouldn’t use my energy. I rushed past Malcolm as fast as I could, skirting his flesh by only an inch or so.

  He felt my chill. A sad smile played on his lips.

  “You are here,” he said.

  I am.

  “Maybe it’s good I can’t see you. I don’t know if I could say what I want to say. When I told you I loved you … you’re the only girl I ever said that to, Liv. And I meant it.”

  I wanted to show him I was still present, but I was frozen. Rapt. I could only listen.

  “I imagined us together. You’re the first person I ever felt really myself with. I don’t know what my point is. Maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself. But I shouldn’t—you’re the one who’s gone.” He paused. “My father is coming tomorrow, er, today I guess. You’ll see me with him. I’m already a little embarrassed. You’ll see … I’m weak.”

  “You’re not weak!” I shouted silently.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and blurted, “I need to hear your voice!” He grabbed his phone and clicked his voice mail. “I have one message from you. I saved it, thank God. I think I’ve listened to it a hundred times.” He put it on speakerphone, and I heard myself. “Hi, Malcolm, it’s Liv. Um, I was thinking …” I sounded so young, so far away. I remembered how I’d had to call five times just to get his voice mail. And how nervous I’d felt. How I’d practiced exactly what I wanted to say but then said something completely different. “There’s one word missing in the drawing I did, the one I did on you, I mean. Free. I should’ve put the word ‘free’ in there.”

  He stood up and unbuttoned his shirt and checked. A faint, ghostly trace remained. He took his shirt completely off and approached the mirror. “I don’t want it to fade away.”

  I stood next to him.
I wanted to see us together, but there was no me. It was still shocking to peer into a mirror and see nothing. I fell away, unable to look. He lay back on his bed. “I think I should probably get a little sleep.” He closed his eyes, and I watched him gently doze off.

  Malcolm hadn’t exaggerated: alumni started to arrive on campus before he woke up. It was day one of Fall Festival, the school’s anniversary weekend celebration. They celebrated Wickham Hall’s anniversary every year, but this was a particularly big one: the big one-five-oh.

  Malcolm slept though the voices and car-door slams. I even heard a helicopter and wondered if the president had arrived on Marine One. It wouldn’t have surprised me. Malcolm needed the rest; he was so spent. He slept right through first period, although his phone kept buzzing. He slept until his door was swung open by a handsome man—a taller, sturdier, older version of Malcolm. When Malcolm saw him, he sprang up, instantly awake.

  “Dad!”

  “Shouldn’t you be in class?” His father’s eyes immediately dropped to the fading ink on his chest. “What’s all that?”

  “Just a drawing.”

  “Put a shirt on, son.”

  As Malcolm followed his father’s orders, Gabe burst in. “I found Brit’s old MySpace. Serious creep-o-rama …” He trailed off as he noticed Malcolm’s father, then quickly tried to cover up. “Creep-o-Rama, have you seen it? On Hulu? So realistic, that movie was so realistic, man!”

  Malcolm’s father ignored Gabe as skillfully as Kent had in the library. “I have business to tend to. I’ll see you at the Ball this evening.”

  Malcolm nodded, not that his father waited for a response. He turned on his heel and walked out of the room, without even so much as a nod to Gabe.

  The door slammed.

  Gabe exhaled. “Sorry, man. But Brit’s MySpace is outta control. They kept writing on her profile and harassed the crap out of her. Even after she died.”

  “And that’s probably why she died,” Malcolm grumbled. He already looked tired again.

  “Exactly. But, anyway, what’s the plan for Old Homestead?”

  “The Victors Ball.”

  “Yay for you,” Gabe muttered.

  But Malcolm started to smile. “No, that’s the plan. That’s it. That’s how we’re going to get in.”

  “We?! As in you and me?”

  “Yes, we. But first we have some work to do.”

  Gabe eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “Making you presentable, my friend.”

  BOTH MALCOLM AND GABE went to see Nurse Cobbs to get out of classes for the day. They figured it’d be pretty easy to get a medical excuse after a friend had died, and they were right. Although she was prickly, Nurse Cobbs was, it turns out, a bit of a sap. Not that she didn’t loathe Gabe for his “ceaseless shenanigans” (her phrase, not mine), but Malcolm charmed her (of course) and she also remembered me. Apparently she’d noticed a drawing in the notebook I was carrying that first day and thought I was very talented.

  As Malcolm was leaving, Kent passed him on his way in.

  “What’s the matter?” Malcolm asked.

  “Stomachache. And you? Seeing the counselor, I hope.”

  Malcolm shrugged, avoiding an answer.

  “I’ve been calling you. And texting. See you tonight?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  I wanted to linger to see what Kent was up to. He didn’t seem to be in any pain. But Gabe was still in the examination room and I couldn’t leave Malcolm alone, so I ran over to Gabe’s door and whispered, “Watch Kent.”

  “HE DIDN’T GO INTO an examination room,” Gabe told us when he got back to Malcolm’s room. “He went into Nurse Cobbs’s office and left with a bunch of big envelopes.”

  “Big envelopes,” Malcolm repeated.

  “Maybe he takes some medication,” I offered.

  “These didn’t look like medication envelopes. They looked … I don’t know. They weren’t labeled. It was weird.”

  “Weird, yes,” Malcolm interjected. “Who knows what they were. But we have work to do to get you ready for the Ball.”

  “A lot of work,” I added. Gabe stuck out his tongue.

