Haunted Hallways, page 16
Dedication? Where had that come from?
Going through my apps, I didn’t get any messages about being the newest member, or even being rejected. And if I were rejected, I realized, I’d be dead. I plopped onto my bed; maybe I did dream it all up.
I got out of bed. I didn’t want to have to wait too long to use the bathroom. Grabbing my toiletries, towel, and a t-shirt and jeans, I left my dorm.
“You bitch!” The moment I opened the door, Genevieve flew at me, causing me to drop my things. I fell on my ass on the cold hardwood floor. She probably would have attacked me further had it not been for one of her friends.
“You killed him, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU?!” she screeched.
I looked up at her, her pregnant belly fully pronounced. Guess she and Ethan had been sneaking around long before I found out. “What the hell are you talking about?!”
“And she fucking denies it!” one of Genevieve’s friends spat.
“Ethan is dead, and it’s all your fault!” Genevieve threw her phone at me. It hit my forearm as I tried to protect my face. I yelped in pain.
“You deserve more than that, you murderer!” Genevieve continued her tirade. “Look at it!”
Not wanting her to keep yelling at me, I did what she asked. My jaw dropped as I read the blurb:
The body of an eighteen-year-old student was found at the swimming pool of the Mallory Thorne School of Excellence. This was another unfortunate death at our school. Previously, our prominent Year 7 footballer was found dead outside Mallory Thorne’s Creative Arts Wing. Investigations are still ongoing as to whether this recent passing was a suicide or if there was foul play.
I scrolled down and saw Ethan’s school picture in the article. Indeed, my cheating, racist ex-boyfriend was dead.
At first I thought it was some twisted prank, but I saw the URL came from the school itself.
“You’re gonna pay for this,” Genevieve seethed.
“No, she won’t.” A familiar voice rang through my dorm. Amor.
“Who the hell are you?” another one of Genevieve’s friends called as they rounded on her.
“You wouldn’t talk to me like that if you knew, you uncultured lapdog.” She made her way through the clique to get to me.
“Get up,” she commanded.
“Uh, we’re not done here,” Genevieve cut in. “So get the hell out.”
Amor gave her a once-over. “Shouldn’t you take care of yourself and your baby?”
Insulted by her question, Genevieve’s friends attempted to grab Amor when Amor let out a yell. Or rather, sang a pitch-perfect note that was loud enough to be a yell. I covered my ears, but the rest of the clique fell on their knees, tortured by Amor’s singing. They all passed out when she had finished. Briefly, I worried about Genevieve with the way she thudded on the floor, but then I remembered this was Ethan’s kid, so whatever.
Amor held out her hand and cocked her eyebrow. I scrambled up and let her take me wherever she was going to take me.
“I was about to change,” I started to say, but Amor waved me off.
“There’s no time,” was her curt reply, not looking at me.
The route we took felt familiar, and before I knew it, we were underground. We were going to the choir room.
I entered to the sound of cheers. The first face I saw was Gabriela’s, who was leading the applause.
“Congratulations,” she greeted, though I didn’t miss her judgy glance at my pajamas. To the crowd, she announced, “Everyone, welcome Desiree Aquino, our newest Siren.”
My jaw dropped. Seriously? I made it?
“I don’t see why you’re surprised,” Gabriela commented after the cheers died down, “considering your ex-boyfriend’s dead. Good job, you passed all the tests. You could have at least dressed for this occasion, however.”
I was about to explain what had happened, but she cut me off. “Your life is forever changed, Desiree, hopefully for the better. But, you must still put in the work. Starting now.”
Suddenly, memories of last Friday came flooding back the moment I saw the security guards enter with another body bag. Another dead body, which I would have to decompose through song. Even before one of the guards unzipped the bag, I knew the corpse was Ethan’s.
Even after everything I’d found out, I winced at seeing his drowned body. Ethan Harrison, one of Mallory Thorne’s best swimmers, dead from drowning—or so I kept telling myself.
Yet, he was no angel, and I had a job to do.
As if on cue, the mic stand was ready for me.
