Free Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt Page B

opinion that the Mix-n-Match Fling indicates triumphant future endeavors for the entire Donne School community. After all, if we can make gentlemen out of ladies, what can’t we transform to our advantage?
    Editor’s note: Found in the Andropov diary, with several passages underlined in felt pen.

 
    Zoya
    16.
    A few times in the following months, Cindy and Adeline badgered me back into the library to try and contact more spirits, though we didn’t have much luck. They pared down the people and the accessories, so it was just the three of us, and instead of candles they brought cigarettes. Mostly we sat around while they smoked. There was just one other occasion worth mentioning. It was early in the spring of my second and final year, when the grass was still covered with frozen dew in the mornings, and they made me show up before first bell, slipping a note under my door to indicate the time and place. I walked over with a scarf pulled tight around my neck, coat hanging off my shoulders, grumbling inwardly about missing breakfast. I’d become very fond of morning coffee, and without it I felt sluggish and low. Scratchy throat, itchy nose. Icy wind and early pollen. As I approached the library Cindy poked her head out of the door and indicated I should hurry, so I picked up into a jog and followed her to the basement, rolling my eyes just a bit.
    There was another girl there, no one I knew, who introduced herself as Caroline Geiss. A fellow fourth-year and an aficionado of field hockey, hailing from Minnesota. Her legs were covered in bruises, which she wore with pride.
    â€œWhat are we doing here so early?” I asked, throwing my bag down and shaking the cold morning out of my hair. “Grades? Peeking into the future?” I looked at Cindy and waved my fingers. “Woo-ooh?”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell her?” Cindy said to Caroline. The girl colored, which was unexpected. All those muscles and wounds, she seemed like the type who could hold her own.
    â€œMy friend,” she said. “I miss her.” Apparently, before her parents shipped her off to New Jersey, Caroline had been close with a girl named Laura Shipman, who she’d known since childhood. During the first week of classes at the Donne School, Caroline found out that Laura had had a bad reaction to a bee sting, and had died following a severe attack of anaphylactic shock. Her parents wouldn’t agree to bring her back for the funeral, for financial reasons or something else that Caroline wouldn’t go into. Now here she was, and as she looked at me her spine straightened out with hope and sincerity. “They said you could talk to her.”
    â€œI don’t know.” I frowned. It seemed unkind to promise anything when my past attempts had ended so badly.
    â€œBut you can at least try , right?” Adeline tugged my hair until it hurt, and I slapped her hand away. Then I nodded. Because really, why not?
    â€œWe better hurry, though, if we want to get out of here before classes start.”
    The four of us sat in a circle, Caroline fidgeting beside me. Cindy and Adeline started reciting that same strange poem that always sent me into a stupor, and I closed my eyes, waiting. I didn’t expect anything to happen, not again. I thought we’d sit there for five or six minutes growing increasingly bored, until someone stood up and said they were going to get an apple before the caf closed, and that would be that. But then there was a breeze on my face, the scent of clover and cut grass. I reached out and took Caroline’s hand, and she squeezed it, tightly.
    â€œLaura?” she asked. “Is it you?”
    â€œYes,” I said.
    I knew it was really me, but then again, I didn’t. I was playing the game the way they wanted me to, and for a second it was sweet. A rush of familiarity and bubblegum, swimming pools full of chlorine and toys that could float. It fuzzed around my