Carmilla Read online

  “Dance?” she asks.

  Grateful for the liquid courage I was cursing a few moments ago, I answer with a smile. The touch of her hand on mine as she guides me through the maze of people to the dance floor makes my crush on her grow exponentially. She’s just so everything.

  And we have the whole year ahead of us.

  * * *

  •

  My tongue seems to be wearing a wool sweater this morning. This is exactly why I don’t go to parties. I let Betty talk me into all of those vodka pulls and Jäger Bombs, and now I’m paying the price. I look over at the lump beneath her covers. Betty. She ruled the party last night. She is officially the queen of vodka pulls at Silas University, or so said all the screaming students who were cheering her on. With each chug from her perch on the bar, the noise from the crowd was deafening.

  The light on my computer is flashing. Crap, I left the camera on. I roll up out of bed and down an entire bottle of water while I scour the room for something for my pounding headache. I spot the bottle I need in a sea of cosmetics on my dresser. Fighting with the childproof top, I yank it off and pop two. I yell to Betty, “How’s the Jäger-Bombinatrix this morning?”

  No response. Not even a stretch. I know she’s sleeping, but no one is going to need this more than she does. So I yank the covers back.

  Nothing but pillows.

  And then, before I turn away, a piece of folded paper flutters to the floor, stuck together with some unrecognizable fluid. I pry it open. “Dear Student, your roommate no longer attends Silas University …”

  I knew it. I knew that party was a mistake. I should have insisted we stay home, but no, I succumbed to the pressure to fit in, to be a normal college freshman who chugs beer and hammers shooters on a Friday night instead of studying. And now Betty is kicked out of school? I text her on my flip phone. Yeah, my dad thought I’d sext selfies to strangers on an iPhone, so this was my only option. He gives new meaning to the words “better safe than sorry.”

  My first text goes unanswered. Another also goes into oblivion.

  My mind starts racing a mile a minute. I mean, I go from zero to one-eighty. Whatever her future is at Silas, where is she now? What if she’s lying on the side of the road?

  What kind of roommate am I? Did I lose her or did she lose me? Calm down, Laura, I tell myself. We’re at college — maybe she hooked up with someone. That has to be it. My inner dialogue seems to be working. My heart rate is slowing down.

  I scan my computer, checking her social media. Nothing since the pic of us playing flip cup with Danny and a couple of knucklehead Zetas. Betty’s a poster. I mean, she posts her every move. Her breakfast. Her outfits. Everything. So why the silence?

  My heart picks up its pace again.

  What can I do but text? Hey, not to be a freak but are you alive? Hookup?

  I add a laughing emoji to lighten it up and force myself to lie back down. That lasts about forty-five seconds before I pop up to check my phone. Nothing. Maybe I need some cookies.

  I rip open a box of vanilla wafers. She’s definitely missing. I pause. Do I want to be the overreactive friend who panics? Maybe she’s fine.

  What if she’s not?

  I comb the college directory to figure out who to call. I pound in a number in the housing office, hoping someone will answer at this ungodly hour on Saturday morning. I shake the vodka cobwebs out.

  “Yes! A person!” I scream when I hear a voice on the other end of the phone. “I want to report a missing person.” I don’t even wait for a response. “My roommate disappeared last night and all I found was a sticky note, and there is no way in hell or Hogwarts that she would bolt in the middle of the night and leave me with a cryptic scrap of paper.”

  Plus, she was too drunk to do anything other than pass out. I keep that fact to myself. She was just drunk. Now she’s gone. Simple.

  “No.” I interrupt the lame-sauce BS they’re feeding me. “No one leaves a multiple-choice note,” I insist. That’s the weirdest part of all.

  I listen, bobbing my head, then I cut the guy off. “Sir, this is what was left behind. I will read it to you word for word so that you can comprehend the situation.

  “Dear Student,

  Your roommate no longer attends Silas University. He or she has (a) lost his or her scholarship and has decided to go home; (b) elected to attend another school due to your extreme incompatibility [please, never]; (c) experienced a psychological event that left him or her unfit for student life or (d) cited personal reasons, and really, why does anybody do anything? Exit procedures have commenced. No action on your part is needed.”

