The book was here. I know that much for certain. It was here, and then it was gone—the book we left at the cemetery, the book that smelled of Alex’s perfume.
She’s here.
I push the thought away, but a sick ribbon of nausea is tied to it. I can’t stop thinking about her.
She’s here.
I grab a candle from my collection and kneel down on the floor in the middle of that dandelion ring. I strike a match and light the flame, whisper, “Please go. Please. I’m sorry. Please leave me alone.”
I don’t know if I’m talking to a ghost anymore…or to something else.
A rap sounds against my doorframe. I jerk my head up; Ellis stands there with a mug of coffee cupped between both hands.
“I thought you might still like that coffee,” she says quietly.
I fall back onto my heels and exhale. At least when she’s here, the room feels warmer. “Thanks.”
I hold out a hand, and Ellis moves deeper into my bedroom, crouching down next to me and passing the mug. It’s still steaming hot; the liquid burns my tongue when I take a sip. I’m glad for the pain. It’s steadying.
I wish it were bourbon.
Only as soon as I think that, I think of my mother, with her empty wine bottles, glass shattered on the marble floor, and gag.
“I’m worried about you,” Ellis says.
I snort. “I know. So’s my mother. She called the other week to check in. For the first time all semester, but at least she’s performing her maternal duties.”
“What did you tell her?”
The coffee’s just as hot when I swallow it a second time. I clench my eyes shut and drink it anyway, my tongue numb and dry-feeling after. “I told her I was fine. I…” I laugh, “I told her I was going home with someone over break so I wouldn’t have to see her instead. I suppose I’ll have to get a hotel room in town.”
“Or you could stay here with me.”
My heart seizes in my chest. “What?”
“Stay here with me,” Ellis says again. Her hand finds my knee and squeezes once. “My parents will be traveling most of break, so I got special permission to stay at the school. My sibling, Quinn, is coming up to visit; I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”
A quavering smile rises to my lips despite myself. I shake my head. “I wasn’t trying to invite myself, for the record.”
“Duly noted. Please say you’ll do it.”
I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. “Yes. I’ll stay.”
Ellis grins and swats my leg before her hand retreats back to her own lap. I find myself bereft in the wake of her touch. I want more. I want her touching me everywhere.
I want more, I suspect, than Ellis has the capacity to give.
With the campus empty and Godwin all to ourselves, being at Dalloway feels like summer again.
Ellis and I play records in the common room with the volume turned up loud, hang out of bedroom windows with lit joints and our heads full of stars.
I know that I’m unwell. I know I shouldn’t keep denying it. I’d hoped distance from Alex’s death would erase the fear scrawled on the walls of my mind, but it hasn’t. Dr. Ortega once described psychotic depression as being like a gun: my genetics loaded the chamber with bullets, my mother passed the weapon into my hand, but Alex’s death pulled the trigger.
So maybe I imagined the book. Maybe Ellis is right and it was never there—maybe I wanted it to be there. Maybe I wanted Alex to punish me.
And maybe it’s all right to admit that.
Ellis’s sibling arrives on the third day of Thanksgiving break, their vintage Mustang barely visible through the trees around Godwin. From the third-floor hall window, I watch them ascend the path on foot, a narrow figure silhouetted against the setting sun.
“Ellis,” I call out, just loud enough to be heard from the floor below, where Ellis is hard at work on her novel. “Quinn’s here.”
Even from upstairs I can hear her chair scrape against the floor, then the clatter of her feet on the hardwood as she races down the stairs. I follow, trailing belatedly after Ellis out into the cool dusk, where she has thrown both arms around the newcomer, who squeezes her tight enough that Ellis’s feet lift off the ground.
They’re dark-haired, like Ellis, and tall—also like Ellis. But when they set Ellis down and I catch sight of their face, I realize they’re nothing like their sister at all. Their face is too open, too heart-on-their-sleeve. I don’t know how I can tell such things from a glance, but it feels true. Our gazes meet over Ellis’s head; Quinn’s is steady and black-hued.