The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall (2 page)

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

Things weren’t always bad with my parents. For a lot of my life, we actually got along great. I was a huge nerd, they were huge nerds … I was the daughter they could relate to, whereas Janie was this beautiful blond creature who moved among us like a Barbie doll among Star Trek figurines.

We used to talk. And laugh. And just … be people, without all the tension that comes from not understanding, not trusting, not bothering to try to know who someone really is.

If I could go back, I know I’d do things differently, but I don’t even know exactly what that means. I’d still get annoyed by my parents’ overbearing watchfulness. I’d still find Janie about the most irritating person on the planet. Maybe we’d have a couple of idyllic days, but before long, I’m sure we’d be back to our old ways.

But maybe all that doesn’t even matter—the day-to-day stuff. The important thing is that you know, at your core, that you love someone and are loved.

Not getting along perfectly isn’t a huge flaw.

It’s just … life.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

I
t was the longest driveway I’d ever been on—practically a road all by itself.

And it’s mine
, I marveled, watching the trees go by in a blur.

All of it—the ten-foot brick wall, the rusted metal entry gate, the untended brush and the unending ribbon of bumpy, decaying asphalt. My head spun at the thought of actually owning something so real, so significant. My own house. What would it look like? Would it be cute and well kept, or falling apart, in disrepair? Seeing as we planned to spend the whole summer getting it ready to sell, my hopes were pretty realistically in the “glass half-empty” range.

We rounded a corner and the structure came into view.

Janie was the first one to speak. “Delia gets
that
?!” she spat, her long-simmering jealousy boiling over. “Are you kidding me? That’s not a house! It’s a hotel or something!”

Our parents didn’t answer. They were staring (we all were) at an immense gray building that resembled a giant stone monster that had perched on a hill to rest.

It was easily a hundred feet wide and three stories tall—four, if you counted the space under the roof gables, which must have been an attic. Wings extended off each side, and each floor was lined with a dozen windows. The entrance was an imposing pair of double doors under a stone overhang.

It was so big that I had to duck down in my seat to see all the way to the faded gray roof tiles that blurred into the misty late afternoon sky.

“Nice house,
Deedee
,” Janie said darkly, using what had been her nickname for me when she was little, and which she now used to drive me to the brink of sisterly homicide. “It’s probably haunted.”

“Your face is haunted,” I said.

My sister let out a warning squeal, but before we could get into it, Mom cleared her throat. “There’s a storm coming. Let’s get everything inside, please.”

Dad parked underneath the overhang and we all climbed out of the car. Mom opened the trunk and loaded my sister up with air mattresses and pillows, then grabbed a pair of suitcases. They disappeared through the front doors together.

When Dad and I were alone outside, he looked up at the building. “I must say, Delia, this is not what I expected.”

Yeah, join the club. “How’d Aunt Cordelia die, Dad?” I asked. “For real.”

My father sighed as he began handing me duffel bags. “She killed herself,” he said. “But
please
don’t tell Janie. Hysterics are the last thing we need.”

I was surprised that I wasn’t very surprised. In a way I felt like I’d known it. Poor Aunt Cordelia. “Why do you think she did it?”

He thought for a second. “She was old … and probably very lonely. And sick. Apparently, there was some dementia toward the end.”

Very lonely
. There was a sad weight in my stomach. If I hadn’t stopped writing to her, would she have been a happier person? Would she have stayed alive?

“Where did she do it?” I asked.

My father brightened. “That’s the good news. She wasn’t even on the property. She swallowed a bunch of pills and went for a walk along the highway. They actually thought she’d died of natural causes until they found the empty bottles and did a postmortem.”

The good news? “God,” I said, imagining an old lady limping down that endless driveway, growing dizzy and weak. “That’s terrible.”

“I appreciate your compassion, but you didn’t even know her. Don’t resort to melodrama.” Typical Dad—nothing was worth caring about unless it affected him directly.

“I
did
know her,” I said, scowling out at the decrepit fountain in the center of the driveway. “I still have her letters. And I’m not being melodramatic. Did she leave a note?”

My father ran his hand over his chin. “Not that I know of,” he said. “But look around … maybe you’ll find something.”

