Thirteen

I wake at my desk, my face smashed against the pages of a notebook. Sunlight trickles in from a slit in the curtains. I sit up slowly, my neck and shoulders aching. I blink my crusty, tired eyes at Wren's side of the room. It's empty. Their bed is still covered in the same litter of books and clothes as it was last night. They must have never made it back to our room after the party.

I try to recall everything that happened last night, but it's a blur. I remember lying under the stars with Penny; I remember kissing her. I remember the wild, reckless energy that swept me up. But that's all. The rest is a hazy memory of faces and laughter and the cold, damp smells of the cemetery, mingled with smoke and liquor and beer.

I feel hungover even though I didn't drink. My lips are puffy and bruised from kissing. I touch them and can't help but smile. Then my eyes land on my notebook. The pages are covered top to bottom in my handwriting, or at least a version of it. My usually neat print is a dashed-off scrawl, pressed hard into the page, as if the words were coming too fast and too intensely for my hand to keep up.

I flip backward in the notebook a few pages, and then a few more. There are at least twenty-five pages filled. Did I write all of this last night? I couldn't have.

But the handwriting is mine, and the phrasing is familiar. It feels like something I would write. There are sentences here and there that feel like déjà vu.

And yet... I rub my eyes and try again, starting from the first page of messy, scrawling words. It's a story about a place that reminds me eerily of Corbin College, but Corbin College if it were made up entirely of buildings like Denfeld Hall. All dark stone and creeping ivy, closed in by green hills. It's set sometime in the past, though how far back I can't tell. There is a family that lives on the grounds as caretakers, which they've done for generations, as long as the college has stood on this land. Always caretakers and never students. Always sneered at, imposed upon. There's a growing hatred in their hearts, a cankering ill will toward the school and its buildings, the faculty, but most of all toward the students—"soft, pampered creatures with hard souls" my pen declares them.

I want to say that's not how I feel about the people at Corbin, but I know it is. All this anger and resentment has been inside me for months. And now I've put it onto the page.

But there's no Jane Eyre stand-in here, no put-upon teacher fighting thwarted dreams. In fact, the story doesn't have a single main character like I would usually write. Instead, it centers on three siblings: Coy, Hazel, and Eugenia Dossey. Coy is good-natured, hardworking, and handsome enough that the college girls make eyes at him when they pass him on the grounds. He has flings with some of them but never gets attached. His sisters are just as beautiful as Coy but less even-tempered. Hazel pines over the boys on campus until she is sick. But Eugenia nurses a hatred for them, passed from her father the way a knocked-over candle sets the curtains—and then the whole house—ablaze.

I read over the pages twice before I'm entirely convinced I wrote them, despite how true they feel. The thing is that they are simply too good. I've never written anything so good.

I shake my head. It must have been the effect of the party—kissing Penny, singing and laughing with Wren and Quigg, running like children through the tombstones, playing hide-and-seek in the trees. It must have loosened something in me. There's been a hard, stonelike thing lodged in my chest since I got to Corbin. Last night must have shaken it free. And words came with it.

I bite my lip, smiling at the pages, the most intense rush of relief breaking through me. I am a writer. It wasn't a pipe dream. It wasn't foolish. I am exactly who I want to be. And now I have the words to prove it.

I spend an hour typing up the pages, correcting minor errors of punctuation, filling in a few words where I omitted them in my rush to get the narrative on the page. In a Word document, double-spaced, in Times New Roman, the story feels even more like mine than it did in my own handwriting. When I finish transcribing the last of the previous night's scrawl, I scroll back up to the top of the document and type By Tara Boone with a little disbelieving laugh. I click the line above, where a title should go. The cursor blinks while I think.

CICADA, I type, though I'm not sure why. There is no mention of cicadas in the pages I wrote last night. But the word feels right somehow, the sound and shape of it. I think of the exoskeleton Penny showed me, how it clung to the side of the tree even without its host. I think of the hum and scream from the treetops in the cemetery, from my dreams. Cicada. That's what this book is called. And it is a book, I realize. Not a novel but a novella.

I know I'm putting the cart so far before the horse that the two may never meet again, but I can't help but picture the book, how it would look as a finished thing you can hold in your hands. A small, slim volume you could sit and read in a day, your legs thrown over the side of a chair, mouth slightly open, totally absorbed in the words on the creamy pages. I can see the title on the cover, my own name at the bottom, beneath a moody illustration.

I am deep into a daydream about walking down a city street and spying Cicada in a bookstore window, face out on a New Releases table, when my phone's alarm goes off from inside the pocket of the jacket I wore to the party last night. It's only seven in the morning. I've been awake for hours already, and I know I couldn't have slept for more than a few hours last night. But it's worth it, for this. A novella.

I look back at the typed pages. Only a beginning, I remind myself. The start of something. Beginnings are so much easier than middles and ends.

But it's something I can send to Dr. O'Connor. Proof that I belong in Denfeld Hall, in Magni Viri. Proof that I am not a second-rate Meredith Brown, forever living in her shadow.

Before I can start to doubt myself, before I can lose my nerve, I email him the pages.

