I can’t bring myself to care about the Boston Tea Party, so I doodle in my notebook, drawing different renditions of the strange plant in my bedroom. I scrawl Mistress Bramble’s words.
You woke a great hunger. Now it will hunt.
I trace them and retrace them, then attempt to sketch the beast that killed Lily Vandenberg, but I’m no artist.
Not like Lily, anyway.
I doodle more words. Maybe some mindless scribbling will lead to a legitimate connection.
Hollow Walkers.
Hellhounds.
DeZwarte Muil.
Vorat.
I wish I would have asked Mistress Bramble more about him. As it stands, I only know what I already knew from the podcast episode Twig and I published in our first season, Night of the Howl, and the story I found in the WPA files while researching alternate dimensions. A tale featuring the Hollow Hounds. Each one was once human—a victim of the Hollow Walker—bound to him not by loyalty, but by the consumption of their souls.
I draw a third leaf on the plant.
Manifestation via illustrating.
Langley reaches the final slide—instructions for the remainder of class. He wants us to read the Boston Tea Party section in our digital textbook and answer the corresponding questions.
I scoot away from my desk and ask to use the restroom. I can feel Jude’s attention hot on my back. It doesn’t relent until I step into the hallway.
The bathroom is empty except for Lola Hayes, a girl in my year who spends more time vaping in the stalls than sitting in a desk. At the moment, she has one bare foot propped on the sink and is painting her toenails black to match her lipstick and her eyeliner. Lola and I are vaguely acquainted. Before moving onto the Vandenbergestate, Dad and I lived two trailers down from her and her mother, so our paths have crossed occasionally.
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
I give her a friendly nod.
She just stares back impassively while I slip into a stall. I don’t need to use the bathroom, so I take the opportunity to check my phone instead, then head to the sink to wash my hands. Lola is still there, working on her big toe.
“Nice shirt,” she says, completely deadpan.
This is how Lola talks, without any expression.
I’m wearing my Smashing Pumpkins graphic tee under a chunky cardigan. It is arguably my favorite.
“Thanks,” I reply, pumping soap into my palm.
“Do you actually listen to them?” she asks.
“Siamese Dreamis one of the best albums of all time.”
“What’s the better song—MayonnaiseorToday?”
“Mayonnaise.”
She gives her eyebrows an almost imperceptible lift. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen Lola exhibit. She’s impressed with my taste. I bring the soap to a lather. “It was my mom’s favorite band.”
“Your mom sounds like a legend.” She blows on her toenails, then caps the nail polish.
“She was,” I say softly.
I think of her here—my mother. In this very bathroom thirty years ago, listening toSmashing Pumpkinson a Walkman, maybe smoking a cigarette and thinking of Simon. I’m not sure about the middle part. According to her foster parents, the Abners, my mother was a good student. I don’t think smoking in the bathroom fits that description.
