Page 31 of She Haunts Me Still
But the girl doesn’t slow, sprinting instead toward the gardens. Mallory grits her teeth as she tears after her, nervously eyeing the thick hedge maze featured in every glossy photo of Shore’s brochure. She suddenly feels claustrophobic at the thought of going inside. She has to catch up before the girl gets too far.
Branches bite Mallory’s arms as she runs down the narrow path, autumn air clawing at her cheeks. Ahead, the girl weaves in and out of view, threatening to be swallowed by the fog.
“Wait!” Mallory yells.
“Stopfollowingme!” the girl shouts back, and Mallory falters at the urgency in her voice. The blistering fear in it.
Mallory runs faster, careening around thorn-pricked corners, kicking up leaves with her boots. Her anxiety heightens as she realizes how deep they’ve run inside the maze, but the girl keeps sprinting, so Mallory follows, faintly registering a little stone raven nestled against one of the bushes.
“Wait!” Mallory calls again. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know who—”
“Please, go away,” she begs, looking back. “Lily, leave me alone!”
Bewilderment crashes inside Mallory. Did she just call herLily?
“What—?”
Mallory pitches forward, toe snagged on a root. Stars explode behind her eyes as she hits the ground. Her palms skid against a rock, and she hisses in pain, the taste of metal pooling behind her gums.
When she raises her head to peer farther into the maze, the white-haired girl is gone.
Mallory rolls onto her back in defeat, hair fanning in the dirt. Chasing her breath, she stares up at the last hint of sunlight reaching through the prickly greenery. That girl just called her Lily. But why?Why?
Sitting up, Mallory wipes a dusting of mud from her knit-covered knees. She’s about to stand when a flash of gray catches her eye—
A sharp corner of stone, peeking out from underneath the dirt.
She crawls to it and stares for a moment, her skin inexplicably erupting in goosebumps.
Without giving herself a second to change her mind, she starts to dig.
Dirt gathers under her fingernails as she scrapes at the earth. She flings palmfuls of gritty mud to the side, moving faster and faster until she can finally sit back on her heels to take in what, exactly, has been buried beneath the maze.
The graying stone is about a foot wide, square shaped, yet uneven. It’s not glossy or smooth, and whatever was engraved on it has eroded. But she has no doubt there was once a name and a date. Perhaps something like,Loving Mother and Sister and Friend.
Because at the top of the stone is a cross. And around that cross is a cluster of ivy.
Just like the one in her vision last night.
And as she traces the divots and ridges, taking in the blurred marks and chiseled edges, Mallory knows in the densest part of her bones that she is kneeling over Lily A. Hubbard’s grave. And with that understanding comes a new truth.
Lily didn’t just die on this campus.
She was buried here, too.
8
At rehearsal, Ezra is noticeably absent.
Arden, Raf, and Jessica are deep in conversation, but Mallory can barely concentrate as she walks with them from the greenroom to the Crypt.
“Have any of you seen Ezra?” Mallory blurts, face flushing at the realization that she blatantly interrupted Jessica, who turns in surprise.
“Hendrix said something about a headache,” Raf replies, an arm slung around Arden’s shoulders as they fall into step down the corridor.
Mallory picks at a flake of black nail polish.It feels like someone is taking a scalpel to my brain,Ezra said the other day about his chronic migraines.No matter what I’m doing, I have to stop everything and wait it out in the dark.
“Why are you looking for Ezra?” Jessica asks playfully, and Mallory throws her a look she hopes is more neutral than she feels.
