It’s been hours now, or it must have been; the campus, outside the library windows, has taken on the golden hue of late afternoon.
Ellis stands with her hip tilted against the wall of my carrel, long legs crossed at the ankles. She looks relaxed enough to have been there for a good while, myself too absorbed in du Maurier’s words to notice.
“What?” I say, too belatedly.
“You look pale,” she says, taps beneath one eye. “Dark circles. Are you sick?”
I don’t know why she’s asking, after yesterday. She knows why I’m upset. Maybe this is Ellis’s way of showing concern without letting that concern bleed into pity.
But I don’t need her concern. I slept last night, sort of. I got out of the house this morning. I’m far from Alex now; I just need time.
“I’m fine. Are you following me?”
She doesn’t dignify that with an answer. “Get up. We’re going.”
“Where?” I ask, but I’m already shoving the book into my satchel and getting to my feet. Even the library gets tedious after nine hours. Ellis could be bringing me to Persephone’s underworld and I’d be glad for the change in scenery.
I follow Ellis back to the Godwin House common room, where she pushes me down into the armchair by the window. “Stay here,” she orders, and vanishes into the kitchen.
When I agreed to go with her, I hadn’t thought she meant back here.
But I sink back against the cushions with a sigh, tilting my face toward the sunlight. It might be chilly outside, but the light is warm on my skin through the window; I imagine it sinking through flesh and taking up root in my marrow. There are no ghosts. No dead memories—of mountains or otherwise.
I won’t let Alex get to me anymore.
Ellis emerges with a tray in hand, a teacup and pot balanced atop it. She slides the tray onto the ottoman and crouches down, pouring a steaming cup of jasmine I can smell from where I sit, the long petals unfurling against white porcelain. There’s only one cup.
“Aren’t you drinking any?” I ask.
“I can’t stand anything decaffeinated,” she answers. “Would you mind opening that window for me?”
I obey. The latch is old; it takes a second to get it unstuck and shove the glass up enough to let in a soft breeze. I don’t think this window has been opened in fifty years. Perhaps longer—since the Dalloway Five lived in Godwin House and spilled blood on its ground.
Ellis perches in the other chair, drawing a cigarette case from her inside blazer pocket. “Want one?”
“No, thanks. I quit.” Which is true. The taste of cigarettes reminds me of that last Boleyn House party with Alex.
I hope, whatever Ellis wants now, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. With her. I was vulnerable yesterday, and allegedly that’s a good and healthy thing to be, but I’m not terribly keen on a reprise.
She strikes a match and tips forward to light the cigarette, the cherry at the end flaring as she inhales. A familiar sweet smell curls through the air and my brows lift.
“Is that—？”
“Changed your mind?” Ellis says archly and passes the joint. Judging by her sly smile, she knows the answer already.
Her lips have left a crimson stain behind on the paper.
I take a deep drag, my mouth right over the imprint from Ellis’s, and hold the smoke in my lungs until it goes stale. When I do exhale, all my tension goes out with my breath. Now this…this is something familiar, but something that isn’t tied to Alex. I smoked for the first time at Silver Lake, a joint my roommate had smuggled in. The pair of us shared it out on the back steps, surreptitiously blowing smoke into the chilly winter air and counting down the weeks until our release.
Ellis draws one leg up onto the seat cushion, her posture long and graceful as a nineteenth-century dandy’s.
“Drink your tea,” Ellis says.
I obey without argument and watch Ellis over the rim of my cup as she brings the joint to her red-lipsticked mouth, lips pursing as if in a kiss.
“Didn’t you sleep last night?” she asks.
That chill rolls through me again, like a cold bead of water cutting down my spine.
“Not much,” I admit. “I woke up at three and couldn’t fall back asleep. Nightmare.”
I mentally cross my fingers that Ellis doesn’t bring up yesterday and try to tie my bad dreams to those revelations. I want her to think I’m normal, not…fragile.
She grinds out the joint against the tea tray. “Well, it is the devil’s hour,” Ellis says, pointing to the grandmother clock. I suppose she was never able to fix the thing, after all.