Fourteen

I wake at my desk again. Morning light streams in through the open curtains, which I never closed. Wren isn't in their bed.

My notebook is filled with more inky scrawls. Pages and pages of it. I close my eyes again, as exhausted as if I'd never slept at all. I want nothing more than to climb into my bed and go to sleep. Instead, I stand and stretch, working the aching tightness out of my muscles. I notice that my fingers are smeared with ink, the middle finger on my right hand red and sore where I held the pen. I must have written for hours last night.

I pick up the notebook and pace slowly through the room, turning pages as I go. The middle Dossey sibling, Hazel, is dead, having drowned herself in the lake. Coy is steeped in grief. Eugenia, though, has gotten a college boy named Frederick in her snares. She's working him as surely and darkly as Circe worked the shipwrecked men on her shores. It will not end well for him, I know.

When I reach the end of the pages, I look up, surprised to find myself in this sunlit room, in this body of mine. The pages are good, perhaps even better than what I'd written before. Darkly atmospheric, taut, simmering with suppressed violence. I shake my head in wonder.

But I am a wreck, exhausted to my core. It takes all I have to drag myself down the hall and into the shower. I tip my head back and let the hot water pummel my skull, sluice down my face. I could fall asleep standing. When I finally open my eyes to lather myself with soap, I'm shocked to find an enormous purple bruise on my hip. I touch it gingerly, wincing. When did I get this? How did I get this?

I must have crashed into something last night, maybe my desk or the chair. But I don't remember doing it. I blink at the bruise, trying to recall the sharp, surprising pain I must have felt. But it's not there.

Did I get out of bed last night in the dark and feel my way to the desk to write? I must have. That must be what happened. But the sight of the bruise fills me with a vague unease. Something niggles at me, just out of reach of my thoughts.

I finish washing myself, rinse the conditioner out of my hair, and climb out of the shower, shivering in the cold air. I swipe the foggy mirror so I can see my reflection. There are dark circles under my reddened eyes. I blink at myself. Nothing a little concealer can't fix. Besides, dark circles are a badge of honor around here, practically a fashion accessory. Almost everyone has them.

I lean forward, studying myself. My face looks a little thinner. I haven't been eating enough perhaps. It's such a long way to the cafeteria from Denfeld, and I always seem to have other things to do. But I'd better stop skipping meals.

There's something else in my face that feels unfamiliar though, more than tiredness and a few missed dinners. It's the way my eyes look. Despite the red squiggles on my sclera, the puffiness of my tired eyelids, my gaze is direct and assured in a way it's never been. I hold my head higher, surer.

That girl who ducked her head through the halls, who moved like a ghost through the crowded cafeteria, she's gone now. Someone else has taken her place: a new Tara. A writer, someone with friends and an almost girlfriend, someone who doesn't have to scuttle through this campus like an unwelcome parasite.

The rattle of the bathroom doorknob and a disappointed sigh break me out of the trance of my own gaze. I throw on my bathrobe and hang my towel, then go over and open the door. "I'm done," I call to the figure slowly shuffling down the hall.

Wren turns. They walk slowly toward me, exhaustion evident in every limb.

"You all right?" I ask, moving out of the way of the door.

Wren nods, not speaking.

"Come have breakfast in the cafeteria with me, all right?" I say, studying their wan face. They look even worse than I do. We both could clearly use a square meal.

Wren nods again, then closes the bathroom door.

Fifteen minutes later, we're trudging down the hill toward the main campus. Wren is uncharacteristically silent, wrapped in their own haze of exhaustion—and I in mine. It's only after we've started on our breakfasts and drank half a cup of coffee each that conversation feels possible.

"Wren, where have you been sleeping?" I finally ask.

They blink at me over the rim of their cup. "In my bed?"

I shake my head. "You haven't touched your bed in days. Are you hooking up with someone?" I really hope they say yes.

But Wren laughs. "Who would I be hooking up with?"

I shrug, picking up a piece of bacon. "I don't know, anyone. You're a catch."

Wren's mouth turns up in a wry smile. "Neil complained that my piano playing was keeping him awake at night, so I've been in the twenty-four-hour practice rooms a lot."

"Neil is full of shit," I say. "He's been up every night painting anyway." I squint at Wren. "Have you been sleeping in the practice rooms?"

"A little," Wren admits. "It's such a long way back to Denfeld, so sometimes I nap on the couch in the big practice room."

