Hysteria (37 page)

I opened the window and straddled the sill. And before I dropped out into the night,
I said, “Remember that you did this too.”

And then I ran.

God, how I ran.

Chapter 22

I
was vaguely aware of the tree, of the half-standing walls, now just dark shapes,
as I sprinted by the old student center. A few bricks dislodged and scattered under
my steps, and I almost tripped twice, but I caught my footing and found the path.
I ran until the path narrowed and I couldn’t tell where to move next. I froze.

“Colleen!” I shouted, expecting to hear an echo. But the noise fell flat. Swallowed
up by the trees or the dirt or the heavy air. “Colleen!” I screamed even louder, and
then I listened to the sounds of the forest for any trace of her.

Bree had said there was a dropoff past here
—
some sort of ravine
—
but I couldn’t see far enough ahead of me. The ground sloped upward, since Monroe
was situated in a valley, so I figured I’d keep heading up until I hit it. I kept
moving. Every once in a while I felt the ground shift, like I was heading down again,
and I readjusted until I was moving up. Not exactly a precise navigation system, but
it was better than doing nothing.

“Colleen!” I kept calling, hearing nothing in reply.

Then I tripped over a root and face-planted. I heard the rocks I’d kicked up echoing
somewhere below. I crawled forward to the edge and saw blackness. The ravine. A gaping
splice through the hillside. Problem was, it stretched side to side in front of me
as far as I could see. “Colleen?” Only my voice echoed back to me, and the panic I’d
been avoiding crept up into my stomach. Too late. I was too late.

I crawled along the edge until I found a lower spot with a gentler slope, and I half
walked, half skidded my way into the ravine. Which was pitch-black. Looking up, the
sky looked unnaturally light compared to where I was. I put my left hand on the side
of the ravine, and I started walking. It rose and dipped, the sky getting nearer and
farther. And I kept saying her name. At first in a whisper, because everything felt
so enclosed here. And then, with a panicked ferocity, with tears and anger, with rage.
My hand tore at the side of the ravine as I ran.

I almost didn’t hear it at first, over the sound of my panicked breathing.

But I thought I heard my name.

I listened again. A gasp of air from somewhere ahead. And then a hoarse word. “Mallory.”

I ran forward and nearly tripped over the dark shape on the floor of the ravine. I
was laughing because I found her, but then I pulled her into my lap and I stopped
laughing. Her hair was damp with a thick liquid. Blood. I knew that feeling. And she
barely had a voice. But I held onto her and I started laughing again.

“I found you,” I said.

And she said, “My fucking legs.”

I looked down, trying to see in the darkness, and immediately recoiled from the way
her right leg twisted out at an unnatural angle. Then I took a breath and looked again.
Her left looked okay to me, but obviously it wasn’t since she said
legs
. Plural.

“I can’t get out,” she said. “I tried. But I can’t.”

“I can. It’s not too steep.” I crouched beside her and said, “Okay. Ready?”

She pushed herself onto her elbows, then a sob escaped her from the shift of weight.
“Ready for what?”

“It’s probably going to hurt. When I pick you up.”

Colleen collapsed back onto the ravine floor. “You can’t. I’m too heavy. And you’re
—
you can’t. Go get help and come back.”

“No,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t know how to go get help,
or how to come back after. She had no idea how far into the woods we were, and how
much of a miracle it was that I’d found her in the first place. But all I told her
was, “I won’t leave you.”

“Mallory. You can’t.”

I leaned forward and felt the words before I said them, needing to believe they’d
become true. “I can.” I took her arms and wrapped them around my neck, and I put an
arm under her horribly twisted limbs, and another around her back.

And I stood up.

She cried out, and my legs were shaky, and my back was pulling, and my grip was unnatural
and awkward. But I stood up. I told myself to start walking. And I did.

“Hey,” she said, her face pressed up against my shoulder. “Remember that time you
kicked Danielle’s ass?” Maybe she noticed I was shaking and was trying to distract
me. Or maybe she didn’t notice anything at all. I didn’t respond
—
couldn’t really. I was concentrating on each step. “God, that was so awesome.” I found
another slope farther up the ravine that weaved into the side of the hill, a little
less steep, like a creek used to run down it, and I took it.

My feet kept slipping on the dirt, and we were getting absolutely nowhere. I tried
backing up the slope instead, but I lost traction and we landed together in a heap
at the bottom. Colleen was screaming from the pain.

“I’m sorry,” I said. But she was in too much pain to acknowledge me. “And I’m really
sorry for this,” I said. I gripped her under the shoulders, and I dragged her behind
me, up the ravine.

She screamed the whole way. And it took me a while to realize I was crying with her.
But then she went silent and all I could hear was myself. Colleen’s body went limp
as I heaved her over the side.

I fell beside her in a panic. She was breathing, but unconscious. Which was probably
for the best, since I still had to drag her some more.

We kept going up. It was the only thing I could think to do. I saw a crest up ahead
—
something above the treeline, and I had to get there. I had to get up there to find
a way back out.

When I finally reached the top, I set her down. And I gasped. Because from the top
I could see multiple paths snaking down behind me, in front of me, to the side. A
thousand ways out.

