The Evil Within (4 page)

“Here’s something for the road,” my big, tall dad said, slipping about six twenty-dollar bills into my sweaty palm as he kissed my cheek. I kissed him back. With a sharp pang, I remembered when I was little and I used to give him “butterfly” kisses on his cheeks with my eyelashes. I wanted to be his little girl again, let him fight the monsters for me.

“We’re going to miss you so much,” CJ said, sweetly wearing her sweater, her blonde hair pulled up and held in place with the snowman clay-on-hair-clip Tom had made for her in art. Her delicate, gentle fingers brushed curlicues of hair off my forehead. I knew she was conflicted about the way I was dressed. I had on my usual tattered jeans combined with the new soft-as-sin black cashmere sweater she’d given me for Christmas. And my new Doc Martens.

Troy was wearing his brown bomber jacket, a plain white T-shirt, jeans, and Cons. I still couldn’t figure out what it was that proclaimed that he was a rich kid. Was it his subtly perfect haircut? My dad had wanted one of those vacuum-haircutters he’d seen in an infomercial. My stepmom had refused to let him bring one in the house. Go, CJ.

“Are you going to get married?” Sam asked Troy.

“Not today,” Troy said easily.

“You shouldn’t marry her. She farts in the car,” Tom added helpfully.

“Boys,” CJ warned them while I silently rolled my eyes. It would take more than fart jokes to embarrass me.

Troy just smiled as my dad passed him my cheap chocolate-brown-and-turquoise polka dotted suitcases and equally cheesy matching backpack, tagged for delivery to my dorm. My luggage was years out of date. My mom’s medical bills still haunted us, too.

In the immaculate trunk of the T-bird, Troy’s single suitcase was leather the color of a good tan, no brand name anywhere, definitely not from Target like mine was. It featured a discrete brass plate with TAM engraved in bold capital letters. Troy’s last name was Minear. I didn’t know what the A stood for. Maybe the clue that revealed his wealth was his perfect, short fingernails or the simple ID bracelet he wore on his left wrist. It said TAM, too. Troy was heavily personalized.

“Here’s a couple six-packs of sodas and some snacks,” CJ said, hefting me a soft picnic container. She kissed my cheek. “Let us know you got there okay.”

“I will.” I kissed her back, closing my eyes and remembering my mom. I’d gotten used to this cognitive dissonance—missing my mom while at the same time being glad for the presence of CJ in my life. It was a minor version of my other seismic conflict—spending the day with Troy (yay!), going back to Marlwood (oh God,
why?
).

“Drive safe,” my dad said to Prince Charming. They shook hands. Troy was taller than my father.

We climbed in. I had hoped Heather would show up at the last minute, but apparently she and I really were done. She’d probably texted everyone she knew that Lindsay Cavanaugh was still as insane as ever. Maybe after I left Marlwood for good, I could bypass the San Diego experience by living with my Aunt Doreen in Hick-Sticks, Georgia. That’s what we called it, anyway. She loved bingo night at the Catholic church. I could learn to love bingo, too.

With me beside him, Troy backed his T-bird out of our grease-stained driveway. I waved again at my family, my throat tight as they smiled and waved back, the two boys hopping up and down and wiggling their butts.
I might die
, I told them in my mind.
I might never see you again.

“Your family’s nice,” Troy said, waving too as we drove away and my little green house on the corner got smaller and smaller.

“Thanks. You should unroll your window. I feel an awesome fart coming on.”

He cracked up and slid a glance at me. “You’re funny. I missed you in Cabo.”

“I missed you, too,” I said honestly. “What did you do there?”

“Surfed, swam, hung out. You?”

“Pretty much the same.
Farted
around,” I joked. It wasn’t exactly lying. Except that I hadn’t gone anywhere near our pool. And as for surfing, I had surfed the net for information on the history of Marlwood Academy and all my rich new schoolmates.

“Partied with old friends?” he said, raising his brows above his hypnotizing eyes.

