Hysteria (27 page)

“Interesting,” said Officer Dowle, and I didn’t know whether she was talking about
my story or my shift in tenses.

“Okay, so last night,” Officer James continued.

“I took a sleeping pill. Like every night.”

“And why,” Officer Dowle said, staring at my face, “do you take sleeping pills?”

“To sleep,” Dad cut in. The look he gave Officer Dowle made her look away.

She cleared her throat and raised her eyes back to Dad. “Yes, well, I assume I know
the reason why.”

“Then you should also know that she wasn’t charged. It was self-defense.”

“Was
this
self-defense?” Officer Dowle asked, but she was still looking at Dad.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

They stared each other down. Officer James cleared his throat. “Did you hear anything
after that, Mallory?”

“No. Nothing. I was sleeping and when I woke up . . .” The ringing in my ears was
back, and Mom gripped my arm.

I could barely hear Officer Dowle over the ringing. She leaned forward and placed
her hand on my left leg through the sheet. “Sometimes when people take sleeping pills,
they don’t really sleep. They think they do, but they don’t. They just don’t remember.
My brother took a sleeping pill once. He got up for work the next morning, packed
a lunch, got into a fender-bender on the way. But he didn’t remember any of it.” Then
she placed her other hand on my right leg and said, “Do you think that could’ve happened
to you?”

I thought about it. I thought about what I was capable of. My parents must’ve been
thinking about it too. Because nobody said,
Oh, Mallory wouldn’t do that
, or
Mallory’s not capable of that
. Instead my father turned to me and said, “Don’t answer that.”

Officer Dowle squeezed my legs and grinned. They both turned to leave, and then Officer
Dowle turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. The knife. Any idea where it came from?”

The room seemed to hold its breath. I closed my eyes and said, “It’s mine.”

It was hard to explain why I’d have a knife without going into the reasons why I would
want a knife. I told them someone stole it. And then I added, “My old roommate. Brianne
Dalton. She knew I had it.” Then I repeated, “Brianne Dalton,” slowly, hoping someone
would write it down. But nobody did. The cops weren’t buying it, I could tell. They
took my fingerprints and left the room. Dad looked at me in that way where he’s asking
a question without actually saying anything.

“I was scared,” I said, my voice breaking. “I thought I saw . . .” Dad shifted his
eyes quickly to Mom.

“You thought you saw
what
?” she asked.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I thought I saw Brian’s mom.”

“No. No. That’s not possible,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I said
I thought I saw
instead of
I saw
. It was foggy, but I was
—
” And then I stopped talking because I wasn’t sure exactly what I was.

It sure seemed real. Just like the hand on my shoulder, which was definitely not real.

Dad whipped out his cell, even though there was a sign in the room that said
no cell phones
, and I could tell it was the lawyer on the other end. And then Mom started talking
to me about absolutely nothing, trying to distract me from the other conversation.

We stayed at the hospital that night, because we had nowhere else to go. And the next
day people asked me the same questions over and over, and I said the same thing, over
and over, which all amounted to absolutely nothing except me trying to reason out
how Jason ended up dead on my floor. By the end of the day, it was clear I was not
going to be arrested. But I might be in the future. Something about circumstantial
evidence. Something about the knife. Something about my blood. Something about Jason’s
blood.

Officer James came back and said, “You’re free to go, but you’ll need to stay in this
jurisdiction.” And it felt like this weight lodging in my gut. Like I had been waiting
for something to happen. Just
something.
But nothing happened. I was stuck in the in-between, which somehow felt worse than
being accused or arrested or something.

So we drove back to campus for a meeting. Well, my parents had a meeting. I had a
date with the backseat of their car.

We were parked behind the main building, wedged between the back of the bleachers
and the Dumpsters behind classes.

There was a shape under the bleachers. Hunched down in a ball. Motionless. I got this
sick feeling in my stomach, like I was a magnet for dead bodies.

I pushed my door open, shattering the silence. The shape didn’t move. I walked across
the pavement and crunched a leaf under my shoe. Fall coming early. Things dying. And
then I stepped into the soft grass, and still the shape did not move. Light hair fell
across her arms and knees. I cleared my throat and said, “Hello?”

Bree’s head shot up. And then she started rocking back and forth a little. “Bree?
Are you okay?”

She glanced around at the emptiness. Then she stared at me and tightened her arms
over her knees and said, “This is where Jason kissed me.”

“I’m
—
I didn’t know you were together.”

“We weren’t together,” she whispered, like she was saying something important, a secret,
which was as important as it got here at Monroe. And then she laughed, loud and sharp,
like maybe she was making fun of me. Like maybe she thought I was a prude or something.

