Sixteen

I've been in my room for an hour, but I'm afraid to go back to sleep. I keep thinking about how Mr. Hanks said to fight, but I don't know how. I can't imagine where to even begin. Finally, I head down to the house library to read, hoping it will distract me from my thoughts—and keep me awake.

I stop short in the doorway. Meredith stares back at me from the mantel, brilliant and burning, more alive even in paint than I'll ever be in life. This is the ghost I'm supposed to fight? Her? This girl who latched on to me moments after her death, determined to claw her way back? I was such an easy mark, lonely and drifting, hardly alive myself. Perhaps she knew what was coming even before she died; maybe that night she stared at me in the auditorium with that searching glance that tore right through me, maybe even then she knew. She was waiting for me. Waiting to claim me so she could pick up where she left off.

Anger burns in my chest, momentarily overpowering the fear. Mr. Hanks is right. Why should she have my life? She already had everything—wealth, beauty, genius. Why should she get my life too?

Before I can stop to think, I've reached up and plucked the painting from the mantel. This close, the smell of the paint is strong, almost dizzying. I squeeze the sides of the canvas, my heart racing and my breaths coming shallow and fast. I could destroy it. I could paint over her face. I could burn her burning eyes. I could rip the canvas into bits and throw it in the swan fountain on the lawn, extinguishing her.

I take a few steps backward, my eyes still on the painting in my hands. But before I reach the door of the library, I thud into a hard, broad chest. I yelp, turning to see who it is.

Jordan.

"You okay?" he asks, steadying me with his hands on my shoulders. Then his eyes narrow as he takes in the way I am gripping Neil's painting. "What's going on?"

I stumble forward and put the painting back on the mantel, nausea boiling in my gut. My face goes hot.

"Are you all right? What's wrong?" Jordan asks.

But I push past him, not answering. I rush out of the library, half-blind. All I can see are Meredith's burning eyes—daring me, mocking me, despising me.

"Tara," Jordan calls after me. He follows me to the foyer. "Tara, what's the matter?"

I shake my head once before I slip out the front door and back into the night. He doesn't come after me, but I walk fast anyway, as if I can outrun him and Meredith both, as if I can turn a corner and she'll lose sight of me, like in a cheesy detective novel.

As if she's not already inside me.

I don't know where to go. My feet are still tired from pacing campus earlier. It's the middle of the night. I wish I could go back to my old room with Helena, with her horrid haughty silences. I wish I could climb into that bed and go to sleep and forget that Magni Viri exists, that I had ever set foot in Denfeld Hall. Maybe my ID will still get me into the dorm building. I can go the common room and sit on the couch and watch TV.

Buoyed by the idea, I head straight for my old dorm. It feels like walking back in time. Back before I had friends, when I was drowning in student debt, when I was only a wisp of myself.

Now that my anger has burned off, despair takes its place. I can practically hear Meredith's honeyed voice in my mind, asking me questions I'm not sure I want to answer. Was she better off, that Tara? Was she truly? Who was she anyway? No one. A girl who had done nothing, been nothing, who hadn't been loved by anyone. Not even her own parents.

Pursued by these hateful thoughts, I hurry toward my old building. When I hold my ID to the scanner, it clicks and lights up green. My heart leaps. I hurry inside, my head down. The building is nearly silent, the common room deserted.

I collapse onto the couch, relishing the pure animal relief of getting off my feet. But that lasts only a moment before shame and terror and despair creep back in. I'm such a coward, such a waste of space. For the first time since this all started, I hang my head and let myself cry. I clutch the textbook I was carrying to my chest like it's a favorite childhood doll and not a hard-edged, overpriced anthology.

It's a relief to cry, to stop trying so hard to hold myself together. The tears come and come and come. I cry as quietly as I can, my shoulders shaking with sobs no one will hear. Once my tears have finally stopped, I lie on the couch, my back to the room. I feel numb and spent, the sharp blade of fear dulled. My eyes blink closed. And then again.

I'm going to have to sleep, I realize. If I try to stay awake, I'll only make myself sick. I'll only be exhausted and vulnerable. But I know as soon as I surrender to oblivion, Meredith will come. She will come inside and take over.

I set an alarm on my phone for half an hour. How much damage can she do in half an hour? That's what I tell myself, knowing it's a lie, a pitiful deluded hope. But there's no choice. Exhausted, I drop off into darkness, the low buzz of cicadas already filling my head.

Bright sunlight falls across my face, waking me. I blink groggily at the ceiling, the events of last night rushing back.

I sit up fast. It's morning. But that's not possible. It can't be tomorrow already. Eyes barely open, I scrabble in my pocket for my phone, where I placed it after setting the alarm. It's 8:06, four hours past when I was supposed to wake.

I look around, frantic. I'm not in the common room on the nubby old couch. I'm back in my own bed in Denfeld Hall.

Fuck. Fuck.

I don't have any memory of leaving the dorm, walking across campus, coming home to Denfeld. There's only the vague atmosphere of a nightmare lingering around the edges of my mind. I push my aching body out of bed, despite wanting to lie there forever. I'm so tired. I don't feel like I've slept at all. What did Meredith do while she was inside my skin last night?

