Shadow Hills (4 page)

“Bathrooms are back in the grocery area.” Graham indicated where I should go, then put his plate on top of mine and took them over to the bus tub.

I walked along the aisles, glancing down them. As I approached the next row, I could hear faint music even though the store hadn’t been playing any over the sound system. In the middle of the office supplies aisle was Zach, standing with his back to me, listening to his iPod. A familiar-sounding song came from the headphones that lay on either side of his neck, instead of in his ears.
Strange
. I stepped a little closer, trying to identify it. The violin portion was very distinctive, and it took me only a few seconds to realize the song was “Wonderlust King” by Gogol Bordello.

As I observed Zach, I noticed that several packages on the shelves were tilting out toward him, as if they were being pulled by some invisible force. On the shelf below, the spiral bound notebooks stuck an inch off the shelf farther than the notebooks beside them.
Well, that’s definitely not normal
. Only the metal objects, like compasses and packages of silver tacks, seemed affected by the weird antigravity.

Zach must have felt me watching him because when he turned his head and saw me, he didn’t seem all that surprised.

“Hey again.” He nodded.

“I love that album.”

“Huh?”

“Super Taranta.”
I raised my eyebrows. “The album you’re listening to.”

“Wow. Good hearing.” He frowned. “Usually I’m the only one who can hear it like this.” He gestured at the earbuds hanging around his neck.

“Did they go to Boston on their last tour?” I questioned.
“I saw them a few months ago. They put on an amazing live show.” My voice was getting higher and louder, like it did when I got excited. I clapped my mouth closed.

“I don’t know.” Zach scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve actually never been to a concert.”

I stared at him, not sure I’d heard correctly. “You mean you’ve never seen Gogol Bordello live?”

He shook his head. “I mean, I’ve never seen
any
band live.”

“Seriously?” I had been going to all-ages shows since I was in middle school, and by high school my sister and I were going to every twenty-one and up show we could talk our way into.

“Shadow Hills isn’t exactly a music mecca.” There was a restlessness evident in Zach’s tone, but I was pretty sure it had more to do with being stuck in a small town than it did with our conversation.

“Boston’s not that far. Why don’t you go there?” I couldn’t imagine what it would be like never to have seen a show, never to have felt that surge of adrenaline.

“Haven’t had the chance.” Zach shifted his weight, leaning to the side, causing all the metal objects in the aisle to pull toward him even more.

Now he was uncomfortable, and it definitely had something to do with me. I’d let my elitist-music-snob attitude rear its ugly head, probably making Zach think that I saw him as some kind of hick. When nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, I had never been so intrigued by someone I’d just met—and I was certain I’d never seen anyone else have a physical effect on metal.

“Sorry, that was rude. It’s really not any of my business.” I wanted to ask him about his seeming magnetism, but I didn’t need to come off as any nosier than I already had.

“I’ll write it off as the L.A. influence.” Zach flashed me a smile. “Too much paparazzi exposure.”

I laughed, accidentally letting out a snort.

“Well, that wasn’t humiliating or anything,” I said from behind my hand.

“No.” He was grinning widely at me now. “It was cute.”

“Zach. There you are.” Corinne swept past me, totally ignoring my existence. “You haven’t gotten your notebooks yet?” She stared at him in exasperation before reaching for a three-ring binder. The metal items swung like a pendulum away from her.
Apparently Zach
isn’t
the only one who has a physical effect on metal
.

“What are you looking at?” she practically barked at me.

I tore my gaze from the things that now hung at an opposite angle from the way they’d been a moment ago.

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

“I was looking for the bathroom, actually,” I told her coolly.

“It’s at the end of the next aisle over.” Corinne gave me a fake smile.

“You’re so helpful.”

“Come on. We’re getting out of here,” she commanded as I disappeared around the corner.

“Jesus, Corinne. Do you always have to be so rude?” Zach’s voice floated back to me, and I couldn’t help but smile.

When I returned from the bathroom, they were gone.
I glanced around to make sure I was alone, then stood where Zach had been. None of the packages shifted. I held up a hand, my palm facing the notebooks. Everything remained completely immobile.

