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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Great place to film a horror movie,”
It was tall and narrow, three stories of brick so deep a red and so shaded by massive oaks it looked charcoal. Two of the dark green shutters flanking the tall, skinny windows were hanging crookedly and the wide, wooden porch sagged just enough to make the house look a little drunk.
Boys who were too good-looking seemed to think the world owed them something.
“I’m not going into that mausoleum by myself. Could be dangerous.”
“If that girl spent nine months in this house with that awful wind howling at her, no wonder she committed suicide!” And then the kitchen light went out, plunging the entire room into darkness.
She’d had better conversations with toast.
Or maybe there was an uneasy spirit lingering at Nightingale Hall.
“Nightingale Hall? You mean that creepy place with all those big trees?”
I’ve told three people I’m staying at Nightingale Hall. They all looked at me like I had a screw loose. I think it’s because nothing was ever resolved about that girl who died.”
“I just wish someone had warned me about how expensive college was going to be. I would have saved more money instead of throwing it away on trivial things, like food and clothing.”
“So? You feel any different than you did in high school?” “Yeah, I feel a lot poorer!”
Giselle’s name might be written only on that one page, but Giselle’s eyes had focused on many pages, her fingers had tap-tapped on others while she tried to concentrate, and the book itself had probably nestled cozily inside Giselle’s backpack during her trips to and from campus.
Her guilt over the added expense of the shirt was not as easily dismissed as her ecological guilt over the paper plates. She knew she shouldn’t have spent the money.
With the load of college textbooks in her arms, she had been seized suddenly by a fierce, overwhelming need to claim the bookstore, the university, the classmates surrounding her, as her own. Her place. Her new life. And it seemed to her that wearing the soft, thick gray sweatshirt with the Salem University seal on the front would help her do that.
Nightingale Hall might not be a castle, but it was well-located.
Without that stupid baseball cap he always wears, he’s really good-looking. The thought surprised her.
They all stared silently at the pictures in Jess’s hand. They stared at Ian, smiling, and at Jess, her tongue out in one picture, her eyes crossed in another, her face hidden behind her hands in the bottom two shots. And they stared at the clouded but visible image of a girl with long, pale hair and a painfully sad expression on a very pretty face, looking solemnly into the camera from behind Ian and Jess. Only two people had gone into the photo booth. But there were three people in the pictures.
But several times during the rest of the evening, Jess found herself searching the crowd for any sign of a pretty girl with long, pale hair and a sad face.
So many books to read, so many papers to write, all involving hours of research.
“If you can actually do this stuff,” she told Ian as they studied in the first-floor library at Nightingale Hall, “they let you stay in school and get a degree, which, if you can do this stuff, you probably don’t even need.” Cath nodded. “And if you can’t do it,” she grumbled, her head bent over a book, “they send you home, and your parents disown you and kick you out of the house to wander through town the rest of your life carrying all of your belongings in a shopping bag.”
“All work and no play makes life pretty grim.” “And all play and no work,” Jess said pointedly, “makes a college dropout.”
“Brilliant minds,” Milo said, tilting his chair back against the kitchen counter, “do not employ methods as pedestrian as outlining.”
“And while you slave away up in your dark little cave,” Milo added, “I’ll be outside gratefully gulping in some much-needed fresh air.”
Everyone seems nice enough here at Nightingale Hall, but we don’t really know each other. Not yet.
“That paper couldn’t have just walked away.
“There’s something about this place. I wish I could figure out what it is.
If she had known she was going to be sleeping in the room of a girl who had died, would she have moved in, anyway?
“Your body is a temple, Jon, and you’re tossing a wrecking ball at it.”
Weren’t poets supposed to be emotional?
Hurrying to class a while later, Jess wished that she could stay forever among the beautiful, red brick and stone buildings covered with ivy, and under the sheltering trees whose leaves were just starting to turn blazing yellows and purples and scarlets. She wished she could stay there forever and never have to return to Nightingale Hall, with all of its unanswered questions.
No one else was home. The house was dim and eerily silent. No pipes groaned, no shutters banged, no wild wind shrieked. All three stories of brick sat in silence as if … as if the house was waiting for something to happen, Jess thought as she climbed the stairs.
Someone had been very angry with Giselle McKendrick on the very day before she died.
No more bad thoughts. Not tonight.
She only knew she didn’t feel like talking to anyone about Giselle. Not even Ian.
She turned around and pulled it open. “I forgot something,” Ian said. His dark eyes were serious. “What—” Jess began. And then she was in Ian’s arms and he was kissing her. It was over much too soon. “Sleep tight,” he said and, smiling, turned and went down the hall to his own room. Jess went to bed certain there would be no bad dreams that night.
She shouldn’t be thinking about Giselle. It had all happened months ago, and had nothing to do with her. Putting it out of her mind should put an end to shadows on her wall.
“You’re going to need an ambulance if you don’t get off the phone,”
“It would take an act of Congress to wreck your social life,”
Again she felt the strong sensation that the house was waiting for something. Silly, silly. It was just a house.
“People who do disgusting things like this don’t let themselves be seen. They’re too sneaky. But someone was in here. There are too many worms for this to be accidental.”
She couldn’t believe that anyone in the house would find any humor in something so revolting.
Joke or scare tactic, someone had been in her room. Someone had touched her things. Someone had come in and out, leaving a repulsive message behind.
It looks like nothing happened in here, Jess thought. Anyone who walked in now would never guess I was totally freaked-out fifteen minutes ago.
“The place sort of grows on you.” The girl laughed. “Like fungus?”
Sitting around putting worms on hooks is not my idea of a good time.” A vision of the mass of moist, pink, creepy-crawling creatures slammed back into Jess’s mind so hard, her eyes closed and she was forced to lean back in her chair.
“I need air.” And lots of it.
Since when did Jess-The-Cautious fall for someone she hardly knew? That’s ridiculous, she corrected herself. I haven’t fallen for anyone.
“Never can tell about large appliances. Sometimes they take off without a moment’s notice.”
“What should you wear to the library?” Jess asked. “Well, spike heels, definitely, and if you have any diamond earrings, wear those and …”
“Antiques, spelled J-U-N-K.”
