CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE Beacon School was housed in a four-story brownstone near downtown. The front had a patch of green lawn, with a flagpole in the middle, and wide, sweeping stairs up to four huge oak doors, like something from a cathedral. The back of the building was plain, with tall windows and a rickety fire escape that likely would collapse in a strong wind.

The building was much older than the school. It was built in the 1870s with a gift from the Boston College of Surgeons. The top three floors were wood and plaster, with sweeping staircases and high transoms. The basement was dank and moldy, a former morgue where medical students practiced on cadavers and stray animals alike. Rumor had it that the first dean paid grave robbers, and supposedly there were still jars of specimens in formaldehyde hidden behind the steel doors that blocked entry to the basement. The ghosts of the dead lingered below, looking for the bodies that had been stolen from their graves.

It made for a good story to scare the freshmen. None of it was true, though. The basement was full of cleaning supplies and broken furniture, and the only thing left of the old morgue was a room with a tiled floor where the Zamboni was parked between games. The basement and the ice rink were connected by a short tunnel. I had passed it hundreds of times after practice on the way to the locker room, and it was no more haunted than the free-range chicken aisle at Urban Market.

I arrived at the school gates, a ten-foot-tall fence made of iron and topped with sharp spikes, fifteen minutes late, which Siobhan reminded me of by texting, Do you know for whom the bell tolls?

It tolls for me, I texted. Again.

I sprinted down the dimly lit hallway, hit the brakes at my classroom, and almost kissed the floor. Years of scooting around on ice with knives strapped to my feet helped me keep my balance. I righted myself and stopped at the door labeled “US History: SAXON.” Through the glass I could see my AP teacher, Mrs. Saxon, pointer stuck in hand, showing a PowerPoint about The Crucible.

The Beacon social studies department believed in teaching history through literature, so it felt like we had English twice a day. Since Ma was doing costumes for the Shubert’s revival of The Crucible, my family had lived and breathed the Salem witch trials for weeks.

Saxon had spent four classes lecturing about the Communist hysteria of the fifties and Arthur Miller’s attempt to draw attention to it. Why couldn’t we just read the play? Or better yet, go watch it? Who even thought reading a play was a good way to appreciate it? Did people study screenplays instead of watching the movie? Shakespeare was right when he wrote, “The play’s the thing.”

Thankfully Siobhan, who was wearing thick-framed glasses and a kerchief to tie up her hair, like a myopic Rosie the Riveter, was sitting near the door. Saxon always locked it after the tardy bell. If you came late, you had to knock and wait, then recite from an important work. Yesterday I had recited the Preamble, which was enough blessings of liberty to last a posterity.

I tapped the window and mouthed, Let me in.

Siobhan shook her mop of black hair, no.

I nodded, yes.

Siobhan pointed at Saxon. No.

I shook my fist. Yes!

Siobhan stuck out her tongue.

I made a kissy face, then imitated a guppy by putting both hands beside my ears and crossing my eyes. Siobhan laughed and mimed applause. She held a finger up, waiting for an opportunity, then sprang for the door.

I slipped inside as Saxon’s voice droned, “Inspired to write the play by the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by a certain senator from Wisconsin. Does anyone know his name?”

Shoes in hand, I slid into an empty desk. “The weirdest thing happened,” I whispered to Siobhan. “Devon was—”

“Miss Conning,” Mrs. Saxon said. “Detention for your second tardy, unless you’d like to say the Preamble?”

“I’ll take Classroom Punishments for two hundred, Alex.” I stood and began reciting the tardy passage. “You cannot hear the Shadowless when her breath is in your ear. You cannot see the Shadowless when she raises up her shears.” What the hell? How did that come out of my mouth?

“Salty!” Siobhan whispered and gave me a surreptitious fist bump.

“That is not,” Saxon said, like each syllable was imprinted by a tax stamp, “from the Constitution.”

“It’s not?” I said. “But that’s the way they did it on Schoolhouse Rock.”

Siobhan started to sing, “We the people—”

“Be quiet!” Saxon said. “Now, do you or do you not know the senator’s name?”

“Me?” I said.

“Is there another Willow Jane in this classroom? On this planet, for that matter?”

“Well, I am pretty unique,” I replied tartly. Where the hell did that come from? Since when did I get salty with a teacher?

“I sincerely doubt that,” Saxon said flatly. “Answer the question correctly, and I’ll forget the detention.”

“Uh.” I glared at Siobhan, mouthing, Help me! “Um.”

Siobhan shrugged, as if to say, Why’re you asking me?

