Hysteria (12 page)

I felt the hand on my shoulder, fingers digging in, as it held me down.

There were marks the next morning. I saw them in the shower. Red and thin, like fingers.
I thought of Mom sitting by my bed, stroking the hair away from my sweat-drenched
forehead, saying,
It’s only real if you let it be.
I looked away from my shoulder. If I didn’t see it, it wasn’t real.

Mr. Durham perched on the edge of his desk and took out his tattered copy of
Lord of the Flies.
I’d read most of that one on my own yesterday. And not the CliffsNotes version. Everyone
took out their crisp copies and placed them on the tables in front of them.

“So,” he began, licking his finger and thumbing through the pages, “I think we’ve
already established that Golding was saying, underneath it all, that without civilization,
we are essentially savages.”

I opened my notebook and wrote,
We are savages.

Mr. Durham stopped flipping pages and smoothed down a corner. “They stop thinking
for themselves. When they kill Piggy, do they know it’s Piggy? Do any of them know?”

Krista spoke. “They had to know. How could they not? It’s pretty unrealistic.”

“Is it?” Mr. Durham asked. “You’ve all witnessed herd behavior.”

I wrote,
herd behavior.
Yes, I had witnessed it. At the ice cream shop.

Everyone leaned forward a little over the tables. Everyone but me. This wasn’t news
to me.

“It can be as benign as shopping on Black Friday
—
haven’t you heard of people stampeding to get the cheap televisions? Trampling others?
And when you cheer at a sporting event, would you get up to shout or cheer or boo
on your own? Or do you only do it because everyone else is doing it? Because you are
part of something greater?”

Silence in the classroom.

“And trends,” he continued. “I mean, really, who thought mullets were a good idea?”

A few of the guys laughed.

“Or blue eyeshadow,” Chloe said.

“Or bell-bottoms,” another kid said.

“Exactly,” Mr. Durham said, nodding his head and smiling.

“But it starts somewhere,” Bree said. “Right? I mean, blue eye shadow didn’t just
appear from nowhere. Someone had to start it.”

“Yes, the idea comes from somewhere,” Mr. Durham answered. “Is that person more culpable
than the followers? Less? If one person says, ‘Pull that person from the car and beat
him to death,’ and twenty people oblige, who’s at fault?”

We stayed silent.

“And that, my friends, is why it’s nearly impossible to convict a mob.” He cut his
eyes to me for a fraction of a second. I didn’t know why he was thinking of me. I
hadn’t been part of a mob or influenced by group thought. No, it was just me. My decision.
I chose death.

“So,” Krista said, speaking carefully again, “
Lord of the Flies
is really just a metaphor for bad fashion decisions?” A few giggles escaped around
the room.

Mr. Durham grinned. “Or maybe it’s just one big allegory for high school.”

Reid showed up for study hall again, as promised. He spread out his work across my
floor, and then he put a finger to his lips and motioned for me to come toward him.

I crouched beside him and said, “What?”

“Tonight,” he said in a voice that was so low I had to lean even closer. “New students
get initiated.”

“Initiated?”

Apparently I spoke too loudly because he glanced toward my open door. “Tradition.
They’re going to take you after lights out.”

“And do what with me?”

“I’m not telling.” He was fighting a smile.

“What the hell, Reid?” I sat cross-legged across from him, his notebook between us.

“Mallory, it’s fun. I’m only giving you the heads up because . . . Because. We all
did it. It’s tradition.”

“Tradition. You sound like my dad
—
at Monroe, it’s tradition that blah, blah, blah.”

“It’s really not so bad here. And personally, I’d give just about anything to learn
more about my dad.”

Crap. There were words I was supposed to say now. But they seemed so worthless, so
I pressed my lips together instead.

“Sorry,” he said, like someone had to say it. “I’m just saying. This is practically
my home. I like the traditions. You will too. I’m just giving you the heads-up. I
feel like I owe you one.”

Because we used to be friends. Right.

“Nobody’s
taking
me,” I said.

He started to speak, then stopped. Then grinned. “Are you fast?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 7

R
eid was right. I didn’t need him to tell me when it would start. I heard the doors
latching softly first, then the light padding of footsteps. Someone tested the handle,
gently, but I had locked it. Then someone started knocking. Softly, but frantically.
“Help,” they whispered. “Mallory, help!”

I imagined them waiting on the other side of the door, waiting for me. Smiling at
each other. Waiting to grab me. Instead I slipped on my sneakers, opened the window,
and hopped out. It wasn’t a far drop, but it was hard to judge in the dark, and my
ankle rolled. I stretched it out, took a few shaky steps, and started to run.

Dark shapes came into focus against the brick of the building across the quad
—
Reid’s dorm. Three people, dressed in black, hoods pulled up over their heads. They
spread out in front of me, closing in from different angles. I couldn’t tell them
apart until Reid let his hood fall back, just a little off his face. I cut to the
right, toward him, because I didn’t know what else to do. He caught me around the
waist, and we stood that way, both breathing heavy. This was the closest we had been
since that day in his room. Closer, actually. But things were simpler in the dark.
I couldn’t see his expression and he couldn’t see mine.

