Hysteria (31 page)

And still I held the pepper spray out in front of me. But I was too far away now for
it to work. Dylan let the door fall shut behind him. The room was crackling with energy.
Even Dylan seemed to sense it. He looked around quickly before his eyes settled on
me again.

And I kept shaking my head. Because I couldn’t figure out what was real and what wasn’t.
Because in my head I heard those same footsteps, chasing after me. Dylan’s footsteps.
And I saw the moon in the upper corner of the night sky
—
the sky that felt like it could burst open at any moment and
—

“Hello, Mallory,” Dylan said from across the room, all drawn out, like a rumble of
thunder.

I lowered my eyes to the floor. Except for a second I saw pavement instead of beige
carpeting. I heard his feet move across the ground.
Scuff, step. Scuff, step.
I put one hand on the doorknob behind me, and I kept my other arm extended in his
direction, like a warning.

He stopped moving.

I raised my eyes. “What are you doing here?”

He looked around the room, confused, like Brian had done that night, like he wasn’t
really sure what he was doing here after all. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting?” Nothing was making sense. Not back then, and not right here.

And then I remembered Dylan breaking into the lifeguard supply shed the night on the
beach, when I shoved Danielle into the wall, so long ago. The paint on my door, and
my shirts, slashed up. And the green car driving past Monroe, always waiting. It had
always been Dylan.

“What do you want from me?” I kept the pepper spray aimed in his direction, and I
stepped to the side, trying to judge the distance between me and the door. I wondered
if I could sneak by him before he could grab me. But the whole room was buzzing, thick,
like I might not even be able to break through that energy.

Dylan tilted his head back and laughed, only it came out through a grimace. “What
do I want? What do I
want
? I guess that’s the question, isn’t it?”

I took a deep breath and heard myself wheeze a little, and then I blew it out slowly.
Dylan took a step, and then another, toward me. “Are you going to hurt
me
, too?” he asked. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” He leaned forward, definitely
within range now, and he whispered, “You killed him.”

I kept staring at him. Of course I’d killed him. That wasn’t a secret. I didn’t understand
why he was telling me this.

The buzzing in the room grew. My eyes darted around, not looking at Dylan, looking
for that other thing, taking form somewhere. I could feel it. I knew it was near,
just out of sight.

And then Dylan was in my face and the pepper spray was on the floor, and he had both
hands on my upper arms, and he was shaking me. “Look at me. Do you know what you did?
Do you?”

Then for the first time since I held that knife, since Brian’s blood covered the floor
and my clothes and my hands, since Colleen found me and I learned he was dead, I felt
my own tears. “Yes, I know what I did. I
know
.”

“I don’t think you do. Did you know my mom had to be committed to a mental hospital?”
he asked as he pushed me into the wall.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I have no home anymore. No family. I had to move in with my
dad.
In fucking
Massachusetts
. Did you know that?” he asked again, shoving me even harder into the wall.

I shook my head. And I heard the thud as my back hit the wall, but I felt nothing,
really, at all.

He let go of my arms and ran his hands through his hair, only he was pulling at it.
“I don’t
understand
,” he said. “I don’t get how this happened . . .”

And while he was distracted, I dove for the pepper spray, only he dove for it too.
My fingers brushed the key ring at the base, and then Dylan jerked it from my grip.
I sat with my back against the wall, and he was on his knees in front of me. He threw
the pepper spray across the room, where it hit the opposite wall and landed somewhere
behind the couch.

I was still breathing too heavily, trying to figure out why Dylan was here at all,
what he had been waiting to do to me. “What do you want?
What?
”

He put one hand around my upper arm, and he looked at the base of my throat, but I
didn’t think he heard me at all. “Joe and Sammy think I should take something from
you.” He looked at my throat, and then lower. “That you deserve it.” As his eyes drifted
down, I understood, with sickening terror, exactly what they thought he should take
from me.

But he didn’t do anything. If Joe and Sammy were here, I wondered if he would have.
His face contorted and he squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, he released me
—
threw his hands up in the air, like he was surrendering to something.

I turned to the door, before he could change his mind, and started walking slowly.
Step. Breathe. Step. Glance to the couch, checking for the pepper spray. Another step.
But halfway across the room Dylan was suddenly right behind me again. He put his hand
on my shoulder and said, “Wait.”

