Chapter Two

“So you’re telling me, you think that your father was dragged into hell by an angry demon?” Mina asked, her green eyes full of tender skepticism.

 

“No, that’s what the kind folks of Ulysses thought,” Penelope said, bitterness heavy in her voice. She drew her knees to her chest and let her eyes rest on the edge of her bedspread. It had only been a few hours since Mina found her in the grove at the front of Lovell Hall and coaxed her back into the building, murmuring reassuringly It took longer than Mina had expected to get Penelope to open up and tell her about her past, about why she freaked out when Mina had looked at the picture of her parents.

 

“Okay,” Mina said. She stood and walked over to Penelope’s bed, sitting down beside her shivering roommate. “What do you think happened?”

 

“I don’t know,” Penelope started, “I guess, I think he just ran away. That he got sick of us, my mom and me, and the farm. That he was tired of Ulysses and wanted out.” It was the first time Penelope said it out loud, what she really thought about her father’s disappearance. It weighed on her heart every day to think that her father was really tired of being with his family and that he simply wanted to free himself from the responsibilities of the farm he loved so much. Or those of  Penelope and Selma both he loved dearly. Penelope squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force the tears and thoughts away and muffled her sobs with her knees. 

 

Mina watched as her roommate struggled to contain her hurt, and didn’t say a word. She wrapped her arm around Penelope’s shoulders and gave the weeping girl a gentle squeeze. Mina didn’t bother with clichés this time, simply letting Penelope release all that she had bottled in for so long. 

 

“I’m sorry, this is the worst first impression anyone has ever made,” Penelope said, her tears and breathy gasps subsiding. “You must think I’m crazy.”

 

Mina shook her head, smiling slightly, “ I don’t. I think that you were just really unlucky, and that the people where you’re from didn’t help you deal with your misfortune. Instead, they made it worse. You’re not crazy, you’re just really beaten down.”

 

Penelope looked at Mina, finally seeing her roommate for the first time. There was a kindness in Mina that she had failed to recognize, a gentle, loving spirit that Penelope had never seen in anyone other than her mother.

 

“Thank you,” Penelope muttered, smiling for the first time since she left her mother and their farmhouse behind. Mina shrugged and smiled widely before standing and crossing back over to her side of the room, which was nearly completely encased in pink adornments.

 

“You want to know something crazy I heard about this place?” Mina said, her back turned to Penelope as she finished making her bed up. Penelope was relieved at the sudden change in subject,  her smile growing. It felt like someone had removed the weight from her chest and she could finally breathe.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I heard that back in the 1930s, a boy snuck over from Champion Memorial Hall across the way,” Mina started and turned to face her roommate, a devious smile spread across her beautiful face, “And when the RAs tried to put him out, he ran into the East Wing of Lovell, where the infirmary was. Well, they never found him, so the RAs thought that he just crawled out of the window and left. Three days later, a nurse found his body in one of those rolling medal cabinets that they used to store dangerous chemicals back then. Apparently, he’d hid in one, but when he got in, he knocked over a small beaker with something really noxious in it. Because the cabinet was so tightly sealed, the fumes caused him to pass out and he suffocated.”

 

Penelope stared at her roommate with her mouth gaped open. It wasn’t the story that was so shocking, it was the intensity of Mina’s story-telling that was so surprising. 

 

“They say his ghost roams around on the floor that he died on, and that he peeps when girls are in the showers or changing in their rooms,” Mina stated matter-of-factly as she began folding her clothes, “And just guess what floor the infirmary was on.”

 

“Ours?” Penelope’s voice broke when she spoke.

 

“Yep. You know, I saw him once.”

 

“You’re lying,” Penelope said, she smirked, a little embarrassed that she fell for Mina’s game.

 

“No I’m not,” Mina defended, “I was leaving the C-Hall showers down at the very end of our corridor, and halfway to the room I heard a guy whistle. And when I turned around to see who it was, I saw him sitting on the radiator by the large window that was right outside of the bathroom. He was transparent, but I could still see his outline.”

 

“What did you do?” Penelope asked, leaning forward, intrigued by Mina’s story, even if it was highly improbable.

 

“I remembered my roommate, the one I had before you; she was a senior at the time. She was the one who told the story to me, and I was like you, I didn’t believe it,” Mina said, “Well, I remember what she said about how he had a green glow around him when he was seen in the moonlight. So I walked closer to him, not too close, because that would be dangerous even if he wasn’t a ghost. And when I got closer, I could see that he clearly had a green outline.”

 

“So…?” Penelope asked.

 

“So? So I ran as fast as I could to our room and locked the door. My roommate didn’t believe me.” 

 

Penelope laughed at the story, imagining Mina sprinting, half-naked, down the hallway trying to get away from some green specter. “I wouldn’t have believed you either.”

 

“Yeah,” Mina chuckled, “I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

 

“Was he cute?” Mina paused for a moment, recalling the event.

 

“In a weird, glowing, dead guy kind of way.” Both of them laughed, the tension in the room disappearing completely. Penelope felt a sense of peace, something she hadn’t felt for some time. She finally realized that this, this bonding with another human being, was what she had been missing for so long in Ulysses. A friend, communicating with someone other than her mother and the close-minded townspeople. 

 

The rest of the night Mina and Penelope talked, laughing at and with one another. They discussed embarrassing moments they’d both had, lingering on the comical events from earlier that day. Penelope’s face when she ran into the pillar in the lobby was a particularly hysterical subject for them both. They howled so loud that the RA had to ask them to lower their voices, though Mina and Penelope were giggling through the entire request, disregarding their noise level as soon as they thought the RA was out of earshot.

 

It was the most  "normal" Penelope had ever felt. For the first time, she could let her guard down and not worry about what was going on in the outside world and what people were thinking about her. She didn’t even care if people were thinking about her, for probably the first time in her life.

 

 

But there was someone thinking about her. The same someone who was always thinking about her. Who hadn’t stopped thinking about Penelope for over ten years. A dangerous someone who was on their way to Morgan College and would arrive there soon. Very soon.