Hysteria (26 page)

“You okay? I mean, the sleep?”

Her shoulders relaxed and she let out her breath. She nodded rapidly, like she didn’t
want to really talk. “I’m good,” she said.

I was so used to Colleen, who I could read. Most of the time, at least. But now I
felt like I was squinting at Bree, trying to decipher the meaning. “You’re good,”
I repeated slowly, almost to myself.

“That’s what I said.” Bree’s eyes locked onto something over my shoulder, and she
kept moving.

Friday night. Two hours until it was technically Saturday. Eight hours until I could
say it was Saturday and mean it. Eleven hours until breakfast opened and I had a legitimate
excuse to look for Reid. Eleven hours.

I could sleep through eight of them, easy. Then I could get ready. Maybe even call
Colleen beforehand.

The room was pulsating. Just like the kitchen used to. Except my shoulder was throbbing
along with it. Like I was a part of it now. Like it had claimed me, or claimed part
of me, and it was yearning for the rest. Like it had its talons in and wasn’t about
to let go now.

Boom, boom, boom
. I started to fade. I thought of Reid, telling me to go back.
Boom, boom, boom.
It was getting louder. Coming closer. Right outside my door. But I couldn’t see anything.

Go back.
Think, think, think
. I heard my name, and the word “wait,” and I thought
Wait.
And I felt that hand reaching for me, but instead it was hovering. In the moment
before.

Think.

But I was fading.

Think.

But I felt someone
—
something?
—
no, someone, standing over me.

Think.

But I was gone.

Brian stood over me, as I lay in the remains of the china cabinet, tiny pinpricks
of glass sticking out of my skin. He shook his head, like he was trying to undo it
all. It was like he realized, even in his out-of-control state, how out of control
the situation had gotten. But he didn’t stop. He reached for me still. “Why are you
doing this?” he screamed, which made no sense, like this was all somehow my fault.
“How could you do this?” he yelled again, like this was his house and I was destroying
it.

I crab-walked backward through the glass, and pieces pierced my skin again, this time
into my palms. And I thought,
No, no, no
, but he kept coming anyway, crunching the glass under his shoes.

Then he stopped and looked around the room and he winced, paled. And he said, “Can
you just
wait
one goddamn second?”

And in that pause, I righted myself, scrambled to my feet. Then I ran. I sprinted
into the kitchen, and he ran behind me
—
I could feel him, right behind me. I looked to the door, and it felt important, that
look, like I was willing something to happen, but I couldn’t remember what. And when
nothing happened, I made a choice. Because he was
right
behind me and he wouldn’t stop. So I darted left at the granite island and I grabbed
a knife. “Mallory,” he said.

I spun around. So he would see the knife. So he would stop.

“Wait,” he said.

Because he couldn’t. But I couldn’t, either. There was no time.

I turned my head away, toward the door, but I still felt the resistance. The pressure.
The shock. I looked back at Brian, like maybe I was imagining it, but I wasn’t. Brian
was looking down. And then he looked up at me, and his mouth formed the word “no.”
A long exhale. Like the word was dying along with him.

I woke up choking. Like something was sitting on my chest, constricting my lungs.
I stared at the ceiling, suffocating, trying to remember how to breathe.
Breathe
. And finally, I sucked in a horrific, wheezing breath. I squeezed my eyes shut and
breathed deeply through my nose. And then I smelled it. Something faint, metallic,
acidic.

I opened my eyes. The room felt full. I pushed myself up on my elbows.

There was a person on the floor. Face up. And there was blood. A lot of blood. Two
static bloodred puddles, stretching out from the arms. Both wrists were slit halfway
up the arm. And the knife, just beside the body. Taunting me.

“No.” I scampered down from the bed. “No!” I yelled.

I couldn’t see, even though I could look. And in a brief moment of clarity I thought,
Hysteria
, even while the rest of me refused to process. I couldn’t see his face, just a blur.
I could look, but I could not see.

And my brain whispered,
Brian, Brian, Brian
.

I stumbled past my desk, and my foot slipped in the stickiness, but I caught myself
on the edge of the desk and kept moving for the door. My fingers scratched along the
door and fumbled with the handle and then it flew open and there was light, there
was so much light. I ran down the hall, and the word in my head fought its way out.
“Brian!” I shouted.

And for a moment, all I could see was him, and I heard his name being shouted, but
I couldn’t tell whether it was then or now and it didn’t matter anyway because this
couldn’t be real.

