Read Online Liv, Forever by Amy Talkington - Free Book Online

next to me. We floated and looked up at the sky. Looked up at the sky and floated. Until our fingers felt like “seersucker.”
    That’s what he said. I didn’t know what seersucker was.
    LATER, AFTER IT WAS dark and our clothes had dried and we’d shared a grilled cheese and black-and-white milkshake at the Tuck Shop (which, for the record, is the student snack bar), we headed toward our final stop on the tour. Old Homestead.
    As we approached the house through the cemetery, I felt uneasy. Malcolm insisted no one would be there. But I told him I’d rather wait in the cemetery while he went and checked. When he dashed off, I took out my small Moleskin notebook and looked around for inspiration. As I glanced over my shoulder, a girl was suddenly there. I stood up, startled. She looked oddly out of date, kind of fifties or sixties—like one of Warhol’s famous
Jackie O
s—sporting a jet-black bouffant, a smart suit, and skin that was almost as blue and pasty.
    “I didn’t see you there,” I said.
    “But you see me now?” She seemed anxious.
    “You just surprised me.” I studied her face. I thought I’d become familiar with all of the faces on campus, but I did not recall this peculiar girl.
    “You see me? You do?!” She looked down at herself, touching her limbs excitedly as if she’d just grown them. Then I saw her wrists. Both had gashes. They were bleeding. I sucked in a breath.
    “Are you okay?”
    “No, I’m not. I’m not at all okay.”
    “Should I get someone?”
    “Yes! We need to get someone! But not one of them,” she said, eyeing Old Homestead.
    I looked down, fumbling in my bag for my phone, and when I looked back up she was dashing away.
    “Hey, wait!” I rushed after her, weaving through the tombstones, but she vanished into the woods. I paused at the edge of the dark forest.
    “Hello!? Are you going to be okay?!” I yelled out afterher. But no response. No girl. I immediately started to text campus security, as Mrs. Mulford had instructed us to do in the event of an emergency outside the dorm. I typed:
    wounded girl in cemetery ran into woods.
    “What are you doing way over there?” Malcolm said from behind, jolting me.
    I turned to him, rattled. “The strangest thing just happened. This girl was here—dressed all retro—acting really weird. And her wrists were all bloody, then she just ran away.”
    At first he looked confused but then he sighed, kind of annoyed. “Must’ve been a prank. It’s Headmaster Holiday. Wickies go
nuts
with pranks on this day.”
    I nodded. Of course. What else would they do with a day off? Looking down at the text, I realized how absurd it was. It obviously wasn’t real. I deleted it.
    “Ha. Ha. Very funny!” I shouted toward the forest, just in case she (or one of her conspirators) was still lurking nearby. “I bet it was Abigail,” I said, remembering the look on her face as Malcolm abandoned her earlier. “Or maybe even Gabe.” He didn’t seem like the pranking type, but maybe he was still mad and just trying to freak me out.
    “You’re friends with that Gabe guy?”
    “Well, we do work-study together.”
    “He kind of weirds me out.”
    I nodded—if Malcolm only
knew
—and Malcolm smiled, brushing any thought of Gabe aside, and gestured toward Old Homestead. “But come on. The coast is clear.”

     
    “OKAY, THIS
HAS
TO be against the rules,” I said as Malcolm unlocked the front door to Old Homestead. He had the keys; I didn’t ask how.
    “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I promise, we can’t get in trouble for this.”
    “It just feels wrong.”
    Being there reminded me of that night. And that room with no door. And his friends—Kent and the others. And Abigail laughing at me.
    Malcolm sensed my reluctance. “I swear to you, if there’s another prank waiting in here, you can disown me forever. But I have to show you this. It’s worth it. Trust me.”
    And so I did. He led me into a small room I hadn’t been in