In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

Jack grinned. “I need the full report on what Coop looks like now. I need to know how many tattoos he has, if he’s still rocking that Outsiders vibe, if he cut his hair.” He tugged a strand of his own hair. “What do you think… Did I get close to the way Coop used to wear it?”

  Death by a million paper cuts. “It’s very zero fucks meets Ponyboy. Classic Coop. Um, what about Caro, anything?”

  His gaze turned thoughtful. “I guess I just want to know she’s happy. I don’t know… Caro never really changes. You talk about her the most, anyway.”

  He was right. Caro looked and acted exactly the same now as she did then. She still texted me regularly, albeit not every five minutes, like in college. In fact, the only thing that had really changed about Caro was the addition of Coop.

  “You have to tell me if Mint still looks like a movie star,” Jack said, “or if his hairline is finally receding like his dad’s. God, I don’t know whether I want you to say he’s even more handsome, or his hair is falling out, ’cause that would serve him right. I can’t believe he left law school to rescue the family business. There was always something off about his family, right? His dad, or was it his mom? I remember that one time senior year, when Mint lost it—” Jack stopped midsentence, eyes widening. “Oh crap, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”

  And there it was. Pity, even from Jack. Because I’d lost Mint, the person who used to make me valuable just by association. And even though no one had been there to witness the breakup, to see how deep the blow had struck, it seemed everyone could sense it anyway.

  “First of all,” I said, trading the waitress my empty glass for a full one, “that was a long time ago, and I literally could not care less. I’m actually looking forward to seeing Mint. And Courtney. I’m sure they’re very happy together.” I blinked away a vision of my laptop, shattered against the wall, screen still stuttering on a picture of their wedding. “Second, crap? I find it adorable you still don’t curse. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout. Hey,” I continued, “did you know Frankie just bought one of Mint’s houses?”

  Knife, twist. Tit for tat.

  “Really?” Jack shrugged, playing nonchalant, but his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed hard. “Good for him. I guess he’s getting everything he wanted.” He tossed his hair, another stolen Coopism. “Whatever… Everyone in the world sees Frankie every Sunday. Not hard to tell how he’s doing. What I really want is for you to come back and tell me Courtney’s into new age crystals and meditation, or she does physical therapy with retired racehorses. Something charitable and unexpected.”

  I almost snorted my wine. “Courtney? If she’s even one iota less a mean girl, I will consider that immense personal growth.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “I said it was my hope, not my expectation, Miss Literally-Could-Not-Care-Less.”

  “Ha.”

  “You know, I always felt bad for her. Underneath the designer clothes and bitchiness, Courtney seemed like an insecure little girl, desperate to be liked.” He gasped, lifting a hand to his chest. “Will you look at that… I cursed. Soak it in, ’cause it’s not happening again. The Baptist guilt hangover is already setting in.”

  I shook my head, trying to keep the smile on my face, but inside my heart was breaking.

  “Jess.” Jack laid his hand over mine. “I really do want you to have fun. For both of us.”

  Fun. I was going back for so much more than that. I cleared my throat. “After I give you my report on everyone, my reward is that I finally get to meet Will.”

  Jack withdrew his hand. “Maybe. You know I like to keep things…separate.”

  Jack had never introduced me to his boyfriend. Not once in the years since we’d been friends again, which was itself a strange story. When Jack was accused of murdering Heather our senior year, in the few months before he left campus for good, the other students crossed the street wherever he walked, sure down to their bones they were looking at a killer. If he entered a room, everyone stiffened and fled.

  But not me. My limbs had remained relaxed, limber, fluid around him—no escalating heartbeat, no tremor in the hands—despite the police’s nearly airtight case.

  It wasn’t a logical reaction. Jack was Heather’s boyfriend, the person most likely to kill her, according to statistics. The scissors crusted with Heather’s blood—used to stab her, over and over—were found in his dorm room. Witnesses saw Jack and Heather screaming at each other hours before her body was found. The evidence was damning.

  But in the end, the police weren’t able to convict Jack. In some ways, it didn’t matter. He was a murderer in everyone’s eyes.

  Everyone except for me.

  Slowly, inch by inch, my body’s knowing filtered into my brain. One night, a year or so after I moved to New York City, I woke in a cold sweat, sitting up rigid as a board in my tiny rented bedroom, filled to the brim with a single conviction: Jack was innocent.

  It took me another three months to reach out to him. He was also living in the city, trying to disappear. I’d told him I thought he was innocent, and from that day forward, I’d been one of his few friends. I was his only friend from college, where, until Heather died, he’d been popular. Student body president. Phi Delt treasurer. Duquette University Volunteer of the Year.

  To this day, I hadn’t told anyone I still saw Jack. He was my secret. One of them, at least.

