Chapter 22
The air inside Providence Memorial Hospital is different, somehow. Heavier. As Mallory sits in the waiting room, it’s like she’s weighed down by the invisible pain and grief of strangers. A suitable punishment for putting Arden here.
Guilt floods her as she replays the evening.
Red and blue beams cutting through the lobby like a kaleidoscope.
The EMT shining a flashlight in Mallory’s eyes, replacing her terrifying hunger with fresh fear.
The way Arden was lifted like a stiff corpse onto a stretcher.
How Mallory and Saskia rode in the ambulance with her, and Arden never once opened her eyes.
It wasn’t until they got to the ER that Mallory recalled Hendrix’s warning about being in the theater after hours.
No one at Shore can know we were in the loft, she whispered to Saskia, hating herself.
We have no idea who tore the tape or broke the ladder.
We were putting away our costumes in the dressing room.
We heard Arden scream and found her in the hall.
Arden’s parents had appeared in the lobby just then, expressions twisted in worry.
A doctor said the words head contusion, oblique leg fracture, stable condition, and only at that last phrase did the lines in Nancy Thatcher’s tear-dampened face finally soften.
She’ll be awake soon, the doctor added. You can see her if you want.
Nancy gestured for Mallory and Saskia to follow. But Mallory couldn’t do it. I’ll go after you’re done, she offered. She should be with her family first.
You’re family, too, Arden’s mother said.
Mallory thought of all the weekends she’d spent at the Thatchers’ town house, the endless breakfasts in their sun-drenched kitchen, opening the refrigerator like it was her own.
It was even Arden’s mom who drove her for a birth control prescription when she overheard Mallory talking about sex.
You’re only sixteen, Nancy said at the time.
You don’t want to get pregnant at your age, and you can’t always trust men to care.
Didn’t your aunt ever talk to you about this?
But as much as Arden’s mother had been there for her, there was no way to look her in the eye now and say, This is my fault.
Arden was searching for me when she got hurt.
So Mallory mumbled a cowardly goodbye and chose to sit in the waiting room alone.
Saskia volunteered to stay, but Mallory shook her head and promised she’d call when she returned to campus.
Facing Arden is something she’ll have to do on her own.
Mallory can’t say for certain how long she’s been waiting.
She falls asleep at one point, and when she wakes, the sky is pink with sunrise.
She brings both hands to her cheeks and finds them cool, as though her fever broke overnight.
Bending her head to her knees, she distantly registers two damp moons kissing the curve of her thigh-high socks.
She frowns. She doesn’t remember getting her knees wet.
“Mallory?” A nurse materializes, interrupting her thoughts. “Arden Thatcher is ready to see you.”
Arden’s hospital room is bathed in the ivory light of daybreak. An oversized bouquet of yellow roses sits in a vase on the nightstand, and suddenly the stuffed bunny in Mallory’s fist feels completely inadequate.
“Hi,” she says.
Arden lies still, one leg propped and wrapped in plaster. A gauzy bandage is stamped to her forehead, and shadows cling beneath her eyes. She turns slowly, like it’s an effort to move. Or an effort to look at her.
Mallory sits on the edge of the bed.
“How are you feeling? I’ve been sick to my stomach. I thought you were…”
She trails off as she catches sight of how Arden is staring. Mouth curled in disgust.
“Arden?”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” The words taste chalky.
“This. Pretend. You’re only here because you have to be.”
Mallory looks away. She thinks of those early days with Arden at school, the way they used to sit in the cafeteria and eye their classmates in identical pleated skirts and blazers.
Arden, a vigilante superhero with flip-clips in her chunky highlights, and Mallory, her scrappy sidekick.
Stronger together than they ever were apart.
“I’m sorry,” Mallory admits. “It’s my fault. I’m s—”
“I don’t want you to apologize,” Arden interrupts, but there’s no bite to her voice. “I want you to tell me something real.”
Her words dig at something soft inside Mallory. She thinks of how she pleaded the same to Ezra, how terrible it feels to look right at someone and beg for the truth—and watch them lie instead.
For a moment, Mallory toys with how a confession might sound—but there’s no guarantee it would make anything better.
