Page 27 of House of Hearts
“Six seconds.”
The outer banks of the maze are a manicured, artificial green. Where she’s led me is a mess of thorns and dead branches. They scrape against my skin, drawing blood. My legs ache the longer I run, and my sides cramp as I try to sprint even faster.
And then, all at once, she stops, with her back to me.
“I know this is all a part of some”—I pause to suck in air—“sick hazing ritual, but joking about a dead girl? Don’t you think that’s a little low, even for…”
My anger leaches from me immediately, making way for a terror so bone deep I worry I might collapse on the spot. For the second time tonight, Emoree stares at me. Her body is wisp thin and translucent in the dark. Not alive or dead but some miserable in-between.
“Remember what I said about ghosts?” she whispers, and even her voice is reedy and not quite there.
I can’t speak. I can’t blink. I can’t do anything. The shock might’ve saved me back in the ballroom, but it feels different here in the maze. Horrifically real and impossible to wrap my mind around.
“Something really bad has to happen,” she finishes for me, her voice tapering off with the rest of her until there’s nothing left.
“Em!” I howl when she’s gone, and fall to my knees. With my body collapsed against the earth, I hear a muffled sound beneath the dirt.
VioletVioletViolet, a voice sings.I’m down here.There’s no thinking as I claw the ground bloody, dirt and debris digging beneath the tender beds of my nails. I pry the earth apart and tear through clods of soil. I don’t know what I expect to find, but what I see before me breaks my trance.
A beating heart.
I freeze and stare at it, if only to prove to myself that I didn’t see that correctly, that there’s no possible way it’s alive and moving, but itthump-thump-thumps, pulsating back to life before my very eyes.
Rip it out.
The words rattle through my skull, soft at first before building louder and louder, twice as loud as the heart.
Ripoutmyheart, RIP OUT MY HEART, rip it out, rip it out, rip it OUT!
I squeeze my eyes shut until tears spring in my vision and reach my hand out to give in and end this horrible night. It’s still thrashing as I pluck it from the soil. I hold it in my hands, beating and bloody, and gasp as it dies with one final thump. With another blink, it’s no longer real but plastic in my palms.
What the hell?
I don’t get time to think about it before I hear an awful sound from the gate. Wait a damn minute. The gate?The gate!I can see it! I lift myself up, heart still in hand, and race to the entrance up ahead. They’re all still waiting on the other end, the group of merry assholes kicked back on the lawn like this is some picnic and not the second-worst night of my life.
I send the plastic heart flying before I even emerge from the gate. It lands with a wet plop at Calvin’s feet, and he startles at the sight of it. Good. If only he’d seen it when it was still alive.
“That’s got to be a record.” Calvin whistles, and he has the nerve to be standing there with a timer on his phone. If I still had the plastic heart on me, I’d send it flying at his face next. “Congrats.”
I have no idea which other pledge might be joining me soon, but I’m entirely too exhausted to linger any longer.
With his free hand, Calvin fishes out yet another card from his pocket. The Queen of Hearts stares me down in the dark. She’s patterned like a typical playing card, in a gown with navy blue sleeves and a gilded collar. But instead of looking away, her eyes bore directly into mine.
“Monday,” I snarl in Calvin’s ear as I pass. I’ve had more than my fair share of nonsense, and I’m ready to get out of this dress, shake the loose twigs out of my hair, and bury my face beneath my blankets.
And if I’m lucky tonight, maybe I won’t dream at all.
10
Birdie and I are twinning today, and it goes far beyond our matching set of fingerless gloves (“Trust me, they’re on trend”).
“Are you nervous?” she whispers as we walk up the front entrance to the House of Hearts. She’s been jumpy for hours, and by hours, I mean the last forty-eight, when she ran into our dorm, red-faced and panting. Her dress was rumpled and her hair streaked with soil, but none of that mattered because she was holding up a Queen of Hearts card. The squeal she made when I showed her my matching card was at a frequency only bats could hear.
“No more than I was in the maze.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either. What I’m feeling now isn’t nerves. It’s a beehive beneath the skin.
The storm stole what was left of summer, and Monday morning washed away the rest. The excitement from Saturday has faded to the dull monotony of classwork, glitter and gold party streamers swapped for number-two pencils.
That all changes now.
