White is for Magic (13 page)

It's a ridiculous lie that actually seems to work. Except for Trish and Emma, all the other girls, including Keegan, return to their rooms to savor the few last minutes of sleep before classes.

"We missed you at the chapel service last night," Trish says, not budging from her spot just inches from my face.

I nod an acknowledgment.

"But they're keeping the chapel open all week," she continues. "You know, just in case you wanted to stop by, in case you needed some place to go." She looks back and forth between Drea and me.

"Right now I need to get ready for school," I say. "I can't afford any more detentions."

Emma smiles at us between nose blows, perhaps sensing her roommate's gift of grief giving.

Amber, Drea, and I are just about to file back into our room when I hear a male voice behind me.

I whirl around to find Cory and one of his clone friends. Sneakers in hand, Cory hugs Emma goodbye while the clone-friend gives Trish a smooch on the cheek.

"Geek boy?" Amber shouts.

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Cory stops and looks back at us. "You didn't see anything, okay?"

"The hell we didn't." Drea folds her arms across her chest.

"For your information, we slept on the floor," the clone-friend says. "We were just cramming for an English exam together."

"Where do I know you from?" Amber asks him.

"I don't know," clone-boy smiles, his left eye twitching. "I've been known to get around." He scratches at the scruff of honey-blond hair on his head and winks at Amber, shooting her with an imaginary pistol.

"Wait." Amber takes a step toward him. "You're the guy from the mailroom. The one who asked me how I'd be spending the anniversary."

"I really don't remember that." He cocks his head to the side, feigning bewilderment.

"You guys should really get going," Trish says, gesturing for Cory and Clone-y to leave. "Our RD is gonna come out here any second."

"Fine," the clone says. "We're leaving." He looks up at us. "It was nice to finally meet you ladies."

"What do you mean 'finally'?" I ask.

"It's just that I've heard so much about all of you."

"Let me guess," Amber sighs, "you're one of the ghost groupies' newest recruits."

"Ghost groupies?"

"Yeah," Amber nods. "That's what I like to call the people around here who can't get any live action, so they go looking for the dead."

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"Who says I can't get live action?" clone-boy asks, glancing at Trish.

"If the casket fits," Amber says.

"Let's go," Drea says, tugging at Amber's arm.

Amber pulls away. "What's your name?"

"Hmm," clone-boy says, rubbing at his frizzhead. "That's a tough one."

At that, he and Cory start laughing--stupid, illogical, private-joke laughter, like an instant replay of yesterday in computer class. Trish laughs along as well, but she's still trying to scoot them out.

"Incidentally," Clone says when he can finally contain himself, "how
are
you girls spending your anniversary?"

"Keegan!" Drea shouts, causing them to boot it out the door once and for all.

Keegan emerges from her room. "What? What is it?" she asks.

Emma looks at us, her face at least five shades paler than a few moments ago. She conceals her obvious nervousness with a handful of tissues.

"Nothing," I say, figuring I'm no one to squeal about boyfriends stopping by at the wrong time.

Keegan doesn't say anything else and neither do we. We just go back into our room and lock the door behind us.

"So gross," Amber says, referring to the puke on the mirror. She moves toward it for a closer look. "Did you have Mallowmars last night?"

"Let's not analyze the heave," Drea says. "Let's just get it out of here. Stacey, do you need some Windex?"

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But I'm too busy focusing on what's sitting on my bed-- a handheld tape player and an envelope.

"Stacey?" Drea repeats.

The envelope has my name typed on the front, but it wasn't mailed, and there's no return address.

"What's that?" Drea asks. "How did that get in here?"

I take the envelope with trembling fingers, the vibrations prickling over my skin--just as real and cold and permeating as the last time.

'Are you okay?" Drea asks.

I shake my head but rip the letter open anyway. There's something folded up inside. I take it out--an origami snake.

"That's weird," Amber says.

The origami snake pressed in my palm, I feel a cold, burning sensation drift up my arms, making my hands tremble. "I dreamt it," I say. "I felt it--folding paper. In the common room, the last letter ... I folded paper."

