Page 27 of House of Hearts

Life doesn’t play out like it does in the movies. There’s no way on earth the main character would make an earth-shattering discovery like an ancient spell book only to spend the next several weeks cramming for an exam in multivariable calculus.

But, because real life follows no cinematic rules, that’s precisely what I find myself doing.

Anastasia’s grimoire and Em’s secret involvement play second fiddle to the rules of differentiation.

I can hardly keep searching for Percy if I flunk out of school.

I’m desperately trying to stay awake in class as my teacher reviews test material, but the chalkboard grows fuzzier by the second as I drift in and out of focus.

I couldn’t tell you how the hell Oliver’s managing between the Cards, school newspaper, and school itself.

He’s studiously taking notes on the opposite end of the classroom and even going as far as to raise his hand and participate.

With the exhaust fumes I’m running on, I don’t trust myself to speak coherently, let alone ask questions on the derivative matrix.

I’m not even the one working on transcribing the book in the first place. Oliver and Ash are leading that particular expedition. Oliver explained the harrowing process to me by referencing the infamous Copiale cipher.

“We’re not the first secret society, and we definitely won’t be the last,” he said mid-yawn.

“An eighteenth-century group of Freemason eye doctors—yes, you heard that right—wrote an entire ritual guide in code, and it took scholars years to crack. Researchers broke the symbols down and searched for letter pairs. After that, they eventually realized the original source language was German.”

“You speak German?”

“Nein.”

My head dips, and I jerk myself awake for the seventeenth time this hour. My pencil’s scratched a graphite streak down the page. It’s somewhat fitting given the messy state of my notes.

EXAM NEXT WEEK

THE IN-BETWEEN????????

RABBIT HOLE? IS THIS A CODE FOR SOMETHING? RABBITS BURROW IN THE EARTH…DOES SHE MEAN A TUNNEL?

It doesn’t matter how much time I spend studying either subject—everything written on the page is an indecipherable blur.

“Word of advice, math class isn’t worth premature gray hairs,” Amber says that evening from the other side of the shower-stall door. “I can tell all those AP classes are kicking your ass.”

“Thanks, I’ll be sure to tell Mr.Bayer on exam day.” My voice is drowned out by the chug of water sputtering out of the faucets and the screech of the plastic sliding on the metal curtain rod. “Sorry, sir, I got a zero on the test because my friend says I look ugly when I cram.”

She snickers on the other side of the wall. “Hey now, I didn’t say ugly, but otherwise? Damn straight. Tell him life’s too short to spend it wasting away over tests.”

My heart gallops at her words, but I’m getting better at not letting the panic kick in. She’s not wrong. Life is too short.

For as much money as they pour into this school, the shower rooms lie neglected.

A phlegmy pocket of yellow light flickers above our heads, and a run-of-the-mill shower divider cuts between us.

Amber’s baby blue pedicure shines against the grimy tile, her shower caddy filled to the brim with products.

On the flip side, she’s got a view of my ratty sandals.

They might be hanging on by the grace of God alone, but it doesn’t matter because no one else is in here but her.

Typically in the late evenings or early mornings, you can count on this room being packed with students; girls belting out song lyrics, blasting hair dryers, gossiping over the sinks as they brush their teeth.

It’s usually a competition of who can be the loudest, so tonight is a welcome respite.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” she observes, her accusation followed by a squirt of conditioner in her palm. “You, Oliver, Birdie—the three of you have been weirder than usual. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

I rub my scalp with the tips of my nails and massage the shampoo in. “I’m sorry. MV Calc isn’t the only thing kicking my ass. The club’s…taken its toll. Things are pretty heavy.” It’s as close to the truth as I can manage, but it still sits like a lie on my tongue.

“When it was Oliver, I could manage it, but the three of you? It’s like you’re speaking in code twenty-four seven and trying to figure out the best place to hide a dead body. And it’s like, yoo-hoo, I’m literally right here with a shovel if you’d talk to me.”

I deflect with an exaggerated “awwwww.” “You’d help me hide a dead body? I’m flattered.”

She chuckles. “I’ll dig the hole and everything…It’d be more of a rabbit hole than an actual grave because I ditch PE, but I will bring the shovel.”

My blood runs cold. “What did you say?”

“That I’ll bring the shovel?”

“No, before that.”

I hear her rummage noisily through her caddy. “Uh, that I have noodle arms and could only dig a rabbit hole? Even that’s a stretch because that’s still several feet deep. Let’s throw them in the lake instead. Too morbid?”

I shake my head, then quickly realize she can’t see that and clear my throat. “No, you just made me think of something. I promise we’re not burying dead bodies, though.”

She snorts. “Okay, good to know. I guess the Cards are more boring than I thought.”

The faucet screams in protest as she shuts the water off. I go to follow suit, but she stops me with a reach of her hand beneath the stall. “Here, use this.”

“What is it?” I ask, staring down at the mystery goop squirted onto my palms.

“A hair mask. You’ll want to leave it in for like five or ten minutes. It’s really good, but it smells like cherries, and I hate that…Also your three-in-one hair-care bottle is borderline satanic. I swear I cross myself every time I see it in your bag.”

I work the product through my dead ends before tying my hair back in a bun. “?‘Satanic Shampoo’ has a ring to it, though. You should patent that.”

“I’ll get back to you with a SWOT analysis,” she replies with a swing of her stall door. I listen to the soft pads of her retreating footsteps until finally I’m all alone.

I relish the hot water raining down my skin. I’ve always been careful to take quick showers at home so I don’t rack up a huge bill or make the next bath freezing for Mom. Here, none of that matters.

