“Butter fingers,” I told him. “Literally. From the toast.”

  I was just a bad catch, but I would take the out while I had it.

  “Try not to lose that one,” instructed Grandma. “You remember what I said yesterday, don’t you?”

  “I remember. I’ll be way more careful with this one, I promise.” I gave her a watery smile too, shoved the key into my pocket, and made my escape.

  The fresh air did not do me any good, unfortunately, mostly because it felt like I had just stepped into an oven. It was early in the morning, and the sun was already beating down on me with such force I could feel the skin on the back of my neck turn pink.

  Maryland was nothing like this. We had lived near the coast. I took weekend trips out to the ocean all the time. It snowed in winter, a lot, and even the summers never got hot enough to make me melt into a puddle.

  I hated this town.

  And I hated all of the people in it too.

  Adding Stars

  School didn’t make me feel any better.

  I had Art History first, which meant I had to deal with all three of my least favorite people. I was barely in the room when the final bell rang. Mrs. Harringbone turned and gave me a disapproving look. “You’re cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered, hurrying to my desk. I dropped the quilted bag onto the ground next to my feet and set up my laptop.

  Behind me, Alice snickered. “Wow. Is it raining out?”

  May, at my side, made a big show of looking toward the window. “I don’t think it is, Alice. It looks bright and sunny to me.”

  “Really? Because it looks like Pinky here took a prance in a thunderstorm,” said Alice. She leaned forward, pretending to sniff at my back. “Eww! I think that’s sweat, May!”

  I rolled my eyes. My hair color was called ‘Violet Magenta’ actually. It wasn’t freaking pink.

  May leaned toward me too—but before she could sniff at me, I grabbed a watermelon shaped eraser off the back of my desk and threw it at her. It bounced off of her cheek. May pulled back with a hiss and a yowl, and fell straight out of her chair.

  The pride I felt was instantly ruined by Mrs. Harringbone going, “Quinn! We don’t allow that sort of behavior at this academy!”

  “Funny,” I told her, unable to help myself. It was like the words were just spilling out of their own accord. “Because it looks like you let literally everyone else act that way.”

  “Is that more back talk I hear?” Mrs. Harringbone sputtered. She pointed towards the door. “Hallway.”

  Just as she said it, I rolled my eyes and went, “I know, get in the hallway.”

  I stood up, gathering my stuff. May had managed to haul herself back into her chair. She had a little pink spot on her cheek where the eraser had hit her.

  The teacher glared at me. “I will be speaking to the Dean about this.”

  Alice snickered. I spun around and glared at her. She tilted her head back and just stared at me, smug as a cat that had just eaten the family canary. I might have spooked May by fighting back, but Alice didn’t seem bothered.

  “Have fun in the hallway,” she sing-songed. “Don’t worry, Quinn. I’ll take notes for you.”

  The rest of the class watched in stunned silence as I stamped out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me. The last time Mrs. Harringbone had sent me to the hall, I had dropped onto the ground and played on the computer.

  This time, I was way too agitated to sit down anywhere. I paced back and forth outside of the room first, and then I turned and made my way down the hallway toward my locker. The school was huge. It was weirdly shaped. I could totally see this being the setting for those nightmares where you were just running and running and running, and something was chasing you.

  The lockers were painted in bright shades of rainbow. Mine was bright blue. I undid the combination and started shoving as many of my books in as I could. I knew that a bunch of the other students had decked out the inside of their lockers with magnets and artwork, but I hadn’t yet.

  I mean, what was I going to put there? Some of my grandmother’s old fruit-shaped magnets from the fridge? Yeah. That would not help me make friends. So outside of my books, it was empty.

  After the last book was put up, my bag still felt heavy. I sat the computer down on the floor by my feet and pulled the bag open with both hands, peeking in and half expecting to see a mouse or something staring up at me. Maybe even an old tuna sandwich, as a parting gift from Alice.

  I screamed and dropped the bag.