  Obviously, this is a load of crap. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense. But I listen. Listen some more. Until I can’t stand another word. I take a deep breath and try to be reasonable. “Sir, I don’t think you’re getting the drift of this. I do not need a new roommate. My old roommate is perfect. It’s just that she vanished last night. Disappeared. Something is terribly wrong. I can feel it.”

  He explains that some kids just flip out and not to worry, they’ll get me another roommate shortly. He mentions that I’m overreacting. He’s clearly not getting it.

  At the end of my rope, I holler, “Obviously you’re refusing to help me! I demand to talk to a supervisor!

  “You can’t hang up on me!” I scream to no one. I’m ready to throw the phone across the room, except where would I even replace a flip phone? I know I can be a tad high-strung but my gut is telling me that we are at DEFCON 1.

  Betty, where are you? I wait a few minutes, then my texts get a bit more frantic. You need to text me before I call the police. I need to know that you’re ok. NOW.

  Crickets.

  So I’m on my own in my quest to find my missing roommate. This calls for all the junk food, starting with more of these vanilla wafers and maybe some chips. I find a number for campus security, but my phone rings before I get lost in the automated abyss.

  “Yes, I am the one with the missing roommate. Thank you so much for calling.” Finally, someone who cares. I listen to the babbling and I have to cut her off right away. Why do these people not get it? “No, I do not need a new roommate! I need to find my old one. She’s missing!” I shout. Once again, I’m silenced by a dial tone.

  My laptop is the only sign of life in this room. “Fine. If no one wants to help, I will find her myself,” I say. “I’m not backing down.” Yes, now I’m having a conversation with a computer.

  I don’t know how, but I will. I close my eyes, willing my head to stop pounding.

  This is basically my father’s worst nightmare about college come to life. Hangovers, debauchery, kidnapping. Maybe it’s all a bad dream. I get back into bed, hoping to start all over by going to sleep.

  I toss, I turn, I get caught in the covers like a fish in a net. I try counting sheep, meditating. Nothing works, so I throw the sheet off and get up.

  I make a cup of coffee and drag my fingers through my hair. How the hell am I gonna pull this off? I have to find a way. People don’t just disappear in the middle of the night. Do they?

  A noise outside of my door startles me … but not as much as when it opens. Standing smack in the middle of the doorway is a raven-haired girl wearing black leather pants and an attitude for days, looking like she’s fresh off a Harley. She unnerves me. “Who are you?”

  “Carmilla, your new roommate, sweetheart,” she answers. Why does she seem so … superior? She’s the new one here.

  “Um, no,” I say hesitantly, “there’s been a mistake. This isn’t happening, I have a roommate.”

  She blatantly ignores me, reaching into the fridge and helping herself to one of my sodas. “Don’t you catch on fast.”

  I double back. “No. I mean I have a preexisting roommate, her name is B-Betty,” I stammer.

  Carmilla surveys the room. “Really? Where is she?”r />
  “She’s missing,” I snap. This girl is really getting on my nerves.

  She strides around the room like she owns the place. Never taking her dark eyes off me, she waves a piece of paper in my direction. “Well, I live here now, per my letter from the dean of students. And no one dares to question her.” She’s sarcastic but serious. She’s ballsy, I’ll give her that.

  Carmilla tosses her backpack on the bed, then starts ransacking Betty’s stuff. Tossing aside her jeans, picking through her pile of clean laundry. When she picks up Betty’s shirt, holding it up to herself, I flip. “Hey, that’s not yours.” Jesus Christ, what is wrong with her?

  Her lips turn up and she cocks her head. “It’s on the bed that’s now mine. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, cutie.”

  I don’t like the way she says that, so I snatch the shirt away from her.

  Carmilla shrugs. “Until you cough up Betty, I’m your new roommate and this is my side of the room.” She draws an invisible line between our beds with her index finger. She grabs the cookies from my desk and plops down on Betty’s bed, scrolling through her phone and munching away.

