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“Is someone there?” I say. “If you’re goofing around, this isn’t funny.…”
I trail off as I stare at the door. My door is shut. Yes, that should be obvious, butwhyis it shut? I always sleep with it open—old habit from childhood, when my parents wanted to hear me if I had trouble breathing. Eventually they realized that if something happened, it wouldn’t be that sudden, but by then, I couldn’t sleep with it shut. Last night, I’d left it about half open.
Again, I remember the dream. The crash of my chair didn’t sound like a knock. It sounded like a door slamming shut.
The door rattles again, and my gaze swivels to my window, which is open, because I wanted the night air. Open window plus spring breeze equals a slamming door that turned into an overturned chair in my dream. And now that breeze is rattling the closed door.
I get up, shut the window, and the rattling stops. Then I crawl back in bed, firmly shut my eyes, and focus on getting back to sleep.
NINE
Miraculously, I do fall asleep… and drop straight into the same damn memories.
I’m not in the cafeteria anymore. After the guys left, I’d been uncomfortable with the séance talk, so I’d “remembered” something I needed to do before next class.
The séance idea doesn’t die there. Suddenly, it’s all my friends can talk about. In retrospect, I understand it wasn’t about teenagers wanting to contact the dead. It was about teenagers dealing with their curiosities and their insecurities.
Patrice wanted to try the mushrooms. Drug experimentation was an area of interest and frustration for her, with two best friends who wouldn’t even try pot. For me, it was the ingrained warnings about smoking in general—with my lungs—plus a discomfort with ingesting anything that might interact with my medications. For Heather, a lifetime of “don’t do drugs” messaging had done its job. Patrice, though, was curious, but being a girl who really only had two friends, if they wouldn’t experiment, she was stuck, being smart enough not to try anything without supervision.
The other dynamic at play here was Heather and Patrice’s relationship. There had always been a clear leader and follower. Heathermight have refused Patrice’s drug-experimentation hints, but she felt guilty about it. Didn’t her art teachers always tell her that she needed to relax and let the creativity flow?
Patrice wasn’t dropping the séance idea because it involved drugs. Heather wasn’t dropping it because for once, Patrice wanted something only she could deliver.
That Friday, as I’m waiting for the bus, Patrice marches over, with Heather in tow, and announces, “We’re doing it with or without you. Tonight. In the woods behind the school.”
“You don’t need to take the mushrooms,” Heather says. “One of us shouldn’t, and that can be you.”
I bristle at the emotional blackmail. She’s saying I can watch out for them. I can make sure they do this safely. And if I’m not there? Who knows what will happen, and it’ll be my fault.
“Fine,” I mutter.
Patrice grins and hugs me. “You’re the best.”
I turn away to hide my annoyance. As I do, I spot Anton, a few feet away with Cody and Mike.
Cody is leaning toward Anton, saying something with a smirk, and Anton’s gaze is on me, his expression unreadable.
Cody socks Anton in the arm, pulling his attention back. Mike leans in then to say something. Anton makes a face. Whatever they’re talking about, he doesn’t like it. But he glances my way, and then he nods.
The sound of footsteps tugs me from the dream. I listen, but it’s only someone up and about, probably using the bathroom.
I refocus on the dream. I’d forgotten about the guys being there. It was a tidbit that had seemed meaningless, just Anton talking to his friends. Even admitting I’d noticed would be embarrassing, because it meant I was paying more attention to Anton than I wanted. But in retrospect, knowing what I do from Anton, it’s significant because—
The creak of a footstep breaks my concentration. I glare toward the hall. I understand needing to use the shared bathroom or evengoing downstairs for a glass of water, but why do I keep hearing footsteps right outside.…
My thoughts trail off as I track the slow, deliberate steps. My face turns up to the ceiling.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I swallow and inch back in the bed.
Those footsteps aren’t down here. They’re in the attic.
No, I’m hearing things. Another trick of my treacherous mind.
Sorry, there isn’t any history of hauntings with this house. It is one hundred percent ghost free.
You think so? Here’s a moaning voice in the dumbwaiter shaft and rattling doors in your bedroom and footsteps in the attic. How’s that for a not-at-all-haunted house?
