I don’t know how long I’ve been screaming. My throat’s gone raw, and my ears ring with the sound of my own voice. I can’t look away from my bed, can’t tear my eyes off that word.
Diavolina.
Another fly buzzes in from the open window. It seems to move in slow motion, hovering in midair, wings trembling as it lands in the pool of blood gathered between the folds of my sheets.
I dig my fingernails into my cheeks. It feels like my hands are the only things keeping me from falling apart. My stomach clenches, and an acid taste rises in my throat.
I’m vaguely aware of thumping footsteps and voices vibrating down the hall. My door slams open. Hands grab my shoulders, shaking me.
Harper shouts, “Berkley? Berkley, please stop screaming. What’s going on? What happened?”
And then Mara: “Oh my God . . . Harper, did you see? Oh my God.”
I clench my eyes shut, press my lips together, and force myself to breathe in through my nose. I feel dizzy. My knees shake like crazy, struggling to hold me up. My own screams still echo in my head.
When I open my eyes again, Mara and Harper are staring at me.
“It was like this . . . I just got . . .” The taste of vomit clings to the back of my mouth, and the metallic smell of blood clogs my nose. I swallow. Try again. “I don’t know . . . who would have . . .”
“It’s okay.” Harper’s voice is half-freaked, half–nursery school teacher sweet. She drops a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s sit, okay? Can you sit?”
Mara doesn’t look at me, but the lines of her shoulders have gone rigid. She leans over my bed, plugging her nose with one hand as she rips away the soiled sheets and tosses them into a pile. “Nasty,” she mutters under her breath.
I sink to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. Harper crouches over me.
“How about you start from the beginning?” She squeezes my shoulder and starts rubbing in slow circles. “What happened?”
Another deep inhale. “I . . . I just got home. The window was open.” I nod at the open window. “I didn’t think it was weird because I’ve been leaving it open so Lucky can get in, only Lucky wasn’t here this time. The light was off, but I noticed the smell when . . .”
Harper frowns. “What does the window being open have to do with anything?”
“That must’ve been how they got in!”
Mara and Harper share a look. Harper says, slowly, like she’s speaking to a child, “You think someone climbed into your window and did this?”
“Well, yeah,” I sputter. How else could it have happened?
Mara raises an eyebrow, head tilted like she knows something I don’t. She’s blinking very quickly. “Why would someone do that, Berkley? You don’t even know anyone here.”
I stare at her face for a long moment before realizing . . .
She thinks I did this. She thinks I’m so sick I would paint my bedsheets with blood.
I curl my fingernails into my palms, taking comfort in the flare of pain that shoots through my skin. “What exactly are you saying?”
This time, they make a point of not looking at each other. Mara frowns down at the floor. Harper picks at something beneath her fingernail.
“I’m not saying anything.” Mara flicks an icy blond strand of hair behind one ear. She’s still using a voice that suggests she’s smarter than I am. Like I couldn’t possibly understand her. “But you have to admit, it’s kind of—“
Harper shoots Mara a look, and she stops talking, abruptly.
“It’s kind of what?” I say. Neither of them answers, so I ask again, louder. “I have to admit, it’s kind of what?”
Harper says, her voice low and tired, “What are we supposed to think, Berkley? You’ve been weird all day. You got lost on the way to brunch, and when you finally do show up, you’re completely covered in blood. Then you ditched dinner without telling either of us.”
“You have no idea how worried we were,” Mara says. “We had everyone looking for you. We almost called the police.”
My eyes shift to Mara, and I open my mouth to explain. She’s staring right at me now, eyes narrowed in distrust. It’s like she doesn’t recognize me.
I feel my spine tense. “You both have clearly already made up your mind about me.” I push myself to my feet—too fast—and head for the door. Something throbs in the palm of my hand; it feels like my heartbeat.
Maybe there’s a hostel still open somewhere. Or else I can sleep on a park bench. Anywhere is better than here.
“You were with that guy again,” Harper blurts as I wrap a hand around my doorknob. “The tour guide guy.”
“Giovanni,” Mara adds.
“So what if I was?” I exhale and turn around. “Is it so wrong to want to spend what’s left of my summer hanging out with someone who actually wants me around?”
“We want you around,” Mara says, exasperated. “Why else would we invite you here?”
My anger flares. Liar. “Give it up, Mara. I heard you talking about me back at that dinner.” I let my voice go higher, mimicking. “Berkley had a breakdown. We had to invite her. We don’t even know why she came.”
Mara’s skin goes a shade paler. “That’s not what I said—“
“It’s exactly what you said!”
“Stop it, both of you!” Harper cuts in. She lets her hands fall open beside her, shoulders sagging. To me, she says, “You shouldn’t have heard that. It was really shitty of us to say those things. I’m so sorry, Berkley.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. Not what I was expecting.
“We were really worried about you,” Mara adds in a softer voice. “You just disappeared in the middle of dinner, and nobody knew where you’d gone. We left Professor Coletti’s early to come look for you. We only figured out you were with Giovanni because of Francesca, that bartender chick at the party, remember? Anyway, she saw the two of you riding around on his moped.”
She looks genuinely concerned. I feel my anger start to fade.
Maybe I’m being too hard on them. It’s not like we’ve had some big heart-to-heart since I got out of the institute. They don’t get how it feels to suddenly be free after being locked away like an animal. How I want to live all at once, right now.
I groan and rub the space between my eyes with my thumb. Our fight seems stupid now. I’m overreacting.
“I’m sorry I ditched you,” I mumble after a moment. “I freaked out after I heard you guys talking.”
“That’s fair,” Harper says. “I can’t even imagine how that must have felt.”
Mara rubs her eyes with two fingers. “Look, we’re all stressed and seriously freaked out by this.” She motions to the pile of sheets on the floor. “Let’s get some sleep and try again tomorrow. We still have time to do Italy right.”
“And tomorrow is the Festival for the Dead,” Harper adds. She crosses my room and opens the wardrobe door, pulling out a stack of fresh white sheets. “People come from all over Italy to attend. It’s sort of famous.”
“It’s crazy famous,” Mara adds. She turns to me, tentatively. “Want to go with us?”
Harper cocks an eyebrow.
There’s still a part of me that wants to tell them no. Watch their faces fall as they realize I’m rejecting them for once. But then I think of how hard it will be to find a hostel now. How I really don’t want to sleep on a park bench. I look around my room, realizing I’ve come to like the small coziness of it. I don’t want to leave. And they are trying. It might not be perfect, but it’s something.
“What kind of person comes to Italy without hitting up the party of the season?” I say after a moment.
Mara bites back a smile. “It’s a date then.”
“Sure. It’s a date.”
I start to help Harper tuck the fresh sheets around my mattress. Mara joins us a moment later, gathering downy feathers in her hands and pulling pillows out of soiled cases. Together, the three of us remake the bed, removing all traces of blood and flies and feathers. Harper takes the ruined sheets with her when she goes. I don’t think to ask her what she’s going to do with them.
I thank them and say good night. After they leave, I change into my pajamas, brush my hair, and wash the sweat from my face. I try not to look directly at the bed, but I keep catching glimpses of those clean white sheets in the mirror or from the corner of my eye. They’re always there, flickering at the edges of my vision, and I have to whip around fast to make sure that word isn’t still written across them.
Diavolina.
I don’t know any Italian, but even I can figure out that it means Devil.