"What do you mean?" Drea wraps an arm around my shoulder.

I shake my head. I know I'm not making any sense.

"Look," Amber says, picking up the tape player. "There's a cassette inside. Should we play it?"

My head is spinning so fast that I don't even answer. I unfold the flaps of paper, doing my best to concentrate on the action, to sense the message inside. At the same moment Amber pushes the play button and static-filled music filters into the room.

"Oh my god," I say, recognizing the tune.

"Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,"
a child's voice sings from the player.
"All dressed in black,
black, black. She has all but

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i4i

tons, buttons, buttons straight down her back, back, back. She cannot read, read, read. She
cannot write, write, write. That's why she smokes, smokes, smokes, her father's pipe, pipe,
pipe. .
."

"Shut it off!" I shout. "Now!"

Drea complies.

"It's the real version," Amber says.

"Who's doing this?" My hand trembles over my mouth.

Drea plucks the half-unfolded origami snake from my hand and helps me sit down on the bed.

"It's going to be all right." She pushes my hair back off my face, pausing a moment at the shorter chunk at the side where I cut.

"How do you know?" I snap.

She takes a deep breath and finishes unfolding, until the once tiny origami snake is now a full-blown letter with tears and creases.

"What is it?" I ask. "What does it say?"

Drea cups a hand over her mouth, allowing the letter to drop to her lap.

I pick it up. The words stare up at me from the middle of the page: IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK, STACEY BROWN, YOU'LL BE BEGGING TO DIE!

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I

I

twent/~two

My chest feels like it's about to cave, as if my whole core might collapse in just one breath. Drea pats my back, whispering over and over again how everything will be okay.

"We'll deal," Amber says. She pries the letter from my hands, tosses it out of sight, and then shimmies over to the open window to stick her head out. "I don't see anything." She closes it back up and locks it.

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"Why wasn't it locked in the first place?" I ask.

"I'm pretty sure it was," Amber says. "Not like that matters. If someone wants to get in, they will."

"Maybe they didn't break in through the window," Drea says. "Maybe it was somebody who lives here. I didn't lock the door on the way out."

"Well, then, why was the window open?" Amber asks. "It wasn't open before."

"It doesn't make sense," I say. "It doesn't make sense that someone would be keeping such close tabs on us that they would know it the moment we all stepped out of the room. That they would be able to open the window, climb in, leave stuff, and then climb out before any of us came back.

Plus, how would whoever it is know which bed is mine?"

"I don't know, Stacey," Amber says, glancing toward my night table. "If the crystal and bowl of dried herb thingies didn't tip them off, maybe it was the shrine of candles, those weird cone pieces, or that Bunson burner mechanism you have there."

"The cone pieces are incense," I say. 'And that's a clay burner for lighting them."

"A serious must-have," Amber says.

"Okay, so maybe it isn't so hard to tell which bed is mine."

"Well, there's certainly no mistaking which bed is
mine."
Amber grabs the bright pink boa hanging from her headboard. She drapes it over her shoulders and then turns to gaze over at Drea's bed. "Your bed is looking a bit stark lately, Dray. Is that what happens in a drought?"

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"Better a drought than your monsoon of a reputation," Drea says.

"Can we just stop with the jokes for five minutes?" I ask.

"Who's joking?" Amber asks.

"That's not Maura's voice on the tape, is it?" Drea asks, deciding to ignore Amber.

I shake my head.

"I didn't think so," she says. "It sounds too much like an actual recording. Like an actual children's CD that you could go out and buy."

"Yeah," Amber agrees, "but taped off another cassette or CD or something because of the static and the music in the background." She pushes the Eject button and pops the tape out.

"What is it?" I ask, noticing how her lips have twisted up like she just failed a test.

Amber angles the cassette toward me, the words on the label staring back at me: I'M

WATCHING YOU.

"It doesn't mean anything," Drea says. She's shaking her head, pressing her fingers into her temples, wanting more than anything, I think, to believe that herself.

"It means I'm being watched."

"Wasn't 'I'm watching you' Donovan's catch phrase last year?" Amber asks.

