The Broken Girls

It was dark in the thicket of trees, even though the canopy of leaves was gone. The trunks were narrow, packed dense, hard to see past. As the light came through the other side of the trees, Fiona saw Anthony Eden’s new fence, a high chain-link with signs posted warning trespassers to keep away. Keeping the kids out, as well as the vagrants and the curious people and any other locals who had been using this land since the school closed in 1979.

Gritting her teeth at the cold metal against her bare hands, Fiona climbed the fence. By the time she got to the top, she was sweating beneath her coat. Normally she ran for exercise, a route she did around her neighborhood and back, but lately she’d fallen off the wagon.

From her high vantage point, she could see across the grounds. The main school building loomed off to her left, its teeth bared at her in the dim light. I see you, it seemed to leer. Behind it were the shapes of the school’s other buildings, blurred in shadow. Farther toward the other end of the property she could see the ruins of the well, indicated by the last strips of police tape that had cordoned off the site. Beneath her was the edge of the sports field. There was no one in sight, and no cars sounded on the road behind her through the trees. Fiona swung her leg over the top of the fence and started down the other side.

What the hell are you doing here, Fiona? The question came as her hiking boots hit the ground. It was Jamie’s voice, as clear as if he were standing at her shoulder, shaking his head. She walked across the field and toward the buildings as the wind buffeted her hat. She shoved her hands in her pockets again.

She had no interest in getting inside any of the buildings, even though she’d watched Anthony key his security code into the main keypad and memorized it in case she needed it later. She skirted past the main building, forcing herself to stop and look up into its grim face, to stare at its blank windows and sagging roof. She tried to picture Sonia here, standing where she was right now, having escaped an unknown hell in Europe only to come to a strange country and face this forbidding building, her new home. Had she felt relief, or had she been just as frightened here as she’d been in some godforsaken concentration camp?

Past the main building, she followed the same path she and Anthony had walked, toward the dining hall. As she passed the garden, icy cold in its dank shadows between buildings, her phone vibrated with a text. Fiona took out her phone and swiped it with a numb finger. It was Jamie.

Why do I have the feeling you’re not home in bed right now?

Fiona stopped, staring down at the words. How the hell did he know? She wiped tears of cold from her eyes and typed a reply. Wrong. I’m snug under my covers, asleep.

His reply was immediate. Oh shit. Where are you?

Fiona blew out a frustrated breath. She didn’t mean to make him worry; she really didn’t. He didn’t have to. She could handle it. She was handling it. She quickly typed I’m fine and sent it, then dropped the phone back into her pocket.

From the corner of her eye, a shadow moved in the garden.

She turned and looked. It was an animal, perhaps—a fox or a rabbit. Gone now. But from the corner of her eye, the shape had been . . . strange. Nothing like an animal. Smooth, sinuous, like something bent, bowing its head to the ground.

Over the silence came a faint high-pitched sound. Fiona turned back, facing the way she’d come, listening. Voices? No, not voices, exactly. Music. Someone was playing a song, back out past the main building, in the direction of the field.

She started toward it. She couldn’t catch the tune, exactly, though it sounded familiar—it was too far away, the wind whipping it and dispersing it. Who the hell was at Idlewild, playing music at this hour? Some teenager with an MP3 player? She started to jog as she rounded the side of the main building, her heart speeding up. Someone was here, messing around—there was no reason to be afraid. But there was something about the music—the familiar rhythm and cadence of it, which her brain hadn’t quite placed—that made her wonder if she was alone here. That made her realize she was armed with absolutely nothing with which she could defend herself.

There was no one in front of the school, no one visible on the muddy half-dug road or in the dark stand of trees. No one at the gate. The music didn’t come from there anyway—it was coming from the direction of the field.

There was someone in the field.

Fiona stopped dead when she saw the figure. It was a woman, small and slight—a girl, perhaps. She wore a black dress that was long and heavy, a costume from a bygone era. She faced away, looking off at nothing over the field, utterly still.

