Hysteria (6 page)

“You got taller,” he said.

“You got all . . .” I waved my hands around my head. “Nice hair.”

Reid laughed and stood up. “So you
do
remember me.”

Hard to forget the guy whose father
—
who also happened to be Dad’s oldest friend
—
died in a freak accident, or the funeral your parents dragged you across three states
for, or the fact that you sat with him in his room while everyone else mourned for
his father downstairs. Hard to forget the first guy who rejected you.

When my lack of speaking turned awkward, Reid shuffled his feet and asked, “Need help
orientating?”

“No thanks,” I said. I would’ve thought that after two years, I wouldn’t feel the
pit in my stomach when I looked at him. Wouldn’t feel the urge to spin on my heel
and self-righteously walk away. And definitely wouldn’t feel the urge to close the space
between us.

Walk away, Mallory.

I spent the rest of the morning orienting myself at the computer lab and the student
banking center and the registrar’s office. Then I spent the afternoon orienting myself
at the cafeteria and the bookstore. The new kids stood out
—
we hadn’t assimilated yet. Hadn’t learned how to wear our hair or carry our books.
Hadn’t put on the red shirt and adopted the sameness yet. So when they smiled at me,
I smiled back, like we were in this together.

I had my laptop bag swung over my shoulder and a stack of books propped between my
arms and my chin as I moved slowly back toward my dorm, rocks getting stuck in my
flip-flops every few steps. Reid was still under that same oak tree, like there was
nothing worth moving for, but now he was eating a giant sandwich.

He was watching me, but I didn’t know whether he was staring because he’d heard about
what I’d done or whether he was remembering me, reconciling the Mallory in his head
with the Mallory in front of him. Whether he was remembering the same moment I was:
his hand in my hair and his face an inch from mine the moment before he walked away.

Or maybe he was staring because I had to stop every few steps and shake my feet while
simultaneously balancing a stack of textbooks. He put down the food as I passed by
again. “Hey,” he said.

I kicked off my shoes and started walking faster.

There was a girl in my room. Actually, she was only half in my room. The upper half
of her body was leaning out the window, blowing smoke toward the trees.

She turned around when the door slammed shut behind me but held her cigarette out
the window. She had blond hair cut blunt at her shoulders, a heart-shaped face and
jeans that fit her perfectly, and a T-shirt that fit too tight, but guys probably
wouldn’t agree.

She watched me, expressionless, until I dumped my gear on the bed and said, “Hey.”

She smiled, which I guess meant I had passed some test. She held up a neon-pink lighter
from her other hand and said, “You want?”

“I’m good,” I said, and she ground the cigarette onto the bricks outside the window
and flicked it somewhere toward the forest. Apparently not worried about being caught.
Or starting forest fires.

“So,” she said, quirking her mouth to the side and leaning her back against the wall.
“Like what I’ve done with the place?” She had hung band posters over the other standard-issue
bed, and there were stand-up lights in the corners of our room now. She walked over
to me and stuck her hand out all formal like. “Brianne Dalton. Bree.”

I shook her hand and said, “Mallory Murphy. No nickname.”

She stepped back and looked me over, scanning me slowly from my bare feet to my bare
shoulders and raised an eyebrow at me. “Hmm. Well, you don’t need one. You new here?”

I nodded, searching through my suitcase for another pair of flip-flops, feeling her
eyes on me.

“Me too. Transferred from Chelsey. You know it? No? All-girls school. Can you picture
me at an all-girls school?”

Actually, I could. Probably how she learned to make other girls uncomfortable just
by looking at them. She reminded me of Colleen, even though they looked nothing alike.
Colleen was the one who taught me how to walk when you know someone is watching, and
how to walk to make someone watch. She oozed attraction just by being in a room. Same
as this girl.

Bree looped an arm through mine and led me back into the hall. “Come on, orientation
tours are about to start. And trust me, you are in for a treat.”

I looked down at the registration paper. Bree’s idea of a treat was my idea of perpetual
humiliation.

“I see you made it unscathed,” Reid called to me as we approached the grass.
Unscathed.
Who says unscathed? Prep school boys, apparently. With perfect hair. Who reject you.

Bree leaned closer into my side. “You know Reid?”

“Not exactly,” I said, because it was true. I knew him two years ago, when his hair
stuck out in every different direction. I knew him before his father was taken from
him, before all of this. I didn’t know him anymore.

“Whatever,” she said. She kept her arm looped through mine, but I felt her pull away.

The whole quad area between the dorms and the school buildings took up the space of
two soccer fields. Students were scattered in circular groups, like they were singing
“Kumbaya” or something. Reid was already surrounded by two guys and one other girl.
He must’ve been the leader since he was the only one in uniform.

Reid held my flip-flops out in an extended hand. “Hey, Cinderella, you lost your shoes.”
He smiled and showed his dimple, which I’d forgotten about until right that moment,
and suddenly I was back, three years earlier, a year before Reid’s dad died, walking
into Dad’s twenty-fifth reunion and pushing through the crowd until I’d found Reid,
and he was saying, “Miss me?” with that same dimple, and I was saying, “Hardly,” and
trying not to smile.

