Liv, Forever (19 page)

I rushed at the hanging butterflies and pushed myself through them. I ignored the burning pain as best I could—the swarm began to swoosh and flutter in the air. The metal contraption that held them up squeaked. But I had to collapse against the couch, drained.

Thorton went over to the butterflies. He touched the delicate strings, calming them. Then he checked the other windows—none were open, of course. He was confused and unsettled now.

I had another idea. I lifted myself up and rushed past the old steam heater, chilling it, causing the thermostat to turn on. The radiator began spewing steam and hissing. Somehow that made him feel better, convinced everything was the fault of that noisy heater. He padded over and turned a knob. As he started back up the stairs, I collapsed on the bottom step, still stinging and exhausted. Once I recovered and was certain the headmaster was back in bed, I crept in to find Malcolm and Gabe.

The records room was something out of the past, long before computers, musty and stale: rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling files, documenting every student who ever attended Wickham Hall. Malcolm and Gabe were so deep into a heap of folders they hadn’t heard a thing.

“Thorton came down, but lucky for you guys, I did some deft ghost interceptions.”

Gabe chuckled.

Malcolm asked, “What’s funny?”

“Liv’s back. She saved us from Thorton.”

“For now,” I grumbled, angry at myself. “Any progress?”

“Progress?” Gabe beamed. “We struck gold. We found a file for
every
one of them. Boathouse Girl took forever, but we just found her.”

Malcolm started gathering up folders. “Let’s get out of here. We can go over it all at my dorm.”

THE THREE OF US
climbed through Malcolm’s ground-floor window. Gabe and Malcolm now knew to leave the window open a few extra seconds for me to follow. “In,” I announced. Gabe shut the window as Malcolm spread seven school folders out onto his bed.

“Seven?” I asked. “You found Nature Preserve Girl?”

“No. The six we identified and … you,” Gabe explained.

“Me?!”

“We thought it might help us look for commonalities,” Malcolm said. He was getting good at guessing my side of the conversation and responding to it. Sometimes it even seemed like he could hear me.

“Okay. I guess. But please tell me that’s not the end of this story. That I become some murderous ghost.”

“You’re not going to become a murderous ghost,” Gabe assured me.

Malcolm followed Gabe’s stare and said firmly, “We know you’re not that, Liv. You will
never
be that. And that’s why we’re doing this—to end it. To make things right.”

“Okay. Tell him I said okay.”

Gabe grumbled. “She said okay.”

“Say it nicely.”

“She wants me to say it nicely.”

Malcolm flashed a brief smile, but I was frustrated with Gabe. We all felt that way. Gabe was sick of having to repeat everything I said. I would have been, too. And Malcolm was clearly frustrated he couldn’t hear me. But we got back to the task at hand. Malcolm moved all the folders into chronological order and started to review the facts.

“Clara Dodge, aka Boathouse Girl, disappeared in 1885. Technically, it was an unsolved missing person. Florence Kelly, aka Skellenger Girl, died in 1915. Suicide. Ruth Bookout, aka Miss Weeping Willow, died in 1925. Suicide. Cut her own throat.”

“How is that even possible?” Gabe grumbled angrily.

“Just let him keep going,” I said.

Gabe growled, shaking his long hair down over his face, as Malcolm proceeded. “Mary Bata, aka
Jackie O
Girl, died 1965. Suicide. Cut her wrists. Lydia Korn, died 1985. Suicide brought on by a bad reaction to LSD.”

“Shit! No wonder she seems so insane,” Gabe proclaimed. “She’s tripping.”

He had a point. That could explain her belligerence and wild eyes.

“And, finally, Brit McLean, aka
Gossip Girl
,” Malcolm finished. “Died in 2005. Suicide. Hanged herself in the lobby of Main. So … those are the facts.”

“According to Wickham Hall,” Gabe added.

“Yes,” Malcolm concurred. “The facts
according to Wickham Hall.
”

“So what does it all mean?” Gabe pressed.

“Well, for starters, they’re all girls,” Malcolm said.

Exactly.
I moved next to Malcolm, studying the papers. “And, look, we all died in October.”

Malcolm echoed the same thing without knowing I’d spoken, adding, “Usually late in the month. He turned to Gabe. “You wanna write this down?”

“I’m not your personal assistant, Mr. Astor.”

“Just do it,” I urged, and Gabe grabbed a pen off Malcolm’s desk. He wrote “late October” on the back of some crew-related handout. I couldn’t help but notice the trophies and awards on Malcolm’s desk. I glanced around and saw they were everywhere—trophies, awards, plaques, certificates. Malcolm was a winner. At everything, it seemed. “And look at the years,” Malcolm noticed. “Each death is in the fifth year of a decade!”

“No way
in hell
those are all coincidences.” Gabe stood and started pacing.

“But every death was reported as a suicide.” Malcolm leaned back. “Except Boathouse Clara—I guess her body was never found.”

“
Reported
is the key word. Liv’s death was also reported as a suicide, but we
know
it wasn’t. Come on! There’s a pattern here, some kind of ritualistic killings happening at pre-determined intervals, right?!” Gabe wasn’t taking notes anymore. He was exploding with conspiracy ideas. “Maybe each ghost kills the next one?”

“Don’t say that to her. It’s not necessarily the case,” Malcolm insisted. “Let’s keep studying the records.” He again bent over the papers, reading. “Help me, Liv.”

I stood next to him, examining each girl’s file.

“All good students,” I noted. “Especially Mary.” But
something else caught my eye. “Look! Every one of these girls—except Brit—was on scholarship, financial aid, or charity of some kind, including me. Look here at the letter attached to Clara’s file. It’s from her parents, asking the Wickhams for help before Wickham Hall even officially had scholarships.”