  The clown doll from the bathroom fell out of it and onto the tile floor. I backed up, shoulders knocking into the lockers with a clang. My hands flung up over my mouth, trying to stifle the second scream before it could slip out.

  The doll laid on the floor, limp as a wet noodle. It stared at the ceiling.

  It didn’t move.

  Of course it didn’t move! Get a grip, I tried to tell myself. But I couldn’t uncurl my fingers from where they had been clamped over my mouth. Okay, how did this happen? Rational answers only, because the first image that came to mind was the doll crawling into my bag all on its own.

  Not possible.

  Absolutely not even remotely possible.

  So. Alternative answers only.

  I stood there and stared at the doll. I tried to come up with another possible reason the doll could have been in my bag. I crept toward the doll, still desperately trying to come up with anything that made sense.

  Bending down, I gave the doll a sharp poke in the belly. The fabric indented, and puffed back out when I jerked my hand away. Otherwise, it stayed still, just like a toy should.

  “Grandma did it,” I said with a shaky exhale. I poked the doll again. It still didn’t move. “She knew I was feeling bad and dropped this in my bag to try and make me smile. Or maybe she was angry I moved it this morning, and she was trying to scare me!”

  That was it. It had to be one of those two options.

  The bell rang. Students started milling out into the hallway. I snatched up the clown doll and shoved it into my locker, slamming the door shut so that no one could see I had brought a doll to school.

  That was the last fuel I needed to give Alice and May.

  Leaning forward, I let my forehead thump against the glossy blue metal. I had to get a grip. Everything was turning weird on me. Except that it wasn’t. The dolls were creepy, but they were just dolls. And the people here sucked, but the people back home sucked too. I was just…tired.

  And sad.

  Yeah, that was it.

  I was still standing there being tired and sad when Trevor called my name. I pretended I had gone temporarily deaf, at least to people named Trevor.

  He gave a heavy sigh. “Yeah, okay. I deserve that.”

  “You deserve a pencil to the knee,” I muttered, pulling away from the locker. Being deaf lasted for like, ten seconds. It must have been the fact that I slept like crap last night, because I just didn’t seem to be capable of not running my mouth.

  Trevor glanced down at his knee, wincing like I had really jabbed him hard with a piece of pencil lead. “Okay. I deserve that, too. Look, Quinn.” He pulled in a deep breath and turned his big eyes back on me. “I know I was a jerk. I wanted to apologize.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” I told him, tartly. I tilted my head back, eyes narrowed. “You know, I actually thought you liked me.”

  “I do like you.”

  “You just wanted in my house.” I jabbed a finger at his chest. He took a quick step backward to avoid the second poke. “Because you wanted to show off to all of the other jerks at this school. Well, you got in the house. You can stop pretending to be my friend now.”

  “And that was awful of me,” he admitted. “That’s why I wanted to apologize today. I really am sorry. And I might have just been using you to get in the house at first, but then I realized I was wrong.”

  “Uh-huh.” I snorted. “Right. You’re so sorry, and you do want to hang out. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that I kicked you out before you could get those pictures.”

  Trevor flinched a little, looking away guiltily. “It really doesn’t. You’re a cool girl. I had fun hanging out.”

  “We didn’t hang out, Trevor! That literally didn’t happen. You were so busy trying to get in the basement, we didn’t even do anything!”

  “I know! I want to make it up to you.”

  “I don’t want to have to speak to you.” I shoved him away again. “I don’t want your apology. And you can’t make it up to me!” Grabbing the laptop off of the floor, I tacked on, “Just leave me alone,” for good measure.

  “Quinn!” Trevor called after me as I stormed off.

  Ignoring him, and ignoring the tears burning in the corners of my eyes, I stamped down the hallway toward my next class.

  He must have thought that I was seriously stupid if I was willing to take an apology like that at face value. I managed to get the tears under control before I got into the next class, but my bad mood persisted all throughout the day. It was showing up in my art, too.