I cross the room to the desk. My notebook is there, closed, a pen on top of it. I open it and flip fast until I hit the last filled page. New words. Of course. Meredith walked my sleeping body all the way back here so she could write. She doesn't care about anything else. She just wants to write her novella. She wants to finish it.

I rub my face, so sick with exhaustion I sway a little. Maybe... maybe if I let her finish it, she'll leave me alone. She'll give up this body. Her unfinished business will be done, and she'll go sleep in the earth, where she belongs. Isn't that how ghosts are supposed to work? There's a kind of relief in the idea, an easier path in just letting her take what she wants and moving on after.

I turn away from the desk, not even wanting to read the words Meredith wrote. The excitement of Cicada is gone for me. I walk to the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door. I stare at myself.

My eyes are bloodshot, circled with purple. My skin is pale and wan. My hair hangs limp and slightly greasy. I look as used up as an old dishrag. This is after only a few weeks of Meredith's nighttime writing. What will I look like by the end of the semester? Will I even be alive? Or will I follow Meredith to her grave?

I shake my head, pushing away my defeat with the last energy I have. I can't let her do this to me. This isn't why I came to Corbin. If I wanted to look like this, I'd have stayed home, worked a shitty job, got old and exhausted and bitter before I'd even turned thirty. I wanted a different life for myself. I wanted to be more, to do more. I wanted to be happy.

Someone knocks on the other side of the door, startling me. My heart beats so hard I feel it in my throat.

I open the door a crack. Penny is there, looking fresh and clean and sharp as a J.Crew ad. "Good morning. I brought you some coffee," she says, cradling an oversize mug in two hands.

I let her in and take the mug. "Thanks," I say. My voice is hoarse, creaky. I take a sip of coffee. It's bitter and too sweet.

"Are you sick?" Penny asks, putting a hand to my forehead.

I move away, not quite wanting her to touch me. I feel contaminated, made dirty by Meredith's ghost inside me. "I don't know," I say. "Just tired, I think." I set the coffee on my dresser.

Penny sits in my desk chair and crosses her legs, one oxford shoe jiggling. "Jordan said you seemed upset last night. He said you left Denfeld really late and didn't come back before he went to sleep."

I rub my face. "Yeah, I went to my old dorm."

Penny scrunches up her face. "What? Why?"

I study her. She's so logical, her brain so scientific. I don't think she'll believe me if I tell her I'm being haunted by Meredith Brown. Besides, the secrets she's been keeping from me feel like an invisible barrier between us, a warning not to let her in.

"I needed a break from this place," I say, which isn't entirely a lie. "You told me yourself that you find it claustrophobic sometimes, didn't you? So you go to the woods."

"I guess so," Penny says uncertainly. Then she stands and comes toward me, a hesitant concern on her face. "What's wrong, Tara? You can talk to me. I don't want you to get sick and hurt like Wren did. I want to help you if I can." She reaches for my hands, and this time, I steel myself to her touch. I let her take my fingers in hers and warm them. She looks into my eyes. I can see that I'm hurting her feelings by being so cold.

"I'm sorry," I say, looking away. "It's not you. I am just... kind of overwhelmed. It's embarrassing."

Penny laughs, relieved. "You don't have to be embarrassed by that. We're all overwhelmed."

"Sure," I say, wanting to end the conversation there. "Look, I had better take a shower and get ready for class. I've got Gothic lit soon. I'm going to be late as it is."

"Of course," Penny says, backing away from me. "We'll talk later, okay?" She smiles, reassuring, but her eyes study mine, as if looking for some sign that we're okay. That I still like her, despite my coldness. That must be what she's worried about.

I'm going to have to do what Mr. Hanks said and fight this ghost, I realize with a pang. Because I won't only lose my nights to Meredith. I'll lose my whole life, including Penny. Maybe I don't totally trust her right now, but I don't want to lose her, not when we've only just begun.

"Penny," I say as she turns away.

She looks back at me. I go to her and give her a quick kiss on the lips.

"Thanks for checking on me. I really appreciate it."

Relief fills her eyes. "Anytime."

I meant to send her away, but her nearness somehow makes me feel more present in my own skin, so I wrap my arms around her in a hug, bury my face in her neck. She squeezes me back, and I hear her breathe in the scent of me.

"You smell good," she says, pulling away with a smile. "Green and sweet like spring."

Her words make me go cold because I smell it too. It's lily of the valley.

Penny kisses me once, softly, not noticing my distress. "I'll let you get ready for class," she says, and then she's gone.

I stand in the doorway for a long moment, feeling sick. Meredith's scent is all over me because she's inside me, because she has me utterly in her grasp.

But I won't let her do this anymore. I won't lie still in her coffin while she finishes her book, while she uses my body like a helpless, lifeless instrument. I refuse. There's too much at stake, too much I have to lose. I don't know how, but I will find a way to make her leave me alone. I will find a way to get my life back.

My eyes dart to the notebook on my desk, filled with the pages of Meredith's novella. "I'm not writing your book anymore," I say, my voice fierce. I snatch up the notebook and rip out a big handful of pages, tearing them in half before shoving the whole mess deep into the wastebasket.