“I know the answer, Mrs. S.” I mimed tugging a hat onto my head. “I just need a minute to put on the ol’ thinking cap.”

Saxon tapped her foot. “With each passing moment, I grow less interested in anything you have to say.”

“That’s what her husband said last night,” Siobhan said to take the heat off me, and the room erupted with laughter.

“Out!” Mrs. Saxon screamed. “To the dean’s office, Siobhan. I’ve had enough of your mouth!”

“That’s what he said,” Siobhan said.

Saxon whacked her lectern with the pointer stick. “That will be quite enough!”

“That’s what he said,” Siobhan said, “when she offered him seconds.”

Mrs. Saxon snapped the stick in half. “In all my years in the classroom, I have never—”

I jumped up and announced, “Joseph McCarthy!”

“What?” Mrs. Saxon said. “What did you say?”

Siobhan was just trying to protect me, so I couldn’t let her get kicked out. She and the dean of students were literally on a first-name basis, and he’d warned her that one more “episode” with Mrs. Saxon would earn her three days of OSS and no D1 scholarship offers. She couldn’t get suspended, not with the game against All Saints coming up. She was our only chance of winning. And she was my best friend. My only true friend.

“The name of the senator was Joseph McCarthy,” I said quickly. “Arthur Miller wrote the play as a modern protest against the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee, likening its actions to witch hunts. By the way, McCarthy was a senator, so he didn’t actually chair the Un-American Activities Committee, since it was in the House.”

“Wicked,” Siobhan whispered. “Somebody’s been cribbing off teh Wikipedia.”

I snapped my fingers. “Just call me Wicked-pedia, bitches!” Oh my god, what have I done? Bitches? Why did I call them bitches? Ma was going to kill me. The dean was going to suspend me, too. I had never even been to the dean. Ever. I rubbed my face, stunned at my own stupidity. “I wish I’d just answered the stupid question.”

The words had barely escaped my tongue when I heard the xylophone noise and colors swirled like a rainbow toilet flushing in my brain. The fabric of reality whipped around and around, and I found myself slipping into my desk.

It was déjà vu all over again.

Mrs. Saxon faced the class. “Miss Conning, nice to see you’ve shown up. Detention for your second tardy. Now, do you know the senator’s name?”

“Me?”

“Is there another Willow Jane in this classroom? On this planet, for that matter?”

“Um . . . no?”

Saxon crinkled her nose. “Answer the question correctly, and I’ll forget detention.”

It was as if somebody had hit the rewind button on reality. I was really getting a do-over? I glanced at Siobhan, who gave no indication that something weird was going on.

“Joseph McCarthy.” I squinted at the too bright lights. “Arthur Miller wrote the play as a modern protest against the actions of the Un-American Activities Committee, likening its actions to witch hunts.”

“Somebody’s been cribbing off teh Wikipedia,” Siobhan said.

This time I kept my mouth shut. No wicked. Definitely no bitches.

“I’m impressed, Conning,” Mrs. Saxon said. “From your grade on The Scarlet Letter test, I assumed you only read SparkNotes. Now class, back to the PowerPoint.”

Her voice trailed away. What had just happened? I was no stranger to déjà vu, but this, this was totally different. It didn’t just feel like I’d experienced this before—I knew I had.

“Hey, you okay?” Siobhan whispered. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

Because I did.

Myself.

“Can I get an aspirin?” I whispered. “My head’s killing me.”

“What about water?”

“I don’t need no stinking water.”

It was a lie. I was so thirsty I could drink a whole gallon. Siobhan dug two tablets from her purse and put them in my palm. There was a red, angry bump on my thumb. I touched it, and a jolt of electric pain arched up my arm. The aspirin tumbled from my hand and rolled under a bookcase.

“Stop!” I whispered.

The aspirin stopped on edge, unmoving. So did everything else: Siobhan, the other kids, even Saxon. Everything she had written—the week’s vocab words, the day’s agenda, a list of due dates for assignments—had been erased from the whiteboard. In its place were large red letters. They were turned at crazy angles, some backward, as if the writer had been blindfolded and dyslexic.

And if you feel the Shadowless

When she blankets you with chill,

Do not accept her cold caress—

For the Shadowless will kill.

It was just like the poem on the sidewalk—this time in marker instead of chalk. I picked up an eraser and wiped out the first line of the poem, just like it had been removed from the sidewalk.

But you weren’t the one who washed it off then, I thought. At the time I’d been so freaked out by Devon that I missed that little detail. Someone else had seen the poem. Someone else knew about it. Knew about the Shadowless.

Knew about me.