The Evil Within (14 page)

January 18

After the library, I stayed on high alert, but nothing happened to me. I didn’t sleep, only paced, and avoided the head in our room, staring at the darkened windows of Jessel. I knew that if I didn’t rest, I would break down. But I couldn’t turn down my inner banshee. I couldn’t stop screaming in silence.

Then at breakfast the next morning, Mandy joined me in the food queue. She was dressed in an ivory cashmere sweater topped with a soft gray three-quarter-length jacket and a black wool miniskirt. Her hair was up in a bouffant, held in place with a beaded gray clip. She was beautiful . . . and her warm smile would have melted a glacier.

“Linz, sweetie, good morning.”

I said nothing.

“We’re having a party a week from Friday,” she continued, not daunted at all by my coldness. “You know, for my usual sweet BFFs and suckups.” Her eyes were hard. “You should show.”

No way
, I thought; but I said, “Why? Is it my turn?”

“Oh, baby.” She grabbed a spoon out of the silverware bay and held it out to me. “You already passed the test.”

I turned my back, aware that the din in the commons was noticeably lower, and people were watching. I was shaking. My coffee was sloshing on my fingers, scalding, but I was so cold I could practically see steam rising from my skin.

I REMEMBERED when my mom was sick, and I had told my dad I wanted to stop going to school and live with her in the hospital. And when he’d asked me why, I said, “Because she’s going to die. And if you loved her, you would quit your job and be with her all the time. She’s lonely, and she’s scared.”

He said some things about how life went on and we had to go on living; and I hadn’t spoken to him for three days. For three days, in fact, I’d hated him. But now, as I walked into the admin office for my meeting with Dr. Ehrlenbach, I got it. I felt as if I had just stepped onto the escalator back at Fashion Valley Mall, struggling to get over my present and move into my future. But life just glided along with you.

A ghost had told me to murder another human being—someone I pretty much hated—but life just went on. Maybe Jane had been right: having a breakdown was a way to bail. You just sat down on the escalator and covered your head. At the moment, I was totally tempted to do just that.

“Go on in,” Ms. Shelley said, and I nodded at her as I passed. “By the way,” she added, you look nice.”

That caught me off guard. Besides, I had formed the impression that Ms. Shelley never actually saw me; she just kept track of Dr. Ehrlenbach’s appointments. If it was ten o’clock, it must be Lindsay Cavanaugh.

But I had dressed to please, so I was grateful for the compliment. Julie and Marica had pulled my “look” together for me. Everyone (except for me, last semester) understood that an appointment with Ehrlenbach demanded good clothes. The first time I’d sat in her office, I’d worn raggedy jeans and had died a thousand deaths under her withering disgust. Now I had on a simple black wool skirt of Marica’s, Ida’s highly polished black riding boots, and Julie’s black wool boyfriend jacket with the sleeves pushed up in an attempt to disguise the fact that it was too big for me. Claire’s black-and-white silk paisley scarf was wound around my neck and loosely knotted. The resultant “look” was total conformity but it was
Vogue
-style conformity—and I actually savored the feeling of wearing a perfect outfit of clothes I couldn’t hope to afford.

The ferocious statue of our founder, Edwin Marlwood, stared down at me as I rapped on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s door. There was no answer, but I knew that I was supposed to go into her office anyway. I opened the door into the freezing cold and shut it behind me. It was like stepping into a refrigerator, and I shivered as I sat down in a hunter-green upholstered chair on the visitor side of her desk. As usual, the rich wood surface was immaculate, nothing on it except a desktop monitor facing away from me and her brass nameplate. A watercolor rendition of the Winters Sports Complex was framed on the wall beside her Ph.D. from Harvard.

I heard a soft ding. Incoming mail, probably. I slumped in the chair and tapped my fingers on the armrests; then pushed my butt to the back of the seat and sat up straight. Then before I was aware I was doing it, I got up and leaned over the desk, craning my neck to look at the screen. There was a nested list of folders. The header on the topmost one, SHAYNA MAISEL, caught my eye.

