The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

“Not yet,” she said. “But maybe someday. I mean, what else would they do with it? Janie said her dad moved out the day after Thanksgiving. They’re probably going to get divorced.”

 

What? My parents were getting a divorce? I reeled at the thought. How could that be? They bickered sometimes, but in general they’d been an infuriatingly unstoppable team for my entire childhood.

 

“They say there are some things that break marriages apart,” Landon said quietly. “I guess losing a kid is probably one of those things.”

 

“It broke me apart,” Nic said softly, and I realized how selfish I’d been when I’d imagined her reaction to my death and fretted over being replaced by someone new. Losing your best friend would be something you’d never recover from. Even if you moved on, found a new college roommate, chose a new maid of honor … some tiny piece of you would always be missing. I thought of what my life would have been like if Nic died, and the bleak misery of it made my stomach ache.

 

Nic unlocked the door, Landon pulled it open, and they entered in silence. Then Nic went to the little table by the door and pulled a large key ring from the drawer.

 

“Right where Janie said it would be.” She turned to Landon and tried to hide a shiver. “Shall we?”

 

He nodded, unenthused.

 

“I think she said it was this one …” She opened the door to the main hall, and I slipped through behind them. They’d come prepared—Landon held a huge torch-style flashlight, and Nic carried a little electric camping lantern. Nic moved as if she knew exactly where she was going. I got closer and realized she was looking down at a photo of a hand-drawn map on her phone.

 

The labels on the map made my stomach clench. They were in Janie’s handwriting, but it seemed, to my eye, less loopy—less like the perky preteen scrawl I knew and more like the writing of a young woman. Like she’d grown up in a hurry.

 

The map led us to the back stairwell and up to the second-floor day room. I hadn’t been back up there since the day I died. But being with my best friend and boyfriend (all right, my ex) felt almost … normal.

 

Nic stood in the center of the day room and took in all the details, then strode ahead. Landon watched her, not quite knowing what to do or say. Her single-mindedness seemed to alarm him slightly.

 

“Through there,” she said, gesturing toward the ward door.

 

But before she could go forward, Landon blocked her path. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

 

She was silent for a long time, and then she nodded, her eyes fixed on the door.

 

“Delia.”

 

The sound of my name startled me. Eliza stood a few feet away, looking at me anxiously. “Are you okay?” she asked.

 

“Of course I am,” I said, noticing that Nic and Landon had ventured into the ward hall. “But I have to follow them, sorry.”

 

“No, wait—”

 

But I left her behind. When I caught up to Nic and Landon, they were standing and staring at the door to Room 1.

 

It was crisscrossed with police tape: CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.

 

“We don’t have to go in there,” Landon said.

 

“Yes, I do,” Nic said. “I really, really do. Don’t you understand? She was my best friend. And her being here was my fault. That stupid trip … I knew she didn’t want to go.”

 

“Nic, come on,” I said. “It’s nobody’s fault. I mean, if we’re going to start pointing fingers, it’s way more Landon’s fault than yours.”

 

She tore down the crime scene tape and went inside. Landon tried to tidy the dangling strips of yellow plastic before following her.

 

Though the prospect of being in that room filled me with dread, I was curious enough to go in after them.

 

“Delia!” Eliza’s unhappy voice echoed from the hall.

 

The room was mostly dark, with stripes of dusty sunlight streaming between the boards that covered the window.

 

Nic shivered. “It’s freezing.”

 

Landon shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. They looked around for a minute, and then Nic walked the perimeter of the room, trailing her fingers along the wallpaper.

 

“Do you think she wished we were here with her?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Landon said. “I wish we’d been here.”

 

Nic nodded, staring at the boarded-up window. “I can’t even remember the last thing I said to her. I think I called her a loser or something.”

 

“That’s just what you guys did,” Landon said. “You can’t feel bad about that. What was it she always called you?”

 

“A weenie,” I said.

 

“Weenie,” Nic said, half laughing and half crying. “She always loved Halloween because for a whole day she got to call me Halloweenie.”

 

Landon snorted, and then they dissolved into low laughter.

 

“I could never think of anything for loser,” she said. “So I just said March seventeenth was St. Loser’s Day. But it wasn’t the same.”

 

“Yeah, not as good,” Landon said.