I lift the can of spray paint and compress my trigger finger. A continuous gust of magenta emerges, rushing to meet the back of the white cardstock stencil and the lacquered black bathroom stall. The smell of paint covers the stench of my rotten memory. I fill in the stencil’s gaps then let both arms rest. Then I take a step back to review my work. Not the cleanest lines ever, but I’ll get it on the next try.

  “What’s that smell?” Blythe whispers.

  “If I have to shut up, then you have to shut up too,” Drew says.

  “Are you tagging the doors or something?” Blythe asks, ignoring Drew. I ignore Blythe. An eye for an eye. She knows better than to bother me right now when Charlotte is about to walk in. I move to the next stall door and press the stencil against the metal. I hold the nozzle of the can slightly farther away from the surface. No paint drips this time. The face at the top of the design is in sharper focus now, but my artistic rendering still pales in comparison to the inspiration for this particular piece.

  The design was based on a photo of Gabe Lewis: my friend and Archwell’s most underrated Underclassman, in my humble opinion. I screenshotted one of his selfies that was taken partially in shadow. As a result, the rendering of his face on my stencil was a bit minimalistic. Folks would definitely not be able to recognize Gabe as the muse for this piece—not unless they were already in the know. At least that’s what I told myself . . .

  A debonair sophomore with a flawless fade, Gabe was one of the only other art kids in Chatham House last year. We became friends shortly after he gave me his stash of his dad’s old GQ magazines for a zine project I was working on.

  Gabe was out to certain teachers—Ms. Katz naturally—and pretty much everyone who lived on the third floor of Chatham. Of course, being half out of the closet meant that Gabe had to be half in it too.

  “This place is just painful,” he said to me over a mug of peppermint tea. It was spring finals week and we were sitting in Chatham’s velvety common room. Someone—we didn’t know who—had just taken down the handmade Gender Neutral Bathroom sign from the third floor’s single-stall restroom for the millionth time that semester.

  “I’m still figuring myself out and that’s hard enough . . . but it’s basically impossible to do that when I feel like I’m not allowed to take up an inch of space at this school.” He spoke into his tea as if it were listening just as intently as I was.

  “I know, huh,” I said. “Is there anything I can do to make it easier?”

  He shook his head and stared out the window, examining the pollen collecting on the ledge outside. “I mean . . . something as basic as bathrooms shouldn’t have to be a fight.”

  I agreed. And sometime over the summer I got the idea for my installation. A surprise for Gabe: something that would change things for once.

  Approving my own handiwork, I move on to the next stall and lift up the stencil once more.

  “Veró?” Blythe whispers again.

  “B. Shut up.” Rory’s voice is a curled fist.

  I start a third time. Then I hear the squeal of a stall door. I resist the urge to stop and look, instead I keep my finger on the trigger. The third installation is the best so far, except for one drip dragging down one of the corners of the hashtag.

  “‘Justice looks like gender-neutral bathrooms.’” Blythe reads the words on the installation aloud for the others. She has her head craned at an unnatural angle to be able to see what I’m doing from her stall. “‘#transinclusionatarchwell.’”

  “Seems kinda wordy for a hashtag,” Drew mutters.

  “Who is the face on the stencil supposed to be?” Blythe asks.

  “Will both of you shut the hell up?” Rory is desperate. “Charlotte could walk in any second.”

  I move to the next stall door and lift the stencil. “She’s right,” I admit. “Y’all should be quiet now.”

  “Now?” Drew asks.

  “Charlotte will come in just after I finish the fourth installation.”

  “So we need to hide, like now!” Rory barks.

  The silhouette of Blythe’s head bobs back into the stall and the door quietly shuts behind her. I hold my can of magenta steady.

  “I know exactly when it happens,” I say, more to myself than to any of the others. “I finish the face,” I say, holding the stencil in place. “I start on the words.” The paint particles make contact with the metal door, clinging to the black before emulsifying together. I squint, the way I remember doing. I didn’t bring eye protection when I did this the first time and I don’t have it here in my memory either. “I finish off the word bathrooms. Then I start on the hashtag and she’ll be here in five . . .”

