Hysteria

by Megan Miranda

  I pressed my lips together to keep the tremble from my mouth. I sat on my hands so she wouldn’t see they were shaking. And I held my breath so she couldn’t hear it catch. She placed her hand tentatively on my shoulder and said, “It’s okay. Dad’s talking to the lawyer again. We’ll figure something out. And then we’ll get out of this place.”

  And that did it. My mother telling me we could go—together. My breath caught and she wrapped her arms around me, hugging me from the side. It was like she was seeing me for the first time since the night she came home and found Brian’s blood all over her spotless kitchen floor. It was like she was making up for that. Because she didn’t hug me that night.

  She couldn’t. She was shaking too hard.

  Colleen had been begging me to stand up. She told me we had to go. Leave. Get out of there. And she was pulling on my arms, trying to get me to my feet.

  “Mallory,” she said. And I realized she was choking on the word. I looked at my hands, my shirt, and realized what I must’ve looked like to her with the tide rising up.

  I reached both arms up to her and she locked her hands around my elbows and I locked mine around hers and she dug her feet into the sand and I dug mine in too, and then we were standing.

  “Come on,” Colleen whispered, like we were supposed to go but stay hidden.

  But as she started walking I said, “Colleen.” She looked over her shoulder, and I said, “I want to go home.”

  She didn’t argue, though I could tell she wanted to. She stopped and faced me, and we stood that way for a minute at least, with the rain falling between us, and then she closed the gap between us, wrapped her arms around me, held on so tight I stopped shaking. Held on like this was the end of something, like this was good-bye. But all I could think was that I was getting blood on her shirt. “Please,” she whispered, and all I could do was shake my head against hers. Though now I realized that when she said please, she hadn’t been saying it to me.

  We were saying good-bye. To the life we thought we’d have. To the future we thought we’d see. Even if it was just the two of us, and the future was just tomorrow. We wouldn’t have it. We walked down the back alley, and there were people outside, some with umbrellas. Some without. They parted as we walked, and Colleen held onto my hand. And as everyone parted for us, I saw a figure at the end. My mother, shaking her head, with a hand over her stomach, and a cop with a hand on her shoulder, and my dad with an arm on her back.

  She looked up, I guess to see what the sudden silence was about. And she looked at me, covered in rain and salt water and blood, walking toward her, like I was a ghost. Her knees gave out beneath her.

  Dad caught her under the arms before she hit the ground.

  “Everything will be okay,” Mom said, like she should have that night but didn’t. Couldn’t, I guess. And then after that, it was too late. Nothing was okay after that.

  I wrapped my arms back around her, but I wasn’t scared anymore. Mostly I was angry. Angry for Brian. Angry for Dylan. Angry for the thing I’d done and couldn’t undo. For the future I’d taken and couldn’t replace. For time, so finite and unbendable, that I could not go back. Not now. Not ever.

  And, if I was being perfectly honest, I was angry at Mom. My hands tightened into fists around her back.

  “I can’t believe you sent me here.”

  “It wasn’t safe at home,” she said. “You know that. I was scared she would hurt you. She wasn’t right in the head.”

  “Is that why you hid the knives from me? Because it wasn’t safe for me?”

  “What? You used to stare at that kitchen, like you were remembering something horrible. You were remembering something horrible. I put them away so you wouldn’t have to think about it every time you walked in the room.” Then her whole body tensed. “Is that what you thought? That we sent you away because we were scared of you?”

  When I didn’t answer, she said, “We were scared for you.”

  “I don’t know why I did it, Mom,” I choked out. I thought of the choice again—the knife, the door. Death, life. “I should’ve picked life,” I whispered, though I’m not sure she understood.

  She stopped breathing. And with my head on her chest, I could’ve sworn her heart stopped beating for a second too. “Mallory, don’t you see? That’s exactly what you did.”

  I clung to my mother like she was the only thing I had in this world.

  Which, I guess, she was.

  That night there was no heartbeat. There never had been. There had only been my memory of Brian pounding on the door, trying to force his way in. There was no voice, either. No name whispered throughout the room. No hand reaching for me as I drifted away. There had only been my memory of Dylan, calling my name and then grabbing my shoulder in the alley. I hadn’t remembered—didn’t want to remember—but I needed to remember. I needed to. The memory demanded to be seen.

  Like Reid had explained, his mother had been stuck. And sometimes the psychological can manifest into something physical. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real. My shoulder still ached—the handprint still raw, like a healing burn mark. Real as anything, there it was.

  And the dream still came. Just because I finally remembered didn’t really change anything. It didn’t change the fact that I kept remembering. It didn’t make the dream any better. Didn’t change the ending.

  I was caught in between again, as I was waking up. Hearing Brian’s heart as he stood before me. Boom, boom, boom. No. Not a heart. It had never been his heart to begin with. It was someone at the door. Again.

  I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed, thinking maybe it was the police telling me—telling us—that we were free to go. I raced out of my room, still in my pajamas, but Mom was already in the living room, dressed for the day, pepper spray held behind her back.

  We stared at each other across the room. Mom went to the curtains and peeked through without pulling them apart. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s Reid.”