  There was more red and black on the pages than there usually was. The subject matter was darker. I had to draw a dog for one of my classes, and I went with a big Anatolian shepherd, wearing a bloody wolf collar.

  “Good technique,” said the teacher, and nothing else.

  That rubbed me the wrong way, too. Everyone was always talking about how art was subjective and the best artists were the ones that didn’t just follow the mold and do what everyone else was doing, but they all looked at my art like it should have been part of a freak show.

  As I stepped into my illustration class, the only one I was looking forward to, I was hit with another pull of the rug.

  “Actually, Quinn, don’t set up,” said Mr. Carp. “It’s your turn to go in for your biweekly mentor meeting.”

  “What? No way. That’s tomorrow,” I protested.

  “Hannah is out sick,” said Mr. Carp. “So you two girls are going to switch your days. Don’t worry. We won’t be doing anything in here today that you can’t catch up on. And it might end up being helpful for you.”

  My stomach sunk down into my feet. I wanted to keep protesting, but I knew that nothing I said would change the outcome of the day. Every student had a biweekly meeting with Mr. Tart. It was kind of like meeting with an advisor in college. Supposedly, it was supposed to help prepare us for that, and also to help us figure out what was going on with our projects.

  The fact that I knew what I wanted to have happen in my projects didn’t matter.

  Trevor was staring at me from our usual seat. I wrinkled my nose at him, then turned and stalked back into the hall.

  Mr. Tart’s office was on the second floor of the school. I had sort of gotten myself under control by then. The big storm in my chest was now a gentle breeze. I stopped outside of his door and knocked.

  “Come on in!” Despite his name, Mr. Tart was just about the most cheerful guy I’d ever met. It was almost sickeningly cheerful. He walked around and talked like he had just downed a bunch of pixie sticks.

  And when I stepped into the room… He looked like it too.

  Mr. Tart was wearing a pink- and white-striped shirt, with a neon-green tie and a pair of black slacks. He sat on the far side of the big desk and grinned at me, showing off the smile lines and crows feet he was sporting. His curly red hair bushed out around his cheeks.

  “Quinn, welcome,” he chirped happily. “I know that this is a bit short notice, but I thought you would be alright with the change since it’s only the one day difference. Alright, you get your computer up and running, and we’ll take a look at your big illustration project.”

  “Okay.” I sat down in the chair opposite him and did as I was told, not even a smidge excited about showing someone else my art after how the day had already gone.

  Mr. Tart adjusting a pair of glasses against his hooked nose. “Explain to me the story here.”

  “It’s about this girl…who died a really long time ago. In the basement.” I added the last part on just to spite Trevor. “And she’s stuck in this old house, and is super lonely. She used to collect dolls when she was alive, but the dolls just sit there and stare at her. And then this new couple buys the house and moves in.”

  I ran through the pictures I’d drawn as I spoke, showing off the vibrant watercolor backgrounds, the fun character designs, and the dowdy-looking husband that had just bought the place.

  “And she realizes that she can make them stay with her forever if she kills them and traps them in the dolls,” I explained, pulling up one of the pictures of the ghost girl watching the wife in the kitchen. The wife was holding a big butcher knife and getting ready to cut up some meat for dinner. The idea was that the ghost girl would be cutting her up instead.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Tart asked, pointing at the star on her cheek.

  “She gets one of these for every person she kills. They just appear there.”

  “What for?” Mr. Tart asked.

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What are they there for?” he insisted. “Even if the viewers never know, you should. What makes the stars?”

  “Oh. I guess it’s like, her grief?” I thought about the star staining my own cheek. “She’s just so sad and lonely, and the stars are like—a reminder of that. Ya know murderers in movies get teardrop tattoos on their faces for every kill they make? Kinda like that. But cuter and more magical. Even though she’s killing these people, she’s still sad and lonely…because they’re just stuck in the dolls and they still don’t actually want anything to do with her.”

