Chapter 6
Ezra made the next phase sound easy, but Mallory’s ghost doesn’t return the following night, or the night after.
They meet every day after rehearsal for an entire week. Seven nights in the candlelit dressing room, fingers laced together. But the mirror remains dark—no woman in a bloody dress, no silent warnings between toothless gums.
Still, whenever Mallory gets scared and wants to stop, Ezra counters with: Tell me something real. It’s become a game, a way to ground her.
On Thursday, he asks: “You’re on a desert island and you can only bring one album—what is it?”
“Fiona Apple, Tidal.”
“One book.”
“Weetzie Bat.”
“Movie.”
“The Craft.”
Ezra releases a sound, something between a chuckle and an exhale, and Mallory narrows her eyes.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No. Although that was funny.” His voice is curved in a smile. “Just thinking it would be depressing as fuck to be stranded on an island with you.”
On Friday, he asks when she had her first kiss. She tells him about Mason, a lacrosse player at a neighboring boarding school who put his hands under her sweater at the fall fair in ninth grade. She doesn’t tell him about Becca, the popular girl she secretly wished she was kissing instead.
Mallory’s confessions snowball until she recounts having sex for the first time with a boy she met on vacation junior year, the way she discovered it felt empowering, like she had a sense of control.
But then Ezra trades his own stories without her having to ask, and surprise flutters through her when he says his first crush was a boy.
“I didn’t know any of the terms,” he explains.
“Straight, gay, bi—those words didn’t mean anything to me.
I just knew I liked being around him. And then a few years later, there was a girl.
” He shrugs. “There’s so much noise, so much pressure from all sides to be a certain way.
I still don’t have a word for it. I’ve hooked up with girls, and I’ve been with guys. It’s just who I am.”
A million possible responses jumble inside Mallory’s mouth. It’s who I am, too, she could say. I think we’re the same. But instead, she tightens their hands and offers, “Not everything needs a definition.”
On Saturday, Ezra asks about her dad. It’s an inevitable question, the practical follow-up to finding out her mother is dead.
People always want to know how deep her loneliness runs.
But Ezra asks it differently, like he just wants to know about her.
And something about that makes Mallory brave enough to admit she’s never even met her father, that Penelope always said he worshipped her mother endlessly, but she preferred to be alone. Said she felt safer that way.
“Sometimes,” Mallory admits into the flames, “I worry she passed that guardedness on to me. That maybe I’m meant to be alone, too.” He doesn’t say anything after that.
On Sunday, Mallory inquires about Ezra’s rings. “Graduation gift,” he says as she studies the engravings. “My dad’s dad made them. The symbols date back to the fifteen hundreds. I guess you could say my grandpa was a bit of a history nerd.”
Monday, he asks about her dream role. (Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)
Tuesday, her biggest regret. (That she doesn’t have more photos of her mother.)
On Wednesday, she asks him his.
They’re sitting on the floor, hands pressed together. The candle crackles between them, and Ezra hesitates at the question, like he’s not sure he wants to answer.
“You don’t have to—”
“I was ten the first time my dad hit me,” Ezra interrupts, and she quiets immediately.
The air between them seems to shift. “But that’s not where it started.
Or where it ended. People think of abuse as bruises and welts, but it’s also other things.
” His gaze drops to their laced fingers.
“It’s being called worthless over and over until you believe it’s true.
It’s getting locked in a closet if you talk back.
It’s—” He swallows. “It’s being told he’s hurting you because he loves you. ”
Ezra takes a shaky breath. Before she can change her mind, Mallory carefully, tentatively runs her thumb over his. Her pulse jumps as he strokes back just as softly, and when he speaks again, his voice is steady. As though her touch is grounding him, too.
“It all blurred together,” Ezra continues.
“You go somewhere in your head, you know? Make up a new life where nothing bad has ever happened. And you stay there for as long as you can.” Ezra raises his eyes to hers.
“It took me years to realize I didn’t have to pretend—that I could claim a different life for myself.
I wonder who I could’ve become if I’d figured it out sooner.
But it’s too late now.” He looks away again.
“ ‘Regret’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. ”
Mallory stares at him, too many thoughts tangling inside her brain.
“It’s never too late,” she finally says.
The smile that flutters across Ezra’s face can only be described as sad.
