Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 7

In front of the window, I held my breath in wonderment as I saw the visibility through the window ever-so-slightly blur as if an invisible fingertip was writing on it. I couldn't recall the last time I had heard steam release from the radiator, so I had no idea when it would next come on to heat my room. But I was impatient to see what sign Jennie was leaving for me, as it seemed that writing on windows was the easiest way she'd found to communicate messages to me. I leaned in closer to the window and exhaled deeply, filling the window with the vapor of my breath. There were three illustrations of girls' bodies, shakily drawn stick figures with circular heads and dresses. A fourth illustration was in process, and I stared, too scared to make a sound, as I watched its legs form, inches from my face. Whether it was intentional or not, I noticed that a gap had been left in between the third and fourth illustrations approximately wide enough for another drawing of a girl to have fit.

Does that mean something? I voiced inside my head, and then realized that I was being silly; there was no reason to believe that Jennie could read my mind. My breath on the window disappeared quickly, taking the drawings away with it. I exhaled again to reveal them once more.

"Three and then a fourth. Does this gap mean something?" I whispered aloud, hoping that Jennie could hear me and of course feeling like a complete freak for whispering to ghosts in the dark of my bedroom.  Another circle appeared, the start of a fifth body. Three bodies suggested Olivia, Candace, and Mischa. The fourth suggested... me? Not Trey, as it was unmistakably another girl wearing a dress. Did this drawing suggest that Violethad taken a break after predicting Mischa's death, but that maybe she'd resumed playing the game since September? Perhaps the fourth body was Tracy Hartford, her new best friend. And a fifth? I had no idea.

"Does it mean Olivia, Candace, and Mischa?" I asked again in a whisper. I tapped the window underneath the first three bodies on the cold glass to better explain to Jennie what I was asking. One, two, three—

With my third light tap on the window, suddenly the glass cracked. From the point at which my fingertip had left a tiny imprint in the rapidly disappearing condensation from my breath, the crack spread outward in all directions like a shattered lake covered in ice.

"Oh, no. No, no, no," I murmured, and took a step back.

The glass burst inward with a loud noise, showering the floor with shards of glass. I took a step back, horrified, and winced when I felt glass penetrate the tender bottom of my right foot. I froze in position, not wanting to take another step away from the window for fear of lodging even more glass in my other foot. For a moment I assessed the damage; the windows in our house were double-paned for cold weather, and only the inner pane had broken. I heard my mother's heavy footsteps storming down the hallway from her room, and floorboards creaking beneath her on her approach. My door flew open and she flipped on my light switch only to find me standing in front of my window with my mouth hanging open.

"What is going on in here?" she asked, sounding angry.

My mouth moved to explain, but she was furious. I never saw my mom exhibit anger, and didn't know how to reply. "Is Trey outside that window? If he is, I swear, McKenna, I will murder that boy."

"Mom, don't come any closer," I warned her.

She stopped to realize that the interior panel of the window had broken and fallen into a mix of long shards and tiny pieces all over my floor.  I looked down to see that my foot was bleeding all over my carpet.

"Oh, my god," she gasped. "How did this happen?"

"I don't know. I heard it pop and just got out of bed," I said innocently.

"Well, don't move. I'll get the vacuum," she said, no longer angry. I blushed and shook my head in the moments she was away, fetching the vacuum from our linen closet. How much did she know about Trey sneaking in through my window? She'd never mentioned it before that night. I would have been mortified to learn that she'd known all along that he'd been keeping me company throughout the fall when the hauntings had been more violent, but I chose not to question her about that comment when she returned and vacuumed around my feet so that I could sit down on my bed and examine the bottom of my right foot.