It is unfortunate that Shayna’s Generalized Anxiety Disorder has grown so acute as to necessitate withdrawal from Marlwood. She has presented marked deterioration despite increased dosages of prescribed medications including benzodiazepine
s
and her biweekly therapy sessions with Dr. Melton . . .

Dr. Melton was our school shrink. Generalized Anxiety Disorder? Shayna? I would never have guessed.

Then I heard Rose’s voice outside the door.

“I was in the statue garden, and it was laying on the path. All mangled.”

“It was
lying
on the path,” Dr. Ehrlenbach replied.

“Actually, it was all over the path,” Rose said.

I couldn’t hear Dr. Ehrlenbach’s reply. I crept from behind her desk and crossed to the door, pressing my ear against it. Dr. Ehrlenbach was still speaking:
Something something something, Dr. Melton
.

“
I
don’t need to see a shrink,” Rose insisted. “Whoever messed up that bird does.”

“Rose,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said, and then her voice trailed away.

Suddenly, the knob on Dr. Ehrlenbach’s door turned, and the door pushed slightly open. I was in the way, and I took a step back. A short bald man with black eyebrows smiled curiously at me. Dr. Melton. I had met him before, when Kiyoko died.

“Hello, Lindsay,” he said.

“What’s going on?” I asked, gesturing to the hall.

His smile stayed put. I was willing to bet that his psych training, not Botox, kept it there. “The girls found a dead bird. Looks like a cat found it first.”

I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a cat at Marlwood. No. Lots of birds, though.

“So,” he said, coming into the room. “I’m sure Dr. Ehrlenbach will be here in a minute.” He took the seat next to mine and gave it a half turn, so that when he sat down, he would be facing both Dr. Ehrlenbach and me. “How are things going?”

“Fine,” I said, too quickly. I saw him file that away. Maybe along with my appearance—black circles, sunken cheeks. “Well, except for Shayna.”

“Shayna’s home, and she’s doing much better. She just needs a little break.”

“Oh. What’s her diagnosis?” I asked, because after you’ve had a nervous breakdown, you learn to talk like that.

He raised a brow. “You know I can’t share that. Directly, at any rate. What do you know about schizophrenia?”

I felt the walls of the room closing in, and my body temperature plummeted as if we were sitting outside in the snow. Schizophrenia
and
anxiety?

“One symptom of schizophrenia is the manifestation of hallucinations,” he said.

My face prickled. I fiddled with my Tibetan prayer beads, caught myself, stopped.

“When people are under extreme stress, sometimes they see things that aren’t really there.”

Not like at Marlwood. Like at my mother’s funeral, when I was sure she was still breathing. When I went to my father and begged him to tell the funeral director that they had to get the formaldehyde out of her body immediately, or she would truly die. I got a Xanax for my trouble; later, Dr. Yaeger asked me about it, and I wanted to kill my father for telling him. Not literally kill him, of course. But it had been my own private moment of losing my mom to the ground, and Dr. Yaeger wanted to dissect it like a biology specimen. And maybe he wrote it up in the report—the same report that I was even surer he had sent on to Marlwood. Maybe that was the real reason Dr. Ehrlenbach hadn’t wanted me to come to Marlwood in the first place.

“Schizophrenics hallucinate even when they’re not stressed,” he went on.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t like where he was going.

At that precise moment, Dr. Ehrlenbach entered the room. She was carrying a wafer-thin hunter-green folder, which she handed to him. Her face betrayed no emotion; my school was being run by Vulcans.

Dr. Melton opened the folder while Dr. Ehrlenbach seated herself behind her desk. He scanned some papers, then flipped it shut. They exchanged glances; I couldn’t read their non-expressions. But at nearly the same instant, they both looked at me.

“I asked Dr. Melton to stop by to see if there is anything we can do for you, Lindsay,” Dr. Ehrlenbach informed me. “You were the one who found Kiyoko Yamato, and I know that had to be very difficult for you. Now another classmate you were fond of has left suddenly.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to understand if she was actually linking dying with “suddenly leaving.” Abandonment issues. “But I just started to get to know Shayna,” I added defensively. “We didn’t move past fond.” I was talking too much. I had to shut up.

