“Stop it, you’re hurting my ears,” my mother shouts.

  At night, my mother moves swiftly through the house, relentlessly organizing the already spotless rooms. I stand in the doorway of the practice room and watch as she takes everything off the shelves and tidies them into boxes. Plaques and trophies, certificates and ribbons. She pauses, holding up a framed photo of us together on stage at my first competition. My first win. The moment is crystalline in my memory. Her hand on my shoulder was the only thing that kept me from coming apart with joy. My daughter, she proclaimed to the crowd, as if anointing me, laying her crown on my head.

  I watch as she traces her fingertips over the photo, her shoulder blades sharp against the back of her shirt. “Where have you gone?” she whispers.

  Violin is the only thing I’m good at. It’s the only thing that makes my mother happy. If I can’t play anymore, then what good am I?

  I rush up to my room and dig out my phone, desperately willing Marlie to pick up before the tears come.

  “Oh, hello, Mei,” Marlie’s mother answers. “I’m keeping an eye on Marlene’s phone, she’s been getting unkind messages and I don’t want her to see things that could be . . . upsetting. You can speak to her at school tomorrow.”

  “Right. Of course,” I mumble, swiping my hand across my eyes. “Sorry to call so late.”

  I drop out of orchestra and fill my elective period with Ms. Wilde’s art class. Ms. Wilde compliments my brushstrokes even though they’re hairy and uneven. Marlie switches to the same class and has an easier time than me commanding her paintbrush. She fills her canvases with large swatches of color and bold lines.

  Ms. Wilde nods in appreciation. “What are you expressing with your piece, Marlie?”

  “Hunger,” she answers, and my gut rumbles.

  After class, I run to the vending machine and put in every dollar I have. I tear through bags of chips, stale cookies, mushy honey buns, and two bottles of neon sports drink. Everything tastes like chalk.

  Two weeks before midterms, we’re working on a still life, the class sitting around the display in a circle of easels. I’m concentrating on drawing the curve of a vase when Ms. Wilde’s scream pierces the room. Pencils drop and chairs screech against the floor. Everyone looks up.

  Ms. Wilde stumbles away from Marlie’s station, cradling her wrist. Blood drips from the cracks of her fingers onto her pants. Marlie is holding an X-Acto knife, the tip of the blade red.

  “You stabbed Ms. Wilde!” June Bickel shrieks. The class erupts into panic.

  “I’m okay,” Ms. Wilde says, “everyone sit down, please, I’m okay.” Her face is pale.

  Nobody sits down, they’re all looking at Marlie, a room full of wide eyes and pointing fingers. I rush to her side and throw my arms around her, shielding her from the stares. She doesn’t let go of the knife.

  “Should we call nine-one-one?” someone finally asks.

  Ms. Wilde is taken to the hospital, and Marlie is sent to the counselor’s office. Security escorts me back to class after I screamed in the counselor’s face when she wouldn’t let me stay with Marlie. By the end of the day, the whole school is talking about it.

  “That girl who was kidnapped tried to cut off a teacher’s hand!”

  “Oh my god, what if she starts attacking us in class?”

  “Maybe she’s having traumatic flashbacks.”

  “Maybe she needs to not come back to school. Ever.”

  Marlie is suspended for a week. Her parents try to fight it, but in the end it seems fair for the amount of stitches that Ms. Wilde needed. Ms. Wilde says it’s not Marlie’s fault and she isn’t going to press charges. I bring Marlie her homework and notes for our midterm exams.

  “Thanks, Mei. You want something to drink? We only have diet soda, Mom’s trying to cut down on sugar.” She spreads her notebooks and binders out across the kitchen table, like this is just another study session we’re having, like she isn’t suspended for slicing a teacher’s wrist open.

  “Marlie, if something’s going on with you, if something’s wrong”—I lean in toward her—“you’d tell me, right?”

  “Of course I would.” She looks up at me. “I tell you everything.”

  “Why did you do it?” I ask. “Why did you hurt Ms. Wilde?”

  She sits back, perplexed. “I didn’t. It was an accident.”