Was that
jealousy
in his voice? Was he really asking about old
boy
friends? I felt a little smug, and very thrilled. Presents, jealousy—I was on a roll.

“Some.” Okay, that
was
a lie.

“Let’s go up the coast,” he suggested. “We’ll take the 5. It’ll morph into Pacific Coast Highway.” PCH was a Southern California historical landmark. The ocean views were the best to be had, and that was saying something.

“Sounds good.”

I studied his profile. Long, straight nose, cleft in the chin, dimple at the side of his mouth. Troy had modeled, as a lark. Friends of the family in the movie industry begged him to be in their films and TV shows.

There is a dead girl living inside me
, I thought as he took his ocean-blue eyes off the road and glanced at me. His easy smile warmed me; if an amazing, hot guy like Troy could like me, I could throw Celia out of my life.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked me, a little lilt in his voice—as if he already knew.

“Not much,” I said.

He grinned. “Me neither.”

I tingled. Of course it had occurred to me that we could stop the car anywhere we wanted. We could look for a secluded spot. Or Troy could rent us a hotel room. Jane had rented lots of rooms; like her, he looked older and he had lots of money. What would it be like? I’d made out with guys, sure, but I had never gone further than second base. Everyone assumed I had, but it was my one big secret, back in the day.

He glanced at the road, then leaned sideways and kissed me, quickly, brushing his lips over mine. He smelled so good. His skin was warm and golden from the sun.

“I really did miss you,” he said, and then he leaned in, and kissed me again.

We made out in the car. A lot. We went pretty far, parked at various ocean vista stops along the way north. It was incredible—like flying: all these amazing sensations pulsating through me, far more intense than it had ever been with Riley. I tried to catch my breath and stay in control; but his skin smelled so good and his hair was so soft, and his lips were warm and he was gentle. . . . It felt like he was respecting me, in a way Riley never had. Riley had always pushed; when he and Jane had snuck into my parents’ room that night—she’d later asked me, “What did you expect? You teased him. What were you waiting for, an engagement ring?”

Troy and I ate all CJ’s snacks—tangerines, cookies, sandwiches, Christmas turkey, guacamole, and cheese—and drank most of the sodas. Then around three or four in the afternoon, Troy insisted on stopping at a French bakery for an enormous pink box of all kinds of pastries, which we scarfed. And later, as we got closer to the mountainous northern region of the state, there was a spiffy sit-down steak dinner in a cozy, dark restaurant called La Vie En France—me in my raggedy jeans, gazing at Troy across a candlelit table, the light catching my necklace. He’d loaded an iPod with great songs, which we listened to through his car speakers, then tore up the freeway laughing and singing.

The seaside town of San Covino was the last outpost of civilization before we began the slow climb into the mountains on a one-lane road. It would take about two hours to travel from San Covino to Marlwood. As we prepared for launch, it was almost eight o’clock, and I had to physically check in with Ms. Krige, my housemother, by ten. As we drove down Main Street in search of gas, shadows stretched across the mirrored store-fronts, making the town seemed deserted . . . dead. We stopped at a Chevron station, and I called my parents, reminding them that I probably wouldn’t be able to reach them again until I got to the landline in my dorm. We had terrible cell phone coverage at Marlwood.

Then we were back in the car in the Chevron lot when Troy got a text message on his wafer-thin phone, so new you couldn’t get it in the States yet, and his face fell. He was quiet for a moment, and then instead of pulling out of the station, he took my hand.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

As soon as he said that, my heart dropped and the whole day of fun—the views, the salt spray, tossing tangerine peels at each other in the car . . . it all fell away like background noise, like a carousel winding down until the music warps, slows, and stops. Let’s face it. There’s never anything good coming when someone says, “I need to tell you something.”

Troy hesitated, tossing his thick dark hair out of his blue eyes. “I don’t want to seem like a player . . . ” Then he trailed off, and loosened his grip on my fingers.

A sickening dread rushed through me. I waited.