  The pink meets the black.

  “. . . four . . .”

  My lungs burn. A combination of paint fumes and Malcriada’s fire.

  “. . . three . . .”

  It’s intoxicating.

  “. . . two . . .”

  And terrible. Terrible to be back here again.

  “. . . and . . .” I whisper.

  The door stirs behind me.

  “What exactly are you doing?” Charlotte’s tone is as noxious as paint thinner. “What the hell? You’re vandalizing the bathroom right now? We’re supposed to be beautifying the place for Founder’s Night, Veronica. Not messing it up.”

  My shoulders are at my ears. What do I say to her next? Suddenly, I don’t remember how I phrased it. My pulse pounds against the can in my hand. It falls to the floor with a clatter of metal on tile. The half-empty cylinder rolls away, a slow, aching sound.

  I spin around and there she is, just as I remember her. Pretty, brows gathered, the sleeves of her black-and-yellow rugby shirt are rolled to her elbows. The fabric cinches her body into a knot as she crosses her arms and meets my eyes.

  Then I remember what I said to her. The look on her face reminds me of it . . . of why I did all of this in the first place.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “What’s there to understand?” she snaps. “People are going to think that I helped you with this trash.”

  “It’s art,” I say, feeling the familiar heat in my face, the unmistakable strain in my throat. I turn away. I can’t look at her anymore. It’s her eyes. They remind me too much of Papi: angry and accusing. I follow the can to its resting place and stoop to retrieve it.

  “Your weird art is about to get both of us in a lot of trouble.” Charlotte’s voice is rising.

  I don’t meet her eyes again. Instead, I locate my bag. It’s perched on the counter near the paper towel dispenser. I grab it and unlatch the silver clasp. Inside the satchel I find the balled-up plastic bag I brought to secure the paint can. Malcriada plans ahead. She never gets paint residue on designer bags. She never leaves a trace of evidence . . . except for this witness . . . who’s just standing here, waiting for the artist to respond.

  “Well then, I guess you’ll have to shut the fuck up about all this, won’t you?” I say, my voice louder than I intend. Is it louder than I actually said it the first time? No, probably not. Because the next thing I remember is a direct consequence of my words.

  The bathroom door opens. The cycle continues. She’s standing there again, tall and unflinching in her gray wool suit. Her hair is swept into a tight blond bun. Her jaw is wound, like always. It’s Chancellor Eleanor Archwell.

  I’m caught.

  It happened just like this . . . but it also didn’t.

  Chancellor Archwell’s square heels clack against the cold tile floor. She’s trailing a noxious smell behind her, stronger than the spray paint. I choke on the air and notice how the loop has twisted my memory again. It’s exactly what I remember, yes. But it’s more how it felt than how it actually happened.

  Charlotte and I are frozen. The chancellor’s eyes, a sickly shade of green, slide from stall door to stall door, assessing the situation.

  “I heard shouting,” she says. Her words puddle into an oil slick on the bathroom floor.

  She walks to the first stall door, striding right through the black puddle of her intentions and tracking greasy footprints behind her.

  I hold my breath as she inspects my installation. The memory is brittle here. The loop threatens to skip and repeat like one of Mami’s old records. I know that Chancellor Archwell’s daughter, Rory, is on the other side of the partition, poised motionless above the toilet. But the chancellor doesn’t know that of course. I picture Rory’s saddle shoes perched on the white porcelain toilet seat and pray that she doesn’t make a sound.

  After a long silence, Chancellor Archwell finally speaks. “I must say, Verónica, I was expecting something a bit more splashy from you after the report I got from Easton Academy. They made your antics seem positively diabolical. But this . . .” She runs her fingers across one of the paint drips, leaving a hot-pink smudge. “This is a bit more amateurish than I expected.”

