Hysteria (33 page)

“Everything will be okay,” Mom said, like she should have that night but didn’t. Couldn’t,
I guess. And then after that, it was too late. Nothing was okay after that.

I wrapped my arms back around her, but I wasn’t scared anymore. Mostly I was angry.
Angry for Brian. Angry for Dylan. Angry for the thing I’d done and couldn’t undo.
For the future I’d taken and couldn’t replace. For time, so finite and unbendable,
that I could not go back. Not now. Not ever.

And, if I was being perfectly honest, I was angry at Mom. My hands tightened into
fists around her back.

“I can’t believe you
sent
me here.”

“It wasn’t safe at home,” she said. “You know that. I was scared she would hurt you.
She wasn’t right in the head.”

“Is that why you hid the knives from me? Because it wasn’t safe
for me
?”

“What? You used to stare at that kitchen, like you were remembering something horrible.
You
were
remembering something horrible. I put them away so you wouldn’t have to think about
it every time you walked in the room.” Then her whole body tensed. “Is that what you
thought? That we sent you away because we were scared of you?”

When I didn’t answer, she said, “We were scared
for
you.”

“I don’t know why I did it, Mom,” I choked out. I thought of the choice again
—
the knife, the door. Death, life. “I should’ve picked life,” I whispered, though I’m
not sure she understood.

She stopped breathing. And with my head on her chest, I could’ve sworn her heart stopped
beating for a second too. “Mallory, don’t you see? That’s exactly what you did.”

I clung to my mother like she was the only thing I had in this world.

Which, I guess, she was.

That night there was no heartbeat. There never had been. There had only been my memory
of Brian pounding on the door, trying to force his way in. There was no voice, either.
No name whispered throughout the room. No hand reaching for me as I drifted away.
There had only been my memory of Dylan, calling my name and then grabbing my shoulder
in the alley. I hadn’t remembered
—
didn’t want to remember
—
but I needed to remember.
I needed to
. The memory demanded to be seen.

Like Reid had explained, his mother had been stuck. And sometimes the psychological
can manifest into something physical. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real. My shoulder
still ached
—
the handprint still raw, like a healing burn mark. Real as anything, there it was.

And the dream still came. Just because I finally remembered didn’t really change anything.
It didn’t change the fact that I kept remembering. It didn’t make the dream any better.
Didn’t change the ending.

I was caught in between again, as I was waking up. Hearing Brian’s heart as he stood
before me.
Boom, boom, boom
. No. Not a heart. It had never been his heart to begin with. It was someone at the
door. Again.

I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed, thinking maybe it was the police telling me
—
telling us
—
that we were free to go. I raced out of my room, still in my pajamas, but Mom was
already in the living room, dressed for the day, pepper spray held behind her back.

We stared at each other across the room. Mom went to the curtains and peeked through
without pulling them apart. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s Reid.”

I strode to the door, and as I pulled it open I realized that I knew, with every ounce
of my being, what Reid meant when he always said, “I know you.” He was right. He knew
me. I knew him.

I opened the door all the way, like I should’ve done the day before. Reid stood back,
barely on the walkway, almost in the parking lot. And in front of him was Colleen.
She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her eyes were bloodshot, and she had
a bag slung over her shoulder. She punched me in the arm. “You are
such
an asshole.” Then she flung herself at me and I barely caught her, and I laughed
so hard I was almost crying.

“What are you
—
” I said.

Reid sounded far away when he said, without really looking at me, “She was wandering
around campus asking for you. She was talking to Bree when I found her.”

“That was Bree?” Colleen asked. “Not. Impressed.” She disentangled herself from my
hold. “You know what else I’m not impressed by? A scary text message.” She punched
me in the arm again. “Not hearing from you for days. Calling your house and getting
no one. Calling the dorm number and some chick telling me you were gone.”

“I know,” I said, rubbing at my arm. She actually hit me pretty hard. “I couldn’t,
um . . .” I glanced behind me at my mother, who was still in the same place, watching
Reid very carefully.

“Yeah,” Colleen said. “What the hell are you guys doing in this dump, anyway?”

Reid had his heels on the blacktop, his toes on the sidewalk. “Reid,” I said, as I
willed him to take a step forward.

“What?” he said.

But I didn’t know what else to say
—
he was just
waiting
for me to ask him to stay. With Colleen watching. With my mom watching. “Thanks,”
I said, hoping that would be enough.

He closed his eyes for a second, turned before I could see his face. Then he walked
away.

Mom said, “Colleen Dabner, does your mother know where you are?”

And Colleen said, “Um, I was gonna call her when I got here. But there’s no service
or anything.”

Mom sighed and said, “I’ll call her.”

“What happened to
no calls
?”

“Her mother will be worried sick,” she said, sounding so much like her old self that
I truly believed we’d all be okay. She disappeared into her room.

“What?” Colleen asked. “You’re looking at me like you want to kiss me or something.”
Which I probably was, because I was grinning ear to ear. “I mean, I get it. Everyone
wants to kiss me. But I really didn’t think I was your type.”