He gave his head a little shake. “I told you I would break up with Mandy. But she came to the hospital and . . . ”

I wasn’t stupid. I could fill in the blanks: he hadn’t done it. As I worked to keep the pain out of my expression, I was suddenly very grateful for my year as a Jane-bitch—because she had taught us never to show weakness in front of boys. Never to confirm that we liked or wanted them.
They
had to work to deserve
us
.

“She didn’t used to be so . . . so bad,” he said, wrinkling his forehead. Just . . . it’s so weird. She’s so
bad
.” And I wondered if he
knew
. About the hauntings. “She was . . . ”

He sighed hard and tsked his teeth, as if it was too baffling for him. “It’s her brother. Miles is crazy. He’s ruined their whole family.”

Before I could say anything, he looked up at me. “She was crying when she came to see me. She said she was afraid.”

“Of what?” I asked.

“My guess is Miles. But she wouldn’t say. She told me I wouldn’t understand.”

Of all the things that Mandy might fear, her brother Miles did not seem to be one of them. Word all over campus was that she and her brother had slept in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Together. And that was why she got sent to Marlwood—late, although not as late as me. She had been going to boarding school in London, but Marlwood was much closer to San Francisco, where the Winters lived, and her parents could keep better tabs on her. I half-believed the gossip; she talked about Miles all the time.

“She was
terrified
,” he continued, and I listened hard. Could it be that Mandy and I both wanted to be free of the ghosts that were haunting us?

“I know what you’re thinking,” he went on. “That
she’s
playing
me
.”

You didn’t really want Riley
, Jane had told me after she stole him,
or you would have done anything to get him back.
I knew she was wrong. Guys weren’t possessions to be fought over. And I wasn’t going to fight over Troy. If he liked girls with issues . . .

. . .
Then I am the girl for him. Haha.

Just as with Heather, I had no idea how to respond. He kept gazing at me, then down at his hands, then back at me, and I knew he was expecting something. I just didn’t know what. How did rich girls deal with things like this? Should I give him back the necklace? Tear up my donation card from the Surfrider Foundation? Hitchhike to Marlwood?

“Lindsay,” he said. “I really like you. A
lot
.”

But let’s just be friends
, I mentally filled in, and I wondered what form of insanity I had, that I had actually agreed to riding back to Marlwood with another guy bent on breaking my heart.

“Whatever,” I muttered, trying to keep my voice steady. I hadn’t
asked
him, specifically, to break up with Mandy.

For a moment I thought I saw Celia’s face staring back at me in the windshield; I shifted my gaze and had a terrible thought, and not for the first time: that maybe she really wasn’t there. Maybe it was stress that made me see her. Maybe back at Marlwood, none of that had really happened. I had awakened on the porch, bruised and sopping wet, so maybe it had all been a terrible dream. Or part of a blackout. Or some kind of hallucination . . .

It did happen.

“I just . . . ” he persisted, “I feel like I have a duty toward her. We’ve been together since we were little kids, and Kiyoko was one of her best friends. It is over between her and me, Lindsay. It really is. But . . . she was so upset. And I didn’t want to do it at Christmas . . . ”

“I’m tired,” I said. It was the truth. “Can we not talk?”

“But we should talk.” He reached out to touch my hair, just like Riley in the theater. I pulled my head back slightly, just like in the theater. “I’m going to do it. I promise. But I haven’t done it yet. I’m just trying . . . ” He fumbled, his blue eyes searching mine for understanding.

I melted a little. He was trying hard to be honorable.

“I can’t help you with that,” was all I said.

“She won’t be there until tomorrow,” he added, and I stopped melting. What was he trying to say? That we were still in the clear to cheat on his girlfriend for another twenty-four hours? Did he think I
would
? “She has permission to show up late.”

“I know,” I snapped. “Julie’s coming up with her.”

“Oh.” A beat. “So you’ve been talking to Julie.”