“You were right, Colleen,” I whispered to myself. Because I realized right then, that
boy who wandered off, he probably didn’t die out here. There were a thousand different
paths out of the woods
—
maybe he just chose a different one.

Far away in the distance, I could see light. Past the dark trees, the dark forest,
there were signs of life. Towns. Communities. Cities. And closer still, flashes of
red lighting up in the sky. Fire trucks maybe. Or ambulances. Police. Either way,
I knew it was Monroe.

I gripped Colleen under the shoulders and started moving toward the flashes of red
lighting up the sky.

The woods were dark, but the world was light.

Colleen just hung there, so I tried to think of something else. Something to distract
myself from each torturous step.

We were so close. I could tell by the way the ground leveled out and the space between
trees grew wider. And then the red lights went out. I had taken too long. I panicked
again, but I couldn’t stop moving. So I kept heading in that direction, or what I
thought was that direction. I would hit something
—
if not Monroe itself, then at least a road
—
if we just kept moving.

And then I saw a light in the distance. Just a flash, coming through in split frames.
Here and not here. Like the way I used to wake up from a dream.

There.
Blink.
Closer.

Blink.
Closer.

Flashlights.

“I’m here!” I screamed, easing Colleen to the forest floor. “We’re over here!”

The footsteps approaching grew more frantic, and suddenly I worried that it was Krista,
or all three of them
—
Krista, Bree, and Taryn
—
and I crouched down beside Colleen and held my breath.

Then I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. I stood up and waved my arms and said,
“We’re here,” and I was nearly blinded by the beam of the flashlight, aimed directly
at my face.

So I looked at Colleen, illuminated by light, who was perfectly still. Too still.
Too pale. Too much blood. “Colleen,” I cried. “Wake up.”

Chapter 23

M
allory,” Mom called from the kitchen. “Lunch is ready.”

I joined her at the kitchen table, eating grilled cheese and drinking soda. We ate
in silence, not really looking at each other. She didn’t start clearing the dishes
when she finished, just sat with her hands folded on top of the table. “Are you sure?”
she asked.

I put down my sandwich. “I’m sure.”

Dad came into the kitchen and said, “Smells good.” He grabbed his grilled cheese off
the pan on the stovetop and backed out of the kitchen. “I’ve got some phone calls
to make.”

“He’s happy,” I said.

Truth was, Dad had been smiling for days. Ever since I asked him if he knew anything
about what happened to a boy named Jack Danvers.

“Never heard of him,” he’d said at first.

“He was a boy who disappeared in the woods and . . .” I thought of the makeshift cross.
“Danvers Jack, maybe?”

His pen froze an inch from the paper he’d been writing on. “What do
you
know about Danvers Jack?” he’d asked.

“He wandered off during initiation,” I said. “So they say. And they never found his
body. Some people say he haunts the woods.” I thought of Reid telling me how he thought
he could feel something out there. “They say they can feel him.”

Dad’s face cracked
—
first down, then up. And then he was laughing. “Haunting the woods, huh? Is that what
he’s been up to?” He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and laughed some
more.

“Dad?”

“Danvers Jack wandered off, that’s for sure. Couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped
anywhere. Of anyone telling him what to do. We’d been marched into this ravine and
left there for the night. Tradition, as I’m sure you know.” He grinned at me. I guess
he didn’t realize how well I knew that ravine. “Anyway, about an hour in, someone
noticed he was missing. Everyone panicked. He didn’t show up back at the dorm or anything,
but when we walked into first period, he was sitting at his desk, smiling at us. Became
a bit of an urban legend, I guess. Or, like you said, a warning.” He smirked.

“Stay with the group,” I said. And Dad smiled, like we shared a secret. I leaned forward
and said, “I didn’t.”

And then he was laughing again. “Of course you didn’t.”

“Maybe in twenty years, someone will name a dorm after me too.”

“Name a dorm after you? Oh,
Danvers.
Other way around, Mallory. Danvers Jack isn’t his name. He was named after the
dorm
. We had several Jacks that year. He was the Jack who lived in the Danvers dorm. So
when they were trying to find out who went missing, someone said ‘Danvers Jack.’ And
it stuck. He was my roommate.” And then he started laughing again.

And then so was I, because all this time Reid didn’t realize he’d been learning about
his own father. Didn’t realize how close he’d always been to him. Didn’t realize it
was him he felt standing at the edge of the woods. Dad said, “And here I thought he
was gone for good.”

Jack Carlson, gone but not forgotten.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mom said. “This isn’t about Dad. Or me.”

“I know.” I picked up our plates and took them to the sink. “It’s for me,” I said.
Then I slid on a pair of flip-flops and said, “I’ll be back soon.”

Then I let myself out the back door and the high gate, walked down the alley and across
the road, where no green car waited, and I let myself into Colleen’s backyard. Her
window was closed this time. And anyway, it’s not like she could’ve gotten up to open
it herself.

I knocked on the back door. Her mom opened it and let me in, though she didn’t look
even remotely pleased to see me. I wasn’t sure if that was a new thing or not. I never
saw her after Brian died, since Colleen had been grounded and our parents weren’t
exactly friends, so I wasn’t sure if the new anti-Mallory attitude had started back
then or if it wasn’t until after her daughter left home and almost got killed for
me. Either way, I didn’t blame her.