Page 86 of She Haunts Me Still
Mallory looks away. She thinks of those early days with Arden at school, the way they used to sit in the cafeteria and eye their classmates in identical pleated skirts and blazers. Arden, a vigilante superhero with flip-clips in her chunky highlights, and Mallory, her scrappy sidekick. Stronger together than they ever were apart.
“I’m sorry,” Mallory admits. “It’s my fault. I’m s—”
“I don’t want you to apologize,” Arden interrupts, but there’s no bite to her voice. “I want you to tell me something real.”
Her words dig at something soft inside Mallory. Shethinks of how she pleaded the same to Ezra, how terrible it feels to look right at someone and beg for the truth—and watch them lie instead.
For a moment, Mallory toys with how a confession might sound—but there’s no guarantee it would make anything better. She can imagine Arden’s expression, her pretty features twisted in a concoction of disbelief and horror as she realizes Mallory’s entire world is the antithesis of everything that makes up her faith.
“Something real,” Mallory echoes. “The day you got in trouble for wearing your uniform too short and told our homeroom teacher he was a sexist pig, I knew I wanted to be your friend. But I almost didn’t believe it when you wanted to be mine. I kept waiting for you to find a new best friend who was more like you, knowing eventually you’d learn every terrible thing about me.” She glances at her torn cuticles. “But you didn’t leave. And I never told you anyway.”
“Tell me,” Arden says. “Just tell me now and we can start over.”
“I can’t. We can’t.” Mallory glances at the disappointment gathering in Arden’s face, and she’s not sure which is worse. The incredulous, terrified way Arden might stare if she unloaded every ounce of blasphemous truth, or how she’s looking at her now. Maybe they’re the same. Maybe either way, they lose. “I love you, Arden. That will always be real.”
“Mal.”
Mallory bites the inside of her cheek so she won’t cry. She tastes copper and rot and bubble gum. Gap Om and flowers and mold. She presses the bunny to the pillow and stands.
“Mal, don’t go.” Arden’s voice suddenly sounds small and far away.
But Mallory needs to go. Arden is a girl who deserves yellow flowers and friends whose mouths aren’t wired shut with secrets. She walks toward the door. Arden says her name over and over, like a toddler calling for her mother, and Mallory inexplicably thinks about driving back to the blue house and doing the same.
Lily Flower,a voice seems to purr from all sides. The bite marks sizzle on her neck; her stomach simmers with want.Come find me.
Mallory tugs open the door, but when she steps through—
She’s not in the corridor. She’s in another hospital room.
Mallory whirls around. Around and around and around.
Everything is quiet.
And there’s a different woman asleep in the bed in front of her.
Her long brown hair is tangled on the pillow. She’s bone thin and pale, cracked lips marred with dried blood. The woman wears a white nightgown like Mallory’s Juliet costume, and the frilly collar is stained brown at the edges.
For a moment, it’s almost like looking at herself.
“Lily?” Mallory whispers. She turns, registering the rusted tray of medical instruments, the way the bed is narrow with a metal frame.
Like she’s suddenly stepped back in time.
Lily’s shoulders shudder in a loud, vibrating cough. She brings a frail hand to her mouth, and it comes away with fresh blood. Before Mallory can say anything, Lily meets her stare.
“It’s…not…meant…for…her,” she chokes out.
Mallory’s throat tightens. “What? Who—?”
She narrows her eyes, suddenly recalling Saskia in thelibrary, telling her the one thing Lily ever spoke to her. Thisexactsentence.
“Are you talking about Saskia?” Mallory asks. “What’snot meant for her?”
“They’ll stop at nothing,” Lily hisses, “to get the seventh one. Therightone.”
“The seventh one? I don’t understand.” She swallows, inching toward her. “Lily, please. Tell me what happened to you—”
Mallory bumps into a tray of instruments. A clattering sound echoes, and she spins—