She can imagine Arden’s expression, her pretty features twisted in a concoction of disbelief and horror as she realizes Mallory’s entire world is the antithesis of everything that makes up her faith.
“Something real,” Mallory echoes. “The day you got in trouble for wearing your uniform too short and told our homeroom teacher he was a sexist pig, I knew I wanted to be your friend. But I almost didn’t believe it when you wanted to be mine.
I kept waiting for you to find a new best friend who was more like you, knowing eventually you’d learn every terrible thing about me.
” She glances at her torn cuticles. “But you didn’t leave. And I never told you anyway.”
“Tell me,” Arden says. “Just tell me now and we can start over.”
“I can’t. We can’t.” Mallory glances at the disappointment gathering in Arden’s face, and she’s not sure which is worse.
The incredulous, terrified way Arden might stare if she unloaded every ounce of blasphemous truth, or how she’s looking at her now.
Maybe they’re the same. Maybe either way, they lose.
“I love you, Arden. That will always be real.”
“Mal.”
Mallory bites the inside of her cheek so she won’t cry. She tastes copper and rot and bubble gum. Gap Om and flowers and mold. She presses the bunny to the pillow and stands.
“Mal, don’t go.” Arden’s voice suddenly sounds small and far away.
But Mallory needs to go. Arden is a girl who deserves yellow flowers and friends whose mouths aren’t wired shut with secrets.
She walks toward the door. Arden says her name over and over, like a toddler calling for her mother, and Mallory inexplicably thinks about driving back to the blue house and doing the same.
Lily Flower, a voice seems to purr from all sides. The bite marks sizzle on her neck; her stomach simmers with want. Come find me.
Mallory tugs open the door, but when she steps through—
She’s not in the corridor. She’s in another hospital room.
Mallory whirls around. Around and around and around.
Everything is quiet.
And there’s a different woman asleep in the bed in front of her.
Her long brown hair is tangled on the pillow. She’s bone thin and pale, cracked lips marred with dried blood. The woman wears a white nightgown like Mallory’s Juliet costume, and the frilly collar is stained brown at the edges.
For a moment, it’s almost like looking at herself.
“Lily?” Mallory whispers. She turns, registering the rusted tray of medical instruments, the way the bed is narrow with a metal frame.
Like she’s suddenly stepped back in time.
Lily’s shoulders shudder in a loud, vibrating cough. She brings a frail hand to her mouth, and it comes away with fresh blood. Before Mallory can say anything, Lily meets her stare.
“It’s…not…meant…for…her,” she chokes out.
Mallory’s throat tightens. “What? Who—?”
She narrows her eyes, suddenly recalling Saskia in the library, telling her the one thing Lily ever spoke to her. This exact sentence.
“Are you talking about Saskia?” Mallory asks. “What’s not meant for her?”
“They’ll stop at nothing,” Lily hisses, “to get the seventh one. The right one.”
“The seventh one? I don’t understand.” She swallows, inching toward her. “Lily, please. Tell me what happened to you—”
Mallory bumps into a tray of instruments. A clattering sound echoes, and she spins—
To find herself right in front of a tall figure in a black cloak, face hidden behind an elongated mask with a beak. Like a bird. Like a raven.
She gasps and stumbles, groping behind her for anything to grab. But her hand only swipes air as the masked figure steps toward her. Slow. Menacing. The rest of the room seems to slip away. Lily. Her hospital bed. The light itself.
It’s just them now.
And Mallory doesn’t have to look beneath the mask to know she’s standing before Jacob.
“What do you want?” she whispers.
Jacob is silent as he approaches. He turns the room dark with shadows, cloak fluttering behind him. His hands are still at his sides, covered in leather gloves, and he’s clutching a rusted scalpel in his fist.
Mallory’s breath catches at the sight of it.
“No,” she manages. “Leave us alone.”
Jacob slows. Cocks his head to the side.
And then, without warning, he raises the scalpel. A terrible growl spills behind his mask.
“It’s your turn.”
Mallory unleashes a scream and sprints in the opposite direction, boots pounding on tile. She runs until she collides with something hard—a door.
