Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Anora and the Boy Who Sees the Dead

Everything about this morning is a disaster.

I woke up to Mom yelling I’m going to make her late, five minutes before we were supposed to leave. Now I’m crossing campus in the uniform I wore yesterday: wrinkled skirt, smelly blazer, with the exception of a pair of knee-high, navy tights. Nothing else, my makeup-free face and frizzy hair, gives the impression I tried.

The only reason I overslept in the first place is because I kept myself up thinking about the coin, trying to decide if I could ride the distance to Nacoma Knight on my bike, then deciding it was too dark to find something like that in the grass. I finally convinced myself I would locate it once I retraced my steps—either between the trees, at the football field, or maybe someone turned it into lost and found. I just hope it isn’t discovered by the wrong person, because there are people who want what I create.

There are people who want me.

But my plan to search campus before school is on hold as I increase my pace from a fast walk to a run in an effort to make it to class on time. The absence of the coin has burrowed into my chest, creating a perfect nest for anxiety, and whatever creature takes residence there is growing bigger and bigger as every second ticks by.

It’s okay, I tell myself, inhaling deep in an attempt to relieve the tension. I’ll search at lunch. It’s only a few more hours.

I reach Walcourt and round the corner, slamming into a body. I put my hands up and push away from the person, stumbling back.

“I’m so—” My apology dies on my lips when I see who I’ve run into—Thane Treadway. He smirks at me. I hold my breath to keep from inhaling his cigarette-infused scent. We stand apart, staring at each other. I’m not sure why I can’t bring myself to break away.

After a moment, he speaks. “Maybe you should reconsider this whole school thing.”

“Excuse me?”

He shrugs. “Nacoma fosters obedience. You can’t even make it to class on time. Trust me, they notice when you don’t fit their mold.”

“I’m sure you know that from personal experience.” His smile remains unchanged, but his eyes glitter. Like he’s proud of that fact.

What does Thane know about me? I can fit into a mold. I’ve done it before. Stuffed myself into sharp corners and uneven surfaces. And I fit. Until I didn’t. Until an arm came free from its binding and the thread unwound and ruined everything.

That’s what doesn’t fit in the mold. The thread.

“Or maybe you want to be bad at this,” Thane says, narrowing his eyes. “Maybe you like the attention.”

I lift my chin, challenging him. “Excuse me while I go fit the mold.” I try to sidestep him, but he blocks my way. “Move,” I command, glaring at him.

He puts his hands up, and I brush past him, hitting his shoulder. “Oh, but I did want to ask you—what happened to Vera?”

I have to give him props. He got straight to the point, no false friendships or feigned interest, just business.

I turn to face him. “Vera?”

“Yeah.” His lips lift, and his eyes gleam like obsidian. It’s unsettling and makes me hyperaware of everything. “The dead girl who usually hangs outside Emerson. Where is she?”

How does he know about the dead girl? The creature that’s taken up residence in my chest has claws, and they dig deep, deep, deep, just grazing my heart, beating hard in my chest.

Fit the mold, Anora. Don’t let him know about you.

So I say, “Are you high?”

Thane’s unfazed and takes a step toward me, closing the distance between us, and suddenly the air feels heavier. I imagine him as a monster with long claws surrounding me like a cage. His heat is not like Shy’s, which is somehow calming. Thane feels like a burden. How can two boys create such different sensations inside me? And why?

“You aren’t the only one who can see the dead, or did you not know that?”

I avert my gaze, staring at the wall—staring at anything but his abyss-like eyes. I swear I can see flames in them, like he’s the incarnation of hell.

“They will notice,” he continues. “And they’ll search and search and search until they find her…and when they can’t find her, well, they’ll come for you.”

“Are they people like you?” There is bitterness in my voice.

He laughs. “No, not like me. They’re not people at all.”

Those words hang between us—a threat, needlelike, sharp. It draws the air from my lungs and awakens my body like a live wire. I clench my fist tight. The thread’s desperate, burrowing out, grazing the surface of my palm.

“What makes you think I know what happened to Vera?”

“You’re the newest thing to grace Nacoma Knight’s campus in four long years,” he says.

“So you have no evidence?”

He raises a brow—perfect, arched. “Is there ever evidence?”

No, there isn’t.

Didn’t I know that from experience? Evidence doesn’t mean anything, only accusations.

My nails bite into my skin, and the pain releases me from the cage Thane seemed to put around me. I start to turn away when an icy hand grips my left wrist—the hand where the thread lives. Thane’s eyes travel from the tips of my fingers to the center of my palm where blood-filled crescents accompany scars of the same shape.

“Maybe you need to work on your anger,” he says.