As if to mock me, the smell of lily of the valley grows even stronger, a sickly haze that fills the room. Throwing out Meredith's notebook won't be enough.

I need to get her off me, I think, seized with a desperate need to scrub my skin clean. I hurry to find my towel and bathrobe and get in the shower. Luckily, it's free. I soap up and scrub my skin hard, letting the scalding water turn my skin red. I do the same to my hair. The cloying raspberry scent of my drugstore shampoo takes over, and gradually the horror I felt leaves me, replaced once more by exhaustion.

I let the hot water pound my skull, wishing it would wake me up. But it doesn't. If anything, it makes me want to go back to bed even worse than before. I should have drunk more of that awful coffee Penny brought me.

I put conditioner in my hair and then zone out while the water strikes my back. I don't think about anything, my mind nearly perfectly blank with exhaustion.

When I zone back in, I'm standing in front of the foggy bathroom mirror, my finger on the glass. It's like when you go for a drive and suddenly you're at your destination, not remembering any of the turns or red lights in between. I blink at the mirror. There are words scrawled across the glass, words I just wrote with my fingertip.

You promised, they say.

A whimper escapes my lips.

I wasn't asleep. How did Meredith grab hold of me? I was awake. I was moving, showering. I wasn't thinking of anything; my mind was blank. But I wasn't sleeping. This shouldn't be possible.

You promisedstares back at me, the letters beginning to drip and fade. I grab my towel from the rack and wrap myself up. I feel faint, sick. Everything seems unreal, impossible. Meredith is growing in strength, I realize, even as I get weaker. She can control me in any vulnerable, inattentive moment. I'm at her mercy.

Can she read my mind too? Are my thoughts even my own anymore?

I shiver hard, nausea crawling through my stomach and up my throat. What does she mean by You promised? What did I promise? I never agreed to anything. I never spoke to her at all.

I stare at the now distorted, disappearing words, paralyzed by dread. But I can't stay here. I can't wait around for her. I have a life to live.

I dry myself off roughly and throw on my bathrobe. I hurry down the hall and get dressed quickly, hardly noticing what I put on, consumed by the need to move. I walk as fast as I can to the English building, shivering as the cold wind whips through my wet hair.

When I open the door to the classroom, everyone turns to look at me. Dr. Hendrix scrunches her brow, glances at her watch. I'm seriously late. I put my head down and find a seat near the back of the room. Once there, I sit up straight, keeping my eyes trained on Dr. Hendrix. I don't let my mind wander, not even for a moment. I take notes and listen carefully to even the most inane of my classmates' comments, determined to not lose an instant of awareness. But I don't raise my hand, and Dr. Hendrix doesn't call on me. She keeps shooting worried little glances at me. I must look completely awful.

After class, before I can rush out, she calls me to her desk. "Tara," she says, trying and failing to smile. "Are you quite all right?"

I rub a hand over my eyes and laugh. "I look that bad, huh?"

"Well, and you were very late today. You're never late," she says.

"I haven't been sleeping well."

"Ah. I see," she says. She pauses. "You're not pushing yourself too hard, are you?"

I shrug. "Maybe."

Dr. Hendrix touches my elbow. "Magni Viri has already had one student in the hospital this semester, Tara. Don't be the next one, all right?"

I nod. Then I realize that Dr. Hendrix might be able to give me information about Meredith. "Have you had a chance to read any of the novella I sent you yet?" I ask.

She smiles. "I actually started it last night. Oh, they are beautiful pages, Tara. Really sharp writing."

A few days ago this would have made me blush with pleasure, but now the compliment suffocates me. I know she's praising Meredith's writing, Meredith's words.

"Did they remind you of anything?" I ask. "Of anyone else's writing?"

"Like whose?" she asks. "A literary inspiration?"

I hesitate. "Like... like another student's? Maybe Meredith Brown's?" I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

She shakes her head, looking surprised at the question. "I never read Meredith's fiction, only her essays for class. But no, no, I wouldn't say that your writing is anything like hers actually."

"Oh," I say, my thoughts grinding to a halt at her words. I thought for sure she would see the similarities. She would have to, right?

"Why did you ask that?" Dr. Hendrix asks, cocking her head. "Is it because of what Dr. O'Connor said at her memorial? You're not comparing yourself to Meredith, are you? You two are very different people, after all."

"I don't know," I mumble. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"I'll read the rest in time for your next tutorial," Dr. Hendrix says. "I look forward to discussing it with you."

"Thank you. Thank you so much," I say, giving my best impersonation of a smile. "I'd better get to my next class. Goodbye."

I leave the room with my head spinning. Why isn't my writing like Meredith's? Maybe it's because her fiction and her essays were written in different styles. Maybe Dr. Hendrix couldn't see the similarities across such different mediums. That must be it. I rack my brain, trying to remember everything about the short story she read at the lit club reading. Was it similar to Cicada? Was the cadence of the words the same? The building tension?

My phone dings, startling me. It's a text from Penny saying Wren is back at Denfeld.