“You’ve had nightmares. Frequent ones,” Dr. Ehrlenbach continued.

Julie, how could you?
I thought, gripping the arms of my chair. They would probably notice that. But then again, they already knew I had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder last September. That I had come to Marlwood partly because word had spread all over Grossmont High that I was a quivering mass of cuckoo.

“I’ve had some nightmares,” I allowed.

“Yet despite this, you’re doing very well in your classes. This is most impressive,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said. “If you continue to do this well, I believe Marlwood may be in a position to extend your scholarship for next year.”

“No way,” I said, stunned. The last I had heard, I had too many Bs. Dr. Ehrlenbach stared at me, and I shifted and cleared my throat. “I mean, thank you.”

“It appears that the Board of Trustees has found some funds to cover an extracurricular for you as well,” she went on. Her desk was so highly polished that I could see a vague reflection of her face in the wood. I dared not look down. If I saw Celia, there would be no more talk of how well I was doing.

“I think, given your position, you should think strategically about what extracurricular to take. Something that will elevate your transcript.” She tapped on her keyboard. “Have you given any thought to where you’ll go?”

“Go?”

“You need to think differently,” she continued. “Marlwood is going to open doors for you. You need to get ready. For
college
.”

I fidgeted, even more bewildered. I felt completely out of my element.

She tapped some keys. “Your current foreign language is Spanish. We might want to talk about that. There are other languages that are more desirable. It’s a little too late to put you into the international relations club. Let’s schedule some sessions with Dr. Rahmani.” She glanced past her screen at me. “She’ll organize your admissions portfolio and help you investigate financial aid.”

“Portfolio,” I said, and she looked at me as if I were speaking a less desirable language.

“You should have begun this process last year. We need to catch up. I’ll have Dr. Rahmani available for you as soon as she has an opening.”

“You and I will set up an appointment, too,” Dr. Melton informed me. “Some colleges are administering Meyers-Briggs or other psychological tests. I’ll have your housemother notify you.”

“Ms. Krige,” Dr. Ehrlenbach told him.

He took out a flat silver smart phone and typed into it, then put it back in his blazer pocket.

“Lindsay, I hope you’ll take full advantage of these opportunities,” Dr. Ehrlenbach said. “Marlwood intends to prepare students for a life quite unlike the one you would have led, if you had not come here.”

“Okay. I mean, thank you,” I said.

She kept looking at me. Then she blinked. Dr. Melton pushed back his chair, so I did, too. Dr. Ehrlenbach made no move to stop me so I figured we were done.

I followed Dr. Melton out of the room. He turned to the left, toward the statue of Edwin Marlwood, and I hovered, unsure what to do. He smiled and pointed in the opposite direction, where the reception was, and I nodded, reviewing what had just happened as I headed out.

Are they bribing me? To do what? Or not to do what? Not to say anything?

In the foyer, the light through the leaded windows was glum and gray, and shone down on four heads seated on the couch: Rose, Julie, Susi, and Gretchen. Julie’s face was puffy and blotched. Ms. Shelley was behind her desk on the phone, speaking softly. Susi and Gretchen were pressing their shoulders together, and Rose and Julie looked up as I came in.

“Oh, Lindsay,” Julie said, leaping off the couch, rushing toward me, and throwing her arms around me. “It was so icky!”

I looked from her to Rose, who seemed to be the chick in charge. Susi and Gretchen got up like old ladies. Dark circles like mine ringed Susi’s eyes; beneath a mask of makeup, Gretchen’s skin was dry and flaky. Signs of stress. They were slouchy and long-faced; yet, except for Rose, they were dressed like baronesses or at the very least, contestants on
Project Runway
. Rose was still stridently Rose; she was wearing purple high-tops, a long, ruffled skirt, and an oversized dark gray peacoat with a long lavender-and-olive scarf wound several times around her neck, like my black-and-white paisley. Her silver tube earrings were big enough to qualify as wind chimes.