  “But June said she saw you, she said that you—”

  “It was an accident. You believe me, don’t you?”

  No one believed me when I needed them to. I want to believe her. I have to believe her. I nod my head.

  “Ms. Wilde only wants to fix us.” Marlie reaches out and rests her hand on top of mine. “But we’re not broken. We don’t need to be fixed.” She laces our fingers together. Her skin is much warmer than usual. “Besides. We have each other.”

  I look down at our joined hands and nod again. “We have each other.”

  After the incident with Ms. Wilde, I don’t dream about the witch and her candy cabin anymore. I dream about Marlie. I dream of her running through the woods. She’s all alone, zigzagging through the trees, sharp pebbles and broken sticks cutting her bare feet and slicing between her toes, but she doesn’t slow down, doesn’t look back.

  There’s a shadow chasing her through the darkness. Hunting her. Her hair falls out of its usual neat braid, her breath escaping in erratic pants. She stumbles over an outcropping of roots and nearly trips.

  The shadow gains on her, something massive and animal, moving on all fours. The sounds of wet breaths and snapping jaws are right behind her. She looks over her shoulder and sees only teeth.

  The shadow leaps forward, and Marlie’s face twists into a silent scream. Claws tear into her chest, and teeth close around her neck. There’s red everywhere, the smell of it sticky sweet.

  In those dreams, I’m never there to save her.

  Exactly one year after the witch led us into the woods, the mark appears on the trees behind the neighborhood. It’s carved into tree trunks, the same mark that’s on our arms—stacked triangles inside of a semicircle.

  “It’s just Bryan messing with us again,” I assure Marlie.

  I honestly think the carvings are another one of Bryan Haywood’s sadistic pranks, but then the first girl disappears. A fourteen-year-old from Montgomery Middle School. Then a second girl from Wynter Heights Elementary goes missing. Marlie has a panic attack in biology when our classmates start discussing the Amber Alerts. She gets sent home early, and stays home the next day. I stop by her house after she misses school again.

  “Marlene’s been very anxious lately. We think it’s best for her to stay home for a bit, in case she, well . . .” Her mother kneads her plump hands together. “How about you, Mei? How are you doing?”

  Marlie’s mom is short and round, her cheeks always bright red. I still can’t tell if it’s a skin condition or too much blush. Her life’s purpose seems to be to orbit Marlie’s world, providing never-ending warmth and a constant supply of casseroles. The opposite of my mother in every way. My mother who’s stern and frighteningly tall, angular and radiant, like she’s made from shards of stained glass. My mother who sacrificed her career as a violinist for an illicit love that turned out to be unremarkable. My mother who hasn’t once asked me how I was doing since that night she picked me up from the police station.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “A little stressed about finals.”

  “Bless your heart. Are you going to try out for that music school in Michigan again this year?” she asks.

  “No,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I head upstairs and knock four times on Marlie’s door—three hard knocks and a light one, the entry password—and push inside. She’s sitting on the windowsill bench, her legs pulled up against her chest. Her bedroom hasn’t changed since we had our first sleepover. Her walls are still painted yellow and covered in pastel butterflies; her army of stuffed animals still stands guard over her bed. Marlie doesn’t move when I sit down against the other corner of the window.

  Her eyes are skimming the treetops beyond the cul-de-sac, her fingers scratching at the crook of her elbow where the mark sits under her sleeve.

  “The witch is back,” Marlie says. “She’s going to hurt more girls.”

  “Hey.” I reach out and grab her hand, pulling it away from her arm. “Listen to me. No matter what happens, I’ll protect you. No one’s going to hurt you, not while I’m around.”

  She yanks her hand back. “You think I’m pathetic, don’t you? It makes you feel good to know that you’re so much braver and stronger.”

  Outrage and hurt boil in my stomach. “Of course not,” I snap. “Why would you say that?”

  There’s that stranger again, the Marlie who kills rabbits and cuts teachers and says cruel things. Where did she come from?