“Not really. Just a couple of calls,” I said. “I didn’t tell Julie that you came over, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

He drew back. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I told him, and practically jumped out of the car.

And he didn’t stop me. Which was good, because I couldn’t have held the tears back another second.

I HID IN THE CHEVRON bathroom, which was incredibly gross, splashing water on my face to wash away the tears I could not hold back. Then I took several deep breaths, and worked to make my face a mask, so Troy wouldn’t see my misery.

He didn’t break up with her. Stupid—I was so stupid for believing there was a chance this was real.

As I walked across the breezeway, fog washed over my ankles like a low tide, trailing in wisps across the concrete expanse between the mini-mart and the pumps. I studied the mountains, and my stomach clenched as thick waves of fog crept down the tops of the pine trees like wild animals searching for prey. Crossing my arms over my chest, I shuddered, hard. I knew what really lived in that fog . . . crazy, angry dead girls obsessed with revenge.

“Hey,” Troy said behind me, and I jumped. “Whoa, sorry. I thought you saw me at the register.” He held up two Red Bulls and some trail mix. “I just got a couple of things to keep us going.”

Peace offerings.

“Thanks,” I said, as we walked back to the car. The fog billowed with our strides as we climbed in and he turned the engine key; the motor purred to life and the car idled eagerly. I clenched my Red Bull so hard my fingertips went numb.

“Last chance,” he reminded me, gesturing to my phone. I texted Julie, but there was no answer. I pictured her riding up with Mandy, probably in a convertible, talking about Troy and Spider, laughing like BFFs.

I’m going back to that
, I thought.
All of that.
My heartbeat jackhammered; beads of sweat tickled my forehead. I began to breathe too shallowly, and I could feel myself pulling away. I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
No,
I thought.
Not in front of Troy.

Unaware, Troy plugged his phone into a charger connected to the cigarette lighter and put the car in reverse. He looked left into the side mirror, and then up to the rearview mirror. And then, he looked at me.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, and the soft sadness of his voice seeped into my silent freakout. I held onto those three syllables as if my sanity depended on them.

Then he brushed my cheek with his lips, and then he kissed me on the side of my mouth. The warm, smooth sensation of contact startled me—tempted me—but I didn’t turn my head toward him, which might—or might not have—led to a full, deep kiss. I wanted him to kiss me like that again, even if it was the last time, even if—

—No. I was
not
like that.

“Okay, on our way,” he said, guiding the T-bird out of the gas station. Then we headed off for Marlwood, and I let the sound of his voice and the touch of his lips warm me like a candle flame.

The higher we drove on the bumpy road, the more fog tumbled down on Troy’s car, until we were inching along and he was swearing under his breath. It was way after nine. We tried calling Marlwood on both our cell phones to check in, but as we expected, there was no reception. We talked about turning around; we talked about just stopping. But there was a good chance we’d drive off the road into the deep ravine on Troy’s left; the other side hugged the mountain face. Since it was the night before classes, other cars would be trailing behind us. If we stopped, we might get hit.

COME TO ME,
come to me, come to me, come to me. Get the ice pick. Push it into her brain. She will become biddable, and gentle. A lady. An asset to the name of Marl—

“We’re here,” Troy said to me, jostling me, and I exhaled as I woke up, as if I had had to hold my breath for a long time.

“Don’t worry about being late,” he said. “They’ll understand.”

He didn’t know that my headmistress, Dr. Ehrlenbach, had protested my admission into Marlwood. I had no doubt she was looking for any excuse to boot me.

The fog had thinned very slightly, and I could make out my surroundings. We were in the parking lot next to the creepy three-story Victorian mansion that was the admin building, complete with stone columns and dim lights in a few of the windows. Limos and luxury cars scattered the lot. Golf carts driven by Marlwood staff collected luggage as tired parents and their students walked to their dorms. There were two hundred of us now; there had been two hundred and one last semester. But Kiyoko was dead.