  “I’ll find Betty so fast that there will be scorch marks on those leather pants of yours.”

  The grin on her face rattles me.

  And that’s before she blows me a kiss.

  • THREE •

  After another night of insomnia, I stare at my stack of textbooks. I’m certain I look like a wreck. Rat’s nest for hair, ice cream stains on my T-shirt. I’m surrounded by coffee, cookies and a box of my favorite chocolate-crunch cereal, attempting to start the outline for the big paper that counts as half of my grade. I don’t have one single word written, and I never procrastinate. College is hard. And different. At least this one is.

  After half an hour, I have to admit I just can’t concentrate. I’ll work on my journalism project instead. It’s turning into more of a detailed video account of the manhunt for my lost roommate. Hey, that’s a strange phenomenon at Silas University, right? Every time I try to talk about anything, it turns into my quest to locate Betty.

  Carmilla is nowhere to be found, which is fine by me. The less I have to interact with her, the better. I wish she was the one who was lost.

  I turn the camera on and begin my vlog entry, keeping my voice low just in case. “Betty is still missing and she has been replaced with the roommate from hell. Look at this footage.” I click a link to what the camera caught while I was in class this week. “She steals my chocolate, she wears Betty’s clothes, she’s never up before four o’clock and there’s a nonstop stream of girls in our room. Check this out — this is a girl from my anthropology class with Carmilla on my bed.”

  Danny should be there with me.

  “Carmilla is the worst.”

  I dunk a Pop-Tart in my coffee. “Well, guess what,” I continue. “I told the girl of the week that Carmilla has a longtime girlfriend. She went crazy. Bam, revenge is mine. Now, I’m gonna use her soy milk on my cereal.” Maybe no one is following my video blog, but I sure feel better.

  I reach into the fridge for her box of nondairy blech. MINE is scrawled in black Sharpie across the front, like she has to protect it. She has one thing in the fridge and lays claim to it while eating all of my food as she pleases.

  I pop open the box and pour the soy milk all over my cereal. And I’m not gonna lie — I feel smug and victorious until I look down. The shrieking sound I’m sure the entire campus just heard came from the depths of my being.

  This isn’t soy milk at all.

  It’s blood. Or something that looks suspiciously like it.

  The floor monitor, Perry, rushes into my room trailed by her sidekick, LaFontaine. I mean, these two are never apart. Perry is the dorm’s resident worrier, like a mom away from home. She’s by the books; rules are her jam. Perry is preppy, straitlaced and so uptight, her rules have rules. LaFontaine is all punked out in an X-Files T-shirt and jeans, their short, spiky hair gelled to perfection. Like my high school friend Sam, they’re genderqueer.

  I am officially freaking out. “Do you see this? It’s definitely blood. Isn’t it? How could there be blood? This is the most disgusting thing ever. It’s blood!” I yell, waving my bowl of befouled cereal at them. Carmilla has ruined a perfectly good bowl of chocolate goodness.

  LaFontaine and Perry stand close together, exchanging glances. Inspecting the cereal, LaFontaine says, “Well …” Like Carmilla should be innocent until proven guilty or something.

  “Come on, you guys, it’s blood. For sure. And, it’s the only thing that she keeps in the refrigerator. Not a crumb of anything else. She drinks it all the time. Something isn’t right.”

  Suddenly I see a pattern here adding up to who knows what. Carmilla never studies, she’s out all night and girls throw themselves at her. She tends to appear out of nowhere. It’s spooky.

  And, well, the blood.

  Perry assesses the situation. “I admit that I find it a bit odd.”

  LaFontaine nods. “Odd? That’s where you’re going with this? No one takes type O in breakfast cereal. She’s off. Sounds like there’s something terribly wrong with this one.”

  “Thank you.” I almost kiss LaFontaine, I’m so happy to have someone on my side.

  Perry dismisses her friend’s comment with a tone in her voice that grates on my last nerve. “You are not here in an official capacity, Susan.”

