Sunday came and I was still alone. It was gray outside. I avoided homework. I pulled another card. Death. This time it spoke to me.

  I know what you did.

  It has come to me again and again with the same message. But I never quite knew what it meant. I wasn’t sure if my memory could be trusted, so I held it far away from me. I turned my back on Death. But now . . . I can’t any longer.

  In the closet, Rory, Veró, and Blythe are all glaring at me. They are waiting for me to say something. The walls tremble around us and I worry that the closet will expel us out into the darkness like it did before. It wasn’t oblivion after all. It was my darkness, my secret.

  It’s all on the other side of that door. And I know beyond a doubt that there’s no avoiding it, no matter how many libraries I burn down.

  “Okay.” I hold up my hands, cornered. “Okay, yes, it’s my memory. I didn’t want to relive it so . . . I just . . . I wanted to get out.”

  “You’d rather let the loop turn to dust with us trapped in it than face what happened?” Veró accuses. The words cut deep, especially coming from her. She drives the knife in further. “I thought I knew you, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “I’m sorry, Veró,” I say. “I really, really am. But look what happened in your loop—your worst memory, your biggest regret—it’s like peanuts compared to mine. And Blythe, yes, you gave Charlotte the drugs that caused her overdose, but it’s pretty clear that there’s more to that.” I flash a glance at Rory. There’s terror behind the anger in her eyes. I can see it now. I see Death there. And I see what I did to Charlotte all over again.

  I shut my eyes and press my fists against the sockets. “Ugh!!!” The sound reverberating from my throat surprises everyone, including me. “I just want this all to stop,” I roar. “I can’t get away from this feeling. I can’t get away from the memory. Even when I’m not in the loop, it won’t leave me alone. I just want it to stop.”

  “Then you have to face it,” Blythe says coolly. “Otherwise that feeling is gonna follow you around forever. You have to go back out there and face what happened.”

  “It’s true,” Veró says. “Nothing can be changed until it is faced. Some author said that.”

  “Baldwin,” Blythe cuts in. “It was James Baldwin. We read him in Speech and Rhetoric last year.”

  “All right. Credit where credit is due,” Veró says.

  I look up at her and see that she’s holding her hand out to me, offering to help me up. Maybe she doesn’t hate me after all of this, at least not as much as I hate me right now.

  “But I can’t change what happened,” I confess. “I know that I can’t.”

  “Then just play it through,” Blythe says. “And if Rory’s right, the loop might finally let us go.”

  I take Veró’s hand and let her help me to my feet. “I’m scared,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice even.

  “You should be. It’s scary.” She lets go of my hand and crosses her arms. “Can you promise not to burn the whole place down again?”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say.

  “We’re trusting you,” Blythe tells me. “Don’t blow it.”

  Rory exhales an anxious puff of air out of the side of her mouth. “No funny business, Drew.”

  I nod. Before anyone can say anything else, and before I have a chance to second-guess myself, I turn to the door and throw it open.

  The basement is darker than before. The sounds of Lilies whispering in the stairwell are hollow. The stench is back, the rot that I’ve come to know well. Death is close by. The four of us huddle in a shadowy corner. Fortunately, the growing darkness works in our favor.

  “What were you doing down here on Founder’s Night?” Rory asks again.

  “I was locked out of my room before everything started,” I whisper back. “At first, I hid out in the library stacks. But then the party got going and I just wanted to be alone and get away from all the nonsense. I thought the basement would be . . . out of the way.”

  “Were you watching the initiation the whole time?” Blythe asks, mildly horrified.

  “No,” I murmur. “I was in there.” I motion to the gray-washed door tucked between the basement’s shadows.

  “What’s back there?” Veró asks, clearly a little spooked.

  “Used to be servants’ quarters,” Rory answers. “Now it’s storage. Has been for decades.”

  We fall silent at the sound of something skittering across the cold bricks underfoot. It could be a rat, but I know the sound of Death drawing near. Something creaks and groans behind the walls. The sound makes it feel like we’re not actually in the basement, but instead in the hull of a ship during a violent storm—one that is threatening to break the vessel apart. The loop can’t hold. Our time is running out.

