Page 5 of She Haunts Me Still

Mallory raises her scarf-wrapped hand to her nose. And somehow, before she inhales, she knows the scent won’t remind her of the dressing room, won’t conjure memories of crisp linen or fresh cotton.

She knows it will smell like the faintest hint of something burning.

2

The next morning, Mallory sits in the health center wearing a pink-and-white medical gown and summons the greatest skill her mother taught her before she died: the language of lying.

The days they once had together were long and full of make-believe. Their tiny blue house in Shoreview, Rhode Island, was a castle, a moon landing, a dragon’s den. Mallory’s mother worked nights at a bar in Providence, so their afternoons stretched into a singular burst of sunlight, punctuated by colorful fabric spilling from a dress-up trunk. It was just the two of them, no father to intrude on their games.We don’t have to be ourselves today,her mother would say.Who would you like to be instead?

Mallory’s mother had a treasure trove of fairy tales filed away, plucking a new one like a flower each day. She’d tell Mallory legends of cursed fairies and far-off realms, kindhearted witches and lonely ghosts. Mallory’s favorite was the story Jasmine told most often: about a house on a magical island that granted wishes to visitors lucky enough to find it. Their own house was riddled with playful superstition: unicorn-shaped selenite crystals atop Mallory’s bureau,bundles of herbs scattered in the kitchen.To keep the evil spirits out,her mother would whisper with a wink before setting them aflame.

It was one long game. Yet sometimes, it seemed like Mallory’s mother believed every word. Reality became so intertwined with fantasy, Mallory wasn’t always sure of the difference, either.

But when Mallory was four, her world grew darker, and the wordpretendchanged shape. She learned how to hide beneath blankets and imagine she was inside a stone fortress, protected from the stale, smoldering odor that would fill the walls of the blue house each evening.

A scent that always meantshewas nearby.

The woman in a white dress, covered in blood.

Mallory tried to tell Aunt Penelope about it once while her mother was at work, explain that the air in her bedroom would turn tangy, that soon after,shewould appear. Crouching behind Mallory’s dollhouse in silence. Peering through the curtains. The woman would never say a word, just stare and stare in that white lace gown with a cherry-red stain over her chest. All while Mallory’s room would seethe with invisible, rotten smoke.

But Penelope, who never knew how to play pretend, simply ushered her back to bed.

Mallory’s mother was the only one who ever believed her. Because she could see her, too.

She’smyghost,her mother explained once,notyours.The only reason you see her is because you’re small. Some children have a gift that way; they can peer between worlds. Not everyone is special like you.

Whenever her mother spoke of the ghost, her tone wasusually airy. But sometimes, Mallory caught sight of her face when nightfall approached, noticing the apprehension strewn across it. Like she was anticipating the woman’s visit, too. As time went on, Mallory registered all the little ways fear took root in her mother’s body: perpetually torn-up cuticles, the cigarettes she chain-smoked, the way the house was spotless each morning because her mother had frantically cleaned until sunrise. Toward the end, her mother insisted on keeping every light on, even at night. Most of her mother’s friends stopped coming over, and Mallory wondered if she didn’t want them to see her like that.

To see her afraid.

Mallory learned that particular lesson the hard way. Learned that when she screamed in pre-K because of the nightmarish woman in the window, other children only became frightened ofher. Learned that when she caught wisps of the woman in the bathroom mirror, or felt her hovering on the playground, the best thing to do was nothing at all. How do you tell people something terrifying follows you from place to place?

That your house isn’t haunted—youare?

It became so much easier to lie.

And so, the art of pretending turned into the medicine of lying. It saved her from having to confess that she was different, that she was broken in places other children were not.

The visits from the blood-soaked woman stopped after her mother died, when Mallory was five. As though Mallory’s mother took all the fear with her in death.

Even so, the lies stuck, becoming a part of Mallory forever. Everything hurts a little less when you hide inside a world that isn’t yours. It’s an idea Mallory’s clung to for aslong as she can remember, going so far as to dedicate her life to theater.I don’t have to be myself today,Mallory still thinks before taking on a new role.

Or telling a little white lie.

Like now, for instance, sitting in an exam room in Shore College’s Health and Wellness Center, while a nurse practitioner inspects her injured palm.

“You said you got this cutting a bagel?” the nurse asks skeptically. Mallory nods.

Lie, lie, lie.

“My roommate wanted to take me for stitches, but the bleeding stopped on its own.”

This, at least, is true. After auditions, she and Arden huddled in the bathroom to peer at the sticky red cut.I still think you should get it looked at,Arden had said. Mallory promised to visit the health center first thing in the morning, hoping Arden would stop asking. But as they lay in their respective beds in their narrow dorm in Fletcher Hall later, Arden’s whisper cut across the room—

Mal, is everything okay with you?

Mallory had pretended to be asleep. She found herself longing for their nights at boarding school, when they’d trade pieces of cafeteria gossip between poster-covered walls. At the time, Mallory had been convinced the shadowed part of her life was over.