I go downstairs in a flurry of high spirits, eager for a cup of coffee. I can't stop smiling, and if I weren't so tired, I think I would skip down the stairs. Last night I wrote the beginning of my novella, and last night I kissed Penny. I remember how she looked after we kissed, surprised and bright-eyed and eager. She wanted me every bit as much as I wanted her.

What did it mean? I wonder. I feel so hopelessly inexperienced. Was it just one night—a single moment in time? Or will we be a couple now? It was my first kiss. My first anything. I can't believe I had the courage to do it. I can't believe she kissed me back.

I bite my lip at the memory as I swing off the banister at the bottom of the stairs and launch myself right into Neil. He steps back from me and squints at me blearily. He is haggard and paint-spattered and still smells of liquor and smoke. I expect a nasty comment, but he maneuvers around me and goes upstairs without a word. Maybe all the vitriol has finally left him, though I suspect he's only too hungover and exhausted to be spiteful.

After I eat a Pop-Tart, I carry my coffee and books to the house library to finish my reading before I head to Gothic lit. But I don't make it through the door. Because over the mantel an unframed canvas is propped, the ink still wet.

It's a portrait of a girl with long curly red hair. Her eyes are like the flames that Bernard let loose last night. She is beautiful and terrible, all-consuming. She looks out over the library as if daring us to say she's dead.

All the buoyancy goes out of me. My blood freezes in my veins. Once more, I am small and gauche and frightened, out of my league, an interloper in a house of geniuses.

It feels like a message from Meredith, like she's watched me these last few days, walking the halls that were hers, hanging out with the friends that were hers, trying to become the writer that she was meant to be.

Whether Neil knew what he was doing or not, the meaning of this painting is clear: whatever success I might have, whatever inroads I might make, Meredith Brown still reigns in Magni Viri.

I back out of the library doorway, and then, like a coward, I flee.

I avoid Denfeld's library and the rest of the house for the remainder of the day, Meredith's blazing gaze burned into my memory. Even the campus library is too full of her, and I am forced to abandon my old refuge for the noisy campus café. Every time I let my mind drift from my studies, it returns to Meredith, to her face, to the memory of her voice, the smell of her perfume. A cold thrill goes through me each time I picture the painting, leaving me shaky and sick. How can a dead girl hold so much power over me? Last night I thought I was done being frightened of her, that I could bear the way her ghost lingers in our midst. But I was wrong. I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I am still thinking of her as I walk down the hall to O'Connor's office the next morning. I'm afraid that my confidence in the pages I sent him was misplaced, that he's going to raise his eyebrows at me, asking silently if this is really the best I can do. That all the while he'll be remembering Meredith's writing and comparing me to her.

But when I enter his office after a quick knock, he positively beams at me. "Tara! Tara, those pages you sent me." He shakes his head in wonder. "I knew you had it in you."

"You really liked them?" I ask as I take a seat.

He laughs. "They are brilliant. You are brilliant."

A small smile escapes my lips, the heavy dread lifting from my heart. "Really?"

"My God! The writing is so controlled, so measured, not a word wasted. There is this perfect tension. I held my breath through most of it. Do you know whose writing it reminds me of? Shirley Jackson's."

My heart explodes inside my chest. "Shirley Jackson?"

"Mmm, yes, there's the same tension, the same foreboding." He shakes his head. "Of course, it's entirely your own though. It doesn't feel at all derivative."

"So you approve of this as my project for the year?" I ask, feeling my pride stir for the first time since I saw Neil's painting of Meredith.

"Absolutely. Entirely. I cannot wait to read more."

"Didn't you say we need to bring in another faculty member? Someone from the English department?"

"Ah, yes," he says. "I was thinking of Jimmy Coraline. He teaches creative writing."

"Oh," I say, remembering how awed Dr. Coraline was by Meredith at the lit club reading and how rudely I behaved. Facing him again so soon would be excruciating.

"Did you have someone else in mind?" Dr. O'Connor asks, cocking his head.

"Well... I was hoping we could ask Dr. Hendrix," I say, pouncing on the idea with relief. I know Dr. Hendrix admired Meredith too, but she wasn't Meredith's creative writing teacher. "I'm in her Gothic lit class, and I'm going to take Southern Gothicism with her next semester."

A muscle near his mouth twitches, almost imperceptibly. "Ah, well. That might be a bit awkward," he admits. "She and I used to be married."

"I know," I say. "But you wouldn't have to see much of each other, would you?"

He rubs his chin, considering. "To be honest, she and I do not see eye to eye as scholars or teachers."

"Aren't differences of opinion and pedagogy good?" I press, though I know their differences are way beyond ideological. She thinks he's a monster. But I'd rather have them at each other's throats than bring in Professor Coraline.

Dr. O'Connor laughs. "All right, then. But you ask her. And I'd still like to show your work to Dr. Coraline, if that's all right. He's a Magni Viri alum, you know."

"Sure, of course," I say, accepting my partial win.

He pushes a class change form toward me. "Now, let's talk about your schedule."

When I say I want to drop American history, he nods and fills in the form without comment. I feel strangely validated, as if I made exactly the decision he'd hoped I would. Or perhaps it was never about the class to drop at all, more about my being thoughtful about my own education.

