The Mary Shelley Club, Goldy Moldavsky [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

gently put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me very seriously. “Rachel? No one gets your references.”

I sighed. That was fair.

“It’ll be fun,” Saundra said. “And anyway, this is how you make your mark at Manchester. This is how you get to know the heavy hitters.” She dropped her hands and squeezed my elbow. “This is how you find your people.”

Who knew that all I needed to do to find my people was conjure up some dead spirits? There was already a group forming a circle on the living room floor. By now the party had quieted down, leaving about fifteen of us still there. Unfortunately, one of them was Lux. My stomach knotted up as she glared at me. I was already on her bad side—I prayed she would never find out I’d just kissed her boyfriend.

Someone had shut off the construction lights, so the only light came from the center of the circle, where some kid was lighting thick block candles set on the floor. When the room was sufficiently eerie with flickering candlelight and everyone was sitting in place, the guy stood up. “My father owns this place, so this séance better not mess anything up.”

“Rodrigo, your father bought this place so he could demolish it and build luxury condos,” someone reminded him. “Let’s raise hell!”

There was a smattering of laughter, but I must’ve missed the joke. One girl raised her hand. She looked different out of her school uniform, but I recognized her instantly because she was always assertively raising her hand in Earth Science. Just like she was now. “What kind of séance will this be?”

“A past-life séance,” Thayer Turner suggested. His father was the state’s attorney general and as Saundra had informed me, the Turners were practically the next Obamas. Admired, beloved, perfect in every way. Even now, at this party, Thayer was dressed impeccably in a purple blazer that looked great against his dark brown skin.

“What’s a past-life séance?” Raisey-hand asked.

“It’s when you look in a mirror and you see what your past life was,” I said.

Thayer turned to look at me. In fact, everyone turned to look at me. It was probably the most words any of them had heard me say since I’d infiltrated their school. I’d been joking when I mentioned the séance in Night of the Demons, but as I looked back at their ghoulishly lit faces, it was starting to feel more like a prediction.

“Yeah,” Thayer said slowly, taking an extra beat longer to examine me. “New Girl’s right. Lucky for us I saw a mirror in the hall closet!”

“What were you doing back in the closet?” someone said. I shot the guy a dirty look. There was a sniveling jeeriness to his tone, which Thayer hadn’t missed. His shoulders squared as he headed for the hallway.

“Ha ha, funny, Devon,” he called back.

When Thayer came back into the room, he was holding a full-length mirror. He leaned it against the fireplace. The glass was murky with age and decay, and everyone scooted around it to get a better look at themselves.

“It might take a minute,” Thayer said. “You have to concentrate.”

If this were anything like the movie, a bony demon would appear any minute now. But there was only a group of bored teenagers tilting their faces to show off their best angles.

Of course I knew that there wasn’t going to be a demon popping out at us, or even that we’d see our past lives, but still, I was starting to feel the familiar prickling sensation at the back of my neck. I didn’t believe in past lives, but I had a past. What if I looked in this mirror and they were all able to see who I really was?

“Nothing’s happening,” Raisey complained.

“Well, I guess you don’t have a past life,” Thayer said.

“To go along with your nonexistent love life,” snickered Devon, the asshole. People laughed again, and I began to wonder if I wasn’t in fact seeing a bunch of demons in the mirror after all.

“Settle down, children,” Thayer said. “Why don’t we forget the past-life thing and try to communicate with actual spirits?”

“Like our great-grandparents?” someone said.

“Like the people who lived in this house,” Thayer said.

“I thought it was abandoned,” Devon said.

“Well, someone had to live here first to abandon it, smartass.” Thayer leaned forward. It was a subtle move, but it quieted everyone down and made them lean forward, too. “There was a couple who lived here, Frank and Greta. Typical hipsters—I’m talking vegan cashew cheese and terrible style. All’s well in Hipsterville until one day Greta starts to hear a buzzing.”

“Buzzing?” somebody asked.

“Like when a fly whizzes by your ear,” Thayer said. “At first it was just once in a while, like maybe a bug got in through the kitchen window and couldn’t get out. But then it was more constant. Insistent. Greta realized the noise was loudest whenever Frank was home. Anytime they’d be together, she’d hear it. The buzzing. She asked if he was making the noise on purpose. Frank said he couldn’t hear anything. But Greta kept hearing the buzzing and eventually she couldn’t take it anymore. Greta broke down and begged him to please stop buzzing and Frank looked her straight in the eye and said he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“But Greta didn’t trust him. The buzzing was too loud. She didn’t believe he couldn’t hear it. And as Greta began to spiral, she no longer just thought he was lying about the buzzing. She thought he was the buzzing. Greta became convinced that Frank was wearing a skin suit—that underneath it, he was just a million flies, buzzing and swarming and out to get her.”

Some people (Devon) snorted, but they still listened, waiting for Thayer to continue the story. I leaned in. I wanted him to continue, too.

“Frank tried to reason with Greta, of course, but Greta couldn’t stand to be near him, what with all that buzzing. Some mornings, as he