Hysteria (18 page)

“Because I know you. I know you were scared. I know you
are
scared.” I opened my mouth in protest but he waved me away and continued. “I know
you’re not faking it.”

He was remembering the old version of me again. He couldn’t possibly know what I was
capable of. I was betting he didn’t even know the things he was capable of. There
was a time when I didn’t know what I was capable of either. But I knew now. I knew
I was capable of anything. Anything.

“You don’t know that,” I said.

He shrugged. “Fine. Then I am choosing to believe you. See? It’s not so hard.” Except
from the way he slammed his car door, it looked like it was exactly that hard.

Taryn and Bree were huddled in the back booth, leaning over the center. Taryn was
nibbling the end of a piece of toast. Bree had scrambled eggs, but she was just moving
the pieces around the plate.

Reid and I slid into a booth at the opposite end, and I read over the menu. Reid took
it from my hands and shook his head. “Don’t bother. Only thing worth eating here is
the burger. Cheese at your own risk.”

“Um, it’s breakfast time. And why are we here if it sucks?”

“I like it because it’s away. And, like I said, good burgers.”

I pointed behind us, to Taryn and Bree. “She got eggs.”

“Bet she’s not eating it.”

I craned my neck. He was right. Taryn was still holding a barely eaten piece of toast,
whispering across the table, and then Bree backed up against the booth and hissed,
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Then Taryn reached out her hand and Bree ignored it. I heard another car pull up,
but the engine idled as a car door opened and slammed shut, and then drove away. Krista
walked in and slid into the booth beside Bree. She pushed Bree’s untouched plate to
the side and started using her pointer finger to trace something out on the table,
or make a point, or clean up crumbs. Unclear which.

The waitress arrived, too skinny for her uniform, her black hair in a tight bun. “What’ll
it be?” she said.

“Two burgers,” I answered. “No cheese.”

Krista walked past us to the napkin dispenser and pulled out a thick stack. The corners
of her mouth were turned down, and she looked painfully bored.

“What’s up with her?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t care. She and Jason share the same DNA for sure.”

“They seem like more than cousins, if you get what I’m saying.”

“Yeah. They’re close. In a weird way. But I don’t think it’s like that. I don’t know.
Maybe it is. I don’t really get her. She’s . . . she’s from someplace else.”

“Someplace else?”

“I think the Dorchesters adopted her, but it was kinda recent. So wherever she’s from,
it probably wasn’t good. And that’s a secret that surprisingly hasn’t made it into
circulation, so it must be worth something to Jason.”

I watched her walk back to her booth and hand Bree the stack of napkins. She dabbed
at her eyes, and Krista rubbed her upper back, whispering into her ear.

I ate all the burger I could, then pushed the rest to Reid. As he finished off my
leftovers, I drummed my fingers on the table and said, “What did Jason mean? When
he said you go for girls when they’re down?”

Reid swallowed whatever was left in his mouth and coughed into his closed fist. “What
he
means
is that he’s jealous.”

I could feel the rest of the answer hovering in the air, waiting for Reid. He rolled
his head around and cut his eyes to the table of girls behind us. “And he meant Taryn,”
he whispered.

Not the answer I expected. “You were with Taryn?” I whispered back.

“Kind of. Not exactly. Almost. Jason and I were roommates last year, and they were
together, and then they weren’t, and . . . it’s complicated.”

I knew there was a bunch of information left out of that sentence, skipped over in
the long pause, replaced with the word
complicated.

But I was stuck on one thing. “Taryn?” I asked again.

Reid set his jaw and leaned forward. “She wasn’t always like that. She never even
talked to Krista until . . .”

I was shaking my head to myself. If he liked girls like her, how could he possibly
like girls like me? When I looked back at Reid, he was watching their table.

“You still like her,” I said.

Reid looked at me and shook his head. “No. And I don’t think I ever really did. It
was just the situation, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I also decided right then that I definitely did not like Taryn.

Reid grinned and said, “So don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” I said. Which made him smile. Which made me furious. “I’m
not.
”

He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back. He said, “Can we get the check?” but
he was still looking at me. I knew exactly what was about to happen. We’d leave and
walk to the car and I’d stop beside the door and he’d kiss me. An inevitable string
of events, set in motion right now.

“Be right back,” I said, off to the bathroom to check for sesame seeds in my teeth.

I walked to the back of the diner, past the front counter where people sat on barstools.
Back toward the kitchen. And then I paused. Because right there, right past the bathroom,
was a chopping board. A chopping board covered in sliced tomatoes, one left mid-cut.
And a knife. Not a big one. Not like the one missing from my kitchen. But big enough.
Big enough to scare someone off. Big enough to protect myself.

Everything else faded away. The promise of Reid kissing me. The smell of ground beef,
the sound of bacon sizzling. The smoke from the barstools. Just me, two feet of emptiness,
and the knife.