  I strode to the door, and as I pulled it open I realized that I knew, with every ounce of my being, what Reid meant when he always said, “I know you.” He was right. He knew me. I knew him.

  I opened the door all the way, like I should’ve done the day before. Reid stood back, barely on the walkway, almost in the parking lot. And in front of him was Colleen. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and her eyes were bloodshot, and she had a bag slung over her shoulder. She punched me in the arm. “You are such an asshole.” Then she flung herself at me and I barely caught her, and I laughed so hard I was almost crying.

  “What are you—” I said.

  Reid sounded far away when he said, without really looking at me, “She was wandering around campus asking for you. She was talking to Bree when I found her.”

  “That was Bree?” Colleen asked. “Not. Impressed.” She disentangled herself from my hold. “You know what else I’m not impressed by? A scary text message.” She punched me in the arm again. “Not hearing from you for days. Calling your house and getting no one. Calling the dorm number and some chick telling me you were gone.”

  “I know,” I said, rubbing at my arm. She actually hit me pretty hard. “I couldn’t, um . . .” I glanced behind me at my mother, who was still in the same place, watching Reid very carefully.

  “Yeah,” Colleen said. “What the hell are you guys doing in this dump, anyway?”

  Reid had his heels on the blacktop, his toes on the sidewalk. “Reid,” I said, as I willed him to take a step forward.

  “What?” he said.

  But I didn’t know what else to say—he was just waiting for me to ask him to stay. With Colleen watching. With my mom watching. “Thanks,” I said, hoping that would be enough.

  He closed his eyes for a second, turned before I could see his face. Then he walked away.

  Mom said, “Colleen Dabner, does your mother know where you are?”

  And Colleen said, “Um, I was gonna call her when I got here. But there’s no service or anything.
”

  Mom sighed and said, “I’ll call her.”

  “What happened to no calls?”

  “Her mother will be worried sick,” she said, sounding so much like her old self that I truly believed we’d all be okay. She disappeared into her room.

  “What?” Colleen asked. “You’re looking at me like you want to kiss me or something.” Which I probably was, because I was grinning ear to ear. “I mean, I get it. Everyone wants to kiss me. But I really didn’t think I was your type.”

  “You’re totally my type,” I said.

  She grinned at me. “Missed you too.” Then she pushed her way farther into the hotel room, dropped her bag, and plopped on the couch. “Now talk.”

  So I did. I sat next to her and told her in a whisper about that night—about waking up to Jason’s body on the floor. And about halfway through the story, Colleen reached out and grabbed onto my hand, but she didn’t say anything. So I told her the rest. About the knife and the sleeping pills and Bree lying, and Taryn’s history with Jason, and Krista, who I thought was related to Jason, but wasn’t. I told her as much as I could about Krista, which, admittedly, was not very much. And at a school like Monroe, that’s really saying something.

  “Well,” Colleen said, clearing her throat and easing back onto the cushions. “Reid’s kind of hot.”

  “And I kind of messed that up too.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Later,” I said, cutting my eyes to the thin wall that separated us from my mother.

  “All right. So are we on lockdown here? Are we free to roam?”

  Colleen bounced up and paced the room, and it seemed like this motel room couldn’t really contain her. Like she was about to bust out of the walls.

  “There’s not really anything we can walk to.”

  “How do you think I got here? I have my car.”

  I ran to the window and looked out, and, sure enough, parked next to the empty spot where Reid’s car had been, Colleen’s beat-up purple hatchback sat waiting.

  “Mom!” I called. “We’re going for a drive.”

  She came back out of her room. “I’m not so sure—”

  “Please,” I said. “I can’t sit here just . . . waiting for something to happen.”

  “Colleen,” Mom said, “I need you to understand that Mallory is in serious trouble here. We’re not allowed to leave the county. So please, please, do not get her into any more trouble than she’s already in. Please use common sense.”

  “I promise, Mrs. Murphy,” she said.

  “Your mother isn’t amused, by the way,” Mom said. “You’re going home first thing tomorrow.”

  “My mother is never amused,” Colleen said.

  “Be back for lunch. And stay in the car.”

  When we got outside, Colleen said, “Stay in the car?”

  “Oh, yeah, we almost caused a riot at the diner yesterday.”

  Her hand froze with the car key halfway to the door. “A riot?”

  “Mmm,” I said. “Pretty sure the mob wanted to stone me.”

  “Huh,” she said, but I couldn’t see her face since she was letting the curls fall forward as she unlocked the car door. “Kind of a sucky way to go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right.” She backed out of her spot, shifted the gears too hard, and paused at the entrance to the road. “Show me this place.”

  First we drove by the diner, now empty, which looked not at all menacing without the people all scowling at me. We passed that gas station with the single pump that Taryn had warned me about the first night I arrived at Monroe. And we drove by the woods. The forest. Stretching up into hills and plateaus and down into valleys, and, in the distance, mountains. We drove down the street in front of Monroe, where I’d first seen Dylan driving by, watching me. Waiting for me.

  The street was bare now. I wondered if he was back in Massachusetts with his dad. If he’d gotten what he’d come for. If he’d gotten too much or not enough. If I’d ever see him again, other than in my memories.