Now he was holding my shoes and smiling, like this whole thing wasn’t horrifically
awkward. “I didn’t lose them. I left them right there.”

“Well then, you’re welcome for keeping them safe. There’s a big demand around here
for worn-out flip-flops.”

Or maybe this wasn’t awkward for him. Maybe two years was long enough to forget. Maybe
he started the process of forgetting as soon as he walked out of his room. Not that
I blamed him. He’d had enough going on that day, and in the days that followed. And
if I could’ve made myself forget that, I would have.

I took them from his outstretched arm. “They’re not worn out,” I said, careful not
to touch his fingers. But I threw them back onto the ground because I was pretty sure
they actually were. I’m also pretty sure I was grinning.

Bree caught sight of someone over my shoulder and smiled a “hello, I’m cute and somewhat
mysterious” smile that, as it turns out, was not at all mysterious. Must’ve been a
boy. A cute one.

“When’s the tour start?” My shoulders tensed because I recognized that voice. I turned
around just in time to see Jason, nighttime dorm lurker, skillfully pull out yet another
obnoxious grin.

Reid narrowed his eyes and looked around the group gathered in front of him. “What
do you want, Jason?” he asked. For the moment, I trusted Reid’s untrusting expression.

“Hanging with my new friend, Mallory.” He rested a hand on my shoulder.

I slunk down and stepped away. “New friend, huh?” Reid asked. But before I had a chance
to throw an “I’d rather have my teeth pulled” expression his way, Reid shrugged, and
it didn’t seem like the shrug was directed at me.

“This is the quad, obviously,” Reid said as he started walking backward, like he owned
this place.

Jason leaned in close as we followed Reid. “I get the feeling you don’t like me.”

I didn’t answer.

“Didn’t mean to scare you last night. I wanted you to feel welcome.”

I grabbed Bree’s arm and said, “This is Bree. She’s new. Welcome her.”

Bree dislodged her arm and rolled her eyes. She was nobody’s second choice. And she
sure as hell didn’t want my leftovers.

We walked out the gate with the
M
over the top and started walking around the perimeter. Reid said, “This is the West
Gate
—
what the town considers our main entrance, but our main entrance is actually farther
down this road.” He pointed behind him as he walked backward, and we all strained
to see. Apparently there was a gate in our immediate future, but the only thing I
could see was the car pulled off the side of the road, engine off. Same color as the
surrounding weeds.

Jason was trying to say something again, but I had stopped moving. “Mallory?” Reid
asked, shooting a glance from me to Jason.

They were all still moving toward the car. I turned around, picked a spot in the distance,
woods on woods on woods.

And, like always, I ran.

Chapter 4

I
ran past the scarlet
M
again, past the corner of campus, and then I kept running as the sidewalk turned
into packed dirt, roots, and stone mangling the ground. And again my flip-flops held
me back, so I kicked them off and ran some more. The path narrowed, twigs and briars
reaching toward me, and then suddenly opened again to a large clearing.

I bent over at the entrance, still sheltered by the trees, and sucked in some air.
Then I held my breath so I could hear the noises around me
—
wind filtering through the trunks, leaves rustling up high, faint scurrying below.
But nothing human. So I rested on the side of a fallen tree and took in the unnatural
scene in front of me: a dilapidated brick building, half-walls standing, piles of
bricks scattered around the floor of the clearing.

Those half-walls were the perfect place to hide, so I balanced myself on the piles
of bricks and carefully stepped my way to the building, watching for nails or sharp
rocks as the bricks dislodged and scattered below each step. Then I crouched at the
spot where two of the partially standing walls still stood and leaned back into the
corner.

I closed my eyes, but in my mind I could still see through the back window of the
car, and I pictured her hair poofing over the top of the seat. I imagined her turning
and watching me with those eyes, red and dry. I could see her rise higher still, pulling
herself over the seat, and I could see her clenched jaw and the vein fighting to escape
her neck, pulsating and pulsating.

Like I saw at Brian’s funeral.

Brian’s mom didn’t see me then. Nobody saw me. Not even Colleen, who didn’t tell me
she was going. But there she was, squeezed between Cody and either Joe or Sammy
—
I couldn’t tell from the distance. I didn’t know whether Colleen was there for Cody
or as some sort of atonement for herself. Or if maybe she was there for me. Colleen
had her hand cupped over her mouth, and I could tell, even from between the pickets
of the fence across the street, that she was doing that thing where she wasn’t really
crying, but her body was still shaking like she was.

Brian’s mom wasn’t paying attention. She looked like she was, but if you were staring,
like I was, you’d see she had her head tilted to the side like she was listening to
something. Listening
for
something. Dylan stood next to her, his fists balled up. Staring at the ground like
he was furious with it. Like it had taken something from him. Which, I guess, it had.