The Grace Year

As the days continue, the girls are purged of the contaminated well water, and there are “crying fits, bursts of anger, wanting to claw their own skin off” as the entire camp goes through withdrawals (309). Among them, Tierney feels “out of sync, out of time” (309). Tierney still hears the strange scratching noise, and she thinks the bones of the dead girl are slowly moving into different positions. Every morning, Tierney’s hair is mysteriously braided. Tierney stays busy, but she thinks of Ryker constantly. Although the girls are getting better, Tierney worries that they will never give up their intense fixation on their magic.

Tierney wonders if she is being haunted by the dead girl and the sound of her red ribbon “grating against the bones of her throat” (312). She reluctantly tells the other girls a ghost story about the girl and how she was strangled with her red ribbon and left in the woods. One girl suggests that the dead girl’s ghost is looking for her killer, and Tierney wonders if the girl was killed by other grace year girls. Later, Tierney tells Gertie that there might be some truth to the ghost story, but Gertie laughs and dismisses the idea.