“Sometimes,” he says, “it is.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” she adds, and he tips his head. “What he did to you all those years. It wasn’t your fault.”
He goes quiet at that, staring across the flames. It takes her a breath to understand his silence: No one has ever said that to him before.
For a moment, she contemplates moving closer, close enough to hold not just his hands but to hold him. She wonders if he’d let her. If he’d stroke her hair and tell her that the world is a fucked-up, dark mess of a thing, but there’s a small light in it now.
Before she can, Ezra blows the candles out and says, “I don’t think there are any ghosts here tonight other than mine.”
When Mallory arrives at the dressing room the following evening, it’s completely dark. She frowns, checks her watch. She and Ezra have still been meeting thirty minutes after rehearsal every night, once the theater has cleared out.
It’s getting harder and harder to come up with excuses for Arden.
Yesterday at breakfast, Mallory said she’d promised to help Christina with alterations to make up for ripping her Juliet dress.
Today at dinner, she wove a story about cramming for a literature test. I’ll be at the library late.
It was such a tiny fib, but she saw the glimmer of suspicion behind Arden’s lashes that hadn’t been there before.
Mallory swallows as she thinks about it, hurrying down the stairwell.
Arden’s friendship has always been a life raft, something to hold on to.
And here Mallory is, chipping away at the one thing she’s ever felt good about in her life.
Burying their shared history beneath a mountain of lies and digging her own grave along with it.
Perhaps she should have told Arden the truth from the start, let her decide if she wanted someone like her as a friend.
Arden’s rejection might have stung, but it would have hurt a lot less than this bottomless guilt.
Ezra is right—sometimes, it is too late.
Just as Mallory is about to exit the lobby, a clattering sound echoes inside the Crypt. Holding her breath, she creeps into the darkened theater, trepidation coursing through her as her brain works out what she might find—
She exhales in relief when she spots Ezra, center stage, tugging up a trapdoor.
“What are you doing?” she calls, approaching.
“Change of scenery.” He straightens, revealing a narrow flight of wooden stairs. “Rehearsal studio isn’t working, so let’s try somewhere new.”
“Down there?” She warily eyes the dark opening. “I don’t know. There are probably spiders.”
Ezra just shrugs, already halfway belowground. “Probably.”
Burying her hesitation, Mallory follows him down the rickety steps to the storage vault.
She’s met with a fragrant cloud, almost like the sandalwood incense Arden burns, and her eyes adjust to the shadows moving over old set pieces: a Victorian-era couch, a heavy oak armoire, a pyramid of Queen Anne chairs.
“This is very Phantom of the Opera of you,” she says, trailing him in the dark.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Ezra drops his messenger bag onto one of the tables and pulls out his usual candles. Mallory’s eyebrows shoot up.
“You want to light those down here?” She points to the wooden planks above them. “Are you trying to burn this place to the ground?”
“It’ll be fine.” Ezra produces the silver lighter from his front pocket. “Did you bring it?”
Mallory sighs and reaches into her bag for the lock of hair and bloodstained ribbon. He gestures to the table, and she lays it next to the candle before tugging off her coat.
“I don’t think we should be doing this,” she adds, watching as Ezra draws a new chalk circle on the floor. “Besides possible arson, now we’re messing with props, a theatrical sin.”
“You sound like a stage manager.” Ezra repositions a velvet chaise next to the circle, smirking. “Tell me something, Jules. Are you always this much of a good girl?”
There’s no way to ignore the heat in her stomach at that. Without answering, Mallory snatches the lighter, setting all three candles ablaze. She drops onto the sofa, sending a cloud of cobwebs askew.
“Are we having another séance?” she clips.
“Not exactly.” Ezra sits beside her. “Think of it as a game. About death.”
Mallory stares at him. Above the amber spill of the candles, his features are knife sharp, a discordant mix of angelic and skeletal. In this moment, he looks like someone who doesn’t fear death because it’s already inside him.
She flexes her fingers nervously. “What’s the game?”
“There’s an idea among some mediums,” Ezra starts, “that if you’re having trouble accessing the other side, you should try invoking the dead closest to you. Emotionally speaking, that is.”
Mallory arches a brow. “Let me guess. Another book you read?”
“Not this time.” Ezra’s lips twitch in a smile. “Saw it on an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?”