A month later.
During rehearsal, where I was playing my dream role of Velma Kelly, I received a link from Amor. Clicking it, I saw Genevieve’s picture with the headline: Eighteen-year-old student found brutally murdered near Lake Gracia.
I was too shocked to read the whole article, but I did see the words “decapitated,” “butchered,” and “fetus taken.”
Then I made the mistake of checking the comments, all of them accusing me of killing her.
“Come to the choir room after practice,” Amor texted.
I nearly dropped my phone. She wanted me to disintegrate Genevieve’s body, something I hadn’t done in a month because, aside from the callback, you only disintegrate the bodies your voice had driven to suicide. I never targeted Genevieve once. Hell, I hadn’t even thought about her since she and her friends ambushed me at the dorm.
“Control that voice, Velma. That’s a powerful gift you got there. Almost too powerful.” Amor punctuated her latest text with a winky-face emoji.
A comment popped out at me: “All Genevieve could hear was Desiree Aquino’s voice before she died.”
That was a goddamn lie! I. Never. Targeted. Her. Never made a Dedication toward her. Also, butchering and decapitating were not in The Sirens’ vocabulary.
But what did Amor mean about controlling my voice? That it didn’t matter whether or not I Dedicated a song, as long as the victim heard me sing? Did Gabriela—
“Velma, you’re up!” One of the stage crew members interrupted my thoughts.
I sighed. Velma Kelly was my dream role, and if I wanted to enjoy the privileges of a Siren, I needed to do all of the work. No matter how unpleasant. Or unfair, even.
Besides, it’s not like Genevieve was a friend anyway. I took a deep breath and headed for the stage.
BEHIND THE EYES
ASHLEY DENG
Early morning, and the bells of the new term rang out in the halls of Mallory Thorne. It was the start of Year 7, the beginning of the end for their time together, buzzing about preferred majors and ideal universities. Izzy felt the thrum of the same routines, this time tinged with the smell of blood: breakfast, class, class, lunch, nap, class—yelling, knives, blood, and viscera. How many others knew? She sure as hell didn’t know.
They were a group of best friends—well, no, all of them except for Izzy, who had been taken in by them—who knew each other before they started here at Mallory Thorne, knew each other’s work ethics, each other’s interests and shared hobbies. Izzy Wong was new (the “Wong” kind of Asian, as Irena called her), and they accepted her like an act of charity, homed onto her potential, saw the barest beginnings of what they all had, and absorbed her into their group. She was grateful to have friends help her navigate her school life and commiserate when things went bad; shame how it went, really.
She was one of three in their friend group who wasn’t aiming for medical school, though she still planned to pursue the sciences. (June and James set their sights at business; Izzy later swapped science for English after her first year at university, but if you’d told her this in Year 7, she’d have buried her head in the shame instilled in her by the others.) The rest were Christine, Irena, and Emily, a smattering of immigrant kids with built-in ambitions, thanks to a mix of familial and societal expectations. Izzy hadn’t experienced those until meeting them and she suddenly felt obligated to follow, until the reality kicked in their last semester and started to make her sick. It was lonely, now. She felt better about it.
At the start of Year 7, Izzy found June in their usual meeting place before class, under the vaulted ceilings of the science wing, where they usually sat in the crooks of the pillars with their morning books at their feet. June sat alone, freshly returned from her family trip and buzzing with an energy that Izzy hadn’t seen before. June was generally the quietest of the group, the one who talked like her life depended on it, but only when the room had come to a hush or with company smaller than three. Normally, she only showed her excitement when asked. Normally, she wasn’t clutching her bag so tightly her knuckles went white. Her ears burned red, almost matching the color of their uniform. She wasn’t smiling, either. There was almost a fear in her eyes.
Izzy sat next to her. It was going to be a few minutes before anyone else showed up. “Are…Are you okay?” She pointed to the bag.
June let the words tumble out, a rapid, post-anxious ramble that left her breathless: “So y’know when you visit family and they make you tell them all about your school shit and how your classes are going and what your plans are for the future and you kind of just mutter your rehearsed lines because your Chinese isn’t really good enough to go in depth and they just nod along and criticize you?”