This was not real.

Brian was in the ground. I saw them lower the wooden box into the hole in the earth.
I heard somebody wail for him as I cowered behind the pickets of a fence.

I spun in the hall, and there were footprints on the floor, made of blood, leading
from my room, directly to me.

Crazy. I was crazy.

“Help!” I cried. And a door creaked open. And then another. Because I kept screaming
for help. But nobody helped me. People crept along the path of bloody footprints,
tracing it back to its source.

And I knew it was real when the screaming started.

There was too much screaming. So much. Until it didn’t even sound like screaming anymore.
More like that ringing I’d hear in my ears when there was nothing making a sound at
all.

People came. People in authority. The screaming around me turned to crying, and there
were questions, but I couldn’t speak. I was still sitting, silently, in the middle
of the hallway.

A name was being passed around, in whispers, underneath the crying, just out of earshot.

And then it reached me, the word.
Jason
, I heard.
Jason Dorchester. Jason Dorchester. Jason Dorchester.

Then the cold hands came. Maybe the presence. Maybe a new one. Maybe something else.

Maybe this is how it ends. With a dead body and cold hands, reaching for me.

Chapter 15

T
here were fluorescent lights. Starchy sheets. White walls. And people in scrubs moving
their mouths. My ears were ringing, then stopped. And then the voices came. Light
off. Light on.

“Mallory.” A woman with wisps of red hair falling into her face was leaning over me.
She turned her head to the side and said, “Run a full tox screen.” When she stepped
back, I saw there were other types of uniforms in the room. The dark-blue kind, with
gold shields. She cleared her throat and said, “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

A man started to protest but she raised her hand up, palm out. “First of all, we make
sure she’s lucid. Second of all, and you should know this already, you wait for her
parents.”

I started to feel sick, thinking of my parents. Then thinking of the cops. And then
thinking of the body on the floor.
Jason.
So I didn’t even wince when the doctor slid a needle into the crook of my elbow,
drawing the blood out.

I felt the pull as blood seeped out, drawing more along with it. Then she left, and
I waited, alone.

Like before: I waited, I waited, I waited. I waited for hours, maybe even longer.

The door swung open and my parents barged in, the doctor with the red hair right behind
them.

“What’s going on?” Mom asked. She ran to my bed and put a hand on my side. “I don’t
understand. Is she hurt?” Then she turned to me. “Are you hurt?”

I stared back.

The doctor cleared her throat. “Your daughter was at the scene of a crime, and, apparently,
she was unresponsive.”

“Unresponsive?” Dad said. “You mean unconscious?”

“No,” she said. “I mean unresponsive. She didn’t respond to verbal questions, and
she didn’t seem to know where she was.” She held up the clipboard in her hand. “Tox
screen results are back. Everything normal, except
—
did you take a sleeping aid?”

“Yes,” I said, which I guess was my first response since they brought me in.

“Okay, otherwise, she’s clean.”

I guess they couldn’t detect the orange fire I felt inside, like nerves twitching
on overdrive.

My parents stared at me. Dad was looking back and forth between me and the doctor,
like he was trying to put together the pieces to some puzzle. “I don’t think I understand,”
he said. “Scene of a crime?”

The doctor looked toward the door and knocked twice, almost like she was asking to
be let out. A man and a woman in police uniforms entered the room.

Mom sank into the seat beside the bed. “She’s okay?” Dad asked.

The doctor smiled stiffly. “According to this,” she said, jabbing a finger at her
stack of papers. She left the room.

The two cops stood at the end of my bed. The woman licked her lips, like she was preparing
to devour me. The man cleared his throat. “I’m Officer James, and this is Officer
Dowle. Why don’t you start by telling us the events of last night.”

“I was sleeping,” I whispered.

Officer Dowle bounced a little on her toes, like she was ready to pounce. I kept my
eyes on Officer James when he spoke again. “Okay, before that, then. What is the nature
of your relationship with Jason Dorchester?”

“I have no relationship with Jason Dorchester.”

“You don’t know him?”

I sighed. “I know him.”

“Would you consider your encounters positive?”

“Not really,” I said, and I felt Mom tense beside me.

“Care to elaborate?”

“He doesn’t like me. Didn’t. Well, he did at first. I wasn’t interested, so now he
hates me. Hated me. Hates me.” The dead can still hate, I was sure of it.