The only thing that does matter now is doing what I came to Hart to do. And even that’s morphed and shifted in the short time I’ve been here. No longer the tangible takedown I’d planned for. Some masked killer I could cuff and send to jail.

No, now I’ve got ghosts to summon.

Curses to break.

Rabbit holes to find.

Amber’s words sift back through my skull. Could the rabbit hole really be referring to a grave? Some deep burrow in the earth where no one could ever hope to find him? There’s no way he could be alive if he was buried beneath the soil.

Hmm. I’m once again reminded of my night in the maze.

Standing there in the dead center with the moon winking overhead, the Lockwell mausoleums surrounding me like an army of the dead.

It feels wildly far-fetched, but perhaps he’s not literally buried.

Maybe Em meant he was hiding inside one of the family tombs?

Could there be some special passageway? It’s one thing to explore the tower, but breaking into a family grave is a pretty heavy extracurricular activity.

I could almost laugh if the situation weren’t so massively grim and messed up.

Of course someone like Em would get herself into this mess.

Using your heart over your head has always been a bad move in my book, and that’s all she did.

Applying to this school was reckless and impulsive.

She had starry-eyed dreams of opera houses and sold-out concerts.

She was a dreamer, even if her life ended in a nightmare.

I clamp down on my lip and try to smother the thought of her terrified. For all our disagreements, she’d been like a sister to me, and I knew her better than my own blood.

I squirt some of my three-in-one gel into my loofah and scrub my skin with more force than necessary.

Emoree knew I’d go to the ends of the earth to find the truth.

Not for the first time in my life, though, I wish I didn’t have to.

I wish my love didn’t need to be danced over hot coals.

I wish I could live without the knowledge that I was put on this earth to look out for everyone around me at all times.

“You’re so grown up for your age,” Mom would say through sniffles when she’d use me as a glorified therapist at ten years old. “You always know what to do.”

“You’ll always protect me, right?” Em blubbered in the sandbox. “Do you promise?”

Everyone’s savior and yet I wasn’t able to save everyone. The girl who depended on me most is gone. Dead.

I growl under my breath at the same time I hear a shuffle of feet.

“Amber?”

No response. Okay, awkward, it’s not her. I shut my mouth and contemplate the minutes left for this mystery hair mask. Three? Would Amber even know if I washed it out early?

I brace myself for the stranger to blast music and start belting along to it.

Honestly, with the rate my thoughts are going, maybe I need something to drown my mind out.

I cast a quick downward glance at the opening at the bottom of my stall door.

She’s barefoot. That’s a bit ballsy considering the chances of contracting athlete’s foot or ringworm.

The girl is intensely pale, enough to make my own pallid skin look like I’ve gotten a spray tan. She’s borderline translucent, a whole spiderweb of blue veins on display beneath the surface.

I’m aware I’m still staring as I decide to rinse my hair early.

As if she’s aware I was looking, she swivels to face me from in front of the shower barrier. It’s jarringly abrupt. One second she’s facing forward, and the next she’s directly facing my stall, her body unnaturally still as she stands there.

There’s absolutely no way she could tell I was looking at her. She’d have to be psychic or actually peeking above the divider, and she’s nowhere near that tall.

And of course she starts singing. See, I rationalize, she’s just a normal girl in the shower room, and I’m being incredibly rude staring.

Her song begins wordless, a soft vocalization in the back of her throat. It’s as hypnotic as the rest of her, a striking siren call between us. It’s only as I’m about to shut the water off that I hear the first lyrics.

“Goosey, goosey, gander, whither shall I wander?”

Weird start, but okay. I don’t think this made it on the Hot 100. But some strange, buried side of me seizes up like a gazelle at a watering hole, and I strain to not make any sudden movements.

My hand rests on the shower knob; I can’t bring myself to turn it off.

“Upstairs and downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber.

” Her singing voice is haunting in the echo of the empty room.

It bounces off the walls and carries back to me like a choir.

I recognize the nursery rhyme, a morbid little song with a gruesome ending.

“There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers. I took him by the left leg—”

I know where this goes, but I still wait in anticipation for the ending. My heart constricts painfully behind my ribs.

“—and threw him down the stairs.”

The song ends. She’s still facing me. I’m still facing her.

My hand is still clamped tightly on the knob.

We’re locked like that for way too long, and I’m no Em, but my mind’s run away from me.

A horrific daydream plays out in my imagination; it starts with the water staining orange before deepening to a violent shade of scarlet.

Blood circles down the drain, and I see her nails, long and black and talon-like, slip over the top of the stall and tap.

Tap … tap … tap …like a faucet with a leak. Then she peeks over the top and I see her and—

Nothing happens. We’re in this standstill for a moment longer before she twists away from me and leaves. I stay frozen until I’m positive I’m alone and finally shut off the water. It’s grown cold.

I square my shoulders as I leave the stall and force myself not to take the entire door down with me as I scramble out. I whip my head left and right, but I really am alone. She’s gone, but with the stall door swung open, I see she’s left something behind for me.

It’s scratched into the paint of the shower wall like knifepoint graffiti. I see a jagged letter carved by hand, one single message left behind for me.

O

Dear Diary,

What a silly notion Mother has, that a young woman might be deflowered. On the contrary, I bloom with Oleander’s touch. There’s ivy in my ribs and petals in my heart. I will always remember the two of us in the hedge maze, the sunset a bright peony pink overhead.

“I’ll marry you,” he whispered, his roots tangling together with mine. “I promise you, my love, I will.”

And in that moment, a garden grew.

—Anastasia Hart