  “C’mon,” I breathe, carefully inching toward the door. The others follow. It opens with a wailing creeeaaakkkk. We all freeze, expecting someone in a green robe to appear with a pointed finger. We are intruders here. No one belongs in the loop. Not for long, anyway.

  The four of us slip behind the door and I seal us in. I let go of the knob and find that my hands are covered in dust and old paint flakes. I try to wipe the filth away, but I can’t seem to get it off. The air in here is damp and mildewed. It makes everything feel sticky. Flies buzz in the darkness. The deepening smell of decay catches in my throat.

  “Why would anyone hang out in here?” Blythe whispers.

  “It wasn’t as bad before,” I say. “The loop is making the memory worse. C’mere.” I lead the others to the spot I remember, the one behind the lab table shrouded in a dusty sheet. Cardboard boxes are piled on top, blocking our view of the rest of the room except for one little slit.

  “What happens now?” Veró asks.

  “I was back here reading,” I say. “Someone came in, so I flipped off the light on my phone and tried to stay real quiet.”

  My foot brushes against something. It’s heavy and rectangular. I stoop down and squint into the black until I can make it out. It’s my book. A Tarot Guide to Self-Awareness. It was waiting for me, poised to reenact the memory. I open to a random page. Death’s illustrated skull grimaces at me.

  I flip to another page but Death is there too. Grinning, hollow. The reaper.

  I know you, it whispers. You’re back again.

  I shove through some more pages, but Death is plastered across each one.

  You are complicit, it rasps again.

  I slam the book closed but I can still hear Death’s rattly breath.

  Then I realize, it isn’t Death. It’s someone else. Someone hidden from view. Someone who is wheezing and choking.

  “Now what?” Blythe’s whisper is shaky.

  “Now I notice who is here,” I answer Blythe.

  The wheezing intensifies. I cover my face with my hands and turn toward the noise. Slowly, I peek through my fingers and into the little crack between the boxes. Charlotte is there, lying on the cold damp floor, just like I remember. Except in the loop, her red hair is sticky with sweat and vomited-up blood. Or maybe that happened in real life too. Either way, it’s worse than I remember.

  “What happens next?” Rory urges.

  I blink my eyes shut again and focus on the shapeless light behind my lids.

  “What happened, Drew?” Veró breathes. “Do it just like you remember or we’ll all be dust.”

  “I . . . I . . .” I can’t get the words out. I can’t pull together a complete thought. I’m alone in a room with a dying girl and I don’t know what to do.

  “Charlotte?” I manage to say, shakier and more afraid than the first time all this happened.

  “Help . . . Help me . . .” she croaks. But it isn’t her. It’s Death’s voice, deep and gravely.

  “Now what?” Blythe’s voice is as small as a spider’s nest.

  I try to pull myself together and somehow my knees allow me to stand. They carry me away from the others, around the edge of the lab table, out from behind the boxes. And now Charlotte can see me and I can see her. Except it isn’t her. It’s someone with black eyes, all skin and bones. She’s a skeleton. My chest tightens and I drop to my knees.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” I say. “Oh my god.”

  Her eyes loll around inside her skull for a minute before they come into sharp focus on me. She speaks again, this time different, harder. Something toxic is coursing through her bloodstream.

  “You,” she growls. She chokes on the word, blood spewing a little from the edge of her mouth.

  “Oh my god,” I say again. It’s just as it happened. This is exactly what I said. But this is exactly what anyone would say in this situation. “Charlotte, we need to get you help.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. It’s as heavy as lead in my hands. Charlotte speaks in another rattle as I try to unlock it, my fingers shaking.

  “Get away,” she coughs.

  I finally get the phone to open. Where the hell is the call app? Panic makes me hesitate. The screen is automatically showing me my texts, the last app I was using before escaping into the library basement.

  I’d wanted to get back into our dorm room, but Charlotte wasn’t responding to my messages.

