The mattress reinflates as my best friend stands up, and after a few minutes, the wood above me creaks as she settles into the top bunk.
Even though she’s only a few feet away from me, the board between us feels like an unscalable wall.
This is the first secret I’ve ever kept from Salma.
THE SUNtickles my eyelids, and as I blink them open, I’m rewarded with the breaking of a majestic dawn.
My eyeballs feel itchy and my vision is blurry at the edges. I spent most of the night awake and on guard.
Any time I started to pass out, I would startle back up, convinced I sensed something. It feels like I’ve managed to get only an hour total of sleep. Yet as I watch the reborn rays stretch across the spruce forest’s treetops, what happened last night starts to feel as flimsy as a dream.
And maybe that’s what it was.
I don’t feel any soreness in my neck. Maybe I imagined the blood and the mind control and the demonic boy from the portrait.
Or what if the coffin was another quirky—albeit morbid—invention, like the reading armchair? It could’ve dispersed a type of hallucinatory gas, and since I was the last to leave, I inhaled it. Or it infected my blood when I cut my hand.
All these explanations sound far more plausible than a—monster.
I sit up, brushing my fingers across my neck. The skin there feels smooth and unhurt. I look at Tiffany’s bed. Her sheets are messy, and she’s gone, along with the toiletry kit that was on her dresser.
“Sta-a-arving!” I hear Salma say above me, mid-yawn. “I could eat Girl Scouts for breakfast.”
It’s a Wednesday Addams line. She climbs down to my bed and slides under the covers with me. “How are you feeling?”
The concern in her voice and the comfort of her proximity—and the fact that we’re finally alone—makes me want to spill everything. If anyone would believe me about what happened last night, it’s Salma.
As kids, when I wanted to play with dolls, she preferred her Ouija board. When I was reading Goosebumps, she was reading spellbooks from a local occult shop. I know if I tell her about the undead guy in the basement, she won’t do the sensible thing and run in the other direction—she’ll race down to meet him.
And this time, I won’t be able to save her.
“Was it cramps?” she presses when I don’t answer. “Is that what slowed you down yesterday?”
I feel myself nodding before I’ve even made the decision to keep lying.
“I could tell you were in pain,” she says, her voice fuller now that she’s identified the problem. “On the drive here, you said you thought your period was coming early.”
“Yours, too?” I ask, trying not to dwell on the fact that I’ve just doubled down on lying to her.
She shakes her head.
Weird. We’re always on the same cycle.
The door swings open, and Tiffany sees us together in my bed. “You two need some privacy?”
She’s already in uniform, with her face perfectly made up. I wonder how early she had to wake up to do that.
“I was just talking to these girls, Janelle and Rachel,” she goes on. “They say if the phone service isn’t fixed by the end of the week, they’re transferring back to their old schools.”
“Maybe you should go with them,” I mutter under my breath.
“Insecure much?” she asks. Guess I didn’t speak softly enough.
“Media pesada,” I say to Salma.
“I’m from Miami, so I understand Spanish.” Tiffany crosses her arms. “And I’mnotheavy.”
Pesadais a word our moms use to meanannoying,but the literal translation isheavy.
