Page 14 of House of Hearts
The bell rings not a second later, and students clamber from their seats to grab their belongings and scamper off to the next class.
Birdie swivels my way with a knowing smile. “Welcome to Hart.”
5
Helen Hall has no business looking like it was plucked out of a Shakespearean tragedy, but that’s the impression the dormitory gives off with its infestation of ivy, dreary granite walls, and antiquated parapets. I’ve been here for nearly a week now, and I still feel like I should be holding a random jester’s skull and reciting soliloquies about death.
Instead I’m picking out my nail polish for tomorrow night.
“Once in a Blue Moon or Meet Me at Midnight?” Birdie asks, thrusting two identical shades of navy at me like a manicure morality test. I pick the first choice, and she nods sagely like I’ve made a wise decision.
“Knock, knock—can I come in?” Amber asks in our doorway, not bothering to knock or wait as she waltzes right in. By the time the question is out of her mouth, she’s already sitting next to me on the bed and dumping a suitcase’s worth of clothes on my mattress.
Mymattress. Huh. Nothing in this school feels likemyanything, but it’s weird how quickly our brains can adjust to new environments. Less than a week has flown by, and this room has become a paradox: It’s a sanctuary when the lights are off and the covers are draped over my head, but a prison when it’s the three of us—Birdie, me, and the dead girl we don’t speak about.
I turn my attention back to Amber and immediately notice the matching set of black bags beneath her eyes. She’s usually so well put together, but right now it looks like she’s pulled two consecutive all-nighters and still found the time to participate in the Boston Marathon. Exhaustion sours her features, making her dewy skin sallow and her sparkling eyes shadowed.
“Hey, Amber, you look…” I struggle to finish that thought, but luckily I don’t have to.
She groans and collapses on top of the mountain of satin and chiffon she dragged in with her. There’s a boutique’s worth of dresses and skirts and corset tops, all haphazardly spilling across my plain blue Walmart duvet.
“Like shit?” she guesses with a telling twitch. “Yeah, I know. I feel like it, too. I had two hours of homework to get done before I came over here. Who assigns homework the first week of school—especially before Joker Night?”
With Amber here, Birdie scrambles to turn the fairy lights on to complete the “sleepover ambience” we’ve got going on. The outside of this building might be borderline medieval, but the lights illuminate all the ways this school has been gutted for the current century: The old fireplace in the corner is entombed in white plaster, the scratches in the furniture have been buffed out, and the walls are slathered in a fresh layer of paint like a corpse dressed for a wake. Not quite alive but pretending to be.
“I’m only here right now because I’m running on two cans of contraband Celsius,” Amber drones on. “It’s basically off-brand cocaine. Here, can you feel my pulse and tell me if I’m dying?”
She throws her wrist in my face, and I dutifully press three fingers to her expanded artery. “The good news is you’re not dying,” I say witha smirk. “The bad news is that you’re probably going to be jittery until it works its way out of your system.”
She groans but accepts her fate with a dramatic flourish of her hand. “Well, that’s fine, because we’re going to be up all night figuring out what the hell we’re going to wear. I don’t know about you guys, but I still have no clue.”
It’s Birdie’s turn to balk at the sight of all the outfits crumpled behind Amber’s back. “You might have more clothes than I do, and that’s saying something.”
“I raided my wardrobe before I left home.” Amber sifts through her assortment of gowns and pulls a sequined piece to her chest before scrunching her nose and tossing it aside. “Birdie and I waited all three years so that we could go out with a bang our senior year. I was not about to be caught off guard by the Joker Night theme. You don’t show up underdressed to a masquerade ball.”
I toy absentmindedly with the hem of my pajama top. “I was going to wear my uniform.”
“Like hell you were,” Amber says with jumpy adrenaline. “No ifs, ands, or buts. You’re taking something. Unless Birdie or I get super into layering in the next twenty-four hours, there’s no way either of us could wearallthese clothes at once.”
Speaking of Birdie, she’s busy squawking over my smudged my nail polish. She snags my hand back to reapply a coat of Once in a Blue Moon to my pinky while Amber gestures again to the national landmark she’s made of couture. Birdie relinquishes my hand, and I carefully hover my navy blue nails in the air.
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“Yes,you could possibly,” Amber says, throwing my own words back at me before peering over my shoulder at my roommate. Birdie’s sincewandered over to her own wild pile of clothes on the floor.
Before today, Birdie’s closet was enviably organized—she might be a mess when it comes to cleaning up her makeup vanity or making her bed, but she’s meticulous when it comes to color coding her wardrobe. It’s a blend of school-uniform staples and weekend fits, bold accessories and colorful coats. Tonight, it’s become a scattered collection ofmaybes andnos andwhy did I even pack this in the first places.
“No seriously whydidI pack this?” Birdie asks us, brandishing what appears to be a zebra-print vest with peekaboo side cutouts.
Amber squints at it and crosses one silk pajama leg over the other. “I see the vision.”
Birdie looks back at it with renewed hope. “Would you wear it?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t be caught dead in that.” Amber snorts, and that has Birdie chucking the hideous vest at her head.
“You’re the worst, you know that?”
She blows a kiss in return. “And yet you invite me everywhere.”
