Delilah knew every turn by heart. Everything was perfectly still, empty but for the girl slipping between shadows, looking for a sign that things happened in the school after dark. Searching for some long-forgotten history that would come alive only when the students were all safely tucked in their beds.
She’d been caught once, two weeks before she was jerked back home for good. Father John had found her tiptoeing down the hall between Sister Judith’s ceramics classroom and the auditorium. In that small stretch was an old jeweled chest from the eighteenth century, an elaborate work of art and wealth that simply sat, so trusting, in the middle of an ordinary hallway. The chest was big enough to hold a small child or, Delilah preferred, a very patient hellhound.
“Hunting for ghosts?” Father John had asked from behind her, making Delilah jump.
Once her heartbeat slowed, she admitted, “Yes, sir.”
She’d expected a lecture, maybe one of his bits of wisdom. But instead he’d smiled knowingly at her, nodded, and said simply, “Back to your room, then.”
Her parents had no idea of these fascinations; Delilah had worked hard to keep this side hidden. It hadn’t been that hard, living more than a thousand miles away for the past six years, and also given who her parents were: Her mother had cardigans in every shade of pastel and had worn the same brand of sensible penny loafers for as long as Delilah could remember. Her mother’s books all had bare, muscled chests on the covers, and her hobby was collecting tiny ceramic animals, which were a form of creepy that Delilah had never really appreciated.
Her father, before he lost his job, had been a workaholic, and when he was home he was generally planted in front of the television, where he would be grousing about something or another. To Delilah, he was an inanimate object in a dad suit: Since she’d been home, Delilah had the sense that she wouldn’t have known her father better even if she’d lived at home these past six years.
Though Delilah had longed for a sibling, none had ever appeared, and she’d had to settle for her partner-in-single-childom, Dhaval Reddy, whose parents were as obsessive and attentive as her own were disinterested. But while Dhaval’s rebellion would turn out to be his loud and exuberant manner in a gently spiritual household, Delilah’s quirky obsession would always remain silent: She had hundreds and hundreds of drawings of severed heads, fists curled cruelly around still-beating hearts, and dark, endless tunnels squirreled away beneath the loose floorboard in her closet.
It was the same dark fascination that drew her to Gavin Timothy.
Dhaval was with her when the obsession started. They were nine and had been at the theater watching Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Delilah had insisted they sneak into Corpse Bride after and had made him sit through two consecutive shows. Her life in the tiny square mile of Morton felt small and easy, oppressively ordinary. The idea that another world like this could exist—one that wasn’t beige or boring or safe—was like a siren song.
The next day at school was the first time Delilah really noticed Gavin. He was tall and hunched, with hair so dark and shaggy it would have covered his entire face if Miss Claremont hadn’t made him at least tuck it behind his ears. His eyes even then were ringed with darkness below and long black lashes above. He had no blush to his cheeks, but bloodred lips and arms so long and skinny they seemed to be made from string.
Gavin had always been her classmate, but she’d never really noticed him before that day. For as much as he looked other—like he’d stepped straight out of the movie from the day before—he’d mastered the ability to vanish in a crowd.