"So you are sleeping?" I press.

Wren shoves a big spoonful of oatmeal into their mouth. "Of course," they say thickly. They swallow a bite and cock their head at me. "Are you?"

"Touché," I say with a laugh. I feel a little better now, with breakfast in my belly. Not so totally wiped out. I glance at my phone. "I gotta go to class. Can we hang out later? I feel like I've barely seen you lately."

Wren smiles. "How about dinner? Six o'clock?"

"It's a date." I grab my stuff and hurry to the humanities building. Dr. Hendrix is at the front of the room, setting up for class, when I come in.

"Hi," I say with a smile.

"Tara, how are you?" Dr. Hendrix asks, appraising me. I'm glad I showered and ate breakfast before coming here. If she'd seen me in my earlier state, she would probably assume Dr. O'Connor was driving the newest Magni Viri recruit to exhaustion, and be too mad to agree to join my project committee.

"I'm great actually," I say brightly. "I'm working on a kind of Gothic novella, and I wondered if you might be willing to be one of my readers."

The words fill me with a fierce, happy pride that makes me hold my head a little bit higher. I'm writing a book, just like I've always dreamed of. Those words in my journal have proved I have what it takes. And that makes all the exhaustion worth it, though maybe I won't tell Dr. Hendrix so.

"A Gothic novella! How thrilling!" she says. "I would love to read it."

"It would be for my independent study with Dr. O'Connor," I add, and her smile falters.

"He wanted to ask Dr. Coraline, but I'd much rather have you," I say, hoping she's susceptible to flattery. "You're such a good teacher, and I think you could really help me."

She hesitates, a visible wince on her face.

"Please," I say. "I would really love for you to be involved. I'm going to take your Southern Gothicism class next semester like you suggested. It all fits so perfectly."

"Well, all right," she says.

"Great! I will send you what I have so far, once I finish transcribing my new pages."

"Are you writing by hand? How old-fashioned," Dr. Hendrix says with a smile. "I wasn't entirely sure students knew how to write by hand anymore." She laughs and then shakes her head. "Sorry, that was very boomer-y of me, wasn't it? Though I'm actually a member of Gen X," she adds, patting her hair self-consciously.

I laugh. "I don't usually write this way, but it's how the book seems to be coming out. Maybe because it's set in the past it wants to be written with old ways too."

"Set when?"

"I don't know," I admit. "Sometime in the past, somewhere in the Appalachians."

"Ah, well, that's very Cormac McCarthy of you. Have you read Outer Dark yet?"

"No," I admit. "I've always been afraid to read anything by him after seeing the movie version of The Road."

"We'll read him next semester, so gird your loins," she says. "Gosh, that's an awful expression, isn't it?"

"It is," I agree with a laugh, trying—and failing—to imagine how this funny, self-conscious, fragile woman was ever married to a man like Dr. O'Connor. I'm curious to see what they're like together when we have a meeting.

By this time, half the class has trickled in, so I let her get back to preparing her notes. A movie still from the 1940s film adaptation of Jane Eyre is on the screen. A rather sinister Orson Welles looks down on a much too pretty Joan Fontaine.

We've moved on from vampires to the Bront? sisters, with their wild moors and troubling men. It's a lecture day, and I sink gratefully into my seat to take notes, glad I don't have to try to wow anyone with my intellect for the next hour. Writing Cicada has taken every last drop of it.

Wren doesn't show up for dinner. I text them twice and even call them, but it goes straight to voice mail. As the minutes tick by, my stomach tightens with worry. Penny and Jordan turn up together, and then Azar and Neil.

"Y'all, I'm really worried about Wren," I say once everyone's seated. "They were supposed to meet me for dinner, and now they're not answering their phone."

"They're probably at the piano, completely oblivious to the time," Azar says around a mouthful of salad.

"That's what I'm worried about," I say. "I get being wrapped up in your work, but it's way more than that. Wren hasn't been sleeping in our room. I've barely seen them. And when I do, they look totally exhausted, like to the point of it being kind of dangerous. I think something's wrong."

Neil rolls his eyes, and I turn on him, surprising even myself with my ferocity. "And why the hell did you send Wren to the practice rooms? You couldn't put on noise-canceling headphones or something?"

"They've been playing the same damn song for weeks! I can't stand it anymore," Neil says.

"You know how far away the practice rooms are. Wren isn't sleeping. They're barely eating. At least if they're in the house, we can keep an eye on them."

