The Evil Within by Nancy Holder

little tingle tickled the based of my spine. Was Troy here? Wouldn’t he have mentioned it?
    Not if he was going to hook up with Mandy , I thought.
    Of the rest of the crowd, more people were nicer to me than not. I saw my dormies—Claire, Ida, Marica, and Elvis. We caught up with what we’d been doing over the break. I lied. Claire was a bronze Maui goddess, Ida had gone home to Iran, and Marica did some modeling in Brazil. She was still wearing her big-ass emerald earrings. Elvis had attended an opera intensive at Julliard. They confirmed that Julie had come to the party, too, but they couldn’t tell me where she was at the moment.
    After we swore to cover for one another if Ms. Krige checked on us, I resumed circulating. Shayna was in a corner with some girls from Stewart—her dorm—drinking red wine. She didn’t see me, and I kept my distance in case she slipped up and said something about seeing me with Troy in the parking lot. I felt a little weird, since she’d essentially invited me to the party, and it really dawned on me that in the eyes of Marlwood, Troy was Mandy’s boyfriend.
    Julie was nowhere to be seen, and I figured she had probably gone back to our room. I looked for Rose Hyde-Smith, who’d been my partner in spying on Mandy . . . until she, too, had become possessed. She wasn’t there, either. Having made the rounds, I decided to leave. It was past time for me to unpack and get ready for the first day back, and if Mrs. Krige decided to do a bed-check (although she hadn’t done a single one during the first semester), we would be way busted. As the only scholarship student in Grose, I couldn’t afford to get in trouble. By sneaking out, I was already playing with fire.
    I worked my way back out of the basement to the stairs, through the upper room and out on the rickety porch. It had stopped snowing, and the wind was still. There was no denying the beauty of my surroundings, and my heart ached for the ability to simply enjoy life again. I hadn’t stopped bracing myself for the next bad thing since my mom’s death. And it seemed that life kept handing them out.
    I heard a familiar giggle on the opposite side of the building, on the porch overlooking the lake. Cautiously, I avoided the rotted planks and gaping holes of the floor and walked around the corner. Julie was sitting with Spider, her boyfriend, on a fuzzy yellow blanket and they were bundled up together in another one, of Marlwood hunter green. Julie had cut her hair to a chin-length geometric bob, very Katie Holmes in her Beckham phase. Spider looked like Corbin Bleu, from his mocha-gold skin to his tight ringlets, his hair even crazier than mine. He was rubbing noses with her, and I smiled, cheered up.
    Excellent timing, universe , I thought. Thank you for this moment of goodness.
    “Hey,” I said.
    They turned their heads in unison. Julie let out a happy yelp and jumped up to hug me. She towered over me—she was at least five inches taller than my five-two—smelling of vanilla and a whiff of vodka.
    “Linz, Linz!” she cried. “You made it!”
    I hugged her back, teary and relieved. Spider got to his feet, too, and gave me a quick hug once Julie was done. I was among my friends.
    “How did you get here?” I asked her, as she and Spider laced fingers. They really were an adorable couple.
    “My parents,” she said, pulling a little face. “Not the original plan, as you know.” I could see that there was Mandy-related gossip in my future. “You?”
    I ticked my glance toward Spider, to see if Troy had told him our little secret. They were close friends. It was hard to tell, since he was staring at Julie. “Drove,” I told her vaguely. “By the way? It’s mucho late.”
    Julie grabbed Spider’s arm to check his watch, which was a simple gold-rimmed rectangle with a worn leather band that had probably belonged to his great-grandfather, who had gotten it from Albert Einstein, or Abraham Lincoln. All Lakewood boys had