Read Pretty Please (Nightmare Hall) for Free Online

on for Friday night, right?”
    Jo nodded absentmindedly. She was thinking how different campus looked in the dead of winter. Last October, the big old trees lining the walkways had exploded in a riot of wildly blazing red, purple, gold and russet. Now, their branches stretched bleakly upward, black and bare. The velvety grass that had been thick and green in September was hidden under a thin layer of yellowing snow left over from the most recent snowstorm.
    Winter wasn’t all that kind to the campus of Salem University.
    But it was still beautiful and she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. That girl she’d heard about who had left so suddenly must have been really miserable there not to be able to wait until spring.
    Spring…by spring, her face would be healed. “Good as new,” the doctor had said.
    Really?
    Hard to believe just now.
    Jo raised a hand to touch the bandage on her cheek.
    “It is hurting, isn’t it?” Evan asked, noticing the motion.
    “No. But I’m cold. I need to get inside, where it’s warm, okay? See you later.”
    When she reached the door to Lester, she glanced over her shoulder. Evan was standing in the middle of the walkway, watching her.
    Inside, their resident advisor, Bev, was sitting at the desk in the lobby. “Got a package for you,” she said as Jo moved toward the elevator.
    “A package? For me?”
    “Um-hmm.” Bev reached down beneath the desk and pulled out a large, octagonal-shaped box. Yellow stripes. Big yellow bow on top. But strangely, there was no card.
    “Who’s it from?”
    Bev shrugged. “Some delivery guy dropped it off.” She glanced up at Jo. “Your birthday?”
    “My birthday’s in July.” But Jo took the box and looped the yellow ribbon over her wrist. Her mother wouldn’t send a care package in this kind of box. It looked like a hatbox. Her mother never wore hats.
    Besides, the box was from a local department store. Ogilvie’s. Very expensive. Nan shopped there all the time.
    Jo smiled. Had her friends gotten a get-well gift for her? Had Nan and Kelly hunted all over Ogilvie’s for just the perfect thing to cheer her up?
    What a sweet thing to do!
    “Sorry about your accident,” Bev said. “You okay?”
    Jo nodded and headed for the elevator. The fourth floor hall was quiet. Good. Maybe she could take a quick nap before Kelly got home.
    But first, she wanted to see what Nan and Kelly had selected for her.
    She dropped the box on her bed, along with her books and jacket. After taking an aspirin for her headache, she returned to the bed and lifted the lid on the yellow-striped box.
    Tissue paper…mounds of pale yellow tissue paper.
    Jo unfolded the sheets of yellow to reveal what was hidden inside.
    Black…a pile of black, lying there in the depths of the box.
    And suddenly Jo knew—this was not a get-well gift from her friends.
    Jo’s hands began to shake. As if hypnotized, she reached down and withdrew the black object lying in the yellow-striped box.
    It was a hat.
    She held in her hands a wide-brimmed black hat. A thickly layered black veil hung from the brim all the way around its edges.
    If I put this hat on, Jo thought numbly, holding it out in front of her, my face will disappear from sight. If I put this hat on and drop this veil over my face, I’ll be just like the draped mirrors. Hidden. Not one part of my face will show.
    That’s what someone wants. Someone wants my face hidden. Someone wants me to put on this hat and hide my face from view.

Chapter 8
    J O WAS STILL SITTING on her bed, staring down at the black hat, slowly turning it around and around in her hands, when Kelly and Nan walked in. They dropped their books on Kelly’s bed and turned to face Jo.
    “Where did you get that ?” Kelly asked, coming over to take a closer look at the hat. “Is that what you’re wearing to Cath’s party? What are you going as, a grieving widow?”
    Nan reached out playfully, grabbed the hat and plopped it on her head, letting the thick