  Malcolm looked at him. “I really hope that was meant for Liv.”

  “Yeah. She’s a little dubious of this alleged makeover.”

  Malcolm turned to face my general direction. “Well, Liv, please weigh in. I could use some girl-help here.” Then he turned to Gabe. “And you, take a seat.”

  The facial scruff was first to go. Then his long hair. While Malcolm chopped off Gabe’s locks, he studied his face. It was pained, no doubt. You could maybe even say tortured. Like I said before, very Van Gogh. Finally Malcolm asked, “When did you know you had it?”

  “Lice?”

  Malcolm whipped his hands away.

  “Kidding. Damn. Seriously? Just because I’m not filthy rich doesn’t mean I’m infected.”

  Malcolm sighed and got back to chopping. “I was asking when you knew you had the gift or whatever? Hearing voices.”

  Gabe sighed. “Just since I got here.”

  “How? Why?” Malcolm asked cautiously.

  “I …” Gabe paused, uncomfortable, but he continued. “My older brother died two years ago. He was my hero. I … I don’t know. I wanted to talk to him again, so I focused. I prayed, I begged, I cried. I don’t know how it happened, but I guess I just opened myself up to it. Or maybe it was always there, and I just wasn’t listening. I don’t really know. There is no explanation, I guess.”

  “So you just heard his voice one day?”

  “No, he was never there. But when I came here last year, I started hearing the girls. And seeing them. I told my parents, but they figured—still figure—it’s all in my head. They’re too wrecked over my brother. They can’t deal with me. That’s why they sent me here in the first place.”

  Malcolm nodded as he snipped off a lock of hair.

  “What?” Gabe said.

  “Nothing,” Malcolm said. “It’s just that we all end up here for a reason.”

  Malcolm turned back to the task at hand, studying Gabe’s hair. Or maybe just pretending to. He was a pretty decent stylist. Who would have known?

  WITH THE SCRUFF AND the long hair gone, Gabe already looked like a new man. “Turns out you’re not terrible looking,” I said, quite serious.

  “Ha. Ha.” Then he told Malcolm. “Turns out your lady friend has a real sense of humor.”

  “Yes, I know. Now for styling.”

  “Styling?!”

  “I know I don’t look it, but I’m very in touch with my feminine side,” Malcolm said with a smirk.

  I giggled. I almost forgot for a moment.

  “She laughed at your joke,” Gabe said.

  Malcolm smiled with a sigh as he went to his wardrobe, pulling out a starched shirt and suit. Gabe insisted on wearing his own vintage Radiohead T-shirt underneath “so there’s some dignity down there somewhere,” but Malcolm’s formal wear was still miserably large on Gabe. He looked in the mirror. “This looks like a joke. Like a bad music video from the eighties.”

  “I’ll get you another one,” Malcolm said as he left the room. Within moments he was back with another, smaller shirt and suit.

  “So you can just walk out into the common room, tell someone you need something, and they just bring it to you?”

  Malcolm nodded. “On a silver platter.” His tone was dry. “Especially if they’re smaller than me.”

  Gabe sniffed. “Seriously, though, when I walk into the common room, people flee.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way—I mean, I see how the people here are and they’re not always nice—but you do kind of ask for it.”

  “What?!”

  “You have to admit, you cultivate the image. You practically wear a sign that says, ‘Go Away.’ ”

  “You do,” I added.

  Gabe looked down, intending to swing his hair down over his face—as he always did when
he got uncomfortable—but the hair was no longer there.

  “But that’s the old Gabe,” Malcolm said. “Tonight you’re going to be confident. Outgoing.”

  Gabe grunted.

  “No grunts or grumbles.”

  Gabe huffed and looked down at the floor.

  “No staring at the floor or off into space.”

  He jammed his hands in his pockets, squirming restlessly.

  “Or fidgeting.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?!”

  Malcolm laid his hands on Gabe’s shoulders. “Look at me. You work the room. You pick out alumni. You notice who’s bored and who’s available to make small talk, and you approach them. They will assume you’re a new or prospective Victor, so they’ll want to talk to you.”

  “But what am I supposed to talk about?” he asked, his voice rising.

  “College applications and visits are always a solid choice.” As he continued, Malcolm instinctively gestured as if in conversation. “Harvard Square, the weather in Boston versus Princeton versus New Haven. Rowing on the Charles. Of course you’d prefer Harvard, for undergrad at least, but Yale and Princeton are great backups.”

  Gabe’s eyes flashed toward Malcolm’s desk. He squirmed out from under Malcolm’s grasp, grabbed a notebook, and actually started taking notes. I almost clapped.

  “When they ask about classes, just talk about the core curriculum—how you enjoy the broad educational base. And the Harkness Method, how the round tables really help classroom conversation. They love to talk Harkness because it’s one of the things that sets these schools apart.”

  Gabe was scrawling every detail.

  “And crew, of course. If it were me, I’d talk about how much I enjoy rowing alone. How I like to go out there and think—I’d probably say I met a girl. I liked to think about her …” He stopped talking, suddenly reminded I was dead.

  “Got it,” Gabe said. “Go on.”

  “And the key is to hold your chin up, puff your chest out. You must look extremely confident but speak with modesty.”

  “That’s how you people do it?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “But, wait, who am I?” Gabe asked. “I can’t just be Gabe Nichols. Don’t I have to have that fancy Victors bloodline?”