The form completed, he leans across the desk. "Now, tell me how things are going for you at Denfeld."

I falter, my thoughts full of the uneasiness of the last week—the strange phone calls, the lingering sense of being watched, my worries about the well-being of some of the upperclassmen. Meredith everywhere I turn. And now the painting.

"Have you made friends?" Dr. O'Connor prompts, recalling me to the good parts of joining Magni Viri.

I smile. "I have, actually. My roommate, Wren, and Penny, and I guess Jordan and even Azar. Only..."

"Neil?" he guesses.

"He's not a fan," I admit.

"Neil's not a fan of much of anyone except himself, in my opinion," Dr. O'Connor says.

I blink at him, surprised that he would so openly criticize another student.

"Don't get me wrong, he's a very talented artist."

"Oh, I know," I say. Meredith's fiery portrait hovers behind my eyes. "It's like something you'd see in a museum."

Dr. O'Connor nods. "It's almost ghoulish to say, but I think Meredith's loss will benefit his art greatly. Up until now, he has been a spoiled child who has hardly experienced anything. Now he knows loss and grief. Those are powerful emotions that create powerful art."

He"s right—it is a ghoulish, unfeeling thing to say, but I'm quickly learning that O'Connor doesn't mince his words or pull his punches. Besides, I think he's telling the truth about Neil. I don't know what Neil's art was like before Meredith died, but now it's brilliant.

"He painted her," I say quietly. "A new one, just this morning."

Dr. O'Connor's eyes gleam. "I believe he will be able to hold a show of his work next semester if he keeps up at his current rate. I have a connection in New York."

"An art gallery?" I ask. I wonder if he has connections that would help me too—literary agents, editors.

"Yes, precisely." He must read something of these thoughts in my expression because he adds, "And when the time comes, I'll help you place your work too."

"Really?" I nearly laugh at the thought of it, how far-fetched it seems, yet how easy it might be.

"Really," he says. "But first you have to go write me some more pages." With that, his attention shifts away from me, back to something on his computer monitor. I've been dismissed.

"Next week," I promise.

He waves me away, already immersed in someone else's needs.

This time when I break into the cool air outside of the social sciences building, I don't feel overwhelmed or inadequate. I feel... elated. The air is crisp and smells of fall, the trees are dotted red and orange and yellow. The sky is a brilliant blue, as if it has never known rain.

Talking to O'Connor actually made me feel better about everything, made me realize how silly I've been. Neil's painting of Meredith had nothing to do with me. It wasn't a message or a portent. It was merely a painting expressing his own feelings, just like the novella I'm writing expresses mine. Everything is going to be all right.

As if the universe wants to confirm this feeling, Penny gets up from a bench and comes walking toward me, a small, secret smile on her face. She's limping slightly, her cane in one hand and book in the other. She comes right up to me, where I stand on the bottom stair, which raises me to her height.

"Hello," she says, and she leans forward and gives me a peck on the cheek that makes goose bumps spread over my skin. "I was waiting for you."

"Hey," I say, touching her arm. My insides glow. "What have you got there?"

"Just a bit of light reading." She shows me the book's cover, which features a bat in flight. It has Dr. Coppola's name beneath it.

"Bat girl," I say teasingly.

"Oh, I've never been called that before, not even once," she says with a smirk.

"What's your favorite kind of bat?"

"Little brown bats," she says without hesitation. "That's the kind we have in our cave here. Did you know that just one of them can eat a thousand insects in an hour?"

"I love how nerdy you are. If I were a bat, what sort of bat would I be?"

"Vampire," she says with a grin.

"Come on," I say, "seriously? A bloodsucker?"

"No, you'd be..." She steps toward me and twirls a strand of my hair around her fingers. "You'd be an epauletted fruit bat. They're very cute."

"Are you calling me cute?"

Penny smiles, biting her lip in a way that makes my stomach swoop. My eyes follow the movement, and I'm thinking about kissing her again when the door behind us opens and Dr. O'Connor comes out.

"Penny," he says. "I hope you've made some progress before our meeting tomorrow."

"I'll do my best," she says, her voice suddenly strained, the ease from a moment before lost.

"Do better than your best," he says as he passes us down the stairs and hurries off.

"What's that about?" I ask.

She rolls her eyes. "Nothing. Just O'Connor being O'Connor. Want to go study somewhere with me? I need a break from Denfeld," she says, clearly eager for a subject change.

I hesitate. I am itching to get back to Cicada. To see where the story goes next. But I won't be able to write with Penny there.

"Come on, please," she says. "Surely you wouldn't deny yourself the pleasure of my company."

"Well, when you put it like that," I say. I hop off the final step. Penny starts toward the campus café, her book under her arm. I watch her for a moment, a tall, athletic-looking girl in corduroy pants, green suspenders, a cream-colored button-down. She turns and raises her eyebrows at me, leaning on her beautiful cane. Bat girl.

I smile and follow her through the dreamily autumnal campus. For perhaps the first time, I feel like it belongs to me. I feel as if the world is opening up before me—many worlds, all stacked against each other, their doors flung wide.