by Megan Atwood
Everyone nodded her head, and Sophie felt her stomach twist with unease. She wasn’t fond of the idea of talking to a ghost, but if it would save her sister …
The five girls lapsed into a thick, restless silence. And then, Sophie started to feel something.
At first, she thought she must just be getting sleepy because of the candlelight and the quiet. But she realized that she was incredibly cold and that her brain felt foggy. She didn’t know how, but she understood that Millicent was there.
“Millicent?”
The planchette started to tremble. All the girls looked at one another. Emma’s eyes had gotten as big as saucers.
The planchette moved slowly and landed on the YES space.
“Is anyone moving this?” Kayley hissed. “Don’t lie!”
They shook their heads no, and even Ophelia looked scared. The planchette had moved on its own. Or had been moved by someone other than the girls.
Sophie swallowed. This was real.
She went on: “The person you loved—who was he?”
The planchette moved more quickly, spelling out T-H-O-M-A-S. There was no doubt in Sophie’s mind now.
Sophie got up the nerve and asked, “Did you kill Emily?”
The planchette shot down to YES. All five girls gasped. The force of the movement was scary.
Ophelia whispered, “You’re doing great. Now tell her that this isn’t the same thing, and she can leave Emma alone.”
Sophie nodded and swallowed again. When she spoke, there was a small break in her voice. “Millicent,” she said, “I know how you feel. I really liked someone too.”
The planchette moved a little bit away and then came back to the word YES.
Sophie continued: “I’m so sorry that happened to you. You must have been so hurt and betrayed.”
The planchette circled around YES once again.
“I can understand that you’d think this is the same thing happening, but I want to tell you it’s not. I am happy for Trey and Emma, and I want them to be happy. Emma is not the same person who betrayed you. I want you to leave Emma alone.”
Sophie expected a big reaction, but nothing happened. All five girls looked at one another. The planchette just felt like a dead, plastic object.
They stood for what seemed like hours, Sophie moving from foot to foot, trying to get feeling back in her legs. But still nothing happened.
“So, did we send her away?” Kayley asked.
Just then, the crash of a hundred glasses breaking sounded through the air. Everybody ducked as glass beakers fell from their shelves at the opposite end of the room.
Though the crashing only lasted for a few seconds, Sophie felt like it lasted for hours. When the last beaker shattered, everyone stood up.
“Is everybody OK?” Madeleine asked, her voice shaky.
Ophelia and Emma said yeah in unison. Sophie nodded too, afraid to speak.
Kayley, leaning on the table, said, “Well, I guess that answers that question. Millicent isn’t going anywhere, huh?”
And just as Sophie was going to answer, she heard a groan from the other end of the classroom—a very live, very human groan. Right where the bottles had broken.
Chapter 13
All five girls ran to the end of the room, Madeleine in the lead. When they got to the other side of the desk, glass was strewn around everywhere.
Sophie looked in the corner by the door, and she saw a girl crouched there.
“Hey! What are you doing here? Come out, right now.”
The girl whimpered but came out. Sophie could see that it was Chloe, the girl she had run into days ago.
Chloe, who always seemed to be around.
Chloe.
She was holding her hand, and Sophie could see blood dripping down her wrist, droplets hitting the floor.
And everything clicked into place.
“Hi, Chloe,” she said calmly. “You’re Millicent, aren’t you?”
Without saying a word, Chloe started crying. Ophelia looked outraged. Madeleine stood back and covered her mouth. And Kayley said, “Wha …”
Emma just shook her head sadly. “Yes. This all makes sense now.”
“Wait, she’s a ghost from the 1920s?” Kayley asked.
Ophelia elbowed her. “No, you idiot. She’s just been acting like one.”
“We need to take you to the nurse,” Madeleine said. Chloe spoke through tears, “Please, please, no, I’m fine. Please don’t tell! I didn’t mean to do anything!”
Ophelia stared hard at her. “Are you kidding me? Not only did you threaten our friend, and you set up an exposed wire to try to kill her!”