Then he said, “Someone tell the girls we have Mallory.”

Reid’s arm was still around my waist until I shook him off. Then he put his hand at
the base of my neck. “Okay?” he asked. I didn’t answer, but I didn’t shake him off.
“You’re right,” he whispered in my ear, “you’re fast.”

Behind the building, freshmen and the new transfer students were crouched along the
base of the wall as Jason paced in front of them. They were wearing pajamas, huddled
in dark blankets. Krista and Taryn, also dressed in black, turned the corner with
Bree between the two of them. “We do it because we love you,” said Krista. She laughed
and deposited Bree with the rest of the new kids. Jason tossed Bree a blanket.

Jason got up in my face and said, “Looks like you skipped the getting-taken part.”
He looked at my sneakers, at my sweatshirt over top of my pajamas.

“She ran,” Reid said.

Jason narrowed his eyes at Reid. “Yes, I can see that. Doesn’t seem fair, really.”
Jason pointed to everyone else against the wall: barefoot and underdressed for the
cold night. He looked at Krista and held his hand out to his side. They shared the
same knowing smile before she jogged around the side of the building. She returned
with a hose.

“Jason . . . ,” Reid began, before Jason raised his eyebrows at him.

Somebody else mumbled, “Dude, it’s cold.”

“So cold she sleeps in sneakers?” Then he grinned at me. “I
am
sorry to do this to you.” Then he looked me up and down one last time. “Actually,
I’m not.”

I turned my back to him as a cold blast of water hit me between the shoulder blades.

Someone tossed me the same dark blanket
—
something cheap and feltlike
—
that everyone else was wrapped in. I wanted to let it fall to the ground, to pretend
I wasn’t cold, but I’m pretty sure the shivering gave me away. I wrapped it around
my shoulders as they lined us up and marched us silently around the far edge of campus
back toward Barringer Hall.

Something was behind me, right at my back, even though I thought I was the last in
line. I thought about running. Just . . . running. Off into the woods somewhere. Anywhere
but here. I tensed when I felt hands in my hair, twisting the ends around, until I
realized it was Reid
—
that he was wringing out the water.

“I think I made it worse,” he whispered over my shoulder. I pulled the blanket tighter
around my shoulders as we walked.

“You think?”

He put his hand on my side. “Just a sec,” he said, as the rest of the line stumbled
forward.

He took his sweatshirt off in one swift motion and said, “Here. Switch.” He had a
black T-shirt on underneath. I was trying to remember what I had on under mine.

“Mine won’t fit you.”

“Mallory, take the freaking sweatshirt.” He glanced toward the line, moving farther
away, and added, “Hurry.”

I dropped my blanket, stripped off my top shirt, and threw on his sweatshirt before
either of us had a chance to notice whether the shirt underneath was soaked through.
His shirt was twice as long as mine and warm on the inside, and I pulled the sleeves
down over my hands. “Think they’ll notice if I skip it?”

He grinned. “They’ll notice. Come on. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun.” We jogged to catch
up with the group.

One of the side doors of Barringer Hall was propped open with a brick. We entered
and climbed the stairs in silence
—
but we didn’t stop on the top floor. Jason pushed through the door to the roof and
held it open as we all marched silently past him. The others, the initiators, I guess,
stood in the doorway. Reid pushed my blanket back into my hands. “Take it,” he said.
“Trust me, it gets colder.” He smiled at me.

I didn’t smile back. But I took the blanket.

The roof was framed with a brick wall, about waist level. “Every one of us here has
spent the night on the roof of Barringer Hall. Some, more than once.” Jason smiled
wide, and a few people snickered. “But it wasn’t always this way. Initiations used
to be held in the woods, until poor Jack Danvers wandered off and never returned.
Which brings us to the rules. There’s only one, really. Stay with the group. Unless
you want a dorm named after you.” Obnoxious grin.

The initiators started filing out the door, back down the steps. “Enjoy the sunrise,
kids. Oh, and don’t jump.” Jason closed the door behind him, and everyone stood in
silence, staring at it.

A freshman guy immediately started pulling on the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge.
A girl joined him and ran her fingers along the seams. “No hinges, either,” she said.

“Son of a . . .”

A girl who looked way too young to be on a roof in the middle of the night said, “We
could scream.”

The freshman guy who’d been pulling on the door said, “Don’t be stupid. If we get
caught, they get in trouble, and then what? We’re stuck with them for the rest of
the school year. You want to be on their bad side? ’Cause I don’t.”

And with that sentiment, everyone settled into complacency. Some curled up around
the edges under the bricks. Bree folded her hands behind her head and closed her eyes.
Like it was no big deal she was stuck on a roof for the foreseeable future. And some
people took the opportunity to gossip, like it was some planned slumber party or something.
Not like we were herded like animals, marched up here, and locked on the roof against
our will.