"Wren's not a child, and I don't think they'd appreciate you treating them like one," Neil shoots back. "In fact, you've all got a nasty habit of infantilizing them."

I sit back, wounded, my words curdling on my tongue. Wren said almost the same thing the first day I met them, about hating how the others babied them. But this isn't the same. I genuinely think Wren is in trouble.

"Wren isn't a child, but they are young," Penny says, coming to my defense. "Barely even seventeen, which is younger than all the rest of us. And you know how obsessive they are, how hard it is for them to pull away from their work."

"Look around this table," Neil says. "Show me one person at this table who isn't bone-tired right now. Show me one person who got more than five hours of sleep last night."

Met with silence, he waves his hand. "There you go."

"This is what Magni Viri is," Azar says hesitantly, as if she's not entirely sure whether she believes it. "This is what it takes." She rubs her face, and I notice for the first time how exhausted and stressed she looks. Azar is so good at projecting confidence and competence, but now I see the cracks in her armor.

Jordan shifts uncomfortably. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't look out for each other," he says quietly. "And Tara's right. Wren has gotten way worse lately. We've all noticed it."

"I've been worried about them for weeks now," Penny says. "Even Quigg said something to me yesterday about how bad Wren looked. I think it might be time for an intervention."

"So let's go find them," I say. "We'll sneak some food out for them and go find them in the practice rooms. We can all go do something fun together, maybe just casually bring up how we're worried about them."

"What are we going to go do?" Neil spits. "We're in the middle of Hillbillyville, in case you haven't noticed. We can't exactly run up the road to see a movie."

"Tara's right though," Penny says, a protective edge to her voice. She touches my knee under the table. "We don't want Wren to feel like we're ambushing them. Besides, we all need a break. Something normal and nice. What should we do?"

The whole table falls into silence. No one can remember how to have fun, I realize. Except for the wild Sunday night cemetery romps, no one at this table does anything except study and work on their independent projects. We've all become a bunch of work-obsessed robots. And we're wearing ourselves out. I can see the exhaustion and strain written plainly on each of their faces, just like I know it's written on mine.

"How about a game night?" I suggest tentatively.

"What kind of games?" Jordan asks, brightening. "Like Monopoly?"

"No," everyone else says in unison.

"Oh, let's do charades!" Azar says excitedly. "I always played that with my astronomy club friends in high school. Or Pictionary. Something like that."

Neil rolls his eyes again and mutters something about being surrounded by nerds, but he doesn't argue. Everyone else seems to think it's a good idea. So we finish dinner quickly, wrap a tuna sandwich in a napkin for Wren, and set off toward the practice rooms. My panic fades now that we're in action. Maybe I was overreacting. Wren's probably fine, but a night of fun and rest won't hurt anyone.

We hear the practice rooms before they loom up out of the gloaming. A single saxophone croons into the night, lovesick and warbling.

"Jesus, at least Wren only plays the piano," Neil says with a shudder.

We wander down the hallway of practice rooms, peering into the window of each door. Most of them are empty. But in one a girl leans over a cello that's between her bare knees, playing feverishly, her eyes closed.

"What are you looking at, Tara?" Azar asks, putting her face next to mine to peer in at the glass. She laughs, throaty and dirty-sounding.

"Pervert," she whispers in my ear, but she stares too.

We have to jog to catch up with the others.

"Wren is usually in the big piano room at the end of this hall," Penny says.

Azar elbows me in the side. "So are you and Penny exclusive yet," she asks with a grin, "or are you going to go back and ask out that cellist?"

"Oh, don't worry, I won't stand in your way," I whisper back.

She laughs and puts her arm in mine, and I feel like we're finally, really friends.

"How's your independent project going?" I ask. "I've never really asked you much about it. It's something environmental related, right?"

Azar's smile falters. "Yeah, I'm exploring how robots might be used to remove particulate pollution from the air, the way they're starting to be used to clean up the ocean."

"Wow, are you serious? Didn't know I was arm in arm with—"

"Oh shit!" I hear, and I nearly give myself whiplash turning toward the yell.

It's Penny, panic in her voice. She hurries into the last practice room on the right. We all run to see what's the matter.

Wren is passed out on the floor, their face pale, a bit of blood at their temple.

"No no no no no no no," Azar says, her voice a disbelieving moan. "Not again. Please not again."

The room swims before me, and where Wren lies, I see Meredith. Eyes open and staring. Tear tracks on her cheeks.