Izzy didn’t, but she muttered a “Sure,” anyway. “I’m guessing the visit to China was bad.”
“Sort of?” June shrugged. “I got some new clothes and years’ worth of laisee money.”
“Brought back a shit ton of red envelopes?”
Here, June grinned. “You bet.”
“Okay, but like—” Izzy pointed to the bag.
“It’s a surprise,” June replied. “Let’s call it a good-luck charm for now. I think James and Emily will appreciate it most.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re try-hards! You’ll see. The important thing is, we’ll have a meeting about it over lunch.”
Her bag seemed innocuous enough, but whatever was in there was big enough to fill the whole thing. She had her arms around it, clutched closely to her chest, but Izzy didn’t even question the idea of holding an entire meeting for a good-luck charm. Instead, she asked “Why not get it from your room at lunch, then?”
June replied with a distant voice. “My aunt told me I should hold onto it until we were ready. Also that it’ll be good for me. Good luck from Buddha. Apparently.” There was a pause as June stared at the floor, a sudden and empty quietness washing over her. People passed them in the hall; none of them looked. There were stranger things that happened at Mallory Thorne, and some girl having a breakdown in the middle of the hallway was on par for Year 7s at most schools. Izzy wanted to say something but couldn’t think of what. They waited in silence until the bell rang.
Izzy had math with Emily and James, and she hated that fact more than she probably should have. Class with friends was supposed to be fun—the little chatter in the pauses between the teacher’s lecturing, the notes passed, the plans made for between and after class. There’s a conspiratorial atmosphere when you have class with friends, a gleeful conference of minds, plotting, plotting, always plotting—that was where the fun was, after all. But Emily and James didn’t care to indulge in the fantasy. Maybe after class, if they didn’t have homework. They’d get in a few playfully snide comments when the moments came, but mostly, Emily and James had their heads glued to their assignments, studying, too focused on beating each other for the top grades in the class. It was tempting to blame their upbringing, but Izzy reminded herself constantly that they were a group of Asians and one white girl, and their experiences were as varied as any other group with different demographics. Instead, it meant that they were a self-selecting group of highly-motivated, highly-driven, socially awkward teenagers carving a hole to belong in and forcing themselves to fit, even when the hole was too small. Not that anyone noticed. They were too busy enjoying each other’s company.
Izzy finally had the chance to talk to Emily and James once class wrapped up, all too eager to put her notebook and calculator away and not think about numbers for the next couple of hours. Instead, Izzy was thinking about June and whatever was in her bag. Had her aunt given her some sort of Buddhist talisman for academic success? Did those even exist?
Emily walked over and put an arm around Izzy’s shoulders. She grinned and said, “I called my parents last night—well it was more like they called me—but guess who’s got tickets to the K-pop fest next year?”
James, not far behind her, tsk’d. “Aren’t you going to be too busy?”
“No!” she snapped, almost biting at James. “I know how to manage my time.”
“So do I,” James sneered.
“Whatever. Look, it’s conditional, okay? My parents said they’ll let me go only if I keep my grades up and get into my top choices. Y’know, med school track.”
Izzy shrugged out of Emily’s arm and got out of her seat. She never understood why Emily involved her in these things. They listened to very different genres of music. But, she supposed, it was a way to include her. A small gesture, even if Izzy was less than interested. She feigned a polite smile in return. “You sent all your apps already?” She hadn’t. Izzy thought she knew what she wanted, but the whole ordeal scared her.
“Of course!”
“Same here.” James replied almost immediately after and, in hindsight, it was hard to tell if they were friends or dedicated rivals. He continued, drawing out his words into a sneer: “Except I’m going to make my money elsewhere. You know, not as a doctor.”
That won James an outburst from Emily, who slammed her fist onto Izzy’s desk, her jade bracelet clanging loudly against the wood. Definitely rivals. “What’s wrong with med school? What kind of Asian are you?”
