Hysteria (19 page)

“You took him from me! You took him!”

I could see the blood flowing under the surface of her skin through her neck. And
I just stood there, shaking my head. I walked backward and she walked forward until
she was at the back entrance of the kitchen, and finally she yelled, half delusional,
“Where is he?”

Then my dad was there, pulling me back. He was talking real low to Brian’s mom, and
then he was yelling for my mom. Then my mom was there, but she was just shaking, staring
past me at Brian’s mom, who wasn’t making any sense. “Where is he?” she yelled again.
Dad let go of me and placed his hands on her arms. He kept talking real low and calm,
even though nothing about this felt low or calm. He eased her back through the door
and turned the lock, and then he called the cops. That’s how we got the restraining
order.

Right then, with Brian’s mom in the backyard and Dad on the phone and Mom shaking
behind me, that was the first time the kitchen started pulsating.

And I knew she had come to the right place after all. Because he
was
here.

In my dorm room, I changed out of my dripping-wet clothes. Then I took out the knife.
I wiped the blade with a tissue, careful not to snag my fingers. I cleaned off the
leftover flesh from the tomato. And then I pushed it into the back of my bottom drawer.
Behind my binders and office supplies. I slammed the drawer shut.

I booted up my computer, prepared to write this
Lord of the Flies
essay, but I couldn’t concentrate. The cursor blinked on the Word document until
the screen went to sleep. I stared at the bottom drawer, imagining the knife laying
idle inside. So close. Too close.

I retreated to my bed, but I could smell it still. I could. Ripe and acidic. Full
of possibility. Good and evil and offense and defense and life and death.

Lights out. The whole room was beating, and I stood in the middle of it, willing it
away.
Mallory
, it whispered. I turned toward my bed, where I thought I’d heard it. No, I saw it
out of the corner of my eye, by the desk. The dark shape. I whipped my head toward
it, but it shifted again, to the closet, just at the edge of my vision. And then the
room started to blur, like my vision couldn’t keep up with what I was trying to see.

Wait
, it said, like it was right behind me.

“No, no, no,” I mumbled. Because I knew what was coming next. The hand, pressing down
on me.
It’s only real if you let it be
, I thought.

Two hands pressed down on my shoulders. I shrugged them off violently and yelled,
“Get away!”

“Whoa, sorry.”

I turned around, the beating of the room now only in my own head, in my own chest.
I tried to slow my breathing. Reid had his hands held up in the air. I looked around
my empty room, then at him. I took slow breaths, and I heard the beating of my heart
return to normal.

“You scared me,” I said, once I trusted myself to speak again.

Reid tilted his head to the side. “Who were you talking to?”

My face was hot, and I willed my eyes to stay on his. “No one.”

“You look terrified.”

I looked away
—
at the closed door and the open window, at the shades hanging in front of the window,
alternately blowing inward and slapping back against the window frame. “How the hell
did you get in my room?”

“Your window. Sorry, I knocked first. You didn’t hear. And you . . . you were . .
.”

“I locked it.”

“No, it was open.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes still. They searched the corners of the room, the space behind
me. I’d locked the window, I was sure of it. Almost sure of it. “I thought something
was wrong,” he said.

“I thought I saw . . . I thought I felt . . .” I glanced down to my shoulder and back
at Reid and shook my head. “Never mind.”

“You thought you felt what?”

Things I didn’t want Reid to know about. My shoulder burned where Reid had touched
the bruises. I pulled on the collar of my pajamas to make sure they remained covered.

Then I realized I was still in my pajamas, and Reid was in dark sweats. The carpet
felt cold under the soles of my feet. “What are you doing here?”

He pointed to my laptop. “I sent you a bunch of e-mails. Like, a ton. But you never
responded.”

I kept my eyes on him as I backed toward my desk, unsure why I didn’t trust him. Why
couldn’t I just choose to trust him, like he chose to trust me at the diner? He didn’t
move, didn’t say anything at my lack of trust. Instead he watched as I booted up the
computer and scanned my e-mail. Reid Carlson:
we
good?
Reid Carlson:
hey,
can
you
just
write
back?
Reid Carlson. Reid Carlson.

“I didn’t want to just . . . leave things. Again.”