But no, it's Wren, with Penny on one side and Jordan on the other.

Jordan feels at Wren's throat for a pulse.

"They're breathing," he says, loud, relieved. He pushes back Wren's hair. "The cut isn't too bad either." He puts his hand ever-so-gently on Wren's shoulder.

"Hey, Wren. Hey, buddy, can you hear me?" he asks, his voice shaking.

Wren's eyes flutter open. "Ehhmmm," they say.

Azar lets out a relieved, inarticulate cry. The tight pressure in my chest eases slightly. Neil says something I don't catch and slams out of the room.

"What happened? Did you fall?" Jordan asks, voice tight with worry.

Wren blinks at us, struggling to focus. "Got dizzy. Must have hit my head on the piano. Did I hurt the piano?" they ask worriedly.

Jordan laughs gently. "The piano's fine. You don't look so good though. I think we'd better get you to the hospital."

"Should I call an ambulance?" Penny asks, phone at the ready.

"Or health services?" I add.

Jordan glances up at us, his eyes wide despite his apparent calm, chest heaving a little. "No, they'd just call an ambulance anyway, and those are slow as hell out here, not to mention expensive. It'll be faster to drive Wren ourselves. Who has a car?"

"Oh, I do," I say. I'd nearly forgotten about my car, still sitting in the student parking lot, where I left it when I first arrived on campus.

"Can you go get it, pull it as close to here as possible?" Jordan asks, though really it's a command. He's taken charge of the situation.

"Hurry, Tara," Azar says, tears in her voice.

"I will," I say, and sprint out of the room. Luckily, the parking lot isn't far from the practice rooms, but every step I take feels miles longer than it should until I'm there. My breaths come short as I scan the parking lot for my car. My hands shake as I fish my keys out of the cluttered recesses of my backpack, and I drop them twice before I manage to get the door open.

I text Penny once I'm parked outside the music building. They all hurry out together, Wren held up between Azar and Jordan. Penny opens the back door, and they ease Wren down onto the seat. Jordan gets in beside Wren and buckles their seat belt.

"I'd better go check on Neil," Azar says, clearly torn between us and him. "After Meredith—"

"That's fine, we've got Wren," Penny reassures her before climbing into the front seat. Azar strides away, her phone already to her ear.

We're silent as I pull the car out of the parking lot—fast, fishtailing a little. It's very dark, and there aren't nearly enough lights to show me where to go, but I barely slow down. I peer into the blackness, searching for the way to the highway. Penny opens Google Maps and locates the nearest hospital. It's twenty-five minutes away.

"God damn it," Penny whispers, shooting a panicked look at the back seat.

"It'll be okay," I say. "I'll drive fast."

I finally find my way off Corbin's campus and onto the long gravel drive through the forest. I've always liked the idea of Corbin's remoteness, set in its own little world in the hills. But now it feels like we're a million miles away from the help Wren needs.

Jordan has to work hard to keep Wren conscious and talking. "I'm so tired. Let me sleep," Wren says, their voice wretched.

"You could have a concussion," Jordan reminds them. "You're not supposed to fall asleep with a concussion."

"Why'd Magni Viri have to let in a premed major, anyway?" Wren says. "I hate you."

"I know," Jordan says. "That's all right. Tell me how much you hate me." He's trying so hard to keep his voice even, to keep the panic inside, where it can't touch Wren.

But it hardly matters. Wren is sinking again.

"Turn on some loud music or something," Jordan says. "Blast it."

"There are CDs under your seat," I tell Penny. She fumbles around and pulls out a black CD case.

"Under different circumstances, I would ask you what decade you're from," she says as she thumbs through the choices with the aid of her phone's flashlight. "My great-uncle has a CD collection like this in his car."

"They were in the car when I bought it," I say, glad of the distraction. "The stereo doesn't have any way to connect to a phone. There's a Queen CD in there," I add, thinking of how we sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the Sunday night party.

Penny laughs, delighted, as she pulls out News of the World.

"‘We Will Rock You' is number one. That ought to be loud enough to keep Wren awake."

Penny hands me the CD, and I eject the last one I was listening to and throw it into her lap. I slam Queen in and turn the volume dial way up. The sounds of clapping and stomping fill the car.

We finally make it off the gravel drive and onto the main road. I drive as fast around the tight curves of the hills as I dare. We rocket through the night, Freddie Mercury's voice the only thing between us and our panic.