Chloe’s eyes were desperate. “Please, I didn’t do anything with any wire! I swear! I just … I knew she had set it up. That’s why I said something. I never wanted Emma to get hurt!”
Sophie grabbed Ophelia’s arm. Chloe did look truly terrified, she thought.
“She’s right,” Sophie said. “She did warn me. I think we should take her to the nurse, but not tell Madame.”
Ophelia looked at Sophie like she was crazy.
Emma chimed in: “Yes, I agree.” She looked at Chloe kindly. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
Chloe nodded her head.
“It’s hard when you first start,” Emma continued. “Let’s just forget this ever happened and move on, OK?”
Chloe’s face collapsed in relief. Sophie stepped up to the girl and stuck her finger in Chloe’s chest. “If you ever, ever, ever try to hurt my sister again—or any of my friends for that matter—you’ll be sorry. Got it?”
Chloe nodded, her eyes huge.
Sophie went on, the hard edge in her voice beginning to soften: “So how did you move the planchette? It really felt like there was a ghost at work. Did you use magnets or something?”
Chloe looked bewildered, but before she replied, Kayley butted in. “I’m glad we’re all done with the threats and all, but we need to get out of here, before Bert or Madame comes in here.”
Madeleine blew out the candle, and Ophelia grabbed the spirit board, both of their faces still white.
On the way out, Sophie grabbed Ophelia’s arm.
“Thank you,” Sophie said. She knew that it had probably been hard for Ophelia to admit she’d been researching ghosts. Ophelia’s tendency was to pretend nothing bad ever happened to her, and the research was definitely a sign that Ophelia was still troubled by the brush with the supernatural she’d had earlier in the term.
Ophelia’s big eyes reached Sophie’s. She seemed as though she was about to say something when the girls heard murmurs of teachers’ voices drifting in from the hall.
Kayley said, “Let’s go!”
They only had seconds to get out of the room and to slip down the stairs without being seen. Emma and Sophie flanked Chloe, helping her hold her hand so it wouldn’t bleed all over. Voices gasped at the bottle wreckage just as the girls hit the stairs.
When they got to the second floor, Sophie said, “Emma and I will take Chloe to the nurse’s station.”
Madeleine nodded, her face pale even after the dash downstairs.
“OK,” Ophelia said, “but come back to my room right away when you’re done. We have something to tell you.”
Sophie nodded and she, Emma, and Chloe began their walk to the nurse’s station, the blood from Chloe’s hand disappearing into the carpet.
Chapter 14
Chloe’s hand was stitched up, she was eating ice cream, and she still looked miserable. The girls had made up some story to Nurse John about Chloe falling and cutting her hand. He’d looked dubious, but he stitched her up anyway.
“Chloe, it’s OK,” Emma said. “Sometimes we do things that are a little crazy for love.”
Sophie and Emma had figured it out. Chloe had a crush on Trey too. This was why she seemed to be everywhere Emma and Sophie were.
Sophie was determined to sort out the details.
She asked gently, “Chloe, did you plant the no
tes?”
Chloe hesitated mid-bite and then nodded, reluctantly. “Kind of. One of them was from me, for sure. The one where I said I believed you.” Her eyes shifted around the nurse’s station.
“One of them was from you? … You knocked off all those glass beakers, right?”
Chloe put her ice-cream spoon down and a tear fell down her cheek. She shook her head.
“It’s OK, Chloe,” Emma said. “You won’t be in trouble. And we won’t be mad.”
Chloe swallowed and looked at them with hopeless eyes. “If I tell you the truth, you just won’t believe me.”
Sophie laughed. “We’re pretty open-minded. Did you see that we were trying to do a séance?”
Chloe fidgeted with the blankets on the bed. “I don’t remember doing any of those things. I just remember what happened after. Or I’d remember what I did later. Like, with the wire … I don’t remember touching it. I just remember seeing it afterward. It felt like … well, it felt like I was … I felt possessed.”
Sophie shuddered. Part of her didn’t immediately believe Chloe. But another part of her, after everything she’d seen and felt at the academy, well …
Emma said, “That must have been scary.”
