“No! We have to get to school. No time for that now.”
“Right. My bad.”
“Please just tell me somebody straightened the desks while I was gone.”
“Sure. I did.”
“You did that for me?”
He looks at her like she’s nuts. “Um. . no. I’m not that good.”
“Oh. Ha, ha.” Kendall takes a deep breath and lets it out. “God, I’m nervous to go back in there.”
Jacian pulls into the parking lot, takes her hand, kisses it, and peers at her through his thick lashes.
“You can do it.”
It’s weird being here again. She walks in and looks around. Turns the wastebasket, straightens the markers. Opens the curtains and checks the locks, whispering, “All checked and good.”
Then she looks at the desks.
They’re all there. Twenty-four of them. She breaks from her usual pattern and goes first to the senior section. Stops at Nico’s place. Jacian watches her quietly.
“It’s a different desk,” she says.
“Yes.”
“I’ve never seen this one before.” She draws her fingers across the graffiti carefully, ready to pull back at the first whisper. But nothing happens. It’s just a desk. “I’m glad they replaced it. It would look wrong if there was a hole in this spot.”
“I mentioned that,” Jacian says. He walks over to her. “It’s from the storage room. I said I thought it would be less conspicuous to the other students if they put a new one here, that you and I would be the only ones who noticed the switch.”
She nods, deep in thought. She turns, searching his face, his eyes. “Hector says you heard the whispers too.”
He nods. “I did. I thought it was my mind messing with me. But then I remembered the way you wrapped yourself around the desk whenever you sat there.” He touches her arm. “I held my hand to it for longer than I want to admit. I couldn’t stop. It almost had me too, Kendall.”
Kendall bites her lip. “Whose voice did you hear?”
He swallows hard. Touches her face. “Yours.”
After school Jacian and Kendall drive to the church graveyard. Little bits of snow fall to the graying ground. Kendall gets out of the truck and walks slowly to the grave site, Jacian holding back, giving her some space. She stares at the fresh dirt and shudders with cold and memories, memories of his decomposing face that she knows she’ll never forget.
She fights the demanding thoughts that want to swirl around her head. Instead she forces new ones, remembering the good times with the best friend anybody could ever have. She beckons over her shoulder and reaches for Jacian, threads her arm around his waist. He slips his hand to her shoulder, absently weaving his fingers through her hair as they silently pay their respects together.
She is out of tears.
She kneels by the grave as the snow falls on it. Closes her eyes and pictures him, long blond hair swishing around his head, that grin. She smiles back at him. “I’ll miss you,” she whispers. “Good-bye, Nico.”
At Hector’s that evening, Jacian and Kendall sit around the table with a computer and catalogs, researching.
“There’s NYU’s Tisch in New York,” Jacian says. “Or FSU Dance. That’s Florida. What about
Hartford?”
Kendall pages through the options. “There’s a lot of dance schools,” she admits.
“San Diego, Ohio, or hey, maybe University of Arizona. That’s down where we used to live.”
“No potatoes?”
Jacian smiles. “No potatoes. Lemons, limes, avocados. Horses nearby.”
“I like horses. Hate potatoes.”
He squeezes her thigh. “You’ll have a lot of excellent choices once you pull your grades up again.”
Kendall sighs. “Yeah. I guess spending all that time ignoring everything wasn’t such a good idea, gradewise.”
“Hey,” he says. He turns her chin so he can look into her eyes. “You survived it.”
She nods.
“Let’s go take a break.”
They slip their jackets on and step out onto the porch. It’s bone cold outside. Jacian leans against the railing and pulls Kendall to him. He kisses her softly. She leans into him and holds him, feeling the shape of his body through his shirt, his heartbeat against hers. She counts the beats lazily, more as a comfort than a compulsion.
“I smell a bonfire,” Kendall says after a while.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Want to walk? Go check it out?”
“Sure.”
They walk hand in hand until they can see the flames, hear the crackle. Hector and old Mr. Greenwood hold shovels. The firelight against their bodies makes huge jumping shadows along the tree line behind them. The carcass of the desk stands on metal legs, fire licking, angry smoke erupting from it.
Jacian and Kendall approach with caution, and then they watch, silent alongside the solemn-faced men thinking about the boys who died on that desk so many years ago, and the students who died this year because of it.
Kendall clears her throat. “Whatever happened to the boy in the story? Piere?” she asks.
Hector pulls himself from his thoughts and glances at old Mr. Greenwood, who frowns mightily at the fire. “He made it,” Hector says softly. “He did himself proud.”
When the wooden desktop collapses in on itself and shudders in the ashes, Kendall feels a rush of cold escape her lungs and hears a faint drawn-out scream.
But then it’s gone again.
We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful.
We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire. . like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED!
The fire consumes Our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places.
Or.
To find new places to hide.
And wait.
Touch me.