"Exactly," Drea says. 'And look at the lettering. It's also like last year--the uppercase red. It could just be some copycat prankster. You know? One of the ghost groupies ..."

"Could be," Amber says. "Though 'I'm watching you' is pretty EOE."

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"EOE?" I ask.

"Yeah, you know, an eqHal opportunity expression. It's pretty generic. It could
ffi
be a coincidence. Especially since I'm so done calling th>s a Prat\k."

"So am I." I swallow hard and look at Amber, hoping for one of her stupid jokes, waiting for Drea to tell me that everything will be fine. But it just remains quiet among us for several seconds.

Finally, Amber feeds the cassette back into the player and hits fast forward a bunch of times> followed by the play button. "Nothing," she says. She flips the tape over and tries that side as well. "It's blank except for that one song."

I take the tape out and press
[t
between my palms, trying my best to concentrate, to sense something. "The letter M," I say, picturing it pressed behind my eyes. "Like the first time I dreamt about it."

"Now, would that be M for Maura or M for murder?" Amber asks. "Or maybe it's M for the 'Miss Mary Mack' song." She over-enunciate* the Ms on the title. "I'm a wee bit drained of all this rainy-day clue stuff, Stacey."

"What are you talking about?

"Your insights," she says- "They're all so foggy."

"This isn't exactly easy for me "It

isn't easy for any of ^s> Drea says.

"I know," I say, draping my arm around Drea, noticing how watery her eyes look.

She wipes the tears that dribble from the corners of her eyes and takes a deep breath. I m okay"

'Are you sure?" I ask. "Maybe Amber and I should talk about this someplace else.

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"No," Drea says, sitting up to straighten her posture. "I want to help. We need to figure this stuff out, like, why an origami snake?"

"It was in my dream," I say, remembering the detail. "I also sensed it."

"You sensed origami snakes?" Amber winds the boa around her head, turban-style.

"Well, not exactly," I correct. "When I got that first weird letter, I was able to sense paper folding."

'Are you sure it wasn't paper rolling?" Amber asks.

"Hilarious," I say.

"Yeah, but why a snake?" Drea asks, ignoring Amber. "Why not a rat or a goat? And why that

'Miss Mary Mack' song?"

"That's easy," Amber says. "Because when Stacey fell asleep in yoga class she started singing some twisted version of it."

'And now I have everyone singing that stupid little tune at me." I sigh. "That and throwing barf bags in my path."

"Mortifying," Amber says.

"Were you dreaming about Maura this time as well?" Drea asks.

"No," I say. "My nightmare this morning was different." I grab a couple paper towels and a bottle of Windex and begin mopping up the mirror. Between wipes, I tell them all about the banner and the students gathered around it, and then segue into my little run-in with the guy from the woods. I tell them how he was the one who sent me that email and broke into the boiler room.

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"He's also the one who handed me the origami snake in my dream," I say. "He wants me to meet him later."

"We're so there!" Amber declares. "What time?"

"No," I say. "I think I should go alone. He wants to talk to me alone."

'Are you crazy?" Drea asks.

"No one's going anywhere alone," Amber says. "Not for a good two weeks."

"No," I say, scavenging through my spell drawer for a bottle of cinnamon oil. "I'll be fine." I dab my finger with a bit of the oil and then touch all four corners of the mirror to help restore positive energy. "Plus," I continue, "he'll know if you guys are with me. He's obviously watching me."

"Wait," Drea says. "Is he the one who's sending you all this stuff?"

"Obviously," Amber says. "The guy's a total psycho."

"Actually, I don't know who this stuff is from. I need to talk to him about that. But I'm thinking it's from someone else."

"Why?" Amber asks, fake-smoking one of the feathers from her boa.

I glance back at the crystal on my night table, wondering if I should explain about its healing qualities, how the person who gave it to me couldn't possibly be the same person to send me something so menacing. But then I change my mind, considering how ridiculous the words sound in my head--how ridiculous it would be to try and explain such a theory when breaking into the dorm's boiler room in the

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middle of the night is nothing less than menacing. When the guy who gave me the crystal was in fact the same person who handed me the origami snake in my nightmare.