Chapter 2
The next morning, Mallory sits in the health center wearing a pink-and-white medical gown and summons the greatest skill her mother taught her before she died: the language of lying.
The days they once had together were long and full of make-believe.
Their tiny blue house in Shoreview, Rhode Island, was a castle, a moon landing, a dragon’s den.
Mallory’s mother worked nights at a bar in Providence, so their afternoons stretched into a singular burst of sunlight, punctuated by colorful fabric spilling from a dress-up trunk.
It was just the two of them, no father to intrude on their games.
We don’t have to be ourselves today, her mother would say. Who would you like to be instead?
Mallory’s mother had a treasure trove of fairy tales filed away, plucking a new one like a flower each day.
She’d tell Mallory legends of cursed fairies and far-off realms, kindhearted witches and lonely ghosts.
Mallory’s favorite was the story Jasmine told most often: about a house on a magical island that granted wishes to visitors lucky enough to find it.
Their own house was riddled with playful superstition: unicorn-shaped selenite crystals atop Mallory’s bureau, bundles of herbs scattered in the kitchen.
To keep the evil spirits out, her mother would whisper with a wink before setting them aflame.
It was one long game. Yet sometimes, it seemed like Mallory’s mother believed every word. Reality became so intertwined with fantasy, Mallory wasn’t always sure of the difference, either.
But when Mallory was four, her world grew darker, and the word pretend changed shape. She learned how to hide beneath blankets and imagine she was inside a stone fortress, protected from the stale, smoldering odor that would fill the walls of the blue house each evening.
A scent that always meant she was nearby.
The woman in a white dress, covered in blood.
Mallory tried to tell Aunt Penelope about it once while her mother was at work, explain that the air in her bedroom would turn tangy, that soon after, she would appear.
Crouching behind Mallory’s dollhouse in silence.
Peering through the curtains. The woman would never say a word, just stare and stare in that white lace gown with a cherry-red stain over her chest. All while Mallory’s room would seethe with invisible, rotten smoke.
But Penelope, who never knew how to play pretend, simply ushered her back to bed.
Mallory’s mother was the only one who ever believed her. Because she could see her, too.
She’s my ghost, her mother explained once, not yours. The only reason you see her is because you’re small. Some children have a gift that way; they can peer between worlds. Not everyone is special like you.
Whenever her mother spoke of the ghost, her tone was usually airy.
But sometimes, Mallory caught sight of her face when nightfall approached, noticing the apprehension strewn across it.
Like she was anticipating the woman’s visit, too.
As time went on, Mallory registered all the little ways fear took root in her mother’s body: perpetually torn-up cuticles, the cigarettes she chain-smoked, the way the house was spotless each morning because her mother had frantically cleaned until sunrise.
Toward the end, her mother insisted on keeping every light on, even at night.
Most of her mother’s friends stopped coming over, and Mallory wondered if she didn’t want them to see her like that.
To see her afraid.
Mallory learned that particular lesson the hard way.
Learned that when she screamed in pre-K because of the nightmarish woman in the window, other children only became frightened of her.
Learned that when she caught wisps of the woman in the bathroom mirror, or felt her hovering on the playground, the best thing to do was nothing at all.
How do you tell people something terrifying follows you from place to place?
That your house isn’t haunted—you are?
It became so much easier to lie.
And so, the art of pretending turned into the medicine of lying. It saved her from having to confess that she was different, that she was broken in places other children were not.
The visits from the blood-soaked woman stopped after her mother died, when Mallory was five. As though Mallory’s mother took all the fear with her in death.
Even so, the lies stuck, becoming a part of Mallory forever.
Everything hurts a little less when you hide inside a world that isn’t yours.
It’s an idea Mallory’s clung to for as long as she can remember, going so far as to dedicate her life to theater.
I don’t have to be myself today, Mallory still thinks before taking on a new role.
Or telling a little white lie.
Like now, for instance, sitting in an exam room in Shore College’s Health and Wellness Center, while a nurse practitioner inspects her injured palm.
“You said you got this cutting a bagel?” the nurse asks skeptically. Mallory nods.
Lie, lie, lie.
“My roommate wanted to take me for stitches, but the bleeding stopped on its own.”
