She shrugged and set down her book. "I think it's good everyone finally saw you for what you are."
"Saw me for- And what is that, Dana? What is it that I really am?"
"You want to be her. You're trying to be her. Now everyone knows that about you."
"I don't want to be her!" My voice was strong, but I felt it might give out at any second.
"Why wouldn't you?" She looked challengingly at me.
I breathed deeply, never taking my gaze from her empty black eyes. "I didn't know her. I don't want to be her. I don't want what she had."
"What, to be beloved by everyone? To have Max deeply in love with you? To have Johnny wanting you?" She cocked her head.
I did like Max. I had gone to the ball with Johnny. I shook my head. I didn't want to think that she might be right. Was I just going after what had made Becca happy?
"No, I don't!" I said, trying to sound stronger than I was. "I don't want that. What I want is to be back home!"
"Then leave. Who would care? Who would even notice if you did leave?"
I shook my head. "Shut up. Please, just shut up."
"I will if you stop trying to steal the identity of a girl you couldn't be an eighth of if you sold your very soul to the devil."
"I'm not trying to!" My face was hot, and all my words came out in sputters.
She sighed deeply and shook her head. "That's fine. You'll know when she comes back."
I threw the door back open, not knowing where I was going to run to. I heard Dana's taunting voice as I closed the door: "And she'll be back soon...."
When the library was locked, for what ungodly reason I could not imagine, I ran to the only place I could think of. The boathouse.
I flew from Manderley into the raw, gusting air. The surrounding trees had dropped their dead leaves, which now crunched under my feet and swirled around in the wind like in a cartoon. One big gust of wind set me backward in my trek by a few inches and made me shut my eyes as much as I could and still see.
The waves were like a million dead, gnarly hands throwing themselves onto the sand and trying to bring whatever they could back with them into the darkness. The sand was prickling me in the legs, as if warning me that the waves were after me. I pushed and walked through the boathouse door. The threatening sounds from outside died a little. I gave one big shake and clutched my arms with my hands to keep warm.
I felt around for the light switch before realizing it was just a beaded cord that hung from an exposed lightbulb. I pulled it, and tried to convince myself that anything I heard was the ocean and not waves of cockroaches and mice shuffling across the two inches of dust on the floor. The boathouse felt a lot more sinister when I was there by myself. I could see now that the walls were covered in dust and spiderwebs, and that the windows were so covered in grime that you wouldn't be able to see out of them even if it was light outside.
My sandals clunked with every step on the hollow-sounding wood beneath them as I made my way to the couch. I'd just wait until Dana was probably asleep and then go back up. She was usually in bed by eleven, so I'd just wait until...dammit. Once again, I had no idea what time it was. I needed a watch.
I sat on the couch and got a throat full of dust. I waved it away from my face. There was a thick blanket-or maybe it was one of those rugs that are easily mistaken for blankets-folded on the armrest. I grabbed it and wrapped it around myself. It was almost as cold as I was. I lay down, curled up as tightly as I could, and tried not to think.
But I couldn't help it. All I could think of was Manderley. Why did I leave home? I should have just been honest and told my parents I didn't want to leave. My friends were probably all at Lucy's house, where her parents had funded every snack imaginable, and where losing at Apples to Apples was anyone's biggest concern. Rather than being here, where everyone was straight out of a Lifetime milk carton movie.
That wasn't very nice. I didn't mean that.
But even without its zombie students, the ones milling in the dining hall right now, Manderley itself was cold and austere. It was nothing like the proud and exciting hallowed building I'd imagined at that early age.
I'd been here for two months now, and it's not like I knew no one, but it did seem I'd only gained them as friends by luck. I was like the unwanted new stepsister who was suddenly supposed to be accepted as part of the family. Like everyone had been perfectly content before I came along, and now I was making Manderley a little bit too cramped.
Nobody wanted to know me. And I was not the type to get down on myself like that. There was a distinct message from everyone here to me: we don't like you.
I could go this year without friends. Fine. I could quiet the part of my brain that told me how different it would be if I were still back home. But I was constantly being reminded that it wasn't good that I was here, and that I might as well leave. And Becca was here, too, everywhere, even though she was nowhere. I heard people talk about her all the time. Everyone wondered what had happened. Everyone had a theory. Everyone had questions. Everyone had to talk about it all the time.
I'd made the right choice when I decided to go to FSU. I didn't have what it took to be a risk taker. I was a small-town girl, who couldn't handle the real world.
I lay there, getting colder every second, and tried to do that thing my mom taught me about breathing in and counting slowly to three and then breathing out and slowly counting to three. It should steady my breathing and relax me, apparently. Instead, it just meant that I was breathing slower than my thoughts were coming.
