As I Descended. Robin Talley

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      On the other side, a group of pajama-clad freshmen were gathered in the hallway. Felicia was at the very front. She was his friend Austin’s kid sister, but lately Brandon had realized he liked Felicia a lot better than he liked her brother. Felicia brushed her tangled hair back from her face and smiled at Brandon, but she looked worried. That crash must’ve echoed through the whole building.

      “Jeez, are you okay?” Felicia asked.

      “Just an accident, guys,” Brandon told her and the others. “Ross is here. He said for you all to go back to bed.”

      Felicia pouted. Brandon shrugged and whispered, “Sorry, Fee,” trying to make sure she knew it wasn’t personal. She gave him another small smile and left, pulling her friends with her. Brandon closed the door again—it moved easily this time—and turned back to the room. Maria was standing up, still blinking slowly.

      “All right,” Ross said. “It’s a miracle none of you got hurt with all that glass flying, but since nobody needs to go to the health center you should just go back to your rooms. I’ll call maintenance and write up the incident report tomorrow, and the dean will call your parents. How the heck did you pull the chandelier down, anyway?”

      “We didn’t pull it,” Brandon said. “It fell.”

      “Uh-huh.” Ross ran a hand through his thick brown hair and sighed. “Just go. Watch out for the broken glass. Lily, do you need help getting back?”

      “Like I said, I’m fine,” Lily snapped.

      * * *

      Maria could hear the others talking, but they were far away. It felt like she was alone at the bottom of a cave, listening to the faint echo of distant voices on the surface. By the end of the session, that was all she’d wanted. She’d pleaded silently, over and over, for the board, for everything, to go away, to leave her alone.

      Now she’d gotten her wish. The thing in the corner was gone. The room was empty.

      But the shards of the Ouija board on the table—something was nagging at her. Something important.

      It wouldn’t be until hours later, when she was struggling to fall asleep, that Maria would remember what it was.

      The board had been destroyed before she could tell it goodbye.

2

       NOTHING IS BUT WHAT IS NOT

      “Ten!” Delilah whispered.

      “Nine!” The dozen seniors squeezed into the tiny dorm room joined in. “Eight!”

      Maria took another gulp as her friends cheered in hushed voices. She was the only girl who’d ever join the guys’ absurd beer-chugging contest.

      “Seven!” everyone chorused. Maria coughed. Lily resisted the urge to snatch the beer can out of her hand.

      “Six! Five! Four!”

      Maria fist-pumped. The movement made her tank top ride up. Just a fraction of an inch, but enough to get appreciative looks from the boys sitting at her feet. Lily wanted to kick them.

      “Three!” Emily, leading the chant, took a dainty sip from her drink. Lily could’ve sworn she was intentionally slowing the countdown to trip Maria up. “Two! . . . One!”

      Lily gazed from face to face. Every single person in this room—except Maria, of course—was useless.

      Lily hated Acheron to the depths of her soul. She longed to tell all these losers to shut up and get out of her room before she shoved them out the door herself. She bit her lip and took another sip of seltzer instead.

      “Zero!” the group chorused. Maria lowered her empty beer can and wiped her mouth. She laughed as Ryan took the can from her and crushed it in that way guys did when they were being stupid.

      The grin on Maria’s face almost looked real. She collapsed onto the bed next to Lily, fanning herself dramatically even though it was freezing in their room.

      Lily raised her eyebrows at Maria—their usual look, the one that meant People are watching us, so you can’t sit that close—and Maria slid down onto the floor next to Austin, still giggling.

      “Congrats, Ree.” Austin tipped his drink to Maria’s beer can in a toast. A trickle of rum rolled down the sleeve of his black mesh shirt. Austin was the school’s resident dealer, and for some reason he liked to pretend he was goth. “I can’t believe they let you off with a warning. That chandelier’s been up there since the Stone Age. You’ve got the magic touch, Princess.”

      Delilah, slumped on the floor next to him, giggled and held up her drink, the liquid glistening in the candlelight that shined across the room. Her own top was so tiny it wouldn’t have had room to ride up. She was on her third Diet Coke of the night, and she was high on oxy. The combination of caffeine, fake sugar, and prescription painkillers had her at maximum intolerability.

      “It was crazy,” Maria told Austin. Lily could see her hiding her smile. “Anyway, they told our parents too.”

      “As long as they don’t stop you from going to homecoming,” Caitlin said. She’d climbed onto Maria’s bed and wrapped herself around Ryan. Tamika, who’d been dating Ryan up until yesterday, glared at them from the other side of the room. “That’s all that matters, right?”

      Lily rolled her eyes. Caitlin, and all the other pathetic excuses for humans in this room, probably thought the dance really was all that mattered.

      “What’d your parents say?” Emily asked.

      Maria shrugged. Her parents hadn’t said a word. Not to her, anyway.

      Lily, Maria, and Brandon had been brought into Dean Cumberland’s office that morning while the dean called their parents one by one. Lily’s mother had been so relieved to hear Lily wasn’t hurt, she barely even listened to the part about the drinking and the rule breaking. Brandon’s father had announced over speakerphone that Brandon would be grounded all summer, and did Dean Cumberland think that was punishment enough or should he take away Brandon’s computer and his phone, too?

      But no one had answered at Maria’s. Not at either of her parents’ offices or on their cell phones. Finally the dean left a sternly worded message with Maria’s mother’s intern.

      Maria had called her parents to explain. She’d left a voice mail pleading for her mother to call her back. But Maria’s phone didn’t ring that day.

      Instead a dorm monitor stopped by their room while Maria was out at soccer practice. She told Lily the dean had spoken to Maria’s parents, and to tell Maria the girls didn’t need to worry about last night—the chandelier would be easy enough to restore for next semester.

      Lily had never met Maria’s parents, but she knew enough about them, and about how Acheron was used to dealing with the genteel Southern families who were its livelihood, to know what that meant: the check was in the mail.

      That СКАЧАТЬ