Page 24 of She Haunts Me Still

BURN.

A cry bursts from Mallory’s lips, and she rips her hands from Ezra’s.

The candles snuff out; the room plunges to darkness. The woman disappears.

Ezra’s hands come down heavy on her shoulders. “What was that just now? What happened?”

“Did you see her?” she whispers in the dark. “Ezra—did you see her?”

“Who?”

“My ghost,” Mallory answers, turning to him. “I think—I think we found her.” She swallows. “Or—she found us.”

Ezra holds her stare in the shadows. For a second, she worries he might not believe her after all.

But then his face splits into a boyish grin, triumphant. Like he just proved something to himself, too. And it was her who helped him get there.

“Aces,” Ezra says. “Now it’s time to figure out what she wants.”

6

Ezra made the next phase sound easy, but Mallory’s ghost doesn’t return the following night, or the night after.

They meet every day after rehearsal for an entire week. Seven nights in the candlelit dressing room, fingers laced together. But the mirror remains dark—no woman in a bloody dress, no silent warnings between toothless gums.

Still, whenever Mallory gets scared and wants to stop, Ezra counters with:Tell me something real. It’s become a game, a way to ground her.

On Thursday, he asks: “You’re on a desert island and you can only bring one album—what is it?”

“Fiona Apple,Tidal.”

“One book.”

“Weetzie Bat.”

“Movie.”

“The Craft.”

Ezra releases a sound, something between a chuckle and an exhale, and Mallory narrows her eyes.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No. Although thatwasfunny.” His voice is curved in asmile. “Just thinking it would be depressing as fuck to be stranded on an island with you.”

On Friday, he asks when she had her first kiss. She tells him about Mason, a lacrosse player at a neighboring boarding school who put his hands under her sweater at the fall fair in ninth grade. She doesn’t tell him about Becca, the popular girl she secretly wished she was kissing instead.

Mallory’s confessions snowball until she recounts having sex for the first time with a boy she met on vacation junior year, the way she discovered it felt empowering, like she had a sense of control.

But then Ezra trades his own stories without her having to ask, and surprise flutters through her when he says his first crush was a boy. “I didn’t know any of the terms,” he explains. “Straight, gay, bi—those words didn’t mean anything to me. I just knew I liked being around him. And then a few years later, there was a girl.” He shrugs. “There’s so much noise, so much pressure from all sides to be a certain way. I still don’t have a word for it. I’ve hooked up with girls, and I’ve been with guys. It’s just who I am.”

A million possible responses jumble inside Mallory’s mouth.It’s who I am, too,she could say.I think we’re the same. But instead, she tightens their hands and offers, “Not everything needs a definition.”

On Saturday, Ezra asks about her dad. It’s an inevitable question, the practical follow-up to finding out her mother is dead. People always want to know how deep her loneliness runs. But Ezra asks it differently, like he just wants to know abouther. And something about that makes Mallory brave enough to admit she’s never even met her father, thatPenelope always said he worshipped her mother endlessly, but she preferred to be alone. Said she felt safer that way.

“Sometimes,” Mallory admits into the flames, “I worry she passed that guardedness on to me. That maybe I’m meant to be alone, too.” He doesn’t say anything after that.

On Sunday, Mallory inquires about Ezra’s rings. “Graduation gift,” he says as she studies the engravings. “My dad’s dad made them. The symbols date back to the fifteen hundreds. I guess you could say my grandpa was a bit of a history nerd.”