Page 73 of The Black Table
But iftheyknow, then …
I’m not crazy.
I can’t leave. I can’t.
The quiet of the early morning canvas makes everything feel exposed, tripwired. As I cross to Broceliande Hall, I mentally rehearse, prep myself: shower, change, maybe slip out for a cup ofcoffee at Holy Grounds. Lay low—the lowest I’ve ever laid. Go to my place in the library and hide in my alcove.
I round the corner to Broceliande and slow my steps.
There’s a crowd gathered outside. Girls in pajamas, everyone whispering frantically, eyes wide, and glances darting everywhere. There’s a tangy, acrid smell in the air. Heavy, familiar.
Smoke.
I break into a run, ankle be damned. The crowd parts for me, almost like it was expecting me.
And I race into the hallway and up the stairs, leaping, flying, until I get to the room, our room. And Morgan’s there, but not inside, just at the door, hanging back.
She turns at the sound of my footsteps, and her eyes go wide.
“Gwenna,” she gasps. “You…oh thank God, you’re all right. It didn’t…”
“What didn’t?”
Instead of answering, Morgan just takes a step back, her arms clutched to her chest. I advance a half step at a time and look into our dorm room.
Or what used to be our dorm room.
Because now all I see is…nothing.
At first, I’m confused, wondering if I’ve lost consciousness, blacked out entirely, because that’s all there is around me: black.
But slowly my brain parses the information: not black.
Gray.
Gray everywhere, like a blanket of snow, or a blanket of…
Ash. It’s ash.
Everything—my clothes, my books, my comforter and blankets and pillow, everything that Morgan owned—someone burned them up and dumped the ashes in the middle of the floor. And on top of it, a single sheet of paper with a handwritten line:
See how you like it.
NINETEEN
GWENNA
Around me,Holy Grounds swims and buzzes in indistinct shapes. I’m sitting hunched over, wrists pinned between my knees, the best invisible-girl posture I can manage, and try not to cry.
It’s over, I think. I barely made it two weeks. And now it’s over.
I’ll have to go home, sit on Dr. Riggs’s stupid couch, endure the punishing glares from my mom, the threats, the eye-rolling?—
Or maybe this time they’ll go through with it. Maybe this time they’ll really and truly lock me up—not just temporarily. For good.
I’ll never go into the library again. To the chapel. To Dr. Emrys’s class. To any of it.
In spite of myself, a choked sob comes out of my throat.