  Locking me out is an asshole move, I wrote.

  I guess you’re just gonna have to tell your grandma meredith to pull some strings, she replied. Just like she did to get you into this school.

  Joke’s on you. She’s dead. I had typed the last bit out but never sent it.

  I resist the urge to throw the phone across the room. Rage seeps from my chest down into my fingertips. I didn’t choose to be here. I didn’t backstab or pull any strings. I’m just existing. So why does Charlotte have to be so hateful toward me?

  On the floor in front of me, Charlotte turns away and heaves. Blood spills from her mouth onto the ground.

  “It’s okay.” I reach out to touch her shoulder but she pulls away. “It’s gonna be okay. I’m calling for help. Are you sick? Did you take something?”

  Charlotte coughs up the last of the blood and gasps for air. She doesn’t answer my question. I am on the dial pad and begin punching in the number. 9—

  “I’m going to tell everyone,” Charlotte sputters. “Traitor. Backstabber. Bitch.”

  What the hell is Charlotte talking about? She’s not making sense. I remind myself that Charlotte is smacked out of her mind. What the fuck is the emergency number? 9-1—

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she wheezes. “You don’t belong here.”

  I freeze. My whole body goes cold. The nerves along my spine all pinch together, simultaneously. Charlotte’s words hurt even more the second time.

  You don’t belong here.

  She could mean anything. She could mean I don’t belong here in the basement, at Archwell . . .

  Or she could mean on this earth. People like me don’t belong on this earth.

  Lots of people believe it. They would love to see me and everyone like me gone. Erased. Turned to dust.

  I look down at my phone screen, the only source of light in this godforsaken place. The number is dialed, but I haven’t hit the call button yet.

  I don’t hit it.

  I will never hit it, no matter how many times the memory plays on a loop in my head. I will not help someone who doesn’t respect my humanity. I will also live to regret it.

  I silence the phone screen and plunge us back into darkness.

  “You don’t belong here,” she wheezes one last time. But now, I suddenly realize her tone is different than I remember. Desperate and sorrowful.

  My throat tightens, my palms are slick with sweat.

  Charlotte is pleading with me.

  Does that mean that I’ve misunderstood everything?

  Is Charlotte trying to warn me about something? Is she telling me I don’t belong around the treachery of the Lilies? The ones who dosed her, who betrayed her . . .

  Is she’s telling me to get out while I can?

  The muscles in my core seize up. This is fucked-up. I fucked up. I misunderstood.

  Then Charlotte’s choking starts all over again. The paleness of her face comes into focus as my eyes adjust. Here in the black she looks more like herself. Pretty and delicate, just like I remember. But this lasts for only a second.

  I didn’t believe it the first time I saw it. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone. But even if I had told someone, they wouldn’t have believed me. They would not have believed that Charlotte could just . . . dissolve.

  But that is exactly what happens.

  A wave of darkness swirls around her, smoky and fine. It wraps around her arms and legs, winding its way around her face, clamping her mouth shut. And now, it’s happening again. Each part of her is being consumed. Something is devouring her piece by piece. She tries to scream, but she can’t. Something has taken her.

  The first time I saw it, I didn’t know what it was. How could I? But now I see that whatever it is, it’s what’s corroding the loop. The same thing that binds the Lilies together. The thing that kept me awake in the hours and days after Charlotte disappeared.

  It’s not really a thing. It’s a feeling. It’s shame, coming to feed on our memories.

  I don’t call for help.

  Instead, I wind up alone in the dark room.

  And then, out of nowhere, comes the sound of the alarm.

  BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP . . . BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP . . .

  Warning. Warning. Lockdown. Shelter in place. Secure doors. Warning. Warning.

  23

  Veró

  The painting was from one of my dreams. I put Mami and Papi in it first, then my cousins and my tías, then the principals of Easton Academy and Forrest Gable. Troy the assistant made it in there too. So did Papi’s campaign manager, Carla. Above them all, I included my own version of La Revolucionaria, Yolanda López’s La Virgen de Guadalupe, and Manuel Caro’s El Alma de la Virgen. I added some Archwell girls in tweed blazers into the background of the crowd for good measure.