What the hell was going on? There had been no one in sight when she’d straddled the fence minutes ago. Fiona approached the girl, consciously making noise so she wouldn’t startle her, noting that the girl had no coat in the cold. “Hello?” she called as she started over the field, her boots sinking into the cold muddy grass. “Hello there?”

The girl didn’t move. Wind bit into Fiona’s hands, snaked down the neck of her coat, making her nose run. The girl didn’t turn, didn’t move. She was wearing some kind of hat or hood, black, so Fiona couldn’t see the back of her head clearly. The music grew stronger, and sounded like it was coming from the trees. She recognized it now, the familiar tune sung in the familiar voice, a song she’d heard a thousand times: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” Deb’s favorite song, the one she’d danced to in her room most often, mouthing the lyrics and doing hip-popping disco moves as her little sister, Fiona, watched and clapped.

Fiona slowed, hesitated. That song, with its peppy beat overlaid by Gloria Gaynor’s vulnerable yet determined voice, had been difficult to avoid for the past twenty years. It was still a popular song, so much so that Fiona had trained herself to no longer think of Deb when she heard it. She made herself think of pink pantsuits and multicolored stage lights and fresh-faced girls wearing fake eyelashes and blush, instead of her sister in her pajamas, standing on the bed, pointing cheesily across the room. But why was this song playing now, over the cold landscape of Idlewild Hall at dawn on a November morning?

The sky seemed to lower, and as the sun came up behind the clouds, the morning light turned a strange white shade, turning the trees dark and the ground vibrant, every detail visible in sudden perfection. Fiona took a step and kicked something with the toe of her boot. She looked down and saw it was a wreath of plastic flowers.

That’s it, she thought with certainty, listening to the wind flap in the fabric of the strange girl’s dress over the strains of Gloria Gaynor’s voice. This is a dream.

Because strewn over the grass between her and the girl was a litter of flowers, wreaths, cards, teddy bears—the detritus people leave at the site of grief. The same detritus that had been left in this place after Deb’s body was found. Fiona looked around and realized, belatedly, that the girl was standing in the exact spot that Deb had lain with her coat open and her shirt torn, her eyes open to the empty air.

She looked down again. ANGEL, read one of the handwritten cards, the writing now blurred and soaked. She toed another cheap bouquet of plastic flowers, bright yellow daffodils and pink roses. Next to it was a crumpled cigarette package, cellophane winking in the light. The same garbage she’d seen when she’d come here at age seventeen. It’s a dream. A nightmare. I’m still in bed. I never got up.

She raised her gaze to the girl again. She hadn’t moved. Fiona was closer now, and she could see the girl’s narrow shoulders, the weave of the thick fabric of her dress. The wind picked up a scrap of fabric, blowing it around her head, and Fiona realized it was a veil. Beneath it, Fiona caught a glimpse of golden brown hair tied tightly at the back of the girl’s neck.

There was something otherworldly about her, but since this was a dream, Fiona decided not to be afraid. “Who are you?” she asked, thinking, She looks so real, I can see her breathing. “What are you doing here?”

No answer. No acknowledgment that the girl knew Fiona was there. Fiona had just lifted her hand to touch her—what the hell? It was a dream—when she heard her voice being called. A deep male voice shouting her name in the wind.

She turned. A man in a black coat was striding over the field toward her. Anthony Eden.

“Fiona!” he shouted.

Did he see the girl? Fiona glanced back over her shoulder and froze. The girl was gone. She looked down; the wreaths and cards were gone, too. Gloria Gaynor was silent.

“Are you trespassing?” he asked as he came closer. He was out of breath, flustered, his thinning hair blowing in the cold wind. “That is not a good idea. Security is just coming on shift. If they’d seen you, they would have called the police.”

“I—” Fiona couldn’t speak. She was still in shock from what she’d just seen—whatever it was. Am I losing my mind? “I was just—”