  I told Colleen about Reid—or enough about him—how I knew him from before, how our fathers were old friends, old roommates, how he almost kissed me then and did kiss me now. She didn’t say anything at all. She gripped the steering wheel with two hands and paid extra close attention to the traffic signs.

  Colleen paused in front of the gate with the scarlet M and said, “This is where I ran into that Bree chick. She was sitting on that bench, just staring. And when I asked for you, she looked sick. I seriously thought she was gonna hurl all over my shoes or something.”

  “I don’t get it, Colleen. It had to be Krista. She had to be the one. There’s some secret that only Jason knew, because he could get Krista to do anything for him. It was her. I can feel it. But I can’t figure out why Bree and Taryn are letting her get away with it.”

  “Didn’t you say Bree was the one who knew about the knife and the sleeping pills? Maybe she’s scared Krista can frame her instead.”

  “And Taryn?”

  “It doesn’t have to be complicated, Mallory. I’d lie for you.”

  She was looking at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I knew she would. She had. But I couldn’t explain the difference. “They’re not me and you, Coll.”

  “Yeah, well, most people aren’t.”

  The car started moving again, toward the woods.

  “Back that way is the old student center,” I said. “We’re not supposed to go out there, though. Years ago, some kid wandered off into the woods and never came back.”

  “Creepy.”

  “Yeah. There’s this sign, like a memorial to him or something, except it’s all overgrown now and totally forgotten. Kinda sad, really.”

  Colleen turned off the engine. “Let’s see it,” she said.

  “We’re not supposed to—”

  “We won’t talk to anyone. And anyway, I’ll kick anyone’s ass who comes near you. Cross my heart.”

  I opened the door. The rain had stopped, but the moisture still clung to the trees and the grass. I heard crickets everywhere. And some bird kept fluttering its wings directly overhead. Colleen followed in my footsteps, down the path to the old student center, where the walls were still half standing.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Don’t know. Some history I don’t know about.”

  “So that kid who wandered off—he’s dead?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I guess. There’s no body, but it happened a while ago.”

  I led her to the path that narrowed as we walked, and I kept glancing behind me to make sure I could still see the clearing.

  Colleen said, “Don’t worry, nobody’s following us.”

  “It’s easy to get lost,” I said.

  I stooped down next to where the memorial should be and brushed the weeds aside. “See?” I said, pointing to the letters on the front. Then I flipped it over for her to see the other side. forgotten but not gone.

  “The irony,” Colleen said, “is that somebody had to remember about this to write that he was forgotten. You know? You can’t know you’ve forgotten something until you remember it.” Then she scrunched up her mouth and said, “That was either really profound or really dumb. I can’t decide which.”

  “Profound, of course,” I said, which it was, actually. I hadn’t remembered that Dylan was at my house—I hadn’t remembered Dylan’s role in Brian’s death. I hadn’t remembered the events between the party and Brian coming in through the window. And I had been so focused on the events I did know, I didn’t even know I was missing something.

  I had been so preoccupied not remembering that the memory became something else. Something more. I guess that’s why hysteria was called conversion disorder—it converts. Mind to body. Internal to external. The memory of someone touching my shoulder to a handprint seared onto my skin.

  “Maybe it’s him,” Colleen said.

  “What?”

  She ran her fingers thr
ough the grooved letters. “The killer. It’s this kid. Danvers Jack.”

  “Jack Danvers,” I said.

  “Whichever.”

  I shook my head, sick of thinking about ghosts. About what they could and could not do. About what a memory could and could not do. I tried to play it lightly. “I don’t think ghosts carry switchblades.”

  “No. I mean, I bet it’s him. The real him. I bet he left because, hello, have you seen this place? Who would want to stay here?”

  “So, what, he’d rather hunt his food than be served in the cafeteria? That’s not the rich-kid way.”

  “Okay, so I’m not rich, I get that. But from what you’ve told me, I’d choose the forest.”

  I stood up and she followed. “Your choice of boys would be severely limited,” I said.

  “Ha,” she said. “Ha-ha.” She turned to head back down the path toward the old student center, but there were voices carried in the breeze.

  Colleen froze first, obviously taking to heart what my mother had told her. And what I had told her about our encounter at the diner. She pushed me behind the nearest tree and slouched behind the tree next to mine.

  “What are we doing here, Taryn?” Oh God, it was Reid. With Taryn. In private. I looked at Colleen and hoped she understood I didn’t actually want to hear this. Not even a little. Colleen gave a tiny nod of her head, like she was reassuring me. Like she had everything under control. Like she wasn’t about to let me get hurt again. She had no idea how much this was going to hurt.

  “Someone’s spreading lies about me,” Taryn said. “The kind of lies that could get me in real trouble, you know?”

  “Who’s spreading lies?”

  “Your girlfriend,” she said. “Mallory. I don’t know what she said, exactly, but the police came by to talk. My dad’s lawyer isn’t here yet, though, so they have to wait.”

  But all Reid said was, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Oh. Okay, so maybe you can say I was in your room that night?”

  “But you weren’t in my room that night. You want me to get detention so you can have an alibi?”