A Lesson in Vengeance(12)

“So,” she says, perching her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose. “As I told you over email, I think it’s best we find a new subject for your senior thesis. Yes?”

“Yes.” I got used to responding as people wanted to hear while I was at Silver Lake. Yes is what Wyatt wants to hear. “I don’t want to waste the research I did before, so I was thinking I’d stay in a similar genre. Horror.”

Wyatt nods slowly. “Is that a good idea? Horror can be…very gruesome.”

“I’m better now,” I reassure her. “I can handle reading Helen Oyeyemi. I promise.”

Wyatt’s pen taps a quick rhythm against the edge of her desk. I crack open the drink she gave me and take a small sip; the tropical-flavored soda bursts on my tongue with an eruption of fizz and synthetic citrus. It tastes like formaldehyde.

“Very well,” Wyatt says at last.

I didn’t realize how tense I’d been until she says that—and now I feel my body sinking back into the chair, shoulders retreating from where they’d scrunched up toward my ears.

I was never small and frightened before. I didn’t used to be afraid of anything.

“Your thesis will need to be more specific than that, of course. What question will you be trying to answer with this work?”

“The same question.” It’s easier now. My prepared speech falls from my lips cool as a lie. “Misogyny and characterizations of female emotionality in horror literature. It’ll be written through an intellectual history lens: How were these works in conversation with the social norms and mores of their time? How were they influenced by catalytic historical events and literature? And how did they influence history and literature in turn?”

“How did perceptions of women’s emotions change throughout history,” Wyatt translates.

“As viewed through the gaze of contemporaneous horror writers.”

This earns me one of Wyatt’s rare smiles. She uncaps her pen and signs her name on my thesis application form, then passes it back over her desk and says, “I very much look forward to reading this, Miss Morrow.”

By the time I leave Wyatt’s building, though, I already wonder if I’ve made a mistake. If reading about witches was foolish, reading about ghosts is surely more so. Ever since I came back here, I’ve felt Alex’s presence like an unfinished sentence—waiting. And no matter how many times I tell myself ghosts don’t exist, that doesn’t dilute my fear.

I feel dizzy in the sunlight, heat prickling over my skin and fermenting there, spreading like a quick fever. Before I can lose my balance, I catch myself on the handrail and stand at the foot of the stairs, students flowing around me like water around a rock, oblivious.

I’d known it would be hard coming back to Dalloway after Alex died. But I didn’t expect the way I’d smell her perfume lingering on an armchair in Godwin House, or the chill that rolls up my spine when I pass near her old room.

I didn’t expect to feel so…unmoored.

I can practically hear Dr. Ortega’s voice in my head, insisting that I should never have stopped my medication. That I’m not ready, that I’m fundamentally and biologically not well. She’d tell me all this would go away if only I was good and obedient and swallowed what they gave me.

All those old ghosts would wither and die in the light of day—if only I did as I was told.

But I am tired of being a good girl. I’m tired of obeying.

I don’t need a babysitter. I certainly don’t need a woman whose medical degree bought her a cushy job at a pricey private clinic telling me It must be difficult and It wasn’t your fault.

Not that anyone else agrees on that point. Wyatt handles me with kid gloves, as they all do.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just stopped cooperating.

Leonie is in the Godwin House foyer when I return. She jumps a little when I kick the door shut; she was waiting for me. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

“How was your first day of classes?”

“Fine.” I don’t know why she’s talking to me. Not knowing makes me suspicious.

“We’re making dinner in the kitchen. If you wanted to…” She doesn’t seem to know what word she’s looking for to finish the sentence, just stares at me with these big brown eyes.

I think about letting her hang there, awkward and off balance. It would be a nice kind of social vengeance—repayment for that horrible night in the common room, for the invisible walls the four of them constructed to keep me out.

But I can’t let them make me that person, so I relent. “Sure, I’ll help.”

I know this isn’t Leonie’s idea, of course. Ellis sent her. It’s the only explanation, the only reason any of them would tolerate my presence for longer than absolutely necessary. But when I get into the kitchen, they’re all there—sharp elbows and broth-splattered cookbooks and wooden spoons rapping against countertops—and Kajal passes me a gingham apron, and somehow it’s easy to slip in among them.

“We’re making balsamic mushroom ravioli,” Clara says, tipping her head toward the wooden basket of shiitakes at her side. She’s sliced what looks like half a pound already, soil ground into the cutting board.

“I’m not a very good cook,” I admit.