Abigail stands. “I need to go. I need to help. I can’t let it end like last time. I can’t.”
Before I can stop her, Abigail walks through the door. I don’t mean she opens the door and then walks through it. I mean she literally walks through the door. Abigail, like so many others in this hotel-turned-school, is dead. To someone like me who can see and hear ghosts after the accident, she looks as solid and real as anyone going to school here. Sure, she wears turn-of-the-century clothes and isn’t exactly tied to our physical laws—what with sitting on my bed one minute and walking through the door the next—but Abigail and all the others are not just a fun story to scare tourists with. To me she’s real. I found out within hours after the accident that ghosts can exert enough energy to move physical objects and touch the living. (There’s a crazy amount of spirits hanging around a hospital.) That shivery feeling you get when no one else is around? That’s a ghost reaching out. If I tried to touch one in return, my hand would go right through them.
The former hotel staff aren’t stuck in our realm; they just hang around the living and continue their previous earthly duties. Having a ghost staff is not something Dad puts in the brochure, just like having a daughter that talks to the dead after getting a nasty concussion during The Night That Changed Everything is something he advertises. I keep quiet about that too. As far as I know, I’m the only one on campus who can see and hear our ghost companions. If anyone else around here can, they’re being low-key about it, which, if you ask me, is a smart move. Standing out is not always a good thing. Who wants the label of freak? The one ghost I want to show up—Mom—never has. I wish I knew why.
I hear a commotion in the hallway that sounds like what happens when the boys pull the fire alarm at night, hoping to catch girls in the shower and send them out into the courtyard clad in nothing but a towel. When it feels like you’re one of the last schools in creation that sticks to the no-inter-dorm-visitation rule, you get your thrills where you can find them. Abigail left in a hurry with the bonus of being all cryptic. The fire alarm is not blaring now, so what else is going on?
I stick my head out my door and watch the other girls on my floor stream past. “Hey, what’s going on?” I call to the first girl that stops to look my direction. I recognize her as a freshman named Patrice. If there was drama, Patrice was front and center. She liked to say she knew whoever was involved or was wherever the event happened. I think it made her feel important.
“There’s been an accident,” Patrice says.
“What kind?”
“Some kid on a campus tour fell over the rotunda rail. I heard it’s that kid from Twin Lakes. You know, the one who lost his parents in that boating accident last month?” Gossip—whether it’s true or not—travels fast around campus. Patrice’s friend looks a little too gleeful at the thought of some epic accident happening just a couple flights of stairs below us. I bet she was already imagining walking into a live news shot or tweeting about how she was there when the kid fell. She turns to her friend, already forgetting me. “Hey, do you think if we hurry downstairs, we can be on the news? I bet I can cry on cue. It’ll be awesome.”
She’s out of question range. I can’t get any more details like if the boy from Twin Lakes was just clumsy or pushed by a human or ghost. Asking about the ghost part would violate my policy of never, ever talking about ghosts or the fact I can hear and see them, but there’s got to be a reason that right before the accident Abigail spazzed out and disappeared. Maybe the boy’s fall is related somehow. There’s only one way to find out. I need to go downstairs too.
I only take enough time to pull my hair into a low ponytail and squirm into shoes before I follow the crowd down the three flights of stairs toward the lobby.
“I saw the guy do a swan dive over the rail,” one girl says, gossiping to her friends, relishing the gruesome details of the accident. Maybe Dad should let up on some of his strict rules if this is what my classmates do for entertainment now. The gossipy girl waited until there was a crowd around her before continuing her I-was-there story. I bet her I-was-there story will turn into Patrice’s I-was-there story before the day is out. “One minute it’s ‘to your left is the stained-glass window commissioned by Charles Haunting himself,’ the next minute it’s one story down straight into the rotunda tile.”
“Did he jump or fall?” I ask, but no one is listening. They’re too wrapped up in each other’s dramatic re-creations to hear or care about me. I may be the headmaster’s daughter, but I pride myself on being as invisible as possible. Invisible helps me keep my secret close, but it’s not the greatest when I want answers. Like now. I open my mouth to ask my question again. The group of girls keeps right on gossiping, without a second thought or glance my direction.
“Do you think they’ve cleaned up all the blood yet?” the ringleader’s friend gasps.
“Oooh, let’s go check,” the ringleader squeals as if her friend suggested looking at fuzzy kittens to adopt instead of checking out a potential crime scene. “If he survives, I bet Headmaster Monroe will give him boatloads of scholarship money to not sue him.”
“Remind me to jump off the rotunda the next time tuition is due.”
“I hope the guy is hot.”
“No one is hot after doing a face-plant into old tile.”
“Good one.”
The girls give each other a high five before I lose them and their conversation in the crowd gathered in the rotunda around the accident victim. By any normal standards, this should be a big deal, not a photo op. Boys don’t fall off of rotunda balconies every day—even in Haunting, which is known for its “unusual occurrences.” The girls from my dorm floor shouldn’t be crowded around a potential crime scene hoping reporters ask them questions. They should give the paramedics space to work. They should be worried about the boy. I don’t even know him and my heart is pounding so fast it feels like it’s going to jump out of my chest. I know we’re pretty sheltered since we live in our own little world at boarding school, but when did this become entertainment? When did hoping to catch a glimpse of a bruised and bloodied boy become something to do on a Friday afternoon? I shudder. If Dad didn’t insist I attend his little brainchild Haunting Academy, I’d be looking for a new school pronto.
I maneuver my way to the front of the crowd to try to get a clear look of the boy from Twin Lakes. He looks close to my age, but I can’t be sure since he’s got blood all over his face. He’s lying on one of those pop-up gurney beds as the EMTs work on him, eyes closed, mouth parted, and dark hair matted to his face. I can’t tell if he’s breathing or not. The world feels like it’s tilting—spinning—like how I felt in my room when Abigail said something was happening again. The only difference is, this time, instead of feeling like I’m dancing under the chandeliers in the grand-ballroom-turned-dining-hall, I’m walking along the beach. I feel the sand under my feet, but something—no, not something—someone is not right.
Fear like I’ve never known grips me as I push my way through the gathering crowd of curious students, worried teachers, and random tourists. No one tries to stop me or pull me back or tell me I don’t belong as I rush to the boy’s side. I belong there. If there’s one thing I’ve ever been sure of in my entire life, it’s that I belong at this boy’s side, right here, right now.