When we're a few minutes away from the hospital, I turn off the stereo. "How's Wren?" I ask.

"Asleep," Jordan says. "I tried everything short of slapping them in the face."

"You did your best," I say.

We spend the rest of the drive in tense silence. When we pull up to the dinky little hospital, Jordan runs inside for a wheelchair and help. Penny starts getting Wren ready to move.

After they get Wren out of the car, I go park. I sit alone in the darkness for a few minutes, listening to the car cooling down. I realize that my heart is racing, my whole body trembling. I've been gripping the steering wheel so hard my fingers ache. I unclench them and rest my head against the steering wheel, taking in deep breaths.

Once I feel more stable, I walk into the hospital, looking for the others as I go. Penny and Jordan sit in a nearly empty waiting room. The only other occupant, an old white man who clutches his stomach, eyes them with evident distrust. Are rural townies truly suspicious of college kids like they are in the books and movies? With their dapper clothes, Jordan and Penny are very clearly not locals. Then again, maybe the old man is just racist.

When I sit down next to them, the man's gaze softens. In my thrifted jeans and sweater, I must look more ordinary, more familiar, like the girls who live in whatever town this is.

"They took Wren straight back," Penny says, reaching across Jordan to squeeze my arm. "Wouldn't let us go with them."

Jordan rubs the side of his face tiredly. He had the worst of it during the drive. "That nurse asked me if I hit Wren," he says. He sighs.

"I'm sorry," I say. "That's fucked up."

"I butted in straightaway and let them know they had it wrong," Penny said. "I don't think we'll have any more problems with it."

"I hope not," Jordan says, putting his face in his hands, which I realize are trembling. "They keep calling Wren ‘she' and ‘her' though. It didn't seem like the time to correct them, not that I think it would help."

"We're not at Corbin anymore, Toto," Penny says.

The three of us laugh weakly, though the statement makes me a bit self-conscious. I feel, uncomfortably, as though I've switched sides—now I'm one of the college kids who laugh at the hillbilly locals. I push the thought away.

"God, what a night," Jordan mutters.

"Well, I wanted us to get out tonight. I guess I got my wish," I say quietly. I lean my head against Jordan's shoulder. Penny leans against his other one. We sit in silence for a long while.

"The worst thing," Jordan says suddenly, "is that right now instead of thinking about Wren, I'm actually thinking about my project."

"Tell us about it," I say around a yawn. "It will pass the time."

"Well," Jordan says, "I'm interested to see if—" The rest of what he says is made up of so many unrecognizable scientific terms that the words are more like poetry in another language. Something about cancer cells is all I can grasp. I listen to the soft lilt of Jordan's voice, follow it through unrecognizable lands, caring only for the sound of his voice and the evident pleasure he takes in his subject. Eventually, it lulls me to sleep.

When I wake again, Jordan and Penny are still talking. But they've moved on from Jordan's project. I keep my eyes closed, listening.

"How much do you think she knows?" Jordan asks Penny, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

"I don't know," she says. "Not much, I don't think."

"It's getting harder to keep from her, isn't it?"

"God yes. But O'Connor...," Penny says, hesitating. "You know what he said."

"We've got enough to worry about as it is, I guess."

"Never a shortage of that," Penny agrees tiredly.

Then they lapse into silence. They might have been talking about anyone, anything. But I can't help but think that "she" might be me. It would have to be either me or Azar, wouldn't it? I don't think they could keep anything from Azar.

But what could they possibly be keeping from me? More Magni Viri secrets? Even after the initiation, the Sunday parties, everything? I thought I was supposed to be one of them now, fully. Would Penny do that to me now that we're together? Hurt and worry start to gnaw at my insides. I consider pretending to stay asleep for longer in case they start talking again, but I don't think I want to hear any more. I don't want to risk hearing something that will ruin things between me and Penny. Besides, maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe it's nothing to do with me.

With a fake startle, as if I've been woken suddenly from deep sleep, I lift my head from Jordan's shoulder. I make a production of rubbing my eyes and yawning. "Any news yet?" I ask.

Penny has a guilty look on her face as she starts to answer, but then a doctor in a white coat comes bustling toward us.

Anxiety clenches my heart—for Wren most of all, but for myself too, and for the secrets the others are keeping from me. Because as much as I want to believe they weren't talking about me just now, I know better. I might be a part of Magni Viri, but I guess I'm still not one of them.