Hysteria

by Megan Miranda

I only saw Reid once during classes, and he didn’t see me. He walked into a science classroom down the hall from mine, laughing at something the girl next to him was saying, raising his hand in greeting as he passed his teacher. And that was all I saw of him. He was a senior, with senior classes and senior friends, and presumably a better lunch slot than me. Seriously. Who eats lunch at eleven in the morning?

  And after school, with nothing better to do, I worked. Well, first I changed. Then I worked. I made a serious dent in the summer reading list even before study hall began. After Ms. Perkins made the rounds and checked that we were all in our rooms for the mandatory two-hour study-hall block, I sent a quick message off to Colleen: Day 1: success. And by “success” I mean “survived.” 78 days left. I ran through make-believe responses in my head: telling me how much her day sucked maybe, or sharing some piece of mindless gossip—real or imagined—about someone we both knew.

  I picked up Lord of the Flies, waiting to hear a chime from my computer, but nothing came. So about halfway through study hall, I started writing another email, this time about Reid. Except I realized I’d never once mentioned him to her. And I wasn’t sure why.

  There was a knock at my door, and I froze. Could the faculty sense when we weren’t studying during study hall? Someone jiggled the door handle, and I slammed my laptop shut. “Hey, it’s me,” a voice called. Like I should just know who it was. Which, okay, I did.

  I opened the door and Reid wedged a triangle block underneath it, propping it open. Part (b) of visitation rules as stated in the Monroe Student Handbook.

  “You carry those around?”

  “Ms. Perkins hands them out at check-in,” Reid said. Right. Part (a).

  “Oh.” Then I stood in the doorway, wondering what I was supposed to do. Reid brushed by me and sprawled out on this particularly unattractive orange shag carpet I’d found that afternoon in the closet of spare furniture beside the laundry room.

  “God, this is hideous,” he said. He flipped a textbook open, stuck a pen behind his ear, and said, “By the way, I’m helping you with math.”

  “I don’t need help with—”

  And then Ms. Perkins was standing in the entrance to my room. “I wasn’t aware you were taking senior courses, Mallory.”

  “Oh, I’m not.” Reid was giving me a Look. I opened the top drawer to my desk and pulled out my calculator. “Reid’s helping me with math.”

  He smiled at Ms. Perkins, dimple and all. “That’s very generous of you, Reid.”

  He shrugged, like it was no big deal. “Yeah, well, we used to be friends.”

  Ms. Perkins left and I stared at the blank screen of my calculator. Used to be friends. Is that what we were? Were we ever anything, really? “Mallory, I didn’t mean—”

  “Why are you here, exactly?”

  He glanced toward the hall again, where Ms. Perkins was making the rounds from room to room, and scribbled absently in his notebook. Or maybe all those letters and numbers meant something to him.

  “How was your first day?” he asked, without looking up.

  “I already failed my first quiz.”

  Reid smiled and put his pencil down. “Durham, right?”

  I nodded. “And I eat lunch at eleven.”

  “The horror.” He looked down the hall again. Empty. “So, here’s the thing.” Reid lowered his voice so I had to lean forward off my chair, and I still could barely hear him. “Tomorrow night—”

  “Knock, knock.” Chloe stood in my doorway, something clutched to her chest. Her eyes moved from me to Reid to me again, and she grinned. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No,” Reid said, before I could even open my mouth. He went back to scribbling intensely in his notebook.

  “Oh good,” Chloe said. She stepped inside the room and pressed her back against the wall, out of view of the hallway. “I come bearing gifts.” Apparently whatever she was clutching to her chest were the gifts. Looked like a stack of yellow books. Then she turned them around so they were facing out. CliffsNotes for all the summer reading.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Reid glanced up. “Prep-school porn.” He laughed to himself and started packing up his stuff. “I can’t indulge this behavior. It’s appalling. What would your parents think?”

  Chloe was shaking with laughter. “Leave already so we can close the door.”

  “I’d rather be caught with a girl in my room than that,” he said, hands held up.

  “You mean Mallory?”

  I looked at the floor, so unlike the version of me he remembered. As far as I could tell, Reid ignored the question. “Hey, I need to talk to you tomorrow.”

  “I have e-mail, you know.”

  “Oh no,” Chloe said, “that doesn’t really belong to you. Don’t send anything you don’t want them knowing.” She pointed to the ceiling, like they were all-powerful, all-seeing.

  “Will you be here tomorrow? Same time?” Reid asked.

  “Not like I can be anywhere else.” I pointed to the Monroe handbook on my desk. “I think every hour is regimented.”

  Reid smiled as he backed out the door. “Nah, Mallory. Those are only suggestions.” It sounded exactly like something Colleen would say. And before I could stop myself, I was grinning ear to ear.

  Chloe closed the door behind him and threw the books on my desk. “I suggest we get to work.” She pointed to the CliffsNotes for The Grapes of Wrath. “This. This is a particular brand of torture I can’t let anyone endure. Start here.” I searched for a pen. “And Mallory? Write fast.”

  When Chloe left with her books at the end of study hall, the emptiness of the room was overwhelming. I started to see things, like I used to at home. Brian’s shadow on the dark window. A handprint on the wall.

  Ms. Perkins came around to give the lights-out notice, and I held the vial of sleeping pills in my hand, thinking about the hand on my shoulder when I was half conscious. I started to worry that maybe someone had been in my room—someone real. I tilted the vial back and forth, listening to the pills fall against one another. Then I threw them in the bottom drawer of my desk and slammed it shut.

  My mind raced with possibility. That green car. The red door. The restraining order. Was it only good in New Jersey?

  The alarms on the outside doors were armed at night, at least.

  But the window. Crap, the window. I checked it and double-checked it, like Mom would do at home.

  I sat on my bed and stared at the door, the window, the door again. The dorm settled into silence.

  And then it started, in the distance. Even though I wasn’t sleeping. Even though I wasn’t in the in-between. I was wide awake. Sitting upright. Staring at the door. And it started.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  I stared at the light framing the door, which seemed to pulsate brighter with each beat of his heart, coming closer.

  I used to have nightmares when I was a kid. The kind where you wake up, but you still see the dream. Back then, I used to close my eyes from it. Remembering what Mom always told me—it’s only real if you let it be. So I’d close my eyes until it passed.

  The air changed in my dorm room. It started throbbing with the slow and steady beat. And because I was a coward, I ran for the desk. I threw open the bottom drawer, snatched the vial of sleeping pills, and took one.

  I buried myself face down on my bed and covered my head with my pillow, but sleep didn’t come quickly enough. I felt something taking shape behind me. And this time, I swear I could hear it laughing.

  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 mos
t 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

  Reid 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.”