I nodded and started for the doors, intending to do just that. In fact, I’d already decided to make learning more about Aunt Cordelia my number one priority. She’d cared enough about me to leave me her house—not just her house, her
mansion
. How long had it been since somebody had cared about
her
?

Besides, what else was I going to do with the endless days that stretched before me? Clean toilets? Repair the plumbing? Play Yahtzee with Janie? Scroll through old pictures of me and my ex-boyfriend Landon on my phone?

As I crossed the threshold into the house, my father called to me. “Delia,” he said.

I turned, one foot in, one foot out, to look back at him.

“Don’t get too attached to this place, okay?” he said. “It’s not like you can stay here forever.”

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

Can’t stay forever, eh?

Wanna bet?

A
sweet scent filled my nose the moment I crossed the threshold. I couldn’t place it right away, but it clouded the back of my mind with memories of sunny summer walks with Mom when I was younger—the bright blue sky overhead, the two of us picking tiny wildflowers …

Buttercups. That was the smell. Little yellow buttercup flowers.

After I figured that out, I could focus on looking around. The foyer was spacious, with a high ceiling, an elaborate chandelier, dark red wallpaper, and an antique couch off to the side. It didn’t resemble any foyer I’d ever seen, actually. It looked more like … a lobby.

To my left was a door. I looked at the metal plaque, darkened with grime, screwed into the wall next to it.

HEAD WARDRESS

Hmm. I had no idea what a
wardress
was.

“Delia?” Mom’s voice startled me. She and Janie stood oddly still on the far side of the room, staring at the wall.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s a wardress?”

Mom let out a bitter half laugh, half sniff. “You’ll find out in a minute. Come here.”

I walked over.

On the wall before them was a large wooden plaque caked in a layer of dust. Hanging above it was the portrait of a handsome, severe-looking man in a suit and bowler hat.

Embossed on the panel, in old-fashioned block letters, were the words:

THE PIVEN INSTITUTE

FOR THE CARE AND CORRECTION OF TROUBLED FEMALES

FOUNDED 1866 BY MAXWELL G. PIVEN

“Hysteria Hall,” Mom said, her gaze locked on the writing. “The word
hysteria
originated from the Greek
hystera
, meaning ‘womb.’ Female hysteria was a blanket diagnosis applied to women for everything from schizophrenia to having too many opinions.”

Mom had a PhD in women’s studies. To put it mildly, she didn’t find stuff like this amusing. Janie and I heard the danger in her tone and didn’t comment.

“That’s Maxwell?” Janie asked, standing on tiptoe and reaching a finger up to touch the dried swirls of oil paint. “He looks mean.”

I batted her finger away. “He’s the founder of an insane asylum,” I said. “Not Mr. Rogers.”

The silence was broken by artificially cheerful whistling as Dad entered the room behind us. We all spun to face him at once.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“What’s up,” I said, “is that I’m the only sixteen-year-old I know who owns a mental hospital.”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Brad,” Mom said, a trace of sharpness in her voice, “you don’t seem surprised.”

“Oh no, I am,” he said. “I am. A mental hospital? That’s … not what I imagined.”

My mother folded her arms over her chest. “What did you imagine?”

Now Dad was starting to look a little uncomfortable. “A school, maybe? I mean, I didn’t know details. The lawyer told me it was some kind of institute, and that there was a recovery center interested in the property, once the structure was retrofitted …”

“Wow,” I said. “Way to keep all the important stuff to yourself.”

“What’s a recovery center?” Janie asked.

“Same thing,” I said. “A place for crazy people.” I crouched to pick up the bags I’d dropped, then started back for the front doors.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked.

“To the car,” I said. “We can’t stay here.”

“Of course we can. Where else would we stay?”

I stared at him in blank disbelief. “Um … how about anywhere that
isn’t
an abandoned mental hospital?”

Dad shook his head. “Don’t be overdramatic. Cordelia lived here her whole life, and—”

“And look what happened to her!” I said. “Exactly. I’m not staying.”