“It was! I don’t know what happened! I think it’s this school.” Chloe shivered. “There’s something wrong with this place. After the wire incident, I called my parents. Tomorrow is my last day here. I never wanted to hurt anyone.” She began sobbing again. “All I wanted to do was dance.”
Sophie nodded. “Yeah, this school can get you down.”
She still wasn’t sure what to believe. The answer flitted around the back of her brain like a butterfly, unreachable. And then she remembered and sat up. She had to know: “Chloe, did you move the planchette? Actually, did you know we were going to do a séance at all?”
“I didn’t know anything,” Chloe said. “All of a sudden I’m sitting in a pile of glass, and you guys are yelling at me.” She scrunched up her face. “What’s a blangette?”
Before Sophie could respond, Nurse John came over. “All right, girls. My patient needs to rest. Out!”
He pointed his finger to the door, and Emma turned to leave, always one to follow directions. Sophie took a final look at Chloe, who timidly ate more ice cream. Chloe looked at her with big, haunted eyes, then turned back to her cone.
Nurse John nudged Sophie to the door.
As Sophie and Emma walked down to Ophelia’s room, Sophie said, “Huh.”
“Yeah. Huh. Do you think that poor girl is telling the truth?” Emma asked. “I know something happened in that room. Something … strange.”
Sophie shook her head. “With everything we’ve been through, with everything we know from this house, none of this is completely beyond belief, right?”
The twins reached Ophelia’s door. Sophie turned the knob, and they walked in to find Madeleine, Kayley, and Ophelia staring at an object on the bed.
The other girls moved aside when Sophie and Emma came in, not saying anything until Madeleine spoke.
“We have to tell you something. Something weird. When Ophelia and I grabbed the spirit board, we saw this.”
Kayley opened the board. The word DIE was burned into it. Sophie gasped.
Ophelia said, “I don’t think Chloe is entirely to blame for everything.”
After catching her breath, Sophie said, “No. It’s Millicent. Oh my god. Poor Chloe.”
“Poor Chloe?” Kayley said. “How about poor Emma?”
Emma shook her head. “Yeah, this has sucked for me, for sure. But Chloe talked to us in the nurse’s room. She wasn’t working with a ghost, not consciously, or even doing things and trying to pretend that a ghost was doing them. Millicent possessed Chloe. She didn’t even know what was happening.”
Madeleine put her hands to her mouth. “That poor girl. That poor, poor girl … So the ghost can move things on her own? Or can she only move through Chloe? I don’t get it.”
“It seems like Chloe did most of the things that needed physical doing, like the notes and the exposed wire,” Ophelia said. “But maybe Millicent was able to gather up enough energy to knock off the beakers.” She pointed to the board. “And write that.”
Sophie sat down hard on the bed. She could barely bring herself to say the words. “Emma, what if Millicent had succeeded?”
“So this whole love triangle thing—it wasn’t Emma and Trey and Sophie,” Kayley said. “It was Emma, Trey, and Chloe? Which means Millicent identified with Chloe and possessed her. Not you, Sophie.”
“I feel so bad for her,” Sophie said. “She came here to dance, and instead, she got taken over by a psycho ghost.”
At least Chloe was leaving the school, Sophie thought, getting out of harm’s way. Maybe Millicent would go back to where she came from now that the agitation and the heartbreak were over.
Ophelia sat up suddenly. “How do we know Chloe’s not still possessed?”
Sophie thought for a second. “She’s leaving the academy tomorrow. She seemed to be herself when we left her. With Chloe away from here, out of Millicent’s reach …”
Just then, a knock sounded on the door. Ophelia opened it and the handsome visage of Nurse John appeared.
“Have any of you seen Chloe?” he said. “I looked up from my station, and she was gone.”
The girls looked at one another.
“Ophelia. Please tell me your research included possessions,” Sophie said.
The quiet in the room was louder than any glass beaker falling.
About the Author
Megan Atwood is the author of more than fourteen books for children and young adults and is a college teacher who teaches all kinds of writing. She clearly has the best job in the world. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with two cats, a boy, and probably a couple of ghosts.
