Possessions by Nancy Holder

Author:Nancy Holder
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Razorbill
Published: 2010-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

eighteen

November 20

Rain was washing away the snow when Julie’s parents pulled into the lot and her strapping older brother hoisted her suitcases and boxes into the gigantic trunk of their Mercedes station wagon. The Statins were very nice people. Beneath umbrellas, they thanked me for taking care of their girl during her first semester at a boarding school.

“She’s told us so much about you,” Julie’s mother said, beaming.

“I’m a keeper,” I joshed, and then Julie darted forward on her crutches and hugged me. In the wake of parting, she had forgotten her anger toward me.

“I’ll miss you this week,” she said. “Hang around Jessel and I’ll text you.”

“Okay, I will,” I promised. I would be hanging around Jessel a lot. Then whispering, I added, “Keep me posted on Spider.”

She giggled, then bounded over to the car like a happy-go-lucky, beloved little girl. Her father took her crutches as she slid in and her brother put them in the trunk. All the Statins waved at me as I stood beneath my umbrella, and they joined the departing parade of luxury vehicles as the rainy sky grew darker, and darker, and darker.

The lights winked on in the admin building as I turned and headed back toward Grose. Through the drizzle the horse heads stared blankly at me, holding their chains in their mouths.

Did one clank?

Clank like the chain of a ghost?

I chuckled aloud at my jumpiness to show that I wasn’t really scared, and concentrated on other things, like the pungent aroma of dinner: in the commons, to be served in less than an hour. Rose would be there. If I trotted onto Jessel’s porch, I could text her. But as I walked along, the rain turned into hail, pelting me with painful stones of ice, and I ducked into Grose, which was closer.

I shut the door and leaned against it, listening to the tick-tick-tick on the roof two stories above me and the snick-snick-snick against the windows. The howl of a gust of wind rattled the door as if someone were trying to get in.

“At least she took that stupid head with her,” I said aloud. I had watched her pack it myself, in a cardboard box we scrounged from the commons recyclables. She’d surrounded it with socks and underwear.

Ms. Krige was in the kitchen. Christmas carols played on the music system in the common room. I listened for a few seconds, reminding myself that I wasn’t alone.

We weren’t alone when someone tore up Julie’s mattress, either. She still hadn’t told Ms. Krige about it, and I thought that was a mistake. If anything happened to my mattress, I was going to raise holy hell. I was not a victim, not a wimp. I had never been either of those things, and I wasn’t going to start now.

Tick-tick-tick, snick-snick-snick.

And the wind blew against the door again.

Snorting, I walked through the gloom of our hallway and opened the door to our room.

The white head sat on Julie’s windowsill, hollow-eyed and blank, and staring at me.

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