  I know not to care about the chancellor’s opinion. The moment she walked in, I expected an assault of some kind. But the word amateur stings more than I anticipated. The leaden lump in my throat leeches something toxic into my bloodstream. It’s anger and it’s sadness and it’s fear all in one. It feels even worse than I remember . . . because I know what’s coming next.

  “We were supposed to be decorating together. We—we’re both on the committee,” Charlotte blurts. “I was wondering what was taking Veronica so long in the bathroom and then I smelled something funny and—”

  “Who is this supposed to be?” The chancellor’s silky, slick voice cuts Charlotte off. Her words fall to the floor and mix into the black puddle, congealing into a soup of toxic waste.

  I summon my strength to speak, knowing now that what I’m about to say will ruin everything.

  “Is this supposed to be G—”

  Before the chancellor can use Gabe’s dead name, I cut her off without thinking. “Gabe Lewis,” I say.

  Gabe’s name echoes across the tiled room. The loop amplifies every syllable to a deafening tone.

  Gabe didn’t know he was the subject of my piece, the face above the hashtag bearing some resemblance to him and his signature fade. To be fair, I didn’t think most people would recognize him. And I couldn’t risk telling him. I had to stay anonymous.

  Still, I wanted him to know that there was someone on his side at Archwell. Not just someone, a chorus of someones. That’s what the hashtag was about. #transinclusionatarchwell was going to take off and the school would be forced to change its policies. Gender-neutral bathrooms. Inclusive admissions. Everything was about to change because of this. I just knew it. It was why I planned the installation this way.

  And the best part was, to those who knew him for who he truly was, Gabe would appear to be the hero of it all.

  But I was wrong. Malcriada was wrong. We weren’t starting a revolution. We were starting a wildfire.

  “Gabe Lewis . . .” The chancellor utters softly.

  Just like the rest of her words, Gabe’s name—a name that should be sacred—oozes into the black mass of bad intentions on the floor.

  I remember this moment so clearly.

  The moment when I realized the consequences of my actions.

  “You seem to be confused, Verónica. Archwell is a school for young women. Your subject, I know, is also well aware of this. All Archwell students, and parents for that matter, are aware of our policies. This is a school for girls. A safe space.”

  Oh, no. Oh god. How could I have been so stupid? So careless?

  I just . . . outed Gabe.

  The nauseating realization mixes in with the sickening smell of the bathroom itself.

  “Now that I’ve seen this, I’ll need to make some . . . family phone calls.”

  This wasn’t how this was all supposed to go down. In an instant, I have a splitting headache.

  How did Malcriada get it so wrong? Why didn’t I think? I don’t have to search hard for the answer. The truth ricochets around my brain. I got myself here by valuing my anonymity more than Gabe’s. I messed up because I treated Gabe like my subject, not like my friend. Like a cause, not like a person.

  “Charlotte,” the chancellor says. “You can go now. I will handle this. But mind I don’t find you in another situation where you’ve run afoul of the rules. Especially given tonight’s special event.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Charlotte practically sprints from the room, leaving the door swinging behind her. It flaps open and closed, open and closed, flashing the Girls sign again and again until it loses momentum.

  I don’t want Charlotte to leave. I don’t want to be alone with the chancellor. Not again. But now I have to face the fact that I’ve delivered Gabe to Eleanor Archwell on a silver platter. I hold my breath and brace myself.

  “I have run this school for thirteen years now,” the chancellor says. “I know what it takes for young women to be successful in this world. It’s my responsibility to ensure I deliver on the promise of an Archwell Academy education.” Her cheeks are more sunken than I remember. Her eyes are somehow smaller too. “That means I have a responsibility to remove anyone who poses a threat to our community,” she continues. “You, Verónica, can thank your lucky stars that your father secured your place at Archwell through his generous donation. It guarantees you one strike. I can’t say as much for your friend.”

  The chancellor’s eyes flick to the stall doors and the stenciled rendering of Gabe’s face. The magenta paint starts to coagulate and drip even more. The lump in my throat burns. I know what will happen next because I lived through it.