I didn't want to be ungrateful. I didn't want to not be able to make the best of it here. I hated hating my situation, but I couldn't help it. I felt like I was trying to wear someone else's clothes, and they didn't fit. I gave an audible scoff as I realized I was in Becca's clothes right now. It was darkly funny, and then it was spooky.
Maybe this was all my fault. I'd made the mistake of liking Max-something that was starting to feel embarrassing and blasphemous-and now I'd shown up at the only school-wide occasion so far and worn Becca's dress. I wanted to undo it. But I couldn't.
In...one, two, three.
Out...one, two, three.
In...
"Get out of my dress."
I blinked. I looked around the room, and saw her. Becca Normandy, smoking a cigarette and looking as cool as we've always been told cigarettes don't make you, and leaning on her crossed legs.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't talk. She was...she was here. She was...here. My throat was tight from the shock. That feeling of chills running down my back wouldn't go away. I couldn't ask what she was doing here-all I could do was see her. Her blond hair, so much lighter and softer than mine, had light reflecting off it that made her look practically ethereal. I wouldn't have thought that was possible in this musty room.
She was staring at me, and I felt like she could see everything about me. Everything I'd ever been or thought.
I opened my mouth, and she rolled her eyes.
"I don't even want to hear it. You're a cheap imitation of me. You're dirty blonde. You're muscle-skinny, not a waif. You own moccasins." She stood, and stamped out her cigarette. "That dress looks terrible on you. You know that, right?"
She looked at me amusedly through narrowed eyes, and turned her head. I still couldn't speak.
"That is why everyone was asking what you were wearing. It's not that they didn't know you were supposed to be Marilyn Monroe, or even that they were so shocked that you would try to copy me. It's because you were filling it out so badly you made it look like a sleeveless muumuu." She exhaled noisily. "I have only one question for you."
Becca crouched at the side of the couch. She was painfully beautiful, the ideal kind of pretty that doesn't fear a magnified mirror. She didn't seem to have any flaws at all. Not an eyelash was out of place. Her teeth were toothpaste-ad white. Under her eyes there were no circles. She wafted the scent of alcohol and menthol cigarettes in my direction, but it mingled with her perfume and made her whole image tie together in some kind of strange, unusual beauty. It was like she waited for me to notice these things before moving on.
"I want to ask you...what made you think you could have him?" She smiled a little, and briefly allowed a line to come between her eyebrows. "Haven't you heard everyone? Max is in love with me. He's in love with me. I'm that one he'll never forget. I'm the one he let get away. I am the girl that boys never, ever get over. If I don't come back or want him back and he marries someone else, even, his future wife will have to come to terms with the fact that he's never going to get over me. Sure he might continue living, but I-" she bit her lip "-I am what made him live. I am his light. I am his excitement. I was the bells, the light, the darkness and the melody in his life. You? You could only ever hope to be-" her nose wrinkled as she tried to think of what I could hope to be "-a butter knife. You might be practical and useful, but you're just a blank, dull, staring thing that's there to serve a purpose. And any reflection of me that might be in you is distorted and ugly. You are nothing more."
My heart pounded, and my face was hot. My body trembled. I could hear the ocean. When I noticed it, she did, too, and held up a finger.
"You hear that? The water? No one knows if it ate me alive or not." She said it with a singsong voice like she was keeping a secret from a child, saying the last few words with a seductive, dripping relish. It was like the whole thing was a game to her. "Doesn't that already make me more interesting than you? If or when I come back...can you imagine it?" She rocked backward onto her heels, a smile stretching across her face. "I could walk up there right now, take back Max, and have a world of people who know me and love me thrilled to see my pretty face again."
I was colder than ever, and her words were making my head spin. I felt like I was being hypnotized.
"And what will that mean for you?" she went on. "No one here likes you. They all whisper about you. Not because you're interesting, mind you, but because you're just this sad little thing who wishes she was better. Everyone can see that." She suddenly adopted a look of sympathy. "Your friends back home don't even miss you, do they? You've barely heard from them, I bet. Is that right?"
I had thought this before but refused to believe it.
"Well," she went on, "it looks like no one really needs you at all, do they?"
She laughed, and as she did, chills ran from my toes to the back of my neck. I could hear voices. Becca looked up, toward the door. The light went out. I gasped, and finally felt in control of my body again. I heard the door slam open. My heart pounded. I was sitting up and the blanket had fallen and gathered at my feet on the dusty floor, and I didn't even know since when.
The ocean was crashing outside, and my ears filled with the pounding of that and my heartbeat. I felt paralyzed, unable to stop my fingernails from digging painfully into the rough upholstery of the couch.
Noise was still coming from somewhere by the door, but I had no idea of its source. Then, quite suddenly, the light came back on.
And beneath the bulb stood Max.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
NOTHING WAS MAKING SENSE.