  Looking at him now, radiating kindness, filled me with anger. Jack was undeniably good, so easy to read. The fact that so many believed he was capable of brutal violence was baffling. I’d met dangerous people—truly dangerous people—and seen the violence in their eyes, heard it brimming in their voices. Jack wasn’t like that.

  So I understood why he wanted to shield the new people in his life from his past, the horror of the accusation that remained unresolved, despite the dropped charges. It’s not like he could ever truly hide it from someone, not with the internet, or the fact that his whole life, he was doomed to menial jobs that wouldn’t fire him after a startling Google search. Or the fact that he barely spoke to his family anymore. Though, to be fair, that was because of more than Heather, because of their southernness, their Baptistness, their rigidness…

  I understood why Jack would want to draw a solid, impenetrable line between now and then. But still, it was hard to wrap my mind around, because the past was still so much with me. I lived with the constant unfolding of memories, past scenes still rolling, still playing out. I heard my friends’ voices in my head, kept our conversations alive, even if for years now it had just been me talking, one-sided, saying, Just you wait.

  A thrill lifted the small hairs on my arms. Tomorrow, there’d be no more waiting.

  Jack sighed. “Thanks for coming to see me before you left. You know, I’m glad you never changed. Seriously. Ten years, and same old Jess.”

  I nearly dropped my glass. “What are you talking about?” I waved at myself. “This dress is Rodarte. Look at this hair, these nails. I’ve been in Page Six. I’ve been to Europe, like, eight times. I’m totally different now.”

  Jack laughed as if I was joking and rose from his seat, leaning forward to kiss my forehead. “Never stop being a sweetheart, okay? You’re one of the good ones.”

  I didn’t want to be a sweetheart. How uninteresting, how pathetic. But I did want to be one of the good ones, which sounded like an exclusive club. I didn’t know how to respond. At least Jack had given me what I’d come here looking for, besides the penance: his blessing. Now I could go to Duquette guilt-free. For that, I held my tongue as he tugged his coat over his shoulders.

  He stepped away from the table, then turned back, and there was something in his eyes—worry? Fear? I couldn’t quite pin it. “One more thing. I’ve been getting these letters—”

  “Please don’t tell me it’s the Jesus freaks again, saying you’re going to burn in hell for all eternity.”

  Jac
k winced. “No. Kind of the opposite.” He looked down at me, at my raised brows. “You know what, it’s not important. It might not mean anything in the end.” He squared his shoulders. “Put your wine on my tab. Clara never makes me pay.”

  He squeezed my shoulder and took off, winding around the bar’s motley collection of chairs. He paused by the door and looked over his shoulder. “Just… When you get to Duquette, say hi to Eric Shelby for me.” Then he was out the door, on the sidewalk, carried away by a sea of people.

  This time, I actually did spit out my wine. Eric Shelby—Heather’s younger brother? Eric had been a freshman when we were seniors. I’d never forget the look on his face when he came flying around the corner the day they found Heather, saw the crowd gathered outside our dorm room, scanned it for his sister’s face, didn’t find her…

  The last time I’d seen Eric and Jack in the same place, it was outside the library ten years ago. A crowd had gathered around them. Eric was screaming at Jack that he was a murderer, that he was going to pay for what he’d done to his sister, that even though the cops had let him go, Eric wouldn’t stop until he found out the truth. Jack’s face had gone white as a ghost’s, but he hadn’t walked away. He’d stood there taking it with fists clenched as Eric screamed, his friends trying to hold him back by his scrawny, flailing arms. If there was anyone alive who hated Jack Carroll more than Eric Shelby, I didn’t know them.

  So why the hell would Jack tell me to say hi to him?

  Chapter 3

  August, freshman year

  The day I moved into Duquette, all I could think about was the fourth grade. We’d moved to Norfolk from Bedford over the summer, so I’d entered fourth grade at a new school, desperately shy. I barely talked to anyone, kept my eyes on my feet and the linoleum floor. Miraculously, my teacher saw something in me and suggested I take the gifted test. I scored high enough to get in, and all of a sudden, everything changed. I was given books to read at the ninth-grade level. Math test after math test came back with big, fat 100s scrawled in red marker. I felt as if a radioactive spider had bitten me and infused me with boldness, like a superpower. I started looking up from the floor to people’s faces when they spoke to me, because for the first time, I felt I might be worth the attention.

  Fourth grade promised to be the best year of my life. I loved my teacher, Mrs. Rush, a short, blustery woman who swept around the classroom, calling out compliments and ruffling students’ hair. The day of our big field trip to the tide pools, I’d gotten permission to go to the bathroom to change into galoshes before we lined up for the bus. I’d studied the animals that lived in tide pools every day after school and had begged my mother to buy me galoshes so I could wade in and show everyone what I’d learned. Like an expert. A gifted student.

  But when I arrived back at the classroom, it was empty. The class had left without me. After