Chapter 3
That night, Mallory dreams of smoke.
Distantly aware that she’s asleep, she examines her surroundings: blackened, starless sky. Thick smattering of evergreens on all sides. A crackling bonfire a few feet away.
A forest in the middle of the night.
This is the same nightmare she used to have when she was small. Another thing that stopped after her mother died, like the visits from that terrifying woman.
Mallory inches closer, flinching at the squelch of mud beneath her bare feet.
An acrid burning smell invades her nostrils as she ducks beneath distended branches.
A circle of cloaked figures flickers ahead, like fuzzy static.
There are about a dozen of them, huddled around the fire, wearing dark velvet capes and black masks with elongated beaks.
Making them look like a flock of ravens.
In the past, she’d always wake at this moment, jolted into a cold sweat by everything she didn’t understand. But now, curiosity outweighs her fear, and she approaches the small crowd to see what they’re looking at.
An altar of three engraved stones, displaying a wet, pulsating heart.
It’s like she was trying to cut out her own heart.
Mallory leans against a tree, hand pressed to her mouth to hold back a swell of bile. Wake up, she silently commands herself. Wake the fuck up—
“Mallory,” whispers a childlike voice. “Don’t be afraid.”
She whirls. Déjà vu flattens her stomach, and her mouth forms a name she hasn’t uttered in over a decade.
“Kiki…?”
Mallory hasn’t seen her since moving in with Aunt Penelope, but it’s her: Kiki, the girl who lived next door to the blue house. Kiki, the girl with golden pigtails Mallory used to trade secrets with beneath the willowy stretch of her tree house. Kiki, her very first friend.
“Kiki, wait,” she calls as the young girl starts for the fire. “Don’t go over there!”
“It’s okay.” Kiki points. “She’ll protect us.”
“Who?” Mallory squints through the smoke. “What are you talking about?”
Kiki’s amber-colored eyes glimmer. “Her name,” she whispers, “is Lily.”
“Mallory Eleanor Webb!”
Mallory opens her eyes at Arden’s loud voice and winces at the blaze of light streaming into the dorm. Gauzy curtains are thrown wide on either side of the arched windows, and Mallory shields her face as she sits up.
“Close those, will you?” Mallory mutters, chestnut hair pooling around her shoulders. “Why are you screaming first thing in the morning?”
“It’s almost noon.” Arden tosses jeans and a sweater at her. “You missed scene study. I’m here to drag your ass out of bed so you don’t miss advisory, too. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“What?” Mallory says, fully awake now. She reaches for her alarm clock and frowns at the frozen 3:33 that stares back. “Shit.”
She drops the broken clock with a clatter and peels off her oversized T-shirt, tugging on fresh clothes. When she looks back at Arden, it’s to find her peering oddly.
“Did you do some painting after we all hung out?”
Mallory frowns, confused. They spent yesterday evening smoking clove cigarettes in the twinkling courtyard tucked between a cluster of dormitory halls: Corwin, Denitt, Tillinghast, and Fletcher.
All four brick buildings are punctuated with trellises of ivy and wrought iron gates, though Fletcher, where Mallory and Arden live, is arguably the biggest, with newly renovated rooms.
At some point, they were joined by two other theater majors, Rafael Marques and Jessica Yun, who arrived bearing a six-pack and excitement over the cast list. Guess we’re going to have to get to know each other really well, Raf had joked to Mallory after announcing he’d be playing Romeo.
She’d gone to bed first, telling the others she had to get up early to study for an art history exam, when really, she intended to look up that neurologist from her mother’s records. Memory of the plan comes flooding back now, and Mallory jumps to her feet.
“Painting? I don’t know what you mean. Arden, I need to make a call, and it’s kind of private. Do you mind…?”
She trails off, noticing her hand. One side is smudged black, as though she’d dipped it in wet paint.
“That’s why I asked,” Arden says, following her stare. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” Mallory rubs it with her bandaged hand, wincing at the slice of pain. But it’s useless; the mark lingers like a shadow.
“Mal,” Arden asks softly, “are you alright?”
Arden’s tone wraps Mallory in a familiar warmth, reminding her of all the times they’ve taken care of each other.
How Arden checked on her between classes the entire week she had the flu in tenth grade.
The way Mallory snuck a bottle of wine into their dorm last year when Arden’s then-boyfriend kissed another girl at homecoming.
Mallory summons a smile. “I’m fine. Thanks for waking me.”
“ ’Course.”