This, at least, is true. After auditions, she and Arden huddled in the bathroom to peer at the sticky red cut.
I still think you should get it looked at, Arden had said.
Mallory promised to visit the health center first thing in the morning, hoping Arden would stop asking.
But as they lay in their respective beds in their narrow dorm in Fletcher Hall later, Arden’s whisper cut across the room—
Mal, is everything okay with you?
Mallory had pretended to be asleep. She found herself longing for their nights at boarding school, when they’d trade pieces of cafeteria gossip between poster-covered walls. At the time, Mallory had been convinced the shadowed part of her life was over.
But maybe it was just dormant, waiting to be woken back up. That smell in the theater had stirred something loose inside her, excavating the fear she’d felt as a child hiding beneath blankets while that woman lurked in the shadows.
“That’s a pretty deep laceration,” the nurse says, reaching for a box of gauze. “You sure that’s how you got it?”
Mallory doesn’t hesitate. “Yep. Clumsy me.”
The nurse makes a hmm sound but doesn’t push further, and Mallory relaxes with a small sigh of relief.
“Alright. I’m going to write you a prescription for mupirocin to ward off infection. You can pick it up at Shoreview Pharmacy. You know where that is?”
“Yeah.” Mallory nods again. “I grew up here. In Shoreview, I mean.”
“Really?” The creases in the nurse’s face deepen as she winds the gauze around Mallory’s hand. “Young folks around here usually can’t wait to move away.”
Mallory forces a smile. Maybe she should start saying she’s from Boston, like Arden. It would be easier than admitting she’s a legacy student, which will lead to questions about a family she’d never met.
Most people wouldn’t understand why Mallory wanted to attend the same school as her mother. Even Aunt Penelope tried to dissuade her from going to Shore. You deserve to design your own future, she’d said. No use stirring up history that will only cause you pain.
Mallory had wanted to laugh, because lingering questions hurt more than the past ever could.
But she also wasn’t sure how to confess the real reason she’d wanted to enroll.
During winter break last year, she’d dug through Penelope’s closet in search of some shoes when she noticed a bin of her mother’s old clothes.
At the bottom had been a notebook—with the Shore College insignia on the front.
It was mostly full of lecture notes, and Mallory had nearly cast it aside, until she saw the way her mother’s penmanship had devolved as she flipped through the pages.
The way it started out neat in autumn, but by spring was barely legible.
As though her mother’s hands had refused to communicate with her brain.
Like something else had taken over instead.
The sight reminded Mallory of her mother’s notepad in the blue house. Pages that were full of grocery lists on one side, and nonsensical things that didn’t even look like words on the other. Mallory asked about it once, and her mother responded by throwing the entire pad in the trash.
When Mallory reached the last page of her mother’s Shore notebook, she’d frozen. There, her mother had drawn a series of squares, like a code.
Mallory couldn’t explain it, but it was like her mother was whispering to her with those scratchy pen marks. Come find me, she seemed to call. You deserve to know where this all began.
But it wasn’t like Mallory could say any of this to Aunt Penelope.
They argued about college for months, until Shore’s admissions department reached out, offering Mallory a scholarship.
A recruiter had seen her boarding school’s senior production of The Crucible, writing that their theater department would be lucky to receive her talent.
It felt like fate, like the universe had handed her a map. Penelope relented soon after, sending Mallory off to Shore with a cell phone so she could check in over text whenever she wanted.
“Before you go,” the nurse continues, reclaiming Mallory’s attention, “I want to verify some information on your char—” She frowns at the folder. “Webb, right?”
“Yes.”
“Jasmine?”
Mallory’s chest clenches. “No. That’s my mother. I’m Mallory.”
“Ahh. That would explain it.” The nurse waves the file. “Didn’t think you were born over forty years ago. If you were, I’d be asking about your night cream. Your mother is a Shore alum?”
“Was,” Mallory corrects, and the past tense doesn’t even sting as understanding sinks in.
Her mother’s medical records are here, in this building.
They’ve been here this whole time.
“Oh, you poor thing. I’m sorry for your loss.” The nurse’s sneakers squeak as she patters toward the door. “I’ll return this to the office and grab your chart. One moment, please.”