Wait.

I heard it echo around the room in a whisper. Like it did every night.

Brian
had
asked me to wait, he did. But the voice in my room at night hadn’t been his.

I staggered backward. Because I remembered.

The footsteps following me down the alley and the hand on my shoulder and the voice
in my ear
—

It had been Dylan.

“Wait,” Dylan had said. I had been running, but he caught up. And his hand was on
my shoulder. He wanted me to wait. He wanted
me.
I spun around in the alley between the back of the homes. The moon was bright, but
a cloud moved across it, and Dylan’s face darkened. “Please, Mallory,” he’d said.
“I hate that you’re with him. I
hate
it. I’m a moron, okay?”

I leaned closer, because I couldn’t really see him. Couldn’t tell if he meant it or
if those were just words he had rehearsed, but I think he misunderstood because he
put his palm on the side of my face, and he ran his thumb across my bottom lip, and
he said, “Okay?”

I thought that he meant it. And I felt like saying yes.

And just in case I wasn’t okay with it yet, he leaned even closer and brushed his
lips across mine, and he smiled. Because it felt like this was what everything had
been leading up to. We just got there the wrong way.

“Okay,” I said. But then I frowned and glanced down the alley, toward the party. “I
think I should . . .”

Dylan shook his head. “Did you see him? Not a good idea. Later.”

The sky was about to break open. A fat drop fell between us, and then another
—
he took my hand, and we started running. We were laughing, racing the storm.

Dylan watched as I dug the key out from under the gutter, and then the sky busted
open. I ran up the porch steps, and Dylan was right behind me, pressed up against
my back to escape the rain. I slid the key into the lock. And I felt him smiling against
my neck.

We slipped inside and I turned the deadbolt behind us.

And then I wasn’t sure what to do. The windows were still open, and I thought maybe
I should close them. I saw there were drops of water on the display table next to
Mom’s vase.

But Dylan was still smiling like he won something. Or like he was about to win something.
He kissed me in the middle of the living room. Not like when I’d kissed him in chemistry
class. Like I was the only one he wanted. Me.

He took a breath and said, “No, really, I was a fucking moron.”

“You were,” I’d said. “You really were.”

And he kissed me again.

That’s what we did for seconds, or minutes, or hours. Until the beating started.

Boom, boom, boom.

“Dylan!” a voice called from outside.

Boom, boom, boom.

Not a heart from the grave. Not a heartbeat at all. Brian was pounding on the front
door.

And now Dylan was asking me to wait again. The room was buzzing. Vibrating. Even Dylan
seemed to sense it, because his eyes darted into the upper corners of the room. I
turned around and jabbed my finger at his chest. “You were there,” I said.

He stared at me, unblinking.

My brain tried to make sense of it. He was there. But then he wasn’t. Brian was there.
And now Brian was dead. But the mark on my shoulder was exactly where Dylan had grabbed
me that night. Like the memory wanted to make itself known. I was stuck in that back
alley with Dylan, with his hand, reaching for me. The moment replaying each night,
over and over and over again, until it had become something more than a memory. I
just hadn’t known it.

“I just want to know,” Dylan said. “I want to know why. Because I don’t understand.”
He swallowed and his mouth hung open a little, and he looked so empty.

Don’t tell
.

It was whispered through the room, with the buzz, riding the vibration, bouncing back
and forth across the room, off the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Dylan was watching
me, watching the room. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

“Hear what?”

“Don’t tell,” I said.

Dylan froze. One hand still on my shoulder, his skin the color of ash. He didn’t move.

“I think,” I said, “I think he’s here.” I shook my head. Hard. Because I understood
that it wasn’t the soul of Brian in the room with me. That I wasn’t haunted by
him
. I was haunted by an elusive memory. I was trying to remember, but I couldn’t. “I
think he told me not to tell.”

Dylan shook his head, at least I think he shook his head, but he might have just had
a chill instead. “No,” he said. And then he pulled his hand away and backed into the
wall. “No,” he said. “
I
did.”

Brian had been shouting in the rain. “Mallory!” he’d screamed. “Open this goddamn
door.” The door smacked against the frame, but the deadbolt held. “I know he’s in
there. I saw you guys. I
saw
you.”