That looks really creepy. I gotta see it.

Catherine Morland, with her lack of self-awareness and morbid curiosity, eyed the double brass doors at the end of the corridor. It was practically a siren call.

Music pulsated from the auditorium, and she could hear screeches and laughter. Occasionally, a classmate of hers would stumble out into the hall and flash a saucy smile, only to be reeled back in by an impatient girl in a skimpy dress.

Her eyes darted back to the end of the hall, the doors of which have been chained shut for the last fourteen years. The scorched and long-abandoned East Wing of Northanger Prep was really the only aspect of remote fascination in this droll hellhole.

"Cat?"

She shut her eyes. Shit. Nadine was back.

Nadine Allen looked overjoyed to see her, so Cat plastered the most banal smile on her face for her cousin's sake. The girl, sandy-haired and a little plump, leaned against the wall beside her.

"I've been looking everywhere for you! You don't want to dance?"

"Nah," Cat shrugged. "I'm kind of over Homecoming. It was never really a big deal at my old school."

That was partially true. But also, she just needed a breather from dodging John Thorpe's never-ending offers to dance. He had been texting her all week since they had been paired off in AP Biology for dissections. A master of the humble brag, Cat had decided quite early that he was a douche and a half. And by Murphy's law, he obviously liked her.

"Homecoming is huge here. Get on board," Nadine interrupted her reverie. She straightened the hem of her dress. "I'm a little mortified. Isabella Thorpe is wearing a coral dress too. I mean like, hers is a totally different cut. But nobody else but the two of us is wearing coral."

Cat frowned, thought about choosing her next words delicately, but then changed her mind. "Does it matter?"

Nadine stared at her as if she had just sprouted three more heads and for a moment, Cat wondered how their fathers were even siblings. "Yeah, it matters."

She got a swift swell of homesickness for Fullerton High, her public school back home, renowned for its lack of fucks and the stoners camping out in the bathrooms. Also for the sex scandal that rocked the district back in 2009.

Nobody cared about anything at Fullerton. Kids were relaxed to a fault, easy-going, too familiar with one another to partake in idle gossip. Cruising the same public school train that would predictably drop them off at a comfortable, bumblefuck state college. But it had been two weeks here at Northanger. Two weeks of boys wearing polos and boat shoes, two weeks of girls who were blonde, thin and sunkissed. Everybody's dad was an investment banker and everybody's mother volunteered at bake sales and shopped at Lilly Pulitzer. Winter weekends skiing were common, and the yellow brick road of Northanger typically lead to an Ivy League.

Dennis Leeds eventually found Nadine and pulled her away to dance, and Cat breathed an audible sigh of relief and slumped down to sit on the floor. She was vaguely aware of ruining her dress, a short pretty cream-colored number she had rescued from a clearance rack at Macy's, but the night was winding down and she couldn't bring herself to care. Her dark hair has been falling out of its chignon for the last half hour, so she twisted a tendril round her forefinger and stared absently at the barricaded East Wing, formulating explanations for its secrets in her mind.

The legends about it were muddled, but two facts remained concrete. The place went up in flames on November 11th, 1999—the very same night that the headmistress, Genevieve Tilney, disappeared. Her body was found five days later in Burbage Park, at the bottom of a lake. A suicide. No sign of foul play.

"She was apparently a little Looney Tunes," Nadine had told Cat the first night she arrived, from the common area of the girl's dormitory. They had split a bag of popcorn as she divulged Northanger's deepest secrets. "They found a bunch of narcotics in her system. Don't ever talk about in front of the Tilney twins though. Lord knows this district can't wait to cycle those two out and start fresh. It's a little spooky, having them around."

Cat never officially met the Tilney twins, but Eleanor Tilney was in her physics class. She sat up front, took diligent notes, and always answered Dr. Leonardi's questions correctly. All she knew about Eleanor was that she was quite brilliant, and that her golden blonde hair was always pulled back into an enviably perfect ponytail.

A gaggle of girls burst out of the ladies' room and Cat watched them as they filtered back into the auditorium. Isabella Thorpe, resplendent in her coral dress, smiled down at Catherine. "Pretty dress."

"Thank you." Cat smiled back. Her cheeks tinged pink, flattered at being acknowledged. Isabella rejoined her friends, and the corridor was peacefully silent once more.

"Don't be too gracious."

Cat turned. There was a boy standing several feet away from her, leaning against the brick wall as Nadine had done before. He had coppery, untidy hair. He had his cell phone out—and he was smirking. "Isabella Thorpe is very good at false flattery."

Cat paused, slightly insulted. "I don't think it was false."

"It is a pretty dress," the boy agreed. "Don't get me wrong. But I can tell when she's being insincere. I've known her for many years." He turned to look back at his phone.

She stared at him without really meaning to, and he confronted her gaze.

"You admiring my outfit?" he asked playfully.

"Well, you're not exactly dressed for dancing, are you?"

"Why not? I can bust out some sweet moves in jeans," he smiled. "No, I'm not here to dance. I'm just picking up my sister. I really wish she would answer my texts." He didn't say it angrily at all, but whimsically. As if it was all amusing to him.

Cat frowned. "Are you a student here?"

"Yes."

"Do you live in a dormitory?"

"Yep! Just home for the weekend while my dad's in town," he answered. At her puzzled look, he added, "He's in the military."

"Oh," Cat nodded and pursed her lips. She looked toward the end of the hall as shyness overcame her. Suddenly, his voice sounded much closer. "It's haunted you know."

Cat gasped. He was sitting next to her now, not close at all, but close enough to startle her.

"Wow, you're jumpy. That was so much easier than I thought it would be."

"You scared the shit out of me!"

"That's what I was going for! You zoned out for a second. I thought it would be easy to scare you. Especially if I caught you looking at the notorious East Wing."

She hesitated. "Is it really haunted?" Cat asked, timid.

He raised his eyebrows at her, and Cat decided that she liked his face. The dark expressive eyes. The wide mouth. Then he grinned. "You're a transfer, aren't you?"

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"Where from?"

"Fullerton High."

"Yeesh," he chuckled.

"Something wrong with Fullerton?" she asked primly.

"Not at all," he said. "If you like burnouts and stoners. I love 'em. They're the best company. Never a dull moment. What's your name?"

"Are you like, interrogating me?"

"I like am."

She was blushing now. She was sure of it. Her face felt unnervingly hot. "Catherine Moreland."

He took her hand and smiled. "Henry."

John Thorpe poked his head out of the doorway and called her name. Cat couldn't believe how horrid her luck was. Here her douchebag assailant came, ready to harass her into a dance again. Could it even be called dancing? Civilization must have be in some sort of moral decline in an age where boys could sneak up behind girls, gyrate their hips into their posteriors and call this romance. "Isabella told me you were out here but I refused to believe it. I thought to myself: how could Cat be avoiding me, of all people?"

Cat grimaced.

A cell phone rang and the boy called Henry answered, rising fluidly to his feet. "Hey there. Yeah, I'm by the front office. Meet you in a minute." Then he turned around. "Nice meeting you, Catherine."

"You too."

She watched him round the corner and disappear from view.

John didn't even try to conceal his jealousy. "Don't befriend the wrong type of people here at Northanger. I'd be careful about who I talk to here. Henry Tilney is what you call your standard elusive troublemaker. I'm sure your school had one, too."

Cat turned her head back towards the charred chained doors, yearning for their secrets. "Not exactly."