  “I like it.” Mr. Tart leaned over my shoulder and squinted at the picture. Then he reached down, snatched up my tablet pen, and pressed it to the flat black square of electronics. “But I think that you could go further than this. She’s been here a long time. These aren’t the first people she’s killed. She feels like the dolls are watching her because they are—because they have people in them.”

  I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes, but he seemed to sense my irritation anyway.

  “It must be hard for you to be here,” he whispered kindly. “I heard what happened to your parents. Sometimes, however, art can help us heal.”

  My stomach flipped. “That doesn’t have anything to do with my art.”

  “We both know that it does.”

  “I only picked this because we had to make something about a villain. That’s it.”

  “You know, art is nothing but emotion in visible form.” The smile on his face grew wider. “When we go through troubling and traumatic times, we shouldn’t be afraid of letting that show in our work.”

  I watched in abject horror as Mr. Tart started to draw more stars on the concept sketch for Ghost Girl. “If you funnel your anger into your art, you might find your real heart to be lighter.”

  Fury snapped through me—and just as fast, a wave of grief. I could feel tears start to sting at my eyes again and had to swallow hard, twice, before I was able to answer him. “Can I go?”

  Mr. Tart’s smile faded. He gave me the pen back. “Just try to think about it, Quinn. If you let go of that tight grip you’ve got on your feelings once in a while, you’re going to find you feel a whole lot better.”

  “Right,” I muttered, snapping the laptop shut and getting to my feet. The chair legs scraped backward noisily, and Mr. Tart had to hurry to the side to avoid being whacked by it.

  Once again, I found myself on the verge of tears. What was wrong with me today? It was like I couldn’t just make my emotions behave. I was crying one moment and thinking about screaming or hitting someone the next.

  A part of me wished I’d shoved Trevor harder. Or that I had shoved Mr. Tart too. And that scared me. I wasn’t normally an angry person. Even though I was supposed to head back to class now that I was done with my meeting, I found I just couldn’t.

  I went and hid in the bathroom, instead.

  One of the upsides to going to a fancy art academy was actually the bathrooms. Instead of big rooms with loads of stalls in them, we had a small room with a single toilet. The sink across from it was carved into some weird art piece; something ultra modern and contemporary and kind of abstract.

  It might have been inspired by a swan, but I only guessed that because there was also an oil painting of swans on the wall, in a sleek black frame. There was a fake potted plant in one corner of the room.

  I flicked the lock and dropped onto the ground, bracing my shoulders against the closed door. The room smelled like orange cleaner and bleach. I flipped open my computer and set up the tablet, even as upset, angry, rageful tears slid down my cheeks.

  Idiot teacher…drawing on my art! What, like drawing can bring my parents back? If that was the case, my mom would have come back to life years ago. And my dad would have picked me up from the manor last week.

  Drawing couldn’t fix things, not like that.

  I was about to erase the star Mr. Tart drew, but instead twisted my mouth into a sick grin and added him into the drawing. I gave the Ghost Girl a pair of big sewing scissors, the type that people used to use back in the fifties. Then, I started adding in the color, the motion, the gestures.

  The fear in his eyes. The glee in hers. The sick and twisted way that this felt right, that this felt good. Not just to her, but to me. Blue background. Yellow lines. Red bursts of watercolor blood that spread over the images and stained them. The red ran down through the panel lines and down, drip-drip-dripping into the image below it; the image that Mr. Tart had drawn on, with Ghost Girl and her new stars.

  There. Now she earned that extra star. Now she’s killed him, her art teacher, some bully girls, and Trevor. That’s five stars I’ve given her now, and two that she had at the very start. Five stars, and five pages and scenes that no one seemed to understand.

  Mr. Carp said the topic was weird. Mr. Tart said I needed to push it even further.

  I added a star to the back of her left hand. I stared at it. I tried to make myself feel better, but nothing in my heart changed. I had listened to Mr. Tart. I had put my anger into the picture. But my heart still felt heavy.