Haunting, Colorado
Present Day
I dream to escape.
I know what people must think. Everyone assumes I live a charmed life. Only child of the headmaster of an exclusive boarding school. Girlfriend to the school sports hero. Straight-A student. Who doesn’t want all that?
Me.
Sometimes, it feels like I’m on the outside looking in. I go through the motions of my life, but there’s no connection there. There’s no spark to let me know I’m doing more than just breathing air. I’m a ghost.
At least, I feel like one. That’s why I need to escape. In my dreams, I’m not Meredith. I’m someone else. Someone named Mercy. Ever since Mom died, I’ve been Meredith by day and Mercy at night. It haunts me. It plays out like a movie in my head. I’m me, but I’m not me. I’m wearing fancy gowns and dancing at balls that look like leftover sets from some costume drama on PBS. People call me “Mercy,” and I respond as if I’m her. When I wake up, I take longer and longer to remember I’m Meredith, not Mercy. I’m not that girl in the fancy gown dancing the night away. I’m not that girl who runs off to meet up with her secret lover, Nate.
Though I wish I were.
My phone buzzes, breaking the spell from the latest dream. I pull it toward me from the nightstand next to my bed without even sitting up and check the caller. Jay. Looks like I missed ten texts from him. “Missed” might be the wrong word. “Ignored” is better. His overprotectiveness is one reason I need to escape.
“You best answer that.” My friend Abigail appears out of nowhere. “Mr. Jay is not someone you should ignore.”
“You sound like my dad.” I sit up in bed. I don’t usually nap at three in the afternoon, but I needed an escape and it gives me a ready-made excuse to Jay. I’ve become a master of excuses—but I wish I could tell the truth about the dreams sometime to someone, anyone. My fingers fly over my qwerty keyboard as I type sorry, sleeping into the text box. I hit send, not even bothering to read any of the messages I missed.
I lie back down but keep my eyes open to watch Abigail putter around my dorm room. She’s wearing one of those old-fashioned maid outfits like the tourists get excited over at the Old-Time Photo store on St. Michael Street. Even her hair is done up in a low Gibson-girl roll at the nape of her neck, something that hasn’t been popular since this side of 1900. Everything about Abigail seems stuck in the past. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I think when you live in a place with so much history, some people forget that history is over and done with, you know? It’s time to move on. And then, some forget the moving on part. Like Abigail.
“You know you don’t have to clean up, right?” I remind her. “It’s not, like, your job anymore.”
“Old habits die hard, miss.”
She fluffs my pillow, straightens my bedspread, and runs a white rag across the mantel of my fireplace. It’s a real fireplace, leftover from the time the school was a Victorian hotel. It, like a lot of the leftover opulence, is just for show. The headmaster (also known as my dad) wouldn’t trust us with fire. He doesn’t even trust us with inter-dorm visitation. That’s just asking for trouble. Not that I’d get in trouble—being labeled the “good girl” has its perks when your dad all but lets you raise yourself—but I know plenty of people that would.
“You don’t have to do that, either,” I say.
Abigail looks up and blinks her wide, dark eyes at me. “Do what, miss?”
“Call me ‘miss.’ I know you’re just being polite, Abigail, but I—” I wave a hand to find words that won’t make me sound like I’m putting down how her parents raised her. I need to start thinking things through instead of saying the first thought that pops into my head. Not that I ever say the first thought that pops into my head anyway—especially around Abigail, who is old-fashioned about how girls our age should talk and act. I’ve trained myself to put everyone else’s needs before my own. It’s easier to blend in when everyone trusts you to do the right thing.
“What else should I call you, miss?” Abigail asks.
“I know you think because I’m the headmaster’s daughter that makes me elite or something, but I don’t feel that way,” I say. “I’m not any different from anyone else just because Dad started this school. I don’t think we need to stand on formally. I mean, formality. We can just be cool. No need to call me ‘miss.’ I’m Meredith. Just call me Meredith.”
Abigail’s whole body relaxes as if my words give her permission to just be a girl instead of Mayor of Formal Town. She glides across the room and settles onto the edge of my bed. At first, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands when they’re not cleaning something. She settles on clasping and unclasping them in her lap.
I motion at her hands. “Still nervous?”
“I have a job to do,” she replies.
I shake my head. “Not anymore. Why don’t we talk? You’re my age, right? Sixteen?”
Abigail bites her lower lip as if unsure if she should talk to me or not before nodding. “Yes, miss—I mean, Meredith.”
“Then let’s do what normal sixteen-year-old girls do. Let’s gossip.”
Abigail laughs. I bet she hasn’t had a good gossip session in years and years. I open my mouth to ask when was the last time she talked to someone besides me before deciding to change the topic to the number one interest to girls throughout history --Boys.
“So, Jay is kind of a pain. I mean, I know we’re, like, together, but he seriously signed up for all the same classes as me. I mean, who does that? Especially when they’re trying to graduate on time.”
Abigail smiles and leans back on the bed, melting into the wall a little. “Jay is so handsome. You’re very fortunate he is your fellow.”
I snort. “Sometimes, I think handsome is about all Jay has going for him.”
“And that’s a problem?” Abigail furrows her brow, confused.
“Well, not usually, but it can be.” I glance across the room to my framed picture of me, Mom, and Dad. It was our only all-together pro shot, taken three years ago right before what I call The Night That Changed Everything. The night before I first had the Mercy dreams. “No matter how frustrating Jay can be now, he has helped me through a lot these last three years. I got to give him credit for that.”
I’m not sure if Abigail answers or not. I’m too lost in my own thoughts. That night—The Night That Changed Everything—is as clear in my mind as if it happened yesterday instead of three years ago. One minute Mom, Dad, and I are driving along a mountain switchback singing Christmas carols, the next we’re skidding off the cliff. The only things that stopped us were pine trees and luck. Jay was there for me when all Dad wanted to do was ignore the grief and throw all his time and energy into the school. Sometimes I feel I lost both my parents that night. Yet another reason to escape my supposedly perfect life.
The lights flicker. Abigail appears to flicker with them. “Oh, no,” she whispers. “It’s happening again.”
The “again” gives me a jolt of something I can’t quite name. Vertigo? Déjà vu? I’m not sure what it is, but one minute I swear it feels like I’m dancing under the bright candlelight of the chandeliers in the grand-ballroom-turned-dining-hall, wearing a fancy blue dress and old-fashioned shoes; the next, I’m back in my room still sitting on my bed.