Cringing, Izzy slipped between them, heading for the door. “Let’s, uh, let’s go get lunch. June’s got something to show us.”
Lunch was always a spectacle. Between the excited shouting and the parry-ripostes of light but mean-spirited comments, the entertainment lasted the entire hour. Currently, they were in the middle of an extended joke, lasting days of small jabs, rolling into a cacophonous picture of the various barely-teenager-appropriate exploits of Irena. From flashing her lab partner to making out and fondling behind the backs of the librarians, she took the comments in stride, even if they never happened. It was like a badge of honor, the dare that went too far, the excitement of risk that played out only in their heads. Izzy didn’t know why she loved it, but they all did—it was exhilarating, a fantastical break from the hells of school.
The dining hall, lit in a way that exaggerated all the shadows of its crevices, was packed with students and their chatter. Christine sat on Irena’s lap and waved them over at their usual spot, a table at the far corner, claimed by the group unofficially but never contested. June was already there, her arms wrapped around her bag, which sat on the table itself. Trays of food were set aside, forgotten more than anything. Christine piped up once she saw James and Emily converging at the table:
“James—or Emily, whichever of you—do you think I could get your help for chemistry before my parents find out and kill me? Y’know, before they make me spend my holidays with a tutor.”
Izzy felt a tinge of regret. Her grades weren’t nearly as good as Christine’s, and she didn’t feel like she needed a tutor, nor were her parents pressuring her whenever she gave them updates in school. It was belittling in a way, and Izzy wanted to change the subject, fast. “So, what’s the surprise?” she asked June, interrupting James before he could reply.
June’s grin grew, slowly and steadily, sparking a fire behind her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, unzipping her bag and reaching into it. “But it feels… special.”
What June pulled out could only be described as an idol, a miniature statue that could have been mistaken for a Buddha, if you didn’t know what Buddha looked like. It was a fat, jolly man, whose face was obscured by his round cheeks, and whatever features might’ve been left were wiped off, leaving only a smooth, rounded head behind. Its ears were long, even for a Buddha, and its hands were covered by cloth, hiding whatever gesture it had from the eyes of the world. The sight of it made Izzy queasy. It was wrong but alluring, a presence she wanted no part of yet could tell that it tasted sweet, like clarity and knowledge, like wisdom and fear—
It was the fear that made her jerk away, the sweetness turning metallic, like blood. She looked around, but no one else seemed to have noticed.
June was still talking. “My aunt found this in her village. Apparently one of the old ladies gave it to her when she found out I lived abroad. She said it’ll bring us success—academic success specifically. But only if we provide a sufficient offering. I don’t know if I believe her, but it couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Depends on the kind of offering,” said Irena, grinning. “Does it want blood? Hair? Teeth, maybe?”
“It’s Chinese, so probably food,” Izzy muttered. “That’s probably enough.” The thought made her uneasy; she sure as hell didn’t believe a thing, but her head bristled with anxiety anyway. There’d been enough weird shit happening at school that she couldn’t pretend like it wasn’t a possibility.
“Food it is, then!” said Emily. She placed a napkin in front of the idol and set an apple slice on top of it.
James was the most openly skeptical. He eyed the table, his face twisted into a disapproving glare. “You’re actually doing this shit? It’s fake! There’s no magic!”
“Why, are you scared?” taunted Emily.
“You say magic’s fake and all,” said Christine, shrugging, “but remember what happened to the Year 4 girls in the library last year? How else would you explain the pockets of fire and shifting walls of books?”
James shrugged. “Gas leak.” Still, he plucked a carrot from his lunch and placed it next to the apple.
Christine and Irena both gave up a small piece of their meals—chips, broccoli. That left Izzy and June, and Izzy did not want to join, the thought further making her nauseous. June did it, though. She dropped a few berries onto the table, most of which fell onto the dark wood and not the napkin, and they scrambled to pick it up before they rolled onto the floor. Thinking quickly, Izzy swiped one and passed it off as her own, setting it next to the others. If anyone saw, they didn’t say.