  Over the weekend, the chancellor will call Gabe’s parents and out him, exactly as I did, except she’ll do it intentionally. By Monday, Gabe will have disappeared from campus. His parents won’t come to get him themselves. They’ll send a van driven by someone with a shirt that says Youth Reparative Therapy.

  My heart has been swallowed by my stomach.

  The chancellor’s voice grows sharp. “Consider this your one and only warning, Ms. Martín. If you ever pull another stunt like this . . . Well, let’s just say that’ll be the end of a lot of things. Do you understand?”

  My voice emerges in a gust of fury. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m outlining the consequences,” the chancellor says coolly. “I take anything that jeopardizes this community—this institution—very seriously. Those who wish to harm, those who disrespect the legacy of women who have graduated from this school . . . those people will be expelled.” The chancellor waits for me to react somehow, but when I don’t respond she continues again, shifting to a purposefully patronizing sing-song tone. “If I remember correctly, your father has distinctly different plans for you should you not succeed here.”

  A new, thickly pungent smell fills the room. It takes me a moment to recognize it but then I know beyond a doubt. It’s the scent of dead flowers in water. It’s the scent of defeat. It’s knowing what will happen if I’m expelled from Archwell and Mami and Papi send me to Fort Hancock.

  “You can’t do that,” I say. But there’s no point.

  The chancellor has Malcriada by the throat. She can hold this over me for as long as I’m here at school. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Her minions, the Lilies, seem to specialize in blackmail. I wish I’d dug deeper into the school’s legacy when I had the chance. My Malcriada installations only scratched the surface of Archwell Academy’s secrets.

  Regret hooks its claws deeper into my legs. I’m rooted to the spot. Frozen and small. My veins are filled with ice. Reality comes crashing down.

  Gabe will be expelled because of me.

  My art has hurt people.

  I have hurt people.

  The pain of this thought shoots from my legs into my pelvis. It winds around the bottom of my spine and travels along the nerves up to the base of my skull. I can’t bear it. I don’t want to relive the past anymore. It’s the shame of it all. It’s going to eat me alive.

  I’m going to break apart. I’m going to fly into a thousand pieces. I’m going to—

  Bong . . . Bong . . . Bong . . .

  12

  Drew

  The loop pulls us away from the memory. It feels like I’m being stretched: a part of me here and a part of me there. But fortunately, the world comes back into focus and I know that I’m back in the closet now. We all are. Yet there’s still a part of me that feels like I’m hiding in that stall, trembling as Death stalks around outside.

  I suppose our journey into the loop started like this as well. Hiding. Waiting. Hoping we’d all make it out in one piece.

  I pull myself to my feet and come face-to-face with one of the alarm clocks perched at the edge of the closet’s shelves. It’s exactly at my eye level, old-fashioned with little brass bells on top. The little hand and big hand are pointing toward the twelve. Midnight . . . or noon, depending on your outlook on life. I can’t say I’m feeling very optimistic at the moment.

  “Was that it?” Rory’s voice is muffled underneath the layers of hanging green robes and white gowns. She clambers out from underneath the clothing rack and stands. “Was that all there was, Veró?”

  I can’t help but snort. The notion that Rory was expecting something worse tells me everything I need to know about her. My anger is a black cloak, wrapping around my shoulders. My fists clench involuntarily.

  Feel like fighting now, don’t we? Death murmurs. You like hurting people, huh?

  I relax my hands. I won’t give Death the satisfaction of seeing me worked up any more.

  “Yeah.” Veró’s voice is heavier than ever. “That was it.”

  “Great,” Rory says. “That means we’re through with the first loop. When we go back out there, we can tackle the next memory.”

  “Hold up.” Blythe rises from a nearby spot and switches the closet light on. “We’re not gonna even attempt to unpack that? What happened back there was messed-up on so many levels.”

  I try to breathe deep but I can’t ignore my pulse hammering against my neck and wrist. The truth of what just happened pulls me back from the point of dissociation: I should be angry. All of us should be. Even though I’m a pro at it, I can’t disconnect my mind from my body right now. There’s fire within me . . . sooner or later it has to come out.