  “I like this one of yours,” Mami told me over FaceTime. “It reminds me of Judy Baca. Ever think about doing murals?”

  “I guess as soon as I have a wall,” I said. “I don’t really want to get locked into one medium though. Murals are very time intensive.”

  “But why did you paint the Archwell girls like that?” Mami asked. “And Dean Treadwell from Easton Academy. Do they all really deserve to be portrayed like diablitos?”

  I looked at the little horns and spiky tails I added to the prep school characters in the painting. “Yes, they do.”

  Mami clicked her tongue. “Verónica, you never let go of a grudge, do you?”

  “Why should I?” I put my paintbrush in the cup of dirty water on my dresser and sat down on my extra-long dorm bed. “Anyway, none of them will ever see this piece. Who is it hurting?”

  “You, querida. It’s hurting you.” Mami’s words surprised me. I held the phone a little farther away from my face to pretend like I wasn’t listening too closely. “Resentment doesn’t do anything but make a person miserable. You have to learn to accept the past and move on.”

  “I don’t have to accept things that are unfair.”

  “You can still fight for a better future—but you have to accept that the past is gone,” Mami said. “Be angry, paint little devil horns on mean girls, but then let it go and put your energy toward something that’ll change things.”

  “Art can change things,” I say.

  “Sure,” Mami says. “But it doesn’t have to be cruel to do that.”

  The Archwell girls in my painting smiled at me, their devil horns blushing from a flamingo tone into a shade of ruby. Then they hissed at me, uttering words I didn’t yet know.

  Ut sacram memoriam. Ut sacram memoriam. Ut sacram memoriam.

  I think I hear someone whispering these words again as we are sucked out of the basement and expelled back into the closet. I wind up lying face down on the hardwood floor, grateful to be in one piece again and out of the loop. Nothing has ever felt better than this newfound stillness. I force my eyes open and find that the lights are already on. I rest my cheek against the wood and notice that the floor extends farther than I expected. We’re not in the closet anymore. I sit up and find that we’re finally back in the chancellor’s office, awash with crimson and low lamp light.

  “Wow,” I breathe. “It’s finally over.” I think about standing up but something in me feels a bit too delicate. Emotions are coursing through me. Anger and sorrow for everything that just happened. Grief and shame are tied to every memory that was played on repeat. And in the end, we couldn’t change the past. Charlotte is gone. Gabe is gone. Archwell stays the same. The thought cuts through me like a knife.

  “Drew?” I manage to collect my breath into words. “You good?”

  “I’m all right,” they whisper back. They are sitting up, back leaning against the side of the chancellor’s mahogany desk. Rory is beside them, leaning against the tabletop, hands gripping the edge as if she is still bracing herself against the loop’s propulsion.

  “Are you okay?” Blythe asks me from a spot on the nearby flowery rug.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  We just sit in silence like that for a while. Again, savoring the stillness. Eventually, we each get up off the floor and find a seat in the chancellor’s leather tufted chairs. No one meets anyone’s eyes. Not yet.

  There may be truth now, but there still isn’t trust.

  “We know what happened to Charlotte,” I say, realizing I might be opening Pandora’s box. The others might not want to talk about what we just saw, but, again, what choice do we have? There are still missing girls here at Archwell.

  “Yes, we do,” Rory says, resolved.

  “A lot happened to Charlotte,” Drew admits.

  “She wanted to be a Lily,” Blythe says, a bit tearful. “Because she wanted to fit in.” She looks at Drew now. “And fitting in with the Lilies meant being cruel.”

  I think about my painting with the Archwell girls as diablitos. Mami called it cruel, but was it? I painted those girls like that because of how they acted: above it all, cliquey, and conniving. They made me feel like I didn’t belong. I know they did the same to others. It occurs to me that exclusion is a form of cruelty too. It’ll make people do unspeakable things . . . but in the end, even mean girls are trying to find a way to survive it all.