I took it.

Chapter 10

I
grabbed the black handle, the blade still dripping with tomato juice, and shoved
it deep into my bag. I spun around, back to the bathroom. And Krista stood there.
In front of the bathroom door, which was still swinging behind her. Her mouth was
pressed tightly together. I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there.

So I readjusted my ponytail to keep my hands busy and said, “What’s wrong with Bree?”

She didn’t blink. “Something of very little consequence, I’m sure.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

She plastered her fake, preppy smile on and said, “But it is.”

Reid didn’t kiss me outside the diner. I didn’t give him a chance. I pulled on the
door handle over and over until he gave in and pressed the unlock button on his keychain.
Then I stared out the window.

Reid kept glancing at me on the way home. He drove with one hand on the wheel and
one on the center console, like he was thinking of reaching out and taking my hand,
but wasn’t sure how I’d react. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I’d react either. I
was too preoccupied with the fact that I could feel the blade through the fabric of
my bag, wedged between my body and the car door.

Reid flipped the headlights on, even though it was late morning, bordering on early
afternoon. The sky had grayed, and the air had that heavy feeling, like it was about
to bust. Like something big was coming.

The way it feels before a storm. Just like it felt when I was racing through the alleys
that night. I was walking and I heard footsteps and then my name . . .

“Mallory?” Reid said.

“Hmm?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Remember after the funeral, when you came in my room
—
”

“Yes, Reid. Seriously, you can stop asking that. I remember. And, unlike you, I remember
all
of it.” I didn’t know why I was acting so angry, but I couldn’t stop the way the
words came out with bite.

“No,” he said quietly. “I remember too.” A fat drop fell on the windshield, and then
another. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. It was my dad’s funeral, you know? I wasn’t
supposed to be smiling. I wasn’t supposed to feel . . . I wasn’t supposed to feel
anything.
Just hollow.”

And then the sky burst open, and Reid turned on the windshield wipers. He pulled into
campus and parked behind the student center. I couldn’t see anything, and the car
was still running, like we could go anywhere still. Like we were unfinished.

I heard Reid unbuckle his seat belt, so I unhooked mine. But he didn’t move, and neither
did I, because everything still felt unfinished. An inevitable, unalterable sequence
of events. I turned to look at Reid, and he was looking back at me, like he was thinking
the exact same thing.

Light off, light on.

I met him halfway, twisting unnaturally in my seat to get there, and my mouth found
his before his arms pulled me tighter. And the rain pelting down outside made it seem
like we were the only people in the world, and the thickness in the air made it feel
like what we were doing was not at all dangerous, like we were being pushed together,
like it was the only decision, like it was logical.

I kissed him without thinking. Of all the reasons I shouldn’t, of all the reasons
I couldn’t. And it felt like he was doing the same thing. So I crawled across the
center console, and Reid seemed surprised but not at all upset, because I felt the
corners of his mouth turn up.

And Colleen’s voice in my head was saying
Do what you want to do.

And it turns out what I wanted to do at that very moment was smile. So that’s exactly
what I did. And Reid was doing the exact same thing.

A blue car pulled up beside us, and doors slammed. Someone giggled outside our window
—
it sounded like Taryn. And then that someone tapped on our window, which made me think
it wasn’t Taryn, because Taryn didn’t seem like the type to do anything.

I slid off Reid’s lap and sat on my side again, and we both stared out the front windshield.
He turned the engine off, and the voices faded into the distance, swallowed up by
the rain.

He left his hand on the key, like he was wondering what to do next. “I can drive you
around the back entrance. It’s closer to your dorm,” Reid said.

“No,” I said, grabbing my bag. “I’ll run.”

I backed out of the car, gripping the blade through my bag. I wiped the rain from
my face, smiling, as I raced across campus. I wasn’t sure if was supposed to be smiling,
if I was supposed to feel anything at all
—
other than hollow.

Three days after Brian died, I heard a scraping sound out back. Through the kitchen.
Which I had been avoiding. But I thought maybe it was Colleen sneaking over to see
me.

But when I opened the back door, I saw Brian’s mom standing on a garbage can, looking
through the kitchen window. She saw me and stumbled
—
the garbage spilling around the patio. She crawled out of the middle of it, her fingers
digging into old food and paper and dirt. She looked up at me and she screamed, “You!”
I froze. My legs wouldn’t move.

She stood up and pieces of trash clung to her
—
a napkin on her leg, yesterday’s dinner on her elbow. I cringed. I was embarrassed
for her
—
no, I
wanted
her to be embarrassed. But she didn’t notice. And that was terrifying. She didn’t
notice anything but me. She walked toward the back door. Toward me. I focused on the
napkin clinging to her leg.