Page 1 of She Haunts Me Still

Act I

Burial

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears.

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

—William Shakespeare,Romeo andJuliet

1

Secrets are a kind of sickness.

They can warp cells and hollow out bones, wear through muscles over time. They can chew away organs, turn a person into a husk of themselves, until the shape of their entire being and their ugliest, most poisonous lies are one and the same.

Mallory Webb has been infected with secrets her whole life, but tonight she’s keeping only one: the silver blade tucked carefully inside her bag, wedged between a tin of mints and her brand-new cell phone.

She’s ten minutes late but takes her time on the stone steps outside the theater, fingers skimming the railing, relishing the burning September twilight and gentle swish of her favorite black dress against her thighs. The hushed quiet of the lobby greets her as she slinks past dimly lit rehearsal studios and poster-covered walls, twisting through dark corridors until she finds the door she needs.Dressing Room A.

Arden is likely waiting inside, where they’d agreed to meet before a slew of hopeful first-years descend upon the theater. To most people, the last hour before an audition can feel like a slow, miserable death, but it’s also when Malloryfeels most alive. Soon, the walls will be rattling with eager voices, the air thick with sweaty bodies. But right now, the empty building breathes with seductive possibilities, with all the ways she could succeed.

And all the ways she could fail.

And not just at tonight’s auditions, but why she’s at Shore College to begin with. The reason no one else can know.

Mallory swallows that last thought like a pill. Plastering a smile on her face, she shoves the dressing room door open with a hollow clang.

“Did you bring the knife?”

Arden doesn’t even turn to ask. She phrases it like one long word—didyoubringtheknife—as she leans toward the bulb-lined mirror. Her highlighted hair is freshly curled, and her gold cross necklace catches the light as she applies coat after coat of mascara.

Mallory nudges the door shut with her lace-up boot. A mothball cloud washes over her as she drops her bag onto the counter, but she hardly minds the smell. The dressing room is the heart of any theater, where preshow butterflies fly freely and inside jokes are forged. One day, it’ll feel like home.

“Obviously.”

“You locked yourself out of our dorm three times this week and lost your phone twice,” Arden says, capping the mascara and looking at Mallory in the mirror. “It’s a fair question.”

“Not the same thing. Ihadmy keys.” Mallory rummages in her bag for the pocketknife she purchased earlier that day. “Something is wrong with our door—the lock sticks.” She huffs a shock of chestnut hair away from her lip gloss and flips the blade. “Ready to commit a crime?”

Arden arches a razor-thin brow. “Vandalism is hardly a crime. And besides—we’re not the first ones.”

Mallory follows her stare to the letters and numbers carved into the makeup counter: the ghosts of theater majors who came before, lingering in the wood, sleeping in silent haunt.

She and Arden first noticed the carvings during Shore College’s orientation over the summer, skin sticking in sundresses as they wandered the school’s sprawling thousand-acre grounds. The tour took them from the brick dorms of west campus all the way to the white wooden chapel at the eastern border. They peered into academic buildings with old oak tables, climbed the dome-roofed library’s teetering four floors, and finally combed the quiet halls of the theater, where they’d spotted the counter. It was Arden’s idea to add their initials on audition night, seal themselves into the foundation as if to say,We were here, too.

“You go first,” Arden urges. “I’ll watch the door.”

Mallory scoots onto the counter, the edge clipping the bare skin above her knit tights, and traces a pair of heart-framed initials.Who were you?

“We should do this every year,” Arden says, watching Mallory scrape the careful corners ofMW. “Make it another ritual.”

Mallory smiles. Arden and her rituals. It’s been this way since they were kids. Wishes during a November snowfall. Picnics on the final day of school. Commemorating firsts and lasts, moments that might otherwise pass without notice.