A hush fell over the room.

Oh God. Had someone else seen the kids on the lake? Maria had been sure she was the only one.

“Have you?” Austin asked.

“Well, no,” Caitlin said. “But you know the story, right?”

“Oh, sure,” Ryan said. “I mean, they teach that story to all the ambassadors, too. But it’s bullshit about there being stupid lake ghosts. Come on.”

“Wait, what story?” Mateo asked.

“The little kids say the lake has ghosts,” Ryan said. “The true part of the story is, back in the seventies, when the school grounds first got extended to include the lake, there were three kids who drowned all in one night.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. It was one thing to think about Civil War soldiers dying on their campus, but the seventies weren’t that long ago.

“That’s why no one’s allowed to swim there,” Kei added. “I heard there’s, like, a whirlpool way out in the deep part that sucks you under.”

“The little kids think there’s a bogeyman who grabs you and drags you to the bottom,” Ryan said. “I think the school made that up so people would be too scared to go swim there. Like the one about the football players.”

“No, that one’s true too,” Mateo said. “I heard it before I came here. My parents told me they’d kill me if I ever went near the football field during a thunderstorm.”

“That’s an urban legend,” Ryan said. “You can’t really die just because you’re on a football field and lightning hits the goalposts. Do you pay attention in physics at all?”

“But the one about the lake is totally true,” Caitlin said. “There are pictures of the kids who died in an old yearbook. They were a guy and two girls and they were all in, like, a love triangle.”

“A love triangle?” Austin said. “Spare me.”

Maria had seen the kids on the lake. And there were four of them, not three. But she’d only told Lily and Brandon about that.

Brandon. Oh God, Brandon. She still had to figure out what to say to him about last night.

He’d pulled her into a side corridor that morning after class, breaking away from Felicia, the little freshman who always followed him around like a puppy.

“What the hell happened last night?” Brandon had whispered to Maria. “Did you have a psychotic break or something?”

“Of course not.” Maria had shifted her backpack strap on her shoulder, her heart pounding. She should’ve come up with some reasonable-sounding explanation, but all she’d been able to do since the chandelier fell was replay the spirit’s message in her head. The chiming voice she’d heard sing each line as the planchette spelled them out.

“So what was that?” Brandon asked. “How was that thing writing stuff when you and Lily had your eyes closed?”