With dark shiny hair fluffing out over her puffy silver jacket, jeans, and boots rimmed with fur, Shayna Maisel was walking down the incline with a heavily bearded man in a yarmulke. Her dad the rabbi, I supposed. Shayna had once been Kiyoko’s best friend. First her BFF, then her ex-BFF. I had met her in my lit class on my first day at Marlwood, when she’d been trying to get Kiyoko to eat a protein bar. But that was before Kiyoko had crossed over to the dark side and hung with Mandy. Before Kiyoko died.

Shayna had stuck up for Kiyoko when Mandy had humiliated her with one of her stupid pranks—forcing Kiyoko to skinny-dip in Searle Lake. Shayna had wrapped her freezing, anorexic friend in a blanket down at the shore while Mandy laughed uncontrollably. But Kiyoko had dumped her anyway. Shayna had been Kiyoko’s Heather. There were dark rings under her chocolate brown eyes. Part of me wanted to say something to her—but I didn’t.

Trailing slightly behind Shayna, Charlotte Davidson, our closest thing to a goth, tapped each of the white horse heads that held oversized white painted chain links in their mouths with the brass tip of an old-fashioned black umbrella. Her blue-black hair streaked with red, Charlotte had on a long steampunk black coat with a high collar and black gloves with scarlet lace on them. The man and woman walking with her were bland rich parents in London Fog raincoats and boots.

Shayna glanced my way and gave me a wave. I waved back. Troy hadn’t actually believed that our ride together would remain a secret, had he?

“So, thanks,” I said to him now. “For driving me.”

He stepped closer. “I-I . . . you’re welcome.” He searched my face and started to say something else. Closed his mouth. I nodded, and turned away, even though I was hurt that he didn’t kiss me goodbye or say anything about meeting up later. Jane would have been proud of me for keeping my issues to myself.

“Lindsay,” he said.

I stopped without turning around. “Yes?”

“I thought I saw something. In the fog.”

Oh, God
.

Now I did turn around. His hands were in his pockets, and his head was lowered slightly as he gazed down at me. He was grinning. “You were asleep. I almost woke you but it happened so fast. Just a split-second—”

I kept my voice neutral. “What did you see?”

He waggled his brows. “I was tired. I was thinking about that old story about the ghost that runs down the bypass. The girl who’s on fire. And . . . I thought I saw her.”

I felt as if someone had pushed me into the lake; that I was so frozen my hair might break off—

“I think it was just some light bouncing off the fog, but it was freaky,” he finished, looking a little abashed.

“Do you think she was really there?” I asked him.

He laughed. “Naw. But it would have been cool if she had been.”

“You’re wrong,” I blurted.

He blinked. “Excuse me?” He slung his thumbs in his jacket pockets and tilted his head. “You don’t really believe in all that stuff, do you?”

“Of course not,” I said stiffly. “Thanks again for the ride. Bye.”

“Wait,” he said, but I knew it was time to go. “Thanks for not farting in the car—you know, like your brother said . . . ” he added, searching, I knew, for a way to make me laugh, to recapture the magic.

I grunted sadly to myself, and headed for Grose, my dorm and one of the oldest buildings on campus, staring down at Jessel, where Mandy lived, on the hill below us. With its four turrets tiled in slate and its hunchbacked shape, Jessel was far more interesting than Grose—and said to be the most haunted. I knew for a fact that that was true.

The curtains of Jessel were open, but all the windows were dark, except for one—the large, arched window of the turret room that was Mandy’s single. Candlelight flickered dimly, and someone was standing in the window, head bent, staring straight at me. My blood ran cold.

Mandy Winters was already here.

Behind Jessel, the inky blackness of Searle Lake winked through the fog. The thick promotional booklet about Marlwood (eighty-four pages) showed glossy pictures of pine trees and wildflowers, extolling the virtues of the campus: three hundred acres of forested land, hiking and biking trails, seventeen dorms, the quaint bell tower of Founder’s Hall, and excellence in education. It failed to mention the nearly thirty condemned buildings where students held all-night parties and occult planning sessions about whom to murder next.

