Lisa pounded again. Patrick’s voice groaned from inside. “Go to hell.”
Lisa tried the knob; it turned. She pushed the door open and marched in. Robin followed.
Inside, the walls and shelves were covered with rock posters and concert paraphernalia. Otherwise, the room was surprisingly neat…almost rigidly so.
Patrick was sprawled in bed, bare-chested, hair mussed. Robin flushed, seeing him. Lisa was unimpressed. “We need you, cowboy,” she informed him, and jumped into the bed, bouncing slightly.
“That’s what they all say.” Patrick pulled her comfortably against him, as if they’d known each other for years. It was an easy intimacy, with none of the charged antagonism of the night before.
Robin stood awkwardly in the door, mortified.
Patrick glanced over at her and lifted the plaid comforter on the other side of him with a lazy smile. “Room for one more…”
Robin blushed deeper, if that was possible. Lisa flopped the yearbook on Patrick’s chest, open to Zachary’s picture. “Robin found Zachary.”
Patrick stared down at the photo. Robin could see he was unnerved.
“Fuck me…”
Lisa rolled away from him and stood, kicked the bed imperiously. “Get your ass up and let’s play.”
She grabbed the yearbook off Patrick, threw a sweatshirt at his head, and pulled Robin out the door.
As the girls headed down the dark corridor outside, Lisa smiled at Robin knowingly. “He likes you, too.”
Robin colored. “He’s with my roommate.”
Lisa shook her head, rippling her mane of hair. “And how high school is that? He’s out of the South, away from Daddy.…Miss NASCAR is holding on like hell, but he’s better than she is and he knows it. Baby doll, that cowboy’s looking for the real thing.”
She ran ahead down the hall, glanced back with a teasing smile before she ducked around the corner.
Her mood suddenly lifted, Robin ran, too. She caught up to Lisa at another door, where she stood knocking authoritatively.
There was a standard drug-store-issue plastic sign posted on it:
How Cain, Robin thought, amused. And then she glanced at Lisa, wondering, How does she know where everyone lives?
Lisa was already pushing the door open, striding inside. Robin followed, more hesitantly.
Cain lay back on the bed in the dim light from the window, playing an acoustic guitar, an intricate melody. He barely looked up as Lisa strode to the bed.
Robin hovered inside the open door, looked around the room. On the floor-to-ceiling shelves, law books competed with a staggering collection of vinyl and CDs. An electric keyboard and guitar were shoved in one corner. Posters of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Johnny Rotten glowered from the walls. Old school, she thought. And that’s Cain, too.
On the bed, Cain was pointedly ignoring the yearbook Lisa held open in front of him.
“You found this open on the floor, huh? Right to this picture. Isn’t that convenient.”
Robin bristled, defensive. “It wasn’t open.” But it was set off from the other books. Almost positioned, a voice in her head reminded her. It could be a setup—someone playing a game….
Lisa was speaking impatiently. “Oh, come play with us. You know you want to.” Lisa leaned over Cain seductively, one knee on the mattress.
Cain didn’t budge. He looked up at her with that level gray gaze. “Don’t you ever get tired of yourself, Marlowe?”
Lisa’s eyes blazed, but she didn’t flinch. “Every minute of every day, Jackson.”
The two locked eyes for a long moment, a hot, contentious look. Robin felt herself bristling, something twisting in her chest.
Cain shook his head. “Pass.” Then he looked directly at Robin. “And I think you should, too.”
Robin looked back at him, startled. Before she could respond, or even process, Lisa flared up at him. “Crap out if you want, but don’t spoil everyone else’s fun.”
Cain dropped his eyes to the guitar. “Whatever.” He bent over the strings and didn’t look at Robin again.
Robin felt her face burning, but Lisa grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room, slamming the door behind them so hard that the NO MINORS sign fell to the carpet.
But as she dragged Robin toward the stairwell, Lisa was smiling, cheerful—that constant, mercurial shift. “He’ll be down,” she informed Robin lightly. “Trust me.”
They found Martin’s room at the very dark end of a third-floor hall. Unlike most of the other student rooms, his door was unadorned by any message boards, posters, or signs.
Then Robin caught sight of a small rectangular metal piece nailed into the door frame just below eye level, almost unnoticeable against the dark wood: a little scroll with Hebrew lettering. The word mezuzahflashed through her mind, though she wasn’t sure that was right.
Lisa was knocking and knocking. “Martin, we need you. Pretty please? I’ll breathe on your glasses….”
There was no answer. Lisa pressed her ear to the door, listening, then stepped back, shaking her head. She pushed back her hair, defiant. “Come on.”
Robin followed Lisa down the main stairs to the lounge. Lisa’s face was grimly determined; she hugged the yearbook to her chest like a shield. But some of the energy had gone out of the mission. Privately, Robin had serious doubts about what they could do without the others. There had been something between them the night before. Maybe the sudden, unexpected intimacy, maybe just the drinking and smoking. But whatever it was, it was all of us. She was quite sure.
She followed Lisa through the archway of the lounge and almost ran into her as Lisa abruptly halted.
Martin was there, standing over the round table with a legal pad and a pen, looking down at the board, a small figure amid the weirdly tumbled furniture.
Lisa said, “Hey!” loudly, and he jolted, clearly startled to see them, almost flustered at being discovered.
Lisa crossed the carpet to join him in front of the fireplace, blithely unaware of his consternation. “We were just looking for you,” she informed him, with that exasperating imperiousness that Robin was beginning to warm to. “We want to do another sitting. You’re game, aren’t you?”
Martin blinked at her. “Quite. I’ve been reading up on Ouija boards. There’s a good bit of legitimate research on the subject on the Internet.” He took off his glasses, gestured at the board like a small professor. “Our experience wasn’t unique, you know. It’s amazing how many cases of supernormal effects have been reported by reputable people.”
Lisa winked at Robin. “Reputable people.”
Martin put his glasses back on and looked to Robin, a diffident glance. “Something happened between us last night…the collective focus on the board, possibly the combination of personalities, some link between all of us…”
Robin was startled to hear what she had just been thinking coming out of Martin’s mouth. Behind them, the wind blew a spattering of rain against the windows, like a handful of tiny rocks.
“We achieved some kind of mental communication at least. Possibly precognition, as evidenced by the game scores in the newspaper.” Martin glanced at Robin again. ‘Taken from a psychological perspective, it would make a good subject for a term paper.”
“Hate to burst your Freudian bubble,” Lisa said loftily. She slapped the yearbook open on the table in front of him.
Martin stared down at the photo of Zachary, clearly taken aback.
“Zachary was as real as you and me. He lived here. He probably died here.”