As I Descended. Robin Talley
ladies have been working your asses off in practice. You’ll crush ’em.”
The girls’ soccer team was playing its league championship next week, and it was going to be a lot harder than the guys’ game had been. Mateo’s team had won easily, and a WVU scout even showed up to watch. Mateo had been checking the mail every day since, praying for a scholarship offer.
But the girls were gearing up to play Acheron’s big rival, Birnam Academy. Birnam had won the Virginia state championship two years in a row, and all the girls on Acheron’s team were freaking out about the game. Why? He couldn’t really say. It wasn’t like any of them would need scholarships to go to college.
Some people thought the Kingsley Prize committee cared about the team’s record, but Mateo was pretty sure that theory was mostly bullshit. Just like the Kingsley Prize itself. He hadn’t even bothered to put his name in for the thing. Delilah Dufrey had it in the bag.
Mateo liked Delilah. They’d been friends since Mateo first transferred to Acheron in ninth grade. He could’ve been the weird new brown kid at school—and the gay one, to boot—but Delilah had started hanging out with him right away. When he told her he wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, she said she’d be vice president. Thanks to Delilah, joining the GSA became cool, and so did Mateo.
But if anyone had asked his opinion of the Kingsley thing, he’d have said that if some rich, dead dude wanted to give out a free ride to college, he should give it to someone who actually needed one. Not someone whose parents could afford the most expensive school on the planet four times over.
The championship game was a matter of pride for Maria and the others, though, and Mateo certainly understood about pride. Soccer was the whole reason he’d come here. Acheron had recruited him from Birnam back in middle school. Offered him a full scholarship in exchange for captaining the soccer team and upping Acheron’s diversity quotient. Getting into college didn’t feel half as sweet as listening to that crowd cheering your name.
Just then, the air conditioner stopped humming. The hall light went out. The room sank into dim candlelight.
Great. Another power failure. Acheron’s electrical system was about as old as the house itself. Someone, somewhere, was probably microwaving popcorn.
The room fell silent. Even Delilah’s giggling trailed off. Emily, who’d just been dared to dance like Beyoncé, stopped mid-hip-thrust. Mateo rummaged in his pocket for the matches they all carried and lit two extra candles on the bedside table. Across the room, Austin lit three more.
A sharp clang came from the far corner—the dark, empty corner near the boarded-over fireplace, on the wall the room shared with the old dining hall.
Caitlin squealed. Everyone turned to look in the direction of the clattering sound.
“Emily, was that you?” Mateo asked. Emily had been closest to that side of the room. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Emily shook her head. “I mean, no. Whatever that noise was, I didn’t make it.”
Maria walked unsteadily into the dark, empty corner and bent down. A photo frame lay facedown on the ground. She flipped it over. It was an old picture of her and Brandon from her beach house last summer, in a pink novelty frame that said “BFFs 4-EVA!” in block letters along the bottom. Brandon had the same picture up in his room.
The glass in the frame Maria held was cracked neatly in half, the fracture running right over Brandon’s face.
Maria frowned and turned the frame over in her hands. Lily whispered from her perch on the bed, “Don’t worry, Ree, it was a crappy picture of you anyway.”
They all laughed, even Maria.
It was weird, her and Brandon being best friends. They seemed like total opposites.
Mateo had always liked Maria, of course. Everyone did. She was smart and cute and funny. She had dimples that flashed when she smiled, and she had a way of looking at you that made you feel like you were the most important person in the world. She was the school princess, only one step down from Queen Delilah herself. Which Delilah never let Maria, or anyone else, forget.
No matter how much they adored Maria, though, the popular crowd seemed to think Brandon was barely good enough to be allowed across their threshold. That was Acheron for you. The school used to be a farm run by slaves, now it was a factory for shallowness and broken souls.
And for Maria and Brandon, most of what they had in common wasn’t stuff they talked about with everyone else. In fact, they seemed to spend most of their time together talking about everyone else.
Brandon had shown Mateo the list they used to keep in his old bio notebook. Freshman year, Brandon and Maria had made up nicknames for everyone in their class. Austin was “Pseudo-Vamp,” because he dressed all in black even though his favorite song was “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. Caitlin was “Dumber Than a Dumb Blonde Joke.” Delilah was “Her Most Insufferable Majesty.” Mateo was “Gay or Eurotrash?” (which made Mateo laugh harder than it probably should’ve). At the very bottom of the list was a name that had been crossed through so many times it was barely legible. Lily’s name. Before she and Maria got together they’d called her “Braided Just a Little Too Tight.”
Brandon kept giggling as he pointed down the list. Mateo smiled too. The names weren’t really that funny, but he was sure they’d seemed hilarious in ninth grade. He could picture the two of them lying side by side on Maria’s bed, telling jokes at their friends’ expense. Brandon had been doing it for the shits and giggles, but Mateo had a feeling Maria meant every word she wrote.
You wouldn’t know it to look at her, standing there smiling at everyone like they were her favorite people in the world, but Maria knew exactly what she wanted. How much of her was real and how much was her playing at what she thought these people expected from her?
“Hey,” Kei said. “I’ve got a scary story, actually.”
“Oh, come on,” Lily said. “Just because the lights went out that doesn’t mean we have to pretend we’re at a little kids’ slumber party.”
“What’s the matter, Lily, you scared?” Mateo grinned at her. “It’s just another blackout. What, you think La Llorona’s gonna get you in the dark?”
Lily kept her lips in a tight line. Most girls cheered up when Mateo teased them, but Lily wasn’t most girls.
When Mateo turned away, he saw Maria looking right at him. Her face was pale, her eyes narrow.
“What did you say?” she asked Mateo.
“What? About your roommate being a wuss?”
“No, the other part.”
Maria looked drunk all of a sudden. Really drunk. Mateo felt bad for not noticing sooner.
“You sure you’re okay?” Mateo asked her.
Maria must’ve imagined it. He couldn’t have said La Llorona’s name. No one knew about La Llorona except Maria.
And her old nanny, Altagracia. But Altagracia was dead.
“I’m okay,” she told Mateo.
She was not at all okay. Tonight was not a normal night. “Okay, so here’s my story,” Kei said. “Back in the Civil War, there were a bunch of Union officers camped out here, using the house as their command base, and there was a mutiny, and—”
“Everybody knows that story,” Tamika interrupted him. “The ambassadors tell it to you on the tour.”
Maria’s eyes drifted in and out of focus as she gazed from face to face. Room parties always felt endless.
“Yeah, but did you know the security guards still hear them?” Kei said. “They said you can hear the soldiers marching out on the grounds at night. They say that one lieutenant—the one who was shot by his own soldiers—you can still hear screaming at midnight when the