“If we don’t get this place to at least a basic level of safety and cleanliness, we can’t sell it,” Dad said. “And if we can’t do that as a family, then someday it will be all your responsibility. And you’ll have to do it alone.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sounds perfect. I’ll deal with it when I’m older.”

Not the answer my father had hoped to hear. He sighed. “We’ve already decided that this is what we’re going to do this summer. It’s a family project, and—”

“Some project. We do all the work, and Delia gets all the money,” Janie said, tossing her long blond hair haughtily over her shoulder. (I’d caught her practicing that move once in the mirror and thought it was a little too sad even to make fun of.)

“No more debate,” Dad said. “We’re staying. Cordelia had a small apartment, separate from the rest of the institute, and that’s where we’ll be living. No more discussion. Right, Lisa?”

Mom took a few long seconds to think before she spoke. “Okay,” she finally said, turning away. Her usually sleek hair was starting to fuzz out from its perfect ponytail.

I hate to admit it, because it highlights a certain amount of adolescent self-absorption, but that was the first time it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t my mother’s ideal way to pass the summer—that maybe she’d been roped into it, just like I had. Ordinarily, Mom’s idea of a good time was an evening spent in the air-conditioned den of our house, eating takeout Chinese and following obscure threads of Internet research on her laptop. Maybe being locked away in the middle of nowhere was almost as much of a punishment to her as it was to me.

I caught my mother’s eye. The briefest hint of mutual understanding passed between us, but then she turned away, smoothing her hair. A dim light of hope began to glow in my heart. Maybe Mom would be my ticket out of this place. But I knew her better than to press the issue when she was exhausted and irritated.

Finding out what a wardress was would just have to wait, because Dad opened another door on the far side of the room and held it open for us. “
Mesdames
,” he said grandly, “I present the main hall.”

Janie screwed up her face. “How do you know that?”

“There’s a sign on the door,
madame
,” Dad said.

“I’m a
mademoiselle
,” my sister said, rolling her eyes.

“I should hope so.” My father gave me a goofy wink.

I wanted to roll my eyes at him, too, but his dumb sense of humor always made me feel a stab of tenderness. He couldn’t help it if all his jokes were dad jokes.

The “main hall” wasn’t quite as grand as its name implied. It was a long, low-ceilinged passageway with several doors leading off of it. Even the lush wallpaper and hanging brass lamps didn’t dampen the claustrophobic feeling, and I was relieved when Dad opened the first door on the right.

“The superintendent’s apartment,” he said. “I guess that makes us the new superintendents.”

We stepped into a good-sized living room. There was also a dining area, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and a single bedroom. Once upon a time it had been a luxurious space, with gilded wallpaper and checkerboard floors, but now it felt old and worn—basically, like an old lady had been living there alone for decades. There were deep ruts in the floor from Aunt Cordelia’s walker, which was still stashed in the corner of the bedroom, a medical-looking metal tray on the kitchen counter, and a lavender couch in the living room. A table in the corner held a small, old-fashioned TV set, but for all her frantic channel flipping, Janie couldn’t get a signal.

“Not as bad as you thought, is it?” Dad asked, looking from Mom to me. “It’s pretty clean, considering. Toward the end there was a home-care nurse who cleaned up even though Cordelia ordered her not to. The place was a wreck. She’d poured
salt
everywhere and scratched up the wood floors pretty badly.”

“Like this?” Janie asked, looking down at her feet. We all walked over to see the word
DON’T
carved into the wood in letters about a foot tall.

“Wow,” Mom said. “That’s not going to buff out.”

“Don’t what?” Janie asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “We’ll sand it down. You’ll never even know it was there.”

“Sounds super fun,” I said. “Can’t wait to get started on that. Anyhoo, I’m going to go look around. I’ll see you guys later.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mom said. “You can’t just wander off.”

“I’m not wandering,” I protested. “I just want to see what’s here.”

My mother’s glance at Dad was clearly an appeal for backup, but Dad shrugged. “I don’t see how it can hurt. It’s probably just a bunch of empty rooms.”

“Maybe Janie can go with you,” Mom suggested.

“No way!” Janie shrieked. She’d already retreated to the couch to play games on her phone.

