I bounded down the stairs, out onto the driveway, and yanked open my car door. I found the black hoodie lying in the backseat, the one that I’d woken up wearing that day when I’d been late to school. It’d been stuffed in my car each day, taunting me. I slipped it on now, half expecting it to smell like someone else, the way other people’s clothes tended to do. But that was stupid. The jacket was mine. I zipped it to my collarbone and went back inside because if I was going to bring bread crumbs with me into the night, I would need a place to store them, one I was fairly positive the other version of me would bring with her. Now I had one on.
“A way back,” I repeated, this time under my breath, as I walked more slowly up the stairs.
Have you ever smelled something and been flooded with a memory? Dr. Crispin had asked. At the top of the stairs I tried to think about a smell that would force me to remember, when what I was trying so hard to remember was myself. My eyes snapped open.
Honor.
She was the only piece of me—Cassidy—untouched by the other thing that was lurking around inside my head.
I tiptoed to her door and listened. Usually when she was inside, I could catch her singing along to the soundtracks of Broadway musicals, but the room was quiet. I knocked just in case. Downstairs I could hear the television on and my mom banging around in the kitchen.
I let myself into Honor’s room. She was a freshman, but her room hadn’t made the leap to high school yet. I walked over a giant rug in the shape of a flower. Stuffed animals lined the window seat. I ran my hand over the tops of their heads, trying to remember some of their names.
Turning, I spotted Honor’s blanket still scrunched half underneath her pillow. I crossed to reach it. The inside square of the blanket was knitted and it had a silky lavender border. I pressed it to my nose. It smelled as it always had, like laundry detergent, strawberry shampoo, and, okay, maybe a hint of drool. How many times had I made fun of my sister for keeping a stupid blanket? Mom said she’d grow out of sleeping with it when she was ready. Now part of me hoped that she never would.
In her nightstand, I found a pair of scissors. She would kill me once she found out. But I took the shears and cut a corner off the blanket and stuffed it into my pocket.
TWENTY-TWO
Marcy
The clock on the dash read nine o’clock when I pulled beneath the flickering fluorescent light of the gas station awning and parked beside the Dumpster next to Lena’s VW Bug. I found her sitting on the hood of her car, back leaned up against the windshield, staring up at the stars. I thought about the stars on her wrist and wondered what it is that she would wish for.
I had only one wish now and it was about to come true.
“Why haven’t you started already?” I asked.
She peeled herself off the glass. I’d been “waking up” earlier and earlier and tonight had set a record. But midnight was pressing in on us with an urgency so sharp that we couldn’t dare waste a minute.
“I’m not going in without you.” Her shoes squeaked across the hood. I held her hands to help her down. “The mill gives me the creeps.”
“I should give you the creeps. The mill’s just a mill. I’ll be the scariest thing in there.”
She looked seriously at me. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, you know.” The fringe of her bangs caught in her lashes. I brushed them free. She blinked at me for a second, then turned to rummage around in her backseat. She pulled out a heaping cardboard box and handed it to me, then pulled out another to balance in her own arms.
“Is this everything?” I asked, enjoying the weight of the box in my arms because it made things real.
“Everything that you ordered plus the theater department equipment you asked for. I need all this stuff back, though, Marcy. If it doesn’t get returned to school, they could figure out it was me.”
“Duly noted,” I said, and made sure that nobody saw two girls disappearing into the field behind the station. The night consumed us as we walked into the high grass and picked our way over uneven terrain and torn-up roots to the shadowy silhouette of the old grain mill.
The hulk of metal and mortar twisted into the night sky, and I stared straight into its hollow, glassless eyes for windows. The darkness inside seemed to be deep and without a soul, and the presence of the mill worked chills up the back of my neck.
“Shall we?” I said with the same rush of excitement of a little kid on Christmas Eve.
I thought I heard the sticky sound of saliva sliding down Lena’s throat beside me. We stepped over the broken threshold and into the mill, where sawdust made a sound like sandpaper underneath our boots. Lena clicked a flashlight on and then fished around for a couple of battery-operated lanterns that she pulled from her box.
The lanterns cast circles of soft glowing light on the cement floor. I paced the surrounding area, thinking, exploring, scheming.
How long would it take for stories to be told about this place? I imagined the future legends of the massacre in the old grain mill, forever haunted by the spirits of three college students. The idea was delightful.