Thane’s grip feels like steel biting my skin, and I curl my fingers into my aching palm, desperate to hide.

“Let. Go. Of. Me.”

He smiles and then asks, “Or what?”

“Do not test me. You have no idea what I can do.”

He lets go, and I pull away roughly, rubbing my wrist free of his touch.

“I’m counting on that.” He takes a step back just as the bell rings. “Better get to class. Haven’t you heard? Mr. Val is a prick.”

I glare at him before turning slowly and heading to class. At first, I move away from him at a fast walk, but by the time I make it through Mr. Val’s door, I’m running. I come to a stop, slightly out of breath, and realize Mr. Val has been waiting for me. I glance at the students on my right and find they’re staring at me too. Natalie appears overzealous that I’ve been caught breaking another rule.

“Miss Silby,” Mr. Val says, his tone patronizing. “So good of you to join us. You’re late.”

I look behind me. I’m not sure what I expect to find there—maybe my excuse? I open my mouth to defend myself. “I was—”

“Running,” Mr. Val finishes, raising a brow. I feel like we’re facing each other in a duel, and I know I’m going to lose. As Mr. Val moves to pick up a stack of papers on his desk, he says, “Two days of detention.”

“What?”

His eyes cut back to me. “Do you want a third?” Snickers escape from somewhere in the room, and Mr. Val turns his terrible gaze on the class. “Would anyone like to join Miss Silby?”

The class is silent.

“Take your seat.”

I keep my eyes on the floor as I find my desk and slide low in my seat, shoulders weighed down with humiliation.

This day can’t get any worse.

Mr. Val begins the lesson. His voice grates like the chalk squeaking against the blackboard as he writes. With each shrill stroke—the sharp turn of a seven, the swift cross of an X—Thane’s words run through my head. What happened to Vera?

Vera.

The dead girl has a name.

She is well-known at this school where apparently I’m not the only one who can see the dead. She is missed.

I wanted to find the coin before, but now I’m desperate.

Who is Thane? Who are these “people” hunting me? Was he telling the truth, or is he one of them?

I should have been more careful, shouldn’t have let my fear get in the way of my rules. I used to think if I could get rid of the thread, I could be normal. I tried pulling it out once. There’d been too much blood. Too much pain. Mom found me. I lied and said I cut my hand. The thread is part of me as much as my blood and my veins, and it responds to my fear and my anger…as if it’s attached to my heart.

And that makes me afraid. Because I’m tempted to lose control, open my palm, and let the thread sprout like a flower and dance, twist, twirl, thread through Mr. Val’s back, twine around his soul, and he’d fall to the floor, dead.

He’d be gone—that mundane suit, the wrinkles on the bottom of his jacket, that thick mustache. Gone. And I wouldn’t just be taking his soul. I’d be killing him.

And there would be Thane with his coal-black eyes and ever-present smirk, asking me, “What happened to Mr. Val?”

“Miss Silby.” Mr. Val’s voice cuts through the air. I jump in my seat and meet his stare. “What is the value of y?”

My brain scrambles, and my tongue feels thick and swollen in my mouth. My gaze slides to the problem on the blackboard. It looks like a foreign language. Worse, Mr. Val’s black eyes don’t move from mine as he waits for an answer.

I think through what I’d been doing before I was called on.

Oh. The thread.

A thing just as alien as the problem on the board.

Mr. Val’s eyes remain on me, even when he calls on someone else. “Miss Rivera.”

“One,” Natalie answers smugly.

“Correct.”

At least Mr. Val doesn’t seem impressed.

I take copious notes after that, but it isn’t until the bell rings that I realize I’ve been clenching my fist so hard, my hand is shaking. I concentrate on uncurling my fingers one at a time until the pencil falls against the desk and rolls into my lap.

Mr. Val clears his throat, and I look up to find the class empty. He stands behind his desk, staring at me.

“As much as I think more practice would benefit you, Miss Silby, I’m sure you don’t want to be late for your next class.”

I scramble to my feet, shove my books into my bag, and hit my hip on one of the desks as I go to leave. Just as I reach the door, Mr. Val calls me back. “Miss Silby.” He hands me a slip of paper but does not look at me as he speaks. “Whatever you did before you came here is irrelevant, but you cannot start anew if you do not change the behavior that got you here in the first place.” I open my mouth to speak, but I’m cut off. “You’re excused.”

I swallow hard and turn, leaving the room.

Once I’m outside, the wind runs long, slender fingers through my hair, cooling the back of my neck where sweat has gathered at the base of my scalp. The sun streams into my eyes and they sting. I blink rapidly.

Maybe Thane is right.

Maybe I’m not cut out for this.

But if not this, what?