“You’re totally my type,” I said.

She grinned at me. “Missed you too.” Then she pushed her way farther into the hotel
room, dropped her bag, and plopped on the couch. “Now talk.”

So I did. I sat next to her and told her in a whisper about that night
—
about waking up to Jason’s body on the floor. And about halfway through the story,
Colleen reached out and grabbed onto my hand, but she didn’t say anything. So I told
her the rest. About the knife and the sleeping pills and Bree lying, and Taryn’s history
with Jason, and Krista, who I thought was related to Jason, but wasn’t. I told her
as much as I could about Krista, which, admittedly, was not very much. And at a school
like Monroe, that’s really saying something.

“Well,” Colleen said, clearing her throat and easing back onto the cushions. “Reid’s
kind of hot.”

“And I kind of messed that up too.”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Later,” I said, cutting my eyes to the thin wall that separated us from my mother.

“All right. So are we on lockdown here? Are we free to roam?”

Colleen bounced up and paced the room, and it seemed like this motel room couldn’t
really contain her. Like she was about to bust out of the walls.

“There’s not really anything we can walk to.”

“How do you think I got here? I have my car.”

I ran to the window and looked out, and, sure enough, parked next to the empty spot
where Reid’s car had been, Colleen’s beat-up purple hatchback sat waiting.

“Mom!” I called. “We’re going for a drive.”

She came back out of her room. “I’m not so sure
—
”

“Please,” I said. “I can’t sit here just . . . waiting for something to happen.”

“Colleen,” Mom said, “I need you to understand that Mallory is in serious trouble
here. We’re not allowed to leave the county. So please,
please
, do not get her into any more trouble than she’s already in.
Please
use common sense.”

“I promise, Mrs. Murphy,” she said.

“Your mother isn’t amused, by the way,” Mom said. “You’re going home first thing tomorrow.”

“My mother is never amused,” Colleen said.

“Be back for lunch. And stay in the car.”

When we got outside, Colleen said, “Stay in the car?”

“Oh, yeah, we almost caused a riot at the diner yesterday.”

Her hand froze with the car key halfway to the door. “A riot?”

“Mmm,” I said. “Pretty sure the mob wanted to stone me.”

“Huh,” she said, but I couldn’t see her face since she was letting the curls fall
forward as she unlocked the car door. “Kind of a sucky way to go.”

“Yeah.”

“All right.” She backed out of her spot, shifted the gears too hard, and paused at
the entrance to the road. “Show me this place.”

First we drove by the diner, now empty, which looked not at all menacing without the
people all scowling at me. We passed that gas station with the single pump that Taryn
had warned me about the first night I arrived at Monroe. And we drove by the woods.
The forest. Stretching up into hills and plateaus and down into valleys, and, in the
distance, mountains. We drove down the street in front of Monroe, where I’d first
seen Dylan driving by, watching me. Waiting for me.

The street was bare now. I wondered if he was back in Massachusetts with his dad.
If he’d gotten what he’d come for. If he’d gotten too much or not enough. If I’d ever
see him again, other than in my memories.

I told Colleen about Reid
—
or enough about him
—
how I knew him from before, how our fathers were old friends, old roommates, how he
almost kissed me then and did kiss me now. She didn’t say anything at all. She gripped
the steering wheel with two hands and paid extra close attention to the traffic signs.

Colleen paused in front of the gate with the scarlet
M
and said, “This is where I ran into that Bree chick. She was sitting on that bench,
just staring. And when I asked for you, she looked sick. I seriously thought she was
gonna hurl all over my shoes or something.”

“I don’t get it, Colleen. It had to be Krista. She had to be the one. There’s some
secret that only Jason knew, because he could get Krista to do
anything
for him. It was her. I can feel it. But I can’t figure out why Bree and Taryn are
letting her get away with it.”

“Didn’t you say Bree was the one who knew about the knife and the sleeping pills?
Maybe she’s scared Krista can frame her instead.”

“And Taryn?”

“It doesn’t have to be complicated, Mallory. I’d lie for you.”

She was looking at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I knew she would. She had. But
I couldn’t explain the difference. “They’re not me and you, Coll.”

“Yeah, well, most people aren’t.”

The car started moving again, toward the woods.

“Back that way is the old student center,” I said. “We’re not supposed to go out there,
though. Years ago, some kid wandered off into the woods and never came back.”

“Creepy.”

“Yeah. There’s this sign, like a memorial to him or something, except it’s all overgrown
now and totally forgotten. Kinda sad, really.”

Colleen turned off the engine. “Let’s see it,” she said.

“We’re not supposed to
—
”

“We won’t talk to anyone. And anyway, I’ll kick anyone’s ass who comes near you. Cross
my heart.”

I opened the door. The rain had stopped, but the moisture still clung to the trees
and the grass. I heard crickets everywhere. And some bird kept fluttering its wings
directly overhead. Colleen followed in my footsteps, down the path to the old student
center, where the walls were still half standing.