“Well …” My mother peered out the window at the line of dark gray clouds that had appeared on the horizon. “Just don’t go outside.”

“I’m not looking to get struck by lightning,” I said, grabbing the key ring off the stained wood dining table. I slung my army-green messenger bag over my shoulder and pushed through the door to the hallway.

Maybe I was more annoyed than I had any right to be, but I was sick of being treated like a flight risk.

Okay, yes, I’d messed up.

Yes, I’d messed up in a really big way.

But no, I was not a delinquent. No, I was not a liar. No, I was not looking, at every turn, for a chance to run off and end up living on the streets, picking pockets and sleeping in bus stops.

I just made
one
bad call.

It started back in January. I was hanging out at Nic’s house, along with my then boyfriend, Landon (more on that particular disaster in a moment). It had been cold and rainy for about two weeks straight, and we were going stir-crazy from being inside.

“Where would you go right now, if you could go anywhere?” Nic asked.

“Hawaii,” Landon said.

“Hogwarts,” I said.

Landon poked me in the ribs. “Dork.”

“I’d go to the beach,” Nic said. “Any beach where it’s warm. I haven’t seen the ocean in like three years.”

“Me neither,” I said. And that was fine with me. I’m not the beach-going type. The thought of being crowded into an endless sea of sun worshippers was the opposite of tempting—give me wizard school any day.

“You know what we should do?” Landon said. “We should go someplace for spring break.”

“To the beach!” Nic said, sitting up.

“Or to Orlando … ?” I said. “You know there’s an entire theme park—”

“Yes, Delia,” Nic said. “We know.”

“Not Orlando,” Landon said.
“Daytona.”

“Okay, and which one of our moms is going to be willing to come with us to Daytona?” I asked.

Landon flipped his floppy blond hair to the other side of his head. “Um … why would we invite someone’s mom?”

I was puzzled by his lack of understanding. I mean, a lot of my geekiness went over his head, but I thought this was pretty cut-and-dried. “Maybe … so we’d be allowed to go?”

Nic was sitting on the edge of the bed in deep contemplation. Then she brightened. “Hey! My church does a youth group trip every spring break. We could tell our parents we’re going on that, and then just fly down to Daytona. They don’t have to know about it.”

Oh. So I was the one who hadn’t understood. This trip was supposed to be
sans
parental units. My stomach lurched. As far as child-rearing styles went, my mother and father leaned pretty far into the “over-watchfulness” category. If I snuck off to another state—without so much as a grown-up in the group—and they found out … ? I’d be grounded until forever.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Nic said, leveling me with her dark-lashed gaze. “You’re thinking about Brad and Lisa.”

“Specifically, about the heart attacks they’d have if they found out,” I said.

“But they don’t have to find out!” Nic said. “The youth group goes to the Bahamas. They don’t have cell service. So we send an e-mail every couple of days and say we stopped in at an Internet café. You’ll come back with sand in your shoes and a sunburn. They’ll never even know.”

I closed my eyes for a moment to think about it—about the epicness of it—and as I did, I felt Landon’s warm hand on my forearm. A straining sensation pulled at my heart.

“Just consider it, Delia,” he said softly.

Landon McKay wasn’t the quarterback of the football team or anything, but I’d never quite gotten past feeling like I was the lucky one in the relationship and he was doing me some sort of undeserved favor. Because of this, he held the upper hand in negotiations of every sort.

“Yeah, but why do we have to go to Daytona?” I asked.

Nic shrugged. “Because that’s where cool people go. And we’re nothing if not incredibly cool.”

I was silent.

“All right, we can spend
one
day in Orlando at your Hogwarts theme park,” Nic said. “Deal?”

“Deal, deal, deal,” Landon urged, smiling at me.

He flopped his floppy hair again, and I knew resistance was futile.

“Deal,” I said, the sound of the word settling uncomfortably in my ears as Landon’s hand closed tightly around mine.

It’s definitely fair to say I had a bad feeling about the whole thing from the beginning. When the time came to siphon money from my savings account to pay for the plane ticket and my share of our fleabag motel room, even Nic seemed to be having second thoughts. The problem was, neither one of us was willing to admit it.