Hysteria (25 page)

“Good to know,” I said, and I couldn’t stop the stupid smile from spreading across
my face.

“But now I gotta go kick some soccer ass. See you soon?”

“See you soon,” I promised.

And suddenly the next two days couldn’t be over fast enough. I watched him race off
to get ready for his game, and I sat under the giant oak, just staring off into the
distance. Watching while the sky turned different shades of blue as the clouds moved
across the sun. Like Colleen and I used to do on the summer evenings from the boardwalk.

I went back to my dorm to send her an e-mail. But as I walked through the lounge,
I saw Krista sitting with Taryn and Bree, and I caught the end of Krista’s sentence.
“He won’t get away with it,” she said, bringing her fist down on the coffee table
like a gavel.

I grinned, thinking how inconsequential they were. How Reid didn’t give a crap what
they said about him. How Reid was bigger than all this. And then they all followed
me with their eyes as I walked across the room. Except for Bree. Bree didn’t look
up. Like we were arguing about something.

The afternoon of the party, after I argued with Colleen, after I left her in the water
for Brian, and then after he had left me, I got a text from her. A peace offering,
I guess:
I’m
still
grounded.
But
you
should
go.

I wrote back:
Lame
without
you
anyway
.

And she wrote:
My
life
would
be
complete
if
you
had
a
Y
chromosome.

So when she showed up that night, catching fireflies on my back patio, I knew she
was doing it for me. Not for her. Not for Cody Parker. Me.

I left the girls in the lounge, and I sent Colleen an e-mail.
There
might
be
stuff
to
tell
you
, I wrote, which I knew she’d interpret as boy stuff. But I felt like I was lying
to her, by all the things I wasn’t saying. Reid’s name. The blood on my shoulder,
the fingerprints on my skin, the knife I stole and lost, or possibly just misplaced
in my psychosis. The things I saw that were not there. She sent an e-mail right back
saying she’d be ungrounded Saturday.

For the first time in a long time, I was looking forward instead of backward. To what
comes next.

Two more days.

Chapter 14

T
hat night, like always, it started with the heartbeat.
Boom, boom, boom
.

And then my name.
Mallory. Wait.

And then the hand. The fingers, digging in, grinding down through muscle and nerve.
Shocks of pain radiating down my arm.

But then, there was a different dream.

First I saw Brian’s mouth, saying, “Mallory, wait.” Like always. And then Brian’s
mother appeared, reaching a hand out to me, garbage hanging from her clothes, asking
me to wait. Then I was leaning in to kiss Reid, but his hands were on my shoulders,
pushing me back, and he was saying, “Wait.” And then Colleen was curled up behind
me on the sand, whispering, “Wait,” into my ear. And then I was walking into the fog,
wandering away from campus, down that path past the cross, and a boy was running in
front of me, getting farther and farther away, and I was the one chasing after him.
I was the one screaming, “Wait!”

Click.

My door. Was it in my dream? Or was it from that place where things that did not exist
whispered in my ear? It felt real as anything.

I jumped out of bed and my head swam like my blood was running in the wrong direction.
I dove for the door, but it was locked.

Maybe it was the closet.

I took my scissors out and held them in front of me as I flung open the closet door,
but nothing moved except the clothes, the hangers squeaking with the faintest motion.

I checked the window. This time I kept the light off. I pulled the shade up and placed
my hands against the glass, peering out. The moon was bright, and the trees looked
like tall shadows. Nothing moved.

Then I stepped back and saw a mark against the glass. A handprint. I flipped the lights
on and saw that it was red, like blood. I went closer to inspect the handprint, hoping
it was something other than blood. But it wasn’t.

And it was on the inside.

It was mine.

The moon had been bright that night, even though it was raining. And I was running,
sprinting, wheezing with each step. The alley moving by me in a blur. Feet on the
wooden boardwalk. The moon was too bright.
I
was too bright. Over the dunes. Down on the sand at high tide. The white light reflected
off the water, reflected off me. There was so much blood.

Too much blood. I didn’t understand how there could possibly be that much blood on
my hands, on my arms, on my chest. How did it get there? How did it get everywhere?

I raced toward the pier, where the boardwalk juts out. To the darkness. And I fell
onto my knees in the water and dug my hands deep under the sand, trying to scrub it
all off. I fell face-first, and I picked up fistfuls of sand and ground it into the
front of my shirt. Over my arms. Everywhere.

The salt water stung my eyes. And it stung my arms, where the blood was my own. And
then I sat back, while the water and Brian’s blood lapped around me, and I waited.
I waited. I waited.

In the light of my room, my hands came into focus. The right one was clean. The left
was coated red. I wiped it on my pants, but the red had settled into the lines of
my palm. There were no cuts. The blood was dripping from my shoulder, down my arm,
to my hand. Blood fell from my middle finger onto the floor.

I balled up a shirt and wiped up the blood. Then I pressed it to my shoulder. I was
scared to look, but I had to. The whole handprint was raw
—
blistered
—
like it had been faintly seared into my shoulder. And the blister where the pinky
finger left a mark was weeping blood.

It was nearly dawn. I ran to the bathroom and dabbed at my shoulder, hissing with
pain. I rinsed all the blood off before anyone woke up, and rebandaged it gently.
I pressed my hand down on top of it, like I might somehow hold in all the blood, or
make it clot or something.

Stop the blood.

Stop the blood. Stop the blood.
The words echoed in my head, like they were mine, but I wasn’t thinking it.
Stop the blood
, I heard it again.

My hand shook as I pressed down harder. By the time the blood stopped dripping from
the wound, people were starting to come into the bathroom, half-awake, carrying shower
caddies. I waited until they all went to class before stripping the sheets from my
bed and running everything down to the laundry room.

Another unexcused absence would land me an additional violation, according to the
handbook. I wondered what the consequence would be this time. What could they possibly
take away from me now?

After I remade the bed, my first instinct was to find Reid and show him my shoulder.
Tell him what was happening. Ask if he knew what to do. Or maybe ask nothing. Maybe
just seek some sort of comfort with him.

But we were starting over. He made me think I actually could. So when I saw him briefly
after class, before practice, I tried to mirror the smile on his face.

“Good day?” he asked.

“Great day,” I said. All these people were milling by us, smiling at Reid.

One of his teammates hooked an arm around his neck, dragging him down the hall, laughing.
I turned around, toward the other exit, and then he was beside me again, spinning
me around. Really close. His hands were on my upper arms, and he was staring at me,
like he was willing me to say something. But I didn’t. When he finally spoke, he said,
“You know what tomorrow is?”

“Saturday,” I said. He was smiling as he backed away, and was smiling still as the
crowd swallowed him up. I turned and bumped directly into Bree.

“Hey,” I said, but she tried to move around me without looking.

I stepped to the side, stood directly in her path, and said, “Bree.”

She froze, and there was something not quite right about her. I realized she was holding
her breath. Waiting.