The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

My whole body went stiff. “Since when do you call her that?” I asked. “Nobody calls her that except her grandma. She hates it.”

 

But instead of correcting him, Nic angled her head … and rested it on his shoulder.

 

Then he reached for her hand, wrapping her fingers in his own.

 

Come on.

 

She pulled her hand away. “It doesn’t feel right.”

 

“Oh,” I said, “you think?”

 

I stared at them, a hundred horrible thoughts invading my brain at once.

 

Had Landon and Nic … had they liked each other all this time? Had my best friend been part of the reason he broke up with me? Did he bail on Daytona because he was afraid to be around us both at once? Was the camp girl just an invention to hide their secret?

 

“Listen,” Landon said. “Neither of us knew what was going to happen. And we were both devastated. You lost a best friend, I lost a girlfriend—”

 

“Oh, please!” I snapped. “You lost a girl you dumped. Over text. Like a slimy coward!”

 

“We both loved her. And she loved us. And the thing is …” He reached up and gently touched her cheek. “She would want us to be happy.”

 

“But not this way,” Nic said. The pitiful note in her voice wasn’t enough to buy my sympathy. She should have gotten up off the couch, slapped his hand away from her face. Instead, she just sat there like a traitorous lump.

 

“You’re right, I don’t,” I said. “I don’t want you to be happy this way. Have some respect for the dead!”

 

“Can’t you feel it, though?” His fingers trailed down to her neck. “She’s at peace. Wherever she is, she’s peaceful and happy.”

 

Nic’s eyelashes fluttered. “Do you really think so?”

 

“No,” I said.

 

“I know so,” he said, starting to lean toward her.

 

No, no, no, no, NO.

 

NO.

 

“No!” I cried out. “NO!”

 

But then, in front of my eyes, they were kissing—a sweet, soft, slow kiss. The kind Landon and I used to have. The kind I used to describe to Nic, who listened with starry eyes because she hadn’t had a boyfriend of her own yet. The kind that made me believe that Landon and I might be one of those couples who lasted forever.

 

When the kiss was over, he started to pull away.

 

But Nic—my best friend—pulled him back.

 

As I stood there, drinking in the sight of two people who should have, at the very least, had the grace not to kiss in the very place where I had died—something began to vibrate inside of me.

 

Only when the vibrations became so strong that I had already lost control of them did I understand what the feeling was:

 

Rage.

 

 

 

 

 

MY FAVORITE MEMORY OF NIC

 

 

Gym class, first day of sixth grade. As if being eleven years old in a pair of baggy blue gym shorts wasn’t hideously humiliating enough on its own, Coach was calling us up, one by one, to assess our physical fitness level.

 

I sat a few rows back on the bleachers, listening to the clump of mean girls in front of me verbally eviscerate everyone who wasn’t one of their own.

 

“Thunder thighs,” they would whisper, or, “Jelly belly. Ugh, that hair. You can tell just by looking at her that she smells.”

 

I was petrified, waiting for my turn to make the walk of shame and be judged for my shortcomings.

 

“Pisani, Nicola?” the coach called.

 

A tall brown-haired girl with thick glasses and rainbow-hued braces stood up next to me. The mean girls’ heads swung around to get an early look at her.

 

“Excuse me, Coach,” Nic said. “I don’t actually care to walk up there and be mocked and ridiculed by this pack of cackling witches. I already know what’s wrong with me. I have bad teeth, ugly glasses, and a big butt. So … can you just write that down?”

 

Everyone was speechless.

 

But one of the mean girls couldn’t resist. “Don’t forget hairy arms,” she said.

 

And the mean girls spent the rest of the class running laps around the gym.

 

When Nic came back from talking to the coach, she sat down. “Your butt’s not big,” I said.

 

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Not compared to yours.”

 

From that moment on, we were best friends.

 

 

 

 

 

I saw Nic and Landon as if I were watching them through a telescope—singled out, in perfect focus, while everything around them melted into darkness.

 

“STOP!” I roared, plunging forward past a little table with a heavy, old-fashioned phone on it. Without thinking, I swung my arm in its direction. The shock of contact reverberated through me, and the phone went flying and landed heavily on the floor with a discordant crash of its bell.

 

At the sound, the lovebirds on the sofa jumped apart.

 

“What was that?” Nic searched the room. When she saw the phone on the floor, her eyes widened with fear.

 

“Oh, are you scared?” I cried. “Good!”