I instinctively put my fingers to my lips, remembering. Watched as his eyes followed
my hand. Watched as his eyes stayed there, even after I pulled my hand away.

Now I didn’t know what he expected from me. And he needed to know why he shouldn’t
expect anything, really, at all.

“Sometimes I think I can feel him,” I said. “Hear him, even. I mean, I
do
. I do feel him. I do hear him. Like he’s right here . . .” I shuddered, imagining
him watching me even now.

Reid sat on my bed, ran his hand across my blue comforter, like an invitation. I wondered
if he knew where he was sitting
—
what he was doing. “I guess things . . . happen after a trauma,” he said, looking
somewhere beyond me.

“Things like this?” I waved my arms around the air, like Brian was somewhere in the
emptiness.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” He shrugged and scooted farther onto my bed. I stayed where
I was, my back against my desk. “When my dad died
—
I mean, after we found him, my mom completely lost her vision. She couldn’t see anything.
But it was all psychological. There wasn’t anything physically wrong with her.”

“You mean like hysterical blindness?” We’d watched a movie in history class last year
about World War II, and some guy who just stopped seeing, for no real reason at all.
I mean, other than the fact that everyone was dying around him.

“Yeah, like that. The real term is ‘conversion disorder.’ I guess so it doesn’t sound
so . . . hysterical. Therapy veteran,” he confessed.

“She couldn’t see because she was
upset
,” I said, like an accusation. Because I could see just fine. Not the same type of
thing.

“But that’s not how she explained it. It was more like she couldn’t
not
see. Like she couldn’t see anything
but
my dad . . .” I imagined what Reid was seeing in that pause. His father, on the ground?
In the snow? Or did he see his mother first, see her face, as she saw her husband?
Which was worse? He ran his hand through his hair one, two, three times. And on the
third time I crossed the room and took his hand and sat beside him on my bed.

“It’s like she was stuck,” he said.

“For how long?” I whispered.

“I’m not sure. I had to go stay with my grandparents, but by the time we got home
for the funeral, she took one look at me and told me to change my tie. Two or three
days, I guess.”

“Brian’s been dead for two
months
,” I said.

“Brian,” he said. And I realized he’d never heard his name before. I wondered if it
made it more real. If he understood that he used to be a person and now he wasn’t
—
because of me.

And just in case he didn’t understand, I said, “He was my boyfriend.”

His hand slipped away, and mine immediately felt cold. “Mallory,” he said. “I’m so
sorry.”

Then I stood up because I couldn’t breathe. And he pretended not to notice that my
breath shook each time I exhaled. Instead, he slid down onto my bed, against the concrete
wall, and said, “Do you want me to leave?”

I thought of what Colleen would tell me.
Say yes,
she’d say. Or maybe,
Say no
. Maybe something else. I didn’t know anymore.

Reid was looking at the ceiling, like he didn’t care either way. But he was holding
his breath, I could tell. Which made my decision for me. I slid into bed beside him,
hovering near the edge, and miraculously, given the width of the bed, we did not touch.
I closed my eyes, found his hand again, and laced my fingers together with his.

And when I squeezed his hand, his grip tightened around mine as well. I stared at
my desk, thinking I could probably take a sleeping pill now. I could sleep without
worrying about someone sneaking into my room. Slashing my shirts. Coming for me.

The tension left Reid’s hand, but his fingers still lay between mine. I shifted so
I was on my back, a little closer to him. I ignored the vial of pills in the drawer.
I didn’t want to take them.

Turns out, I didn’t want to miss this feeling.

I slept.

Somewhere in the night, I must’ve slept, because I woke. And you can’t wake without
sleeping first.

The sound of Reid’s light snoring woke me early. My arm was hanging off the bed, and
I didn’t know if I should just lay there, hovering near the edge, or move closer to
Reid.

So instead I got up.

I turned on my computer and typed
conversion disorder
into a search engine and began to read.

Loss
of
hearing,
loss
of
speech,
paralysis,
numbness
with
no
physical
cause.
Hallucinations.

Hysterical
blindness:
Loss
of
sight
of
a
psychological
nature.

Hysterical
pregnancy:
Clinical
pregnancy
symptoms
when
the
person
is
not
pregnant;
most
often
mental
in
nature.