  “I’m sorry.” Marlie looks down, the stranger slipping back into the crevices of her kind face. “I’m just tired of everyone acting like I’m this sad victim all the time.” She glances at her elbow. “My mom is this close to ordering an exorcism to get rid of this ‘devil’s mark.’”

  “You’re not pathetic, Marlie. And you’re not a victim,” I tell her. “You’re a survivor.”

  She lets out a small, dry laugh. “Can we pretend that just this once I’ll be the one to protect you?”

  “. . . Okay.” I nod. “Promise you’ll keep me safe?”

  “I promise,” she vows.

  I come home from school the next day to the smell of fire. Thick black smoke billows up from behind the house, and I race into the backyard to see my mother standing in front of a raging bonfire. I cover my mouth and cough against the acrid heat. There are bits of burnt debris floating up from the flames, fluttering around in the hot breeze. I reach out and pull a piece out of the air. There’s part of a staff and ascending sixteenth notes on the half-charred paper. My mother stands with her back to me, tossing stacks of sheet music and theory books into the fire.

  “Mama, what are you doing?” I storm up to her. “You can’t just burn stuff in our yard like this, it’s totally against the law!”

  “Gone, she’s gone,” my mother mutters and feeds another song into the fire. Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in A Minor.

  “We have to put this fire out before our neighbors call the cops,” I tell her.

  “My baby is gone, ran away in the night,” she mumbles to herself like I’m not there, and throws another piece in. Paganini’s Le Streghe, op. 8.

  “Mama, please,” I plead, “you’re scaring me.”

  She picks up the black case sitting at her feet and pulls my violin out by its neck. “I pushed her to it, my sweet plum left because of this.” She raises the violin high above her head.

  “No!” I shout, but it’s too late, she hurls my instrument into the blaze. Its defenseless wooden body is eaten alive.

  I grab my mother’s arm and twist her toward me. “Why did you do that?!”

  She blinks at me several times. “You’re not my daughter,” she says, her lower lip trembling. “Who are you?”

  “What are you talking about, Mama?” My hand slips away from her arm.

  “Who are you?” she demands, her voice cracking with hysteria. She reaches out and grabs me by the shoulders. “What are you?”

  It’s me, it’s me, I repeat, but I see no recognition in her eyes, only the reflection of the towering flames as she pushes me toward the fire. The heat claws at the back of my neck, the smoke makes my eyes tear. My mother screams in my face, “What are you? What are you?!”

  I shove her, hard, and she falls back onto the grass. “Somebody, please,” she sobs, “help me find my baby!” I turn and run as fast as I can away from her, away from the symphonic pyre, across the street to Marlie’s house, and pound on the door with both fists.

  Marlie opens the door and I fling myself forward, clinging to her. I try to explain what happened, what I saw, but nothing comes out right, just incoherent sounds, my teeth and tongue refusing to form words.

  I stay at her house till nightfall. After the fire truck leaves, Marlie’s mom sits me down in their kitchen and tells me that my father took my mother to the hospital.

  “Do you have any relatives nearby you can stay with?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Well, you know Marlene hasn’t been feeling well, I’m afraid you being here might not be the best for her . . . let me call our pastor, maybe you can stay with his family—”

  “She’s staying here,” Marlie says from the doorway.

  “Heaven’s sake, Marlene, cover that up!” her mother gasps, and I see that Marlie’s wearing short sleeves—she hasn’t this whole year—her thin arms hanging at her sides, the mark on full display.

  “She’s staying.” Marlie sounds so sure of herself; there’s no room for compromise in her voice. She’s standing with her back and shoulders pulled completely straight, no sign of her habitual slouch. I’m shocked to discover that she’s actually taller than me.

  Marlie’s mom opens her mouth, but Marlie walks right past her. She takes my hand and leads me upstairs, leaving her mother dumbstruck in the kitchen.

  We wash our faces and brush our hair, then climb into her bed together, pulling the blanket over our heads. We’re sound in our cocoon, shut off from the world, from mothers as mean as witches, and witches who pretend to be mothers.

  “Do you get the feeling that we’re supposed to be somewhere else right now?” Marlie’s voice echoes in our cushy cave.