How is it that my body parts are stitched together with tendon and muscle and ligament and thread? No amount of history or mythology has given me an inkling of hope that there are others like me, who can collect souls with a thread from their palm. Mom isn’t like me. This isn’t DNA. This is something else—something other and unknown.

I don’t know what I am.

My fists tighten again—not to suppress the rebellious thread but to quash the thoughts running through my head. This isn’t about the thread. This isn’t about being alone. This is about survival. I have to survive. Mom has to survive, I remind myself. She won’t make it without me. That means playing the game—fitting into the mold, bending, twisting, breaking—until nothing’s left of the old Anora, the one I was supposed to leave behind before coming here.

I turn on my heels and march toward Hollingsworth, eyes focused on the trees where I’d confronted Vera yesterday. I’ll find that damned coin, lock it up tight, and never, ever turn another soul again.

If there’s no trail to follow, they can’t find me, right?

“Anora!”

I keep walking.

“Anora!” Lennon runs up beside me. Her long, blond hair is pulled into a high ponytail and still manages to spill over her shoulders. “Where are you going? Biology is the other direction.”

I halt and stare at her. Sometimes I feel like two completely different people. One Anora wants to admit to a mistake I know I didn’t make. Laugh a little and say, “Oh, right,” as I turn with Lennon and head to biology. The other Anora wants to remain expressionless. Offer a monotone “I know” and continue on my way. The first means appeasing my mother; the second means doing what I need to.

But I’m kidding myself if I don’t admit that I want Lennon to like me. To think I’m normal.

So I smile.

“Oh, right… I guess I forgot my schedule for a moment.”

Lennon smiles, but there’s a brief sharpness to her eyes—like a lightning strike against a lavender sky—that tells me she doesn’t really believe me.

I turn with her and head toward Kline. We walk for a few moments in silence. The air between us feels strained. Maybe it’s because I have words at the back of my throat, eager to come out, eager to explain my behavior.

But then Lennon speaks, and I realize it’s because she’s been holding back.

“You’ll never believe what’s on Roundtable today.”

I swallow the words once and for all. They slither down my throat, sour and sharp. I’d almost forgotten about Roundtable.

“What?”

“Nothing about you,” she assures me.

Just then, a girl walks toward us along the buckled sidewalk. Her head is down, her blond hair curtains her face, and her books are pressed against her chest, fingers as white as snow. Students move out of her way but turn to stare as she passes—Lennon and I included. I hear whispers all around—whore and slut, words I hate.

“What’s happening?” Because it looks an awful lot like public shaming.

“Remember when I told you something way bigger would overshadow your weirdness in art?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Lily Martin left her phone in English yesterday. Someone read her texts and discovered she’s been sexting a guy from Rayon High School. It’s all over Roundtable, with pictures.”

“So?”

“So?” Lennon looks at me, astonished. “She was sexting someone from Rayon High School!”

“Don’t you think seventy-five percent of the student body has sexted? Just because Lily got caught doesn’t mean she should be ridiculed.”

“Oh, you have it all wrong,” Lennon explains. “It’s not that she was sexting, it’s who.”

“You mean to say it is a crime that she looked outside Nacoma Knight Academy for a love interest?”

Lennon shrugs. “Something like that.”

I hate this place already. It’s only a matter of time before Roundtable gets their hands on me beyond just being the new girl…and, well, I haven’t decided what exactly I’ll do when that happens.

Lily heads toward Walcourt, but my attention is diverted to a figure standing with his hands in his pockets, head inclined, watching Lily. It’s Thane, and he’s the only one who doesn’t move aside as if she’s the plague. As she nears him, she glances up momentarily. I can’t see her face, but there’s hesitation in her step. It’s the way Thane looks at her—with soft features and eyes, as if to say it’s okay, I’m here, and yet Lily doesn’t move to him. She continues past him, brushing his shoulder, disappearing into Walcourt.

I look away and start walking. Lennon follows beside me.

“Does Lily have enemies here?” I ask.

Lennon shrugs a lithe shoulder. “It’s not about having enemies. Anyone can end up on Roundtable, even the most popular. It’s like standing trial and your peers are the jury. Depending on what they read, you’ll either retain your rank or fall from grace.”

“That’s absurd. They need to figure out how to get rid of that app. Who do you think posted the texts?” I ask, glancing at Lennon.

“Who knows. The site is anonymous… That’s why Roundtable is so powerful.”

I want to laugh at the seriousness of Lennon’s words, but I know she’s not joking.

“Has anyone ever posted about you?”

Lennon’s smile cuts across her face wickedly, and I get the sense someone would rue the day they tried to expose Lennon Ryder.

“Never.”