Page 35 of The Narrow

I put the pill on my tongue and wash it down with a swig of flat distilled water. I swallow it whole. I won’t let the tide take me under. I want clarity, not oblivion. And for that, I need the pain to recede.

My phone chimes. It’s a message from Delphine.

I believe you, it says.Now what?

I consider.We find the Drowning Girl, I write.

We find Grace, she replies.

And with that, the ghost has a name.

—

I wait for sleep, and I wait forher.

She doesn’t come. Only dreams of that bright room and the dark, destroyed world that lies outside it. No matter how far I walk, the room is always right there behind me when I finally give up and turn around.

I wake to a knock on the door. I comb my hair with my fingers as I stumble blearily toward it. My head is foggy. Cotton candy and stuffing pulled out of a teddy bear. I yank the door open and find myself looking at a stranger whose face I know intimately. I’ve seen it larger than life on the theater screen and shrunk down to nothing on my phone. Madelyn Fournier.

Madelyn Fournier is a woman of strong, striking angles: a broad jaw, a wide mouth, a nose that’s a touch larger than you’d expect and makes her stand out.

I’ve never been the kind to get tongue-tied or starstruck. I’m not even a fan—I’ve seen a few of her movies and think she’s obviously a talented actress, but she mostly stars in the kind of dramas that win Oscars and end up on “worst movies to bring a date to” lists.

In person, even before she speaks, she’s electric: immensely tall and dressed to elegant perfection in a silk shell and black pencil skirt, diamond studs winking at her ears. It isn’t that she’s beautiful—though she is—but that she seems to fill up every atom of space around her. Like not even air wants to get in her way.

“Eden, isn’t it?” she says, and the sound of my name on her lips makes me shrivel in place. I realize I’m standing there dumbstruck in front of a movie star, my hair a rat’s nest and dried drool at the corner of my mouth.

“I completely forgot you were coming,” I say, mortified. Madelyn Fournier hadn’t been terribly intimidating in the abstract, but that was when I’d only ever encountered her with the pause button near at hand. Her eyes flick around the apartment behind me, taking in the small signs of disarray.

“I suppose it is rather cruel of me to burst in on a high schooler at seven a.m. on a Sunday,” she acknowledges. I search for anger in her voice, but all I hear is the faint curl of amusement, perhaps even genuine apology. “I’m very sorry—I just got in, and with the jet lag and all, I didn’t quite think through the time difference. I’ll let you get cleaned up, and then why don’t you pop over to my side of the house?”

I agree—or I think I do, I honestly can’t tell if I’ve managed a coherent sentence before she waves a goodbye and shuts my door for me, leaving me gaping.

So that’s Madelyn Fournier. The woman who holds my future in the palm of her hand.

“Shit,” I say eloquently. If she’s been on a plane, does that mean she didn’t see the footage of me and her daughter? Oh, God, we were out of camera view when Delphine gave me the drugs, weren’t we?

The drugs that are still leaving slug trails through my brain.

I haven’t unpacked. I start to yank at the zipper on one of my bags, panicky, and then make myself stop. She said I could come over whenever I’m ready, and surely she didn’t want me smelling of—yuck. Sweat, mostly. She probably smelled me from across the doorway.

At least that’s something to worry about that isn’t ghosts.

I shower quickly, then get dressed.

It’s Sunday, which means I have the added pressure of deciding what to wear. Going around in your uniform on the weekend is a quick way to lose all social credibility. I decide on a black turtleneck and ankle-length tan skirt—what Veronica calls my “ambiguously anachronistic librarian” look. I settle her pentacle around my neck, a flash of silver against the black, but after a moment’s consideration flip it around so only the plain back shows. I don’t know what Madelyn Fournier would think of it.

I steel myself and walk across the hall, making myself hold my arm at something vaguely resembling a natural angle. The door has been left open a crack. I knock twice, tentatively, and Madelyn Fournier’s voice calls out for me to come in.

I enter. Unsurprisingly, this side of the house is far better furnished than mine. I recognize the couch from a high-endcatalog my mom has been sighing over. It’s bright red, with clean mid-century modern angles that are shared by most of the other furniture.

“Coffee, Eden?” Madelyn Fournier calls to me. I can’t help but think of her with her full name. She’s in the kitchen—bigger than mine and sporting quartz countertops that gleam white with gray marbling shot through them. “Or I can whip up an espresso for you.”

“Coffee would be lovely, if it’s not too much trouble,” I say in my best impress-the-adults voice.

“It’s already made. I go through about a gallon a day,” she says in a confessional tone. She pours me a cup and sets it on the counter. I step close enough to curl one hand around it. She leans over, propping her elbows on the counter. I can see the pores on her nose. It doesn’t seem like Madelyn Fournier should have pores on her nose. “So. Tell me about yourself, Eden.”

My mind, of course, goes completely blank.

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