  “Do not call me Susan,” LaFontaine barks. I have to admit that the name LaFontaine fits. I’ve never known a Susan who could pull off the funky badass that LaFontaine does. I mean, my grandmother’s name is Susan. Case closed.

  “That has been your name since I’ve known you, you know, for the last sixteen years,” Perry snaps.

  “Well, now my name is LaFontaine.” They are not giving an inch.

  Perry turns to me. “Maybe you should let Carmilla explain. It might be some sort of a protein supplement.”

  “Right. For extreme hemoglobin deficiency?” quips LaFontaine.

  I scoff loudly.

  “Not helping.” Now Perry’s getting pissed.

  LaFontaine rolls their eyes. “Sorry, Perry, I know you want to believe the weird here is all Dr. Seuss, but in my world the Alchemy Club tests subjects in the cafeteria and participates in all sorts of bizarre things one hundred percent of the time. Silas is all about the weird, like it or not. As this floor’s unofficial truth speaker, I’m gonna tell Laura here to wise up if she wants to survive.”

  Gulp. “Survive? Carmilla wants me dead?”

  “Anything’s possible.” LaFontaine is not making me feel any safer.

  Still acting like everything is roses and unicorns, Perry argues, “A lot can be solved with good communication —”

  LaFontaine cuts her off and turns to me and says, “Or a lot of things can be solved with hair and blood samples.” Then whips out a syringe. My startled gasp stops any further action.

  “I’m a bio major,” LaFontaine explains. “It’s totally cool. It’s what we do.”

  I can’t take it anymore. This place is nuts. The door to my room blows open, but no one’s there. It could be just a draft in the hallway, but nothing here is what it seems.

  Nothing.

  I’m not going to let the bloody cereal distract me from my bigger problem. Why is Carmilla here in the first place? Because Betty is still missing, and it’s been days.

  “If I’m going to get anywhere, I think I should go to the dean,” I tell Perry and LaFontaine. “Surely, she’ll get right on this. One of her students has vanished into thin air. It’s not normal.”

  Perry and LaFontaine face each other and shake their heads knowingly. “Yeah, no. That’s not such a good idea,” they say in unison. This, at least, they agree on.

  I’m not understanding. “What good is a dean of students who doesn’t help students? Isn
’t that her job?”

  “Well, she’s not really known as the warm and fuzzy type. She likes things her way,” LaFontaine explains.

  Perry softens her tone. “The only thing she would do is assign you another roommate. Carmilla is better than what could be.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I argue. “She’s awful. She’s up all night, drinks blood and is a total slob. Did I mention she drinks blood? There’s not one redeeming quality about her. She is no Betty.”

  “You might get a snorer or hater,” LaFontaine insists. “Don’t call attention to yourself with the dean. Trust me. Wait it out. I’m sure Betty will come back.”

  “All the other girls that disappeared did,” Perry adds.

  All the other girls?

  “All what other girls?” I ask, my voice cracking. This is a new level of weird and slightly terrifying, if I’m being honest.

  “It’s not like they stayed gone. They returned to campus,” Perry starts to explain.

  Now my head is spinning. “Let me get this straight. More than one girl disappeared from campus and no one said anything? No one did anything?” Or thought to mention it till now?

  Perry stammers and backpedals. “It wasn’t really that unusual. Girls having fun. Maybe they got a little carried away. You know.”

  “No, I really don’t.” A tiny part of me wonders if my dad was right to be worried about me coming here.

  “How do you not know this?” LaFontaine asks. “Two girls from our floor disappeared, then showed up a few days later — one in her dorm room, the other in psych lab — with zero memory of anything in between. Like, zilch.”

  “Why the hell would I just happen to know this?”

  LaFontaine gives me the once-over. “Everyone does.”

  “It was the beginning of frosh week,” says Perry. “Week one. There were nonstop parties. You know that. Burning the candle at both ends, twenty-four seven. I’m sure they just had too much to drink.”

  “Because that causes random disappearances?” LaFontaine says.

  I stand up, pleading. “You know these girls? I need to talk to them. Now. They might be able to help us find Betty.” The answers could be right in front of us! Betty could be back tomorrow!