  “This is exactly where I want to be,” I tell her. “With you.”

  “Then why did you try to go so far away?” she whispers.

  Under the blankets, only the whites of her eyes are visible. I can hear the still-fresh wound in her voice.

  “It was important to my mother,” I whisper back.

  “You didn’t even tell me you were auditioning.” She sounds miles away. “I tell you everything, and you never told me.”

  “I didn’t say anything, because . . .” I shut my eyes. “It doesn’t matter now. I messed it all up. I got up on that stage and Mama was watching and I couldn’t stop thinking that even if I played perfectly, even if I did get in, Baba still wouldn’t want me, and Mama still won’t get her career back, and you’d never forgive me for leaving you behind, and I choked, I couldn’t remember the first bar, I couldn’t . . .” My fingers clutch the sheets. “I just wanted her to be proud of me again.”

  Marlie leans in and kisses the tears from my eyelashes. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry I made you come with me that night, I’m so sorry . . .”

  “Shh.” She smooths a hand down my hair. “You think I’m the one who needs taking care of . . . but you’re the one who’s terrified of being alone. I couldn’t let you go all alone.”

  Marlie sings to me quietly, and I drift off to the humming, a tune I can’t place and yet it sounds so familiar.

  I jerk awake in the middle of a fitful, shallow sleep and reach out for Marlie. Her side of the bed is empty, the sheets cold. I sit up. The room is silent; stuffed rabbits and porcelain dolls stare down at me, unblinking, from the bookshelves.

  The window is open.

  I jump out of bed and climb out without a second thought, without putting on a jacket or shoes. I flip over the backyard fence and trample Mrs. Parker’s petunias to get to Bishop Ave, racing through the sleeping neighborhood. A fog gathers over the neatly manicured lawns, dimming the glow of the streetlights and settling over the oversized SUVs parked in every driveway.

  I know exactly where I need to go.

  The woods lie just beyond the blue house at the end of the street. As I run past the last stop sign, I hear it. A ghostly song floating down the sidewalk, calling out to me through the mist. I remember it now. It’s the song the witch sang to lure us to her cabin made of sweets.

  Except this time it’s not the witch singing. It’s Marlie’s voice.

  “Marlie? Marlie!” My feet leave the hard asphalt and step onto wet earth. I follow Marlie’s voice into the maze of white pines. The fog is so thick I can’t tell left from right; all I have is the singing guiding me forward. I grasp on to the song like it’s the end of a thread winding its way back toward the spool.

  Up ahead, I see the hazy outlines of two people moving through the fog. I catch a flash of Marlie’s blond hair in the moonlight. It looks almost silver. She’s leading someone behind her, the two of them winding in and out of the shadows, like playful sprites heading to a midnight garden party. The woods grow less dense, and the fog starts to clear. Marlie and her companion slow to a stop in a clearing, long enough for me to catch up, long enough for me to see that the other person is Bryan.

  I’m about to step out toward them when Marlie turns to face him. They’re both wearing pajamas: Bryan in a T-shirt and loose pants, Marlie in her thin nightgown. Marlie stops singing. She sinks down to the ground, onto her hands and knees. Bryan doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just watches Marlie, entranced, and so am I, I can’t look away, my eyes peeled so wide they burn at the corners.

  Marlie’s back bows up. Her neck twists. Her elbows bend inward; the ridges of her spine jut out from between her shoulder blades. Pop, pop, pop. The shape of her distorts into something not human. Her nightgown rips and instead of fair, freckled skin, there is a tough leathery hide. Her face stretches like taffy, her ears and nose pulling longer and longer. A bony tail unfurls between her legs. Her fingernails grow into knives. Her mouth is so, so wide.

  Bryan hasn’t moved from his spot. His expression is pleasant; he sways a little from side to side like he can still hear the song in his head.

  The creature that was Marlie digs its claws into the dirt and springs forward on sinewy legs. Rows of teeth descend on the tyrant prince’s crown of golden curls. There’s a heavy crunch, and Bryan crumples to the forest floor, his puppet strings cut. The beast bites down and eats like it’s been starved for days. For months.