“Hey.” Shayna came up beside me now, and I nearly leaped out of my skin.

“God, Shayna,” I said, trying to force out a laugh instead of a scream. “You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry.” Shayna was gaunt, her cheekbones too prominent, her eyes deep in their sockets. She toyed with a large abstract pendant dotted with diamonds—I had no cause to believe they were anything but real—as she began to walk toward my dorm, then stopped when I didn’t immediately follow.

“How have you been?” I asked, catching up to her. There were lines of tension around her mouth. I realized that in the two weeks between Kiyoko’s death and our winter break, I had never said a word to Shayna, never comforted her. I had been lost in my own angst. And too busy trying to stay alive.

“Well, you know.” She looked at her dad, who had stopped to wait for her about twenty yards ahead of us. She lowered her voice. “There’s a welcome-back party,” she said. “At that creepy lake house. You know the one?”

I nodded. “Who’s going?” I looked over at Jessel. The figure in the turret room hadn’t moved.

“Whoever can sneak out.” She smiled cynically. “It’s the Marlwood way.”

“Are you going?” I asked her.

She gave me a long, measured look, as if trying to decide something about me. Her expression didn’t change as she stopped playing with her necklace and dropped her hands to her side.

“Oh, yeah, I’m going,” she told me. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

I had the sense that she was trying to tell me more than I was hearing, but I just flashed her a quick smile as we reached the door to Grose. The Marlwood Academy crest, a carved M surrounded by leaves, jutted from the center.
Like a stop sign
, I thought. But I opened the door, wondering if Shayna wanted me to invite her in. Shayna had never hung out with me before. Maybe none of her friends had arrived yet. The fog had messed up everyone’s schedule.

“Okay, so, I’ll see you there,” I said. The sooner I got to the business of getting rid of Celia, the better. And maybe seeing all the girls again would give me
some
idea how.

Just then, the little golf cart with my luggage pulled up on the walk. I wished I didn’t care that Shayna would see my low-rent luggage, but it still embarrassed me.

“I need to call my parents,” I said gently. “Check in. And . . . recharge.”

Her cheeks reddened.

“I won’t tell her,” Shayna said. “That you were talking to Troy in the parking lot.”

So that’s how it looked
, I thought.
People will assume he and I ran into each other here at school. No one else will know he drove me up here . . . unless he tells them.

“Thanks,” I said. Then I opened the door and went inside the second-most-haunted dorm on campus.

Judging by the beautiful burnished luggage placed beside antique canopy beds, and iPods and cashmere scarves dangling from half-opened cherry wood and ebony dresser drawers, some of my dorm mates had arrived. But there was no one else actually in Grose except for my housemother, Ms. Krige, who greeted me in her bathrobe and told me with a yawn that everyone else had gone to bed. I couldn’t believe she was so naïve; or maybe it just made her life easier to look the other way.

“Be very careful,” she added. “There were some mountain lion attacks over break. They lost a dog at Lakewood.”

She went back into her room and shut the door. I heard the TV go on. She really
didn’t
want to know what was going on.

I faced the hallway. The overhead chandeliers cast pools of light on the waxed hardwood floor, which I disturbed as I walked toward my room. The walls were covered with offerings from the art classes—a lot of them fairly bad—and the overly large eyes of a poorly painted portrait of a girl with an enormous forehead followed my every move.

I reluctantly changed out of my dad’s socks but I did put my Doc Martens back on. They were a Christmas present from my cousin Jason and his boyfriend Andreas. I also put on the army jacket Jason had given me earlier in the year. I had to choose between it and my mom’s ratty UCSD sweater, which was one of my most treasured objects. After the long day, it was time to switch out the beautiful cashmere sweater for something else. I put on my black long-underwear top—which was kind of sexy-sheer, not that it mattered—and stuck with my old, ripped jeans.

And I took off the silk crocheted necklace, and put it in the topmost drawer of my dresser.