“What are you doing?” Graham was standing at the end of the aisle, watching me curiously.

“Oh. Nothing.” I slapped my hand down by my side. “I thought I might buy a notebook, and I was trying to decide which one to get.” I started down the row to where Graham was. “I’m ready when you are.”

“But you just said you were getting a notebook.” He raised his eyebrow at me.

“I said I was thinking about it,” I corrected him. “And I decided not to. So we can go now.”

“Whatever you say.” Graham shook his head, and we headed outside to the car.

The distant mountains and towering trees loomed over the narrow road, blocking out any light from the moon as we drove.

I could see why the town was named Shadow Hills. The darkness was almost a living thing here.

“So what are you going to do tomorrow?” Graham’s voice broke into my reverie.

“I’m not sure. I probably should get to know the campus so I can find my classes without carrying a map around. Maybe that way I won’t stand out too much.”
And hopefully I can find out about that creepy graveyard
. Going to the hospital museum was the one thing I really wanted to do.

“It would be impossible for you to blend in at Devenish, map or no map.”

“Oh, yeah? And why is that, may I ask?” I hated it when someone who barely knew me tried to act like they had me all figured out.

“It’s nothing bad.” He threw up his hands defensively. “You’re just different from most of the girls who go to school here. In a good way.”

Graham seemed to sense my skepticism without looking at me.

“The students here are so
serious.”
Evidently, this was not a quality that Graham valued. “Their whole lives are about doing well in their classes, getting into a top college—all so they can end up with some high-paying, boring-as-hell desk job.” He shrugged. “I don’t get it. It’s like, you have the rest of your life to be a beleaguered disciple to the Establishment—why start now?”

I was annoyed by Graham’s certainty that he had me pegged, but I had to agree.

“That’s the way my dad is—constantly at his office. I don’t understand why he works so hard for this money that he doesn’t even seem to enjoy….” Suddenly I felt very exposed.

“Exactly. Life isn’t a series of steps you take to get somewhere. It’s everything that happens in between. Or, you know, something like that, but more eloquent and less clichéd.” Graham’s laugh was easy and natural.

I could definitely see us as friends. And that was what I needed right now.

“Here we are,” Graham said as he pulled into the Devenish parking lot. “Want me to walk you to your dorm?”

“Sure.” The well-manicured, deserted grounds gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was so different from wandering around L.A. at night; there was no graffiti, no one was passed out on the park benches. Yet somehow this didn’t make me feel safer.

As we walked down the sidewalk, I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck raise up and goose bumps travel across my arms. I wanted to turn around and look behind me, but I was afraid if I did Graham would think I was a crazy person.

“I’m helping with registration until one tomorrow.” Graham tilted his head toward me. “Would you want to grab lunch when I get off? I could help you with your exploration of the grounds.” He playfully poked me with his elbow. “Seriously, what could be more thrilling?”

“Let me think.” I tapped a finger to my chin in mock contemplation. “I’m going to have to say … almost anything, excluding water torture and mimes.”

Graham laughed, reaching in front of me to open the door to the dorm. There was a bright light coming from the first room on the right.

“Looks like Angela is waiting up for you.” He knocked on the open door.

“Hey, Ms. Moore.” Graham gestured to me. “This is Persephone. The new student from L.A.”

“Good. I was beginning to wonder if you had made it in.” Ms.
Moore—who didn’t look anything like I’d expected a house mistress to look—stood up from her desk, where she had obviously been reading. She was young and fresh faced, her brown hair cut in a slightly layered bob.

“I’m not sure how this works.” I fidgeted with the strap of my purse. There had never been anyone checking up on me in Los Angeles. I knew it was going to be very different here.

“That’s okay.” Ms. Moore smiled. “No one knows how the residency process works when they first get here. It’s pretty simple: Sunday through Thursday, you need to be in your dorm by eight, and lights have to be out by ten thirty. Friday and Saturday check-in is at eleven, lights out by eleven thirty.”

She picked up the clipboard that was hanging on her wall, just inside the doorway. “You sign your name here, record the time you arrived and your room number. I oversee nightly check-in and grant day or overnight excuses.” Ms. Moore shrugged her shoulders. “And that’s pretty much it.”