She glances at her desk, swallowing yet more guilt. “I really do need to make that—”
“Call. Right.” Arden grabs her bag. “Coffee later?”
“Definitely.”
Mallory watches Arden leave, the door clicking behind her.
In the quiet, the remnants of her dream wash over her, carrying a flood of nostalgia.
Kiki appeared in her subconscious the exact way Mallory remembers her—frozen at five years old.
Limbs kissed with plum bruises, a blue teddy bear in the crook of her arm.
Mallory’s mother and Kiki’s mother were best friends, too, and the four of them spent so much time together—dinners, holidays, vacations—they might as well have lived in a world of their own.
But after Mallory’s mother died, Kiki’s mom wouldn’t let them play together anymore, as though death was contagious and Mallory was irreversibly infected.
She never even got to say goodbye.
Pushing the thought away, Mallory turns to the drawer where she’d hidden her mother’s records. She retrieves them, flipping to the health center visits.
And sucks in a raw, confused gasp.
Nothing is legible. Instead, there’s one word written over and over, letters rushing together, consuming the careful cursive underneath.
HURT
“What…?” Mallory thumbs through the pages. Everything is covered in ink. All the notes, gone. That neurologist’s name and phone number, gone. All replaced with HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT HURT HU—
“What the fuck?” She pushes both hands through her hair. “What the fuck? Wh—?”
She stops, catching sight of the uncapped black marker on her desk.
Her gaze slams to her hands. To the smudges on the sides.
“No. No, I didn’t do this. When would I have—”
The room swims as Mallory thinks of her mother’s notebook from Shore, that pad of lists in the blue house, the way her handwriting deteriorated into chaos over time. As though she wasn’t in control of what she was writing.
As if something else was.
Panicked fear overtakes her, and Mallory shoves the papers into the folder, stuffing the entire thing in her desk. Bloody hearts. Lily. Kiki. Hurt.
She wishes she could talk to her mother. You’re stronger than any ghost, her mother used to say. You exist in this world. You get to claim it for yourself.
Mallory drops to her bed, nonsensical questions racing through her. Do ghosts bide their time? Can a haunting return like a cancer?
She considers the idea of a patient spirit, satiated for more than a decade after driving one woman to her death. A wraith sleeping in the shadows, laughing maniacally as Mallory tried for years to assemble a ruse of normalcy.
Waiting for her time to run out. For it to be her turn.
Perhaps Shore was never going to offer answers about her mother.
Maybe Shore was always going to be her own reckoning.
At the read-through that evening, Mallory’s head is swimming with too many thoughts.
She sits between Arden and Raf at the table set up on the stage, barely able to concentrate. She rubs at her hand; the ink remains a stubborn stain.
“Juliet.” Hendrix’s voice cuts across the room. “It’s your line.”
“Sorry.” Mallory flips pages, an embarrassed blush warming her cheeks. “What scene?”
Raf leans over, pointing. On the periphery of Mallory’s vision, she notices Ezra straighten in his chair, his focus solely on her.
“One five,” Hendrix answers. “Romeo and Juliet’s tragic meet-cute—and perhaps your biggest challenge as actors.
To convince an entire room not only that love at first sight exists but also that two people can cross paths and inherently know this is someone I would die for.
” He gestures with his script. “This scene should be imbued with attraction, but it’s also a catalyst—death is set into motion from this moment on. ”
The rest of the read-through passes in fits and starts.
Mallory loses her place dozens of times, and by the end of the three-hour rehearsal, her palms are slick with sweat.
This isn’t her. Last year, when she played Abigail in The Crucible, she had her lines memorized in a week.
She always dives headfirst into roles, whispering scripted words while doing her makeup in the morning, silently running them again while falling asleep.
She’s not sure who this pathetic person is tonight, but she’s suddenly desperate to leave before Hendrix can pull her aside and say he’s made a grave error in casting her.
But as she’s tugging on her coat, a voice drifts into the theater.
“Can I please see Romeo and Juliet and their understudies?”
Mallory looks toward an upperclassman girl with pink hair standing between the curtains. Christina Garcia. Senior design major and head of costumes.
“Juliet’s understudy isn’t here tonight,” Ezra offers from the other side of the stage. “Her name’s Saskia Garin. She’s starting the semester late.”
“How’d she audition, then?” Arden mutters, and Mallory narrows her eyes.
“Good question.”
“Gotcha.” Christina makes a note on the clipboard she’s carrying. “Well, can the rest of you follow me? I want to take some initial measurements.”
“See you at home,” Arden says, and Mallory offers her a small smile.