He saw me, and I watched as he inhaled sharply with surprise. "What are you doing down here? I went up to your room, but you weren't there-I looked in the study room...why did you come down here?"
I could hardly speak. "I came down here to... I was just... I had to get out of my room and...and-what are you doing here?"
Words were tumbling fast from my mouth before I could form them. I stood, on weak legs, and looked around for Becca. She was nowhere. I glanced at the floor, where Becca had stamped out her cigarette. There it was. I resisted the urge to pick it up and see if it was still hot.
"We just wanted to come down and hang out I guess...are you okay?"
"What?" I whispered to myself as I looked at it. I looked helplessly back at Max.
His expression became one of concern, and he stepped back to open the door. He spoke to someone outside. "Just one second, I think I see a rat."
I heard a few girls shriek. Max walked over to me. "I'm really sorry about earlier, Blake told me she told you..." He trailed off, as he saw the expression on my face. "What's going on? Something else is wrong."
"I don't kn-know, I just...I can't. I-" I was trying to gain control of myself, but I couldn't breathe. It was like that feeling you get when you're sobbing so hard that your lungs take in breaths you're not prepared for.
"Come with me."
And I did. He put his hand on my lower back and guided me.
I trusted him. I didn't care where we were going or who was outside, I felt better that he was there. That was crazy, since I didn't even know him, but it's how I felt.
My static breathing slowed some, and I could take deep breaths. I coughed some of the dust out of my lungs as I walked outside. The usual people were there-Madison and Julia, clutching each other's arms as I walked out hand in hand with Max, Blake, wearing a glittering tiara, and Cam in a gold crown. There must have been some kind of king and queen thing like at homecoming. They both looked at me with concern, and then to Max. Johnny also looked at him and asked, "She okay?"
I gave an embarrassed shrug and waved away their concern. "I'm fine. Not feeling well." Other people whose names I kept forgetting were there, all talking to each other and looking at me like I'd just been dragged from the sand beneath their feet. I couldn't look at them. I realized, as I looked ashamedly down at my feet, that they were bare. I didn't remember when I'd taken off my shoes. I remembered Becca's words about how everyone talked about me because I was just a "sad little thing." This was a perfect example, I supposed.
Lonely, friendless, barefoot new girl, with no identity more specific than that. They'd never see me as anything but that. And I was really starting to fear that maybe that's all I was. I'd always been the star of my own story. But not at Manderley.
Max said nothing, only giving a nod to the others, and then directing me firmly up the stairs.
"You're freezing," he said, when his warm hands touched my cold skin. He put his coat around my shoulders. "Not to be too cliche or anything."
I clutched the jacket closer and summoned a faint smile but said nothing. He led me inside and to the library, which was open.
"This was locked earlier, that's the whole reason I went down to the boathouse."
"Shouldn't have been. But I don't know, I've never tried to break into the library in the middle of a ball before." Max gave me a small smile and gestured for me to go in.
He led me to the senior study room, and then turned on the fire.
"You want to sit?"
I nodded and sat on the couch. He sat across from me in a chair.
"So..." he said. "What happened down there? You looked like you'd seen a ghost."
I cringed and stared into the flames. "I didn't even think about whether anyone would be going there tonight."
"How long were you down there?"
I shrugged. I really didn't know.
"I was rude, I'm sorry."
"No, please-" I didn't want him to explain it.
"But Blake told you?"
"Yes. She told me. I didn't know when I-" Furious humiliation filled my chest. "Dana suggested it."
"I figured it was something like that."
I tried to smile, but it didn't work, and I just ended up taking a deep breath and looking at him. "I don't know what everyone's problem is. I realize I could never compare to B-Becca." I had never sounded so pitiful. I'd never talked about myself like this. I'd never felt like this. "But everyone could stop telling me...Dana yelled at me about it the other day...."
I wanted to be honest, but instead I was just coming off as whiny. I didn't feel like I could explain quite what it had felt like when Dana had said what she had. Or what dream or ghost Becca had just told me.
"You're nothing like her."
"Yeah, I get that." My bitterness was not fully disguised. I bit the inside of my cheek anxiously. The whole "you're not better or worse, you're just different" response was not making me feel any more confident. "I don't know. I just wanted to get away for a little while, I guess. And then I fell asleep or something."
Or something. That was the only explanation. But it had been so incredibly vivid. Her smoke had made me cough. I'd smelled her. I'd heard her voice. Can you do all that in a dream? Obviously so, I guessed, but it still left me with a creepy feeling. But her cigarette had been on the ground...it could have just been left there from some other time, I supposed. But...
"It just felt like she was there," I said out loud, without meaning to. I quickly looked up at Max.
"What?" he asked sharply.
I shook my head, regretting what I was about to say. "I don't know. I fell asleep. I had a d-dream or whatever...and she was there. Becca was there."
There was a pause. "You've never even met her."