And then I didn’t feel bad for her anymore. “Did you take the knife, Bree?”

She stopped laughing and recoiled.

“Bree,” a voice came from the other side of the bleachers, and I saw Krista and Taryn
through the metal slats. Just pieces of them, here and there, as they moved. Like
fragments of my imagination when I used to wake up in a half dreamlike state.

She scrambled to her feet and brushed the dirt from her pants. “No, I didn’t take
the damn knife, you fucking psycho.”

She ran to the other side of the bleachers and joined the girls. And as I saw them
move together, broken fragments, pieces of each tied up in the other, it seemed like
there was an answer there. It was there, just on the other side of the bleachers.

How Bree wasn’t acting scared of me because she knew I hadn’t done it. And I knew
it, right then, standing next to a discarded chip bag under the empty bleachers: one
of them did.

My hands were shaking as I pulled at the handle to the car door. And they were shaking
still when I pushed down the lock.

“You can’t stay here,” Dad said as he started the engine. “Not until everything gets
cleared up.”

“But you can continue your coursework remotely,” Mom said.

“We’re going home?” I saw Reid in the distance, across the field, just standing there.
Alone. I placed my palm against the window, but he didn’t see me.

“You can’t,” Dad said, and I remembered Officer James telling us to stay in town.
“I’ll set you and Mom up in a hotel nearby.”

I thought that this must be what purgatory was like. Can’t go forward. Can’t go back.
Awaiting some official judgment.

Dad said my dorm room was sealed off by the cops, so I didn’t have anything. No toothbrush,
no clothes, no computer. The only thing the cops returned was my phone, and only because
it hadn’t been used to make any calls. It was useless. But I gripped onto it like
it was worth something while Mom made a visit to the campus store so I’d have stuff
to wear.

Great. Looked like I’d be living in Monroe T-shirts and gym pants until I was allowed
to leave. Or return. Whichever.

Dad said we were going to a hotel, but there weren’t any, not really. Not what he
would consider a hotel, anyway. More like an upscale motel, two miles away from school,
on the same road past the diner. It was clean, and kind of set up like a suite, but
there was no lobby or anything, just doors opening directly to the outside, like the
motels that bordered the beach on the party side of the shore.

I checked my cell: no service. This whole place was like one big dead zone. So I powered
it down but left it out on the bedroom dresser, like it was a picture frame.

The set-up wasn’t too bad: two separate rooms with queen beds sharing one common living
room. Dad scribbled the number listed on our phone, told us not to make any calls,
and left. Then it got dark, and the walls felt so thin. Not like in the dorm, where
I couldn’t hear the crickets. Here, the outside sounded so close. And occasionally
a car pulled in and the headlights cut through the shades, and I had this fear they
could see me, a shadow against the wall.

I didn’t know where my sleeping pills were. I guess they were confiscated. And it’s
not like I trusted myself to ever sleep again, anyway. When the
boom, boom, boom
started that night, part of me wanted to crawl into Mom’s bed and watch TV with her
—
I could hear it through the two walls. But the other part of me wondered whether she
had locked the door, and I didn’t really want to find out.

Mallory
, the room whispered. I rifled through the bedside table and pulled out a penlight.
Wait
, it said. But I didn’t. I pulled on a sweatshirt, slid my feet into my sneakers,
and snuck out my door. I listened for the television, and when I heard laughter (the
television, not Mom), I let myself quietly out the front door.

I didn’t turn the flashlight on until I was on the main road, and then I realized
how useless it was, with a narrow beam of light. But I figured it would keep me from
getting hit by a car, if there were any. I kept on the pavement, the lights from the
motel fading into the distance, and when I could only see blackness behind me and
blackness in front of me, I started to jog.

I ran away.

And only when I was a good ways past the diner and the gas station did I realize I
was running toward something.

No, not something. Someone.

Chapter 16

I
wanted Reid to know the truth. I wanted him to know I didn’t do it. I wanted him
to believe me. It mattered. I jogged along the edge of the road, the flashlight beam
catching nothing but fragments of trees. Road. Sky. And then that
M
came into focus, darker than the night sky, black on black. And I entered.

I stopped running and skirted around the edge of campus, trying to catch my breath
and keep away from the outside lights. When I reached Reid’s dorm, I froze. The doors
were alarmed at night. He was on the second floor. I shook my head at myself as I
picked up a pebble. I used to think it was so ridiculous when people did this in movies.
Turned out, it was the best option out there.

I counted windows and knew I had his because there was a faint glow behind the blinds.
Seemed right that he wouldn’t be sleeping right now.

Unfortunately, my aim was horrific. It hit the brick next to the glass and the pebble
bounced off, landing silently in the grass somewhere. I tried again, and this time
connected.