Gabe repeated every word that tumbled out of my mouth for Malcolm, then his focus suddenly shifted. “Wait a minute. What about the Wickhams? We’ve all read that thing about Infinite Intelligence and healing the world. It’s our friggin’ school motto. And weren’t they into some weird occult shit? What if they started all this somehow?”

I nodded, thinking of the spirit photography. “There are some really strange photos of Elijah Wickham at the Headmaster’s Quarters,” I confirmed. “Creepy pictures of him with spirits. Most of them looked pretty fake, but there was one of Wallace and Minerva that actually looked real.”

“See?!” Gabe jumped all over it. “What did I say?! They were way into ghosts and shit!”

“See
what
?” Malcolm groaned. He was tiring of always being one step behind.

Gabe repeated what I’d said then asked: “And didn’t Minerva die young?”

“In an unexplained accident,” Malcolm said. He stood. “Let’s go to Old Homestead.”

“Now?!” Gabe asked.

“While we still can. This place is going to be crawling with alumni in about four hours.”

AS WE CROSSED CAMPUS
to Old Homestead, Malcolm told us everything he knew about the Wickhams. They’d come over from England to open the school, supposedly with the idealistic aim of bringing Romanticism to the New World. Malcolm said it was widely known, at least among the Victors, they were into mysticism and the supernatural. He’d heard there was a special room in the basement of Old Homestead where Wallace communed with Minerva after her death.

“Like a séance room?!” Gabe asked. “I knew it! They did something dark, something weird. A curse or something … we need to get down there.”

Gabe was energized. Of course he was. After all, he’d spent two miserable years at Wickham labeled a freak—most of all by Malcolm and his friends. Now every paranoid thought he’d had was being vindicated. It was like giving Van Gogh his happy ending—as if everyone had recognized he was a genius (or at least not insane) before he died.

As we rushed through the cemetery, Gabe stopped. He caught a glimpse of me crossing over a charged headstone. “Stop!” he hissed.

I halted.

“What?” Malcolm demanded.

“She’s changing more,” Gabe told Malcolm, distressed. He stared at me. “You’re fading. You’re disappearing. What did you do at the headmaster’s house?”

“I had to distract him. I moved the butterflies.”

“Stop doing that! Stop trying to move things and change things!”

“Gabe,” Malcolm said, trying to calm him.

“I don’t want her to become like the others. Or disappear,” he murmured.

“Neither do I.” Malcolm patted Gabe on the back, gently pushing him to continue on. Together the three of us kept moving.

WE DEVISED A PLAN
of who would do what, but when we arrived at Old Homestead, we discovered Malcolm’s key no longer worked. He looked as agitated as Gabe. He kept shaking his head, shoving the key into the lock. “This is the master prefect key. It should work everywhere,
especially
here.”

“What do you mean by especially?”

“This is where the Victors meet. In that hidden room on the fourth floor.”

“Yeah, I think I know the one, where Abigail so kindly locked me up.”

Gabe chuckled. Malcolm just looked at him. Instead of asking him what I’d said, he turned and started walking back toward the dorms. “It’s late. I need sleep. I’ll get us into Old Homestead in the morning.”

“You shouldn’t be alone, man,” Gabe called after him. “It’s not safe.”

He looked in my general direction. “I won’t be alone, though. Right, Liv?”

WHEN WE ARRIVED AT
Pitman, Malcolm opened the window and extended his arm, gesturing for me to go first. Always the gentleman, even to invisible me. He climbed into the window after me, closed it, pulled the curtains, and collapsed on his back in bed.

“It’s so hard not being able to hear you. It’s so unfair.” He paused, then laughed at himself. “I can’t believe this. I’m talking to air.”

It’s not air. It’s me.

“But it’s not air. It’s you,” he added, once again seeming to read my thoughts. “I know you’re here. At least I
believe
you are. Let me know you’re here.”

I looked around, desperate to show him a sign but knowing I shouldn’t use my energy. I rushed past Malcolm as fast as I could, skirting his flesh by only an inch or so.

He felt my chill. A sad smile played on his lips.

“You are here,” he said.

I am.

“Maybe it’s good I can’t see you. I don’t know if I could say what I want to say. When I told you I loved you … you’re the only girl I ever said that to, Liv. And I meant it.”

I wanted to show him I was still present, but I was frozen. Rapt. I could only listen.

“I imagined us together. You’re the first person I ever felt really myself with. I don’t know what my point is. Maybe I’m just feeling sorry for myself. But I shouldn’t—you’re the one who’s gone.” He paused. “My father is coming tomorrow, er, today I guess. You’ll see me with him. I’m already a little embarrassed. You’ll see … I’m weak.”

“You’re not weak!” I shouted silently.

He squeezed his eyes shut and blurted, “I need to hear your voice!” He grabbed his phone and clicked his voice mail. “I have one message from you. I saved it, thank God. I think I’ve listened to it a hundred times.” He put it on speakerphone, and I heard myself. “
Hi, Malcolm, it’s Liv.
Um, I was thinking …
” I sounded so young, so far away. I remembered how I’d had to call five times just to get his voice mail. And how nervous I’d felt. How I’d practiced exactly what I wanted to say but then said something completely different.
“There’s one word missing in the drawing I did, the one I did on you, I mean. Free. I should’ve put the word ‘free’ in there.”

He stood up and unbuttoned his shirt and checked. A faint, ghostly trace remained. He took his shirt completely off and approached the mirror. “I don’t want it to fade away.”

I stood next to him. I wanted to see us together, but there was no me. It was still shocking to peer into a mirror and see nothing. I fell away, unable to look. He lay back on his bed. “I think I should probably get a little sleep.” He closed his eyes, and I watched him gently doze off.