It’s freezing out here. How had I not noticed how cold it is?
Everyone out in the backyard exists in their own little world; I have to shove my way through with sharp elbows to get back inside. But inside is worse. Bass thumps through the floor, the windows sweating with the humidity of so many bodies; I trip over someone’s discarded shoes and hit the ground hard enough that it sends shock waves ricocheting up from my knees.
“Are you okay?”
It’s Hannah Stratford, of all people. She crouches down next to me, her mouth in a little pink O of affected concern.
“Fine,” I say.
She has her hands on my arm anyway, helping me up. I wonder if she saw me kissing the ghost in the backyard. I wonder who else saw, how many whispers are passing from lip to ear: I saw Felicity Morrow…
Ellis watching me, her cigarette an ember in the dark.
I kept being lesbian a secret for years. Now I’ve thrown it away to join the rest of the trash littering this house.
“Are you drunk?” Hannah asks, a question stupid enough to rival her first.
“No,” I say. “I just hate everyone.”
It’s not what she expects to hear. She frowns, her mind working overtime to square that with the Felicity Morrow that exists in her imagination.
“You’re drunk,” she decides at last, and settles my arm around her shoulders even though I’m mostly steady on my feet. “Maybe we should get you home…”
“I can walk, thank you.” I shift out of her grasp and reach up to grab my hair, pulling it into a ponytail. For some reason that makes me feel more sober. “I’ll see you around, Hannah,” I say.
I can’t find my coat at the door, so I stagger home without one, teeth chattering by the time I’m climbing the hill to Godwin House.
The door all but slams shut behind me.
“Ellis?” I call her name from the foyer.
No one answers. It’s late; even the light beneath Housemistress MacDonald’s door is dark.
I drag a plaid throw blanket off the sofa and wrap it around myself. Godwin House is old and badly insulated; it’s not much warmer than outside.
There are other reasons it might be cold, Alex’s voice murmurs in the back of my mind. I shunt her aside.
I climb the stairs to the second floor. Unlike MacDonald’s room, Ellis’s light is still on.
I knock.
There is no response.
“Ellis? It’s me.” A beat. “Felicity.”
Still no reply. But I can hear the creak of a floorboard as she—what? Shifts in her chair? Moves across the room?
Ellis is in there. She’s just ignoring me.
I hover in the hall a moment longer, staring at the strip of yellow light under her door, hoping to see a shadow cross the floor and betray Ellis’s position. But nothing else moves. I imagine her sitting at her desk, watching the door the same way I watch the door. Waiting me out.
So I do it. I leave.
I let her win.
The girl became a crow, the crow became bones, bones became dust. I wonder now if such curses are bestowed only upon the wicked.
—Ellis Haley, Night Bird
Patient is emotionally labile, with increasingly erratic mood swings and heightened environmental reactivity. Positive symptoms observed: fixed delusions and auditory-visual hallucinations that are refractory to therapeutic intervention. Will recommend and discuss antipsychotic treatment regimen with pt’s parent.
—Medical record note, Silver Lake Recovery Center The Devil has my consent, & goes & hurts them.
—Abigail Hobbs, confessed witch, The Examination of Abigail Hobbs at Salem Village, April 19, 1692
When I wake up next morning—late, with a pounding headache and the taste of old socks in my mouth—Ellis has already left Godwin House.
I drink her leftover cold coffee in the kitchen and swallow as many acetaminophen as I can handle on an empty stomach. Then I make myself take a shower and get dressed and apply my makeup with a tight jaw and a steady hand. I’m not going to be that girl. I’m not the kind of girl you ignore.
“Where’s Ellis?” I ask Housemistress MacDonald, standing in the doorway of her office.
“You look very pretty today, Felicity.”
“Thank you. Have you seen Ellis?”
MacDonald gives me a look that suggests she’s surprised I don’t already know the answer to that question.
“It’s Saturday, dear. She’s at fencing practice.”
Of course she is.
I find out where practice is held by looking up the fencing team’s website on my phone, then set off across the quad with a coffee thermos clutched in one hand and the sofa throw wrapped around my shoulders; that coat I lost was the only one I had.