She was apparently not aware that this was the longest list of rules I’d ever been given. My parents were never strict, and after Athena, they’d stopped caring altogether.

I took the clipboard she extended to me and wrote down my information before digging around in my purse for my keys. Finally, I found them and headed for my door at the end of the hall, with Graham a few steps behind me.

“Good night, Graham.” Ms. Moore gave him a pointed look that stopped him in his tracks. “No boys in the dorm after eight, remember?”

“Right.” Graham looked at me questioningly. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. He grinned and left the way we had come in.

A noise pulled me out of my half-asleep haze what seemed like only a few minutes later. But a glance at my alarm clock told me it was 3:33 a.m. Had one of my dreams awakened me? I felt like I needed something. A drink? A snack? There was that vending machine in the common room. Tightness crept into my chest as I got out of bed. The tile beneath my feet felt cold, almost wet. I reached down and touched the floor; it was damp. Peering around my door, I stared into the dark hallway. The white tile looked black in the low light. This wasn’t, in and of itself, terribly disturbing, but the reflective, rippling appearance of the floor was.

“What the hell?” I muttered. Taking a tentative step out of my room, I discovered the floor in the hall was covered in several inches of liquid. It was coming from underneath the bathroom door.
Had Ms. Moore left the water running?

Her door was closed, and there was no light escaping from the cracks around it. I took a deep breath. What was I afraid of, an overflowing bathtub? I was trying to be calm, but the closer I got to the bathroom, the higher the water climbed. And the higher the water climbed, the more anxious I felt. The water was now over my ankles. I ignored the jittery panic building inside me and pulled swiftly on the handle. The door swung open, and an avalanche of water hit me hard in the chest. I was
floating now, drowning. The water was thick and murky; my eyes stung as I opened them. I was blinking rapidly, trying to bring my blurry vision into focus, when out of the corner of my eye I saw her.

My sister. Lifeless and limp, sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. Her tiny delicate hand was wrapped around a huge ornate gold skeleton key. Its heaviness seemed to be dragging her down faster and faster.

I swam toward her with all my might, straining against the force of the water, but she was sinking too quickly for me to keep up. Her skin had taken on a bluish tinge, and her hair looked like seaweed. I tried to yell, to wake her, but all that came out of my mouth was bubbles.

“Persephone! Are you okay?”

Ms. Moore was standing in front of me, wide-eyed. We were in the bathroom, but there was no water anywhere, not even a drip from the sink.

“What … I …” I shook my head, trying to rid it of the cobwebs of my dream.

“You must have been sleepwalking. I heard you scream, and I came running in. At first I thought you were awake because your eyes were open, but you were … unresponsive.” Ms. Moore looked concerned. “Does this happen to you a lot?”

“No. I mean, I have nightmares sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever sleepwalked before.” I frowned, disoriented.

“Maybe it’s the change in environment. These old buildings can be kind of spooky without many people around.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I nodded sluggishly. “I should probably get back to bed.”

“Are you sure?” Ms. Moore’s eyes searched mine. “Is there anyone you want me to call?”

Yes, call my parents. Tell them I’m screaming in the middle
of the night. I’m sure they want to keep close tabs on my frenetic behavior
.

“No, really. I’m fine.” Ms. Moore’s expression was still worried. “I just need to go back to sleep; I’m exhausted.”

“Okay.” She stood in the hall watching me, arms folded over her chest, until I disappeared into my room.

I crawled onto the thin mattress and slipped under the plain white sheets. No wonder I was sleeping worse than before; this tiny twin bed was way too hard to be comfortable, and the blankets were scratchy compared to the worn flannel sheets I had at home. My old home.

I pulled the green notebook out of the drawer on the bedside table. There was no alarm clock on the table, but I knew before I even looked at my cell that it was a little past 3:33 a.m. Quickly, I scribbled down the contents of my dream. It was new, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. There had been a few dreams right after Athena drowned that were similar to this one. However, they had never been so vivid, and the gold key was odd.