She tries the handle. Locked.
“Help!” she yells, jiggling the knob. “Please! Someone, h—”
“Miss!” A woman’s voice is sharp behind her. “Miss! You can’t go in there.”
Mallory gulps a panicked inhale. Her heavy breath fogs the glass in front of her. Slowly, she blinks it into view: a door with a narrow windowpane. Room 815W.
Across the hospital from Arden.
There’s a young man inside, dozens of tubes wired to him like gnarled ivy. A stone statue in a well-preserved mausoleum. His light hair is dusted with unexpected gray, and his peach-toned skin is covered in cherry-red splotches that disappear beneath his hospital gown.
“Eight-fifteen W isn’t taking visitors right now,” the woman continues.
She finally glances at the nurse dressed in modern turquoise scrubs, a paper mask over her mouth.
“Family’s wishes,” the nurse adds. “You one of those Grey sorority girls? Nice of you to come by after all this time.”
Mallory’s mouth runs dry. Grey University? She looks again to the window, focusing on a card atop his nightstand, the letters on the envelope that spell B-R-Y-C-E.
Bryce Prescott. Ezra’s fraternity brother.
“Sorry, dear.” The nurse lays a hand on Mallory’s shoulder, mistaking her expression. “I’d suggest coming back tomorrow. Unless you’re on the no-visit list, like that other college boy who shows up every few days.” She shakes her head. “Damn persistent, he is.”
Mallory looks back at Bryce.
“Wait,” she calls out. She swallows. “Is he going to be okay?”
The nurse smiles. She tucks her clipboard beneath her arm.
“I’m very sorry, dear,” she says again, leaving Mallory to sift through all the possible meanings of her apology.
In the taxi back to Shore, Mallory stares out the rain-flecked window and wishes she’d asked Saskia to stay with her at the hospital.
Choosing to be alone seemed like the right idea at the time, but if Saskia were here, in this weathered back seat beside her, maybe Mallory’s hands would be shaking a little less.
Her pulse a little slower. Her fear dialed down to a level she could stand.
The taxi slows at a stop sign, and beneath the steady hum of the engine, an admission sets in.
One she’s been circling since Saskia stared at her beneath the ghost light and told Mallory she makes her feel seen.
The way she feels about Saskia—it’s not a momentary high, not a fleeting spark.
Saskia isn’t just a crush, a girl to be kissed and forgotten.
She’s a girl who knows what it’s like to be haunted, a girl who knows how it feels to lose.
A girl who listens without judgment, who believes without conditions.
Something has taken root inside her, something messy, something with layers, and each one Mallory peels back only seems to make her more sure, more certain, more emphatically insistent—This could be how it feels to fall in love.
Mallory snatches her phone and punches in Saskia’s number. It cuts to voicemail. Unfazed, she tries again. Falling in love is such a funny phrase, she thinks against the ringtone. Is it like falling asleep or falling off a cliff? Maybe there’s no way to tell. Maybe you choose to find out anyway.
The taxi pulls onto Shore’s campus and Mallory keeps calling.
She dials as she pays the fare, as she closes the door, as she hurries up the path toward Saskia’s room in Corwin Hall.
Suspicion creeps in. Why isn’t she answering?
Mallory calls again, barely registering the queasy feeling returning to her body, the desperate need to lie down.
Hi, you’ve reached Saskia Garin! I can’t come to the—
Mallory presses the call box outside the dormitory, waiting for the intercom to crackle to life.
But there’s only silence.
She tries Saskia’s phone again. The call box. The phone. The—
Just then, the arched doors open, and a pair of students walk out in tandem, lost in conversation.
Mallory slips through the entryway before the door shuts and darts toward the center staircase, boots thudding.
She runs to the fourth floor to Saskia’s room, finding the door plastered with YM magazine cutouts.
She doesn’t bother knocking, and the unlocked handle gives easily in her hand.
And in the split second between the door opening and Mallory seeing what’s inside, she’s five years old again. Coming into her mother’s room and finding her torn-up body in the quiet.
Because Saskia is sitting in the middle of the floor, white shirt splattered with blood.
Pressing a knife to her chest.