Hysteria (29 page)

They were giving me something. A story. And I had to give them a different one.

The lawyer in New Jersey had done the same thing. He gave me a story. But that time
I stuck to it.

“You left the party,” he’d said, and I did nothing. I didn’t nod, I didn’t speak,
I wasn’t doing any of those things at the moment. Just staring at the blood caked
under my nails, wondering when they’d let me wash it all off. They’d already scraped
samples from underneath, which was unnecessary, really. It was obvious where it came from.

“You walked straight home, and you locked the door behind you. Sometime later, Brian
Cole broke into your house, through the living room window. He broke the phone when
you tried to call 911. He pushed you into the china cabinet. He chased you into the
kitchen. You took a knife to defend yourself.”

He repeated it to me, and asked me to say it back. And I did, in this detached, monotone
voice. Repeated it over and over to him and anyone that asked. And a lot of people
asked that first day. I said it over and over, with my lawyer nodding slightly beside
me. I said those words until it was the only thing I remembered at all.

Chapter 17

M
om answered the door when Reid knocked the next day. I’d told her he was coming. Told
her and held it out like a dare, wondering what she would say, what she would tell
me to do. “No, he’s not,” she’d said.

“Oh, okay, so how about you drive me over there so I can tell him not to come.”

She glanced at the phone that we weren’t supposed to use, shook her head, and actually
smiled to herself. “Never thought I’d miss cell phone towers . . .” And that was the
end of the discussion.

And now Reid was introducing himself
—
reintroducing himself
—
like he was trying to make a good impression, and it was kind of painful to see. Because
Mom didn’t care.

Mom said, “Reid, I don’t want to seem rude here
—
”

I choked on a cough. “I have to get out of this room,” I said, brushing past Mom.
Mom opened her mouth, then tilted her head to the side, like she was realizing, in
that instant, that I wasn’t about to listen to her. Not after she’d sent me away.
Not after the months where she’d done nothing. Not now.

“Just”
—
Reid said, his hands held out in front of him
—
“for a walk.”

Mom spoke to Reid, like she thought she’d have more luck with him. “Stay where I can
see you.”

We left. I glanced once behind me and saw her shadow pass back and forth behind the
green curtains. I wondered if this is what she always looked like from the outside.

Reid didn’t touch me as we walked to the end of the strip of rooms, and I hoped it
was because he thought Mom was watching from the window.

“How’s everything at school?” I asked.

“Mallory, there’s not any school. Not really. We had this meeting yesterday, and there
will be classes, but just for show or normalcy or something. For something to do.
Half of campus is gone anyway. Parents picked them up. The rest of us are just going
through the motions.”

Then we reached the end of the strip and there was nowhere really to go but into the
woods, so we walked absently, still in view of the hotel, twigs cracking under our
steps.

There wasn’t anything left to say, really, after that. Except what I was thinking,
which was, “I think it was either Taryn or Krista. Maybe Bree, but I don’t think so.”

Reid looked surprised, like it hadn’t occurred to him that someone actually killed
Jason, and that Jason didn’t just miraculously appear dead with knife wounds. “Why
do you think that?”

“Because they’re lying. They’re all covering for one of them.”

Reid sunk onto a gray stone, twice his width, and I sat beside him. He rested his
elbows on his legs and put his head in his hands. “It’s not Taryn,” he said.

I felt this pang
—
jealousy, I guess. Because he was defending his ex or something. And then I worried
that maybe he knew for certain it wasn’t Taryn, and I got this double pang. “How do
you know?” I whispered, wanting and not wanting the answer.

“It’s kind of a secret. So you can’t tell.”

“Jesus, Reid. Seriously? Enough with the secrets already. I think we’re past that.”

“I guess we are,” he said slowly. He took a deep breath and said, “Remember how I
said that before me and Taryn had a . . . thing, she was with Jason?”

“Yes.”

“They were together a while. Over a year, maybe.”

And now Jason hardly glanced at her, but they still hung out in the same circle. Awkward
with a capital A.

“Anyway,” he said, “last year, when Jason was my roommate. I got back from dinner
and heard Taryn in the room, and I was going to leave because, well, that’s what you
do when your roommate has a girl in the room.”

I shifted uncomfortably, because I didn’t really want to hear about all of this. Of
Reid and girls in his room and that there was this whole system because it happened
so frequently, and Reid must’ve sensed it because he rested his hand on the small
of my back. He continued, “But they were fighting. Jason was yelling. And I heard
something. You know how you hear something and you know exactly what it is? Jason
hit her. I’m sure of it. But when I got in the room, she was on the floor next to
the desk, holding her chin, and she was bleeding. And Jason kept saying she fell,
she fell, and Taryn was crying, but she wouldn’t look at me.”

He found me looking at him. “I know what you’re thinking. Weird that I dated the girl
my roommate hit, right? Hard to explain. It was like we had this connection. Because
I knew, and she knew I knew, and she didn’t have to pretend around me. It was like
we could skip all the small stuff, all the bullshit. It was all wrong, obviously.
All the wrong reasons . . .” He trailed off. That was something I could definitely
relate to.

“She wouldn’t tell, though. I guess because of who Jason’s dad is. He said, she said,
right? And then she and Krista were best friends all of a sudden and Taryn stopped
hanging out with me, like she wasn’t allowed to or something.”

“Reid,” I said. “What you’re saying is that Taryn had motive.”

“No,” he said, taking my hand. “What I’m saying is that Taryn is weak.” He squeezed
his hand around mine, and I knew that he meant that I wasn’t, and I hated it. I stood
up and started pacing in front of the big rock.

“So it had to be Krista.”

“I don’t know, Mallory. I don’t get that. It doesn’t make any sense. She’s nothing
without him.”

“Reid,” I said, “she’s not even
related
to him.”

“What? Of course she is.”

“Where does she go in the summer? Does she stay with the Dorchesters?”

“No, I think she goes to camp or something.”

“Does she go there for holidays?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. Maybe not. It’s not like we
talk
. Jason said she was his cousin.”

And then I saw Jason as something else. Someone holding all the truths, all the secrets,
that Krista had. If secrets were currency, Jason was the richest one of all. Turns
out, the richer you are, the more people want you dead.

Then I thought of Krista taking care of the Taryn situation for Jason, convincing
her not to tell, because he held the secrets over her. And Krista having to pretend
to befriend this preppy girl with a preppy name and a preppy satellite phone. And
Bree coming along with the same preppy kind of name and attitude. And Bree telling
me that Jason had kissed her under the bleachers, but she’d been trying to tell me
something else. Krista had to fix that too. I remembered Jason holding Krista around
the neck outside the bathroom, threatening her.

Krista hated him.

Krista hated them all.

I didn’t tell Reid. Secrets weren’t a currency. They were a burden. A heavy, dangerous
burden.

“Okay,” I said. “But Reid,
someone
did it.”

“I know, I know.” He stood up and walked toward me, like he was looking for a way
to forget and I looked like the perfect way to do it.

He kissed me like he wanted something from me, but not like how Brian wanted something
from me, not that thing at all. But something. Definitely something. And I didn’t
know what it was. But I didn’t stop him either because I felt myself sinking into
him, wanting to be more than a way to forget.

His hands were in my hair and then they were on my hips, and I flashed back to that
day on the beach with Brian. And I knew Colleen had been right
—
he hadn’t been right for me, not even a little.

I pulled away, glanced down the strip toward the hotel room, and cleared my throat.

“They’re interviewing us all,” he said. And then he was whispering. “About that night.
I can say something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Like I snuck over to see you but you were already asleep. So they’d
know there was no way you could’ve done it.”

“You mean you could lie.”

“But I could have. So easily. It doesn’t have to be a lie. I’ve snuck over to your
place before. God, I should’ve done it.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“I don’t even have to lie. I can just start a rumor. About me and you that night.
It’ll make its way around and this will all be done.”

“It’ll make it worse,” I whispered.

“It won’t,” he said, and now he was getting agitated.

But I knew it would. It had happened before.

Colleen had lied. Before she found me. The cops showed up at Brian’s house, looking
for next of kin. Looking for his parents. But nobody knew that. They saw the cops
show and they ran. Except Colleen. She never ran away. Besides, they all knew her
by then.

She could tell, I guess, that they weren’t there to break up the party, once they
started asking for Brian’s parents. Once they took their hats off. And when it was
obvious that his parents weren’t there, they asked if anyone had seen me. So Colleen
said, “Yeah. You just missed her.”

I had about twenty-seven missed calls from her that night. First she went to my house.
Then to her own. And then she found me, under the boardwalk. And I know she meant
well, because she did. But the cops wouldn’t listen to a word she said after the initial
lie. So at first they didn’t believe my story
—
the lawyer’s story
—
either.

But eventually the cops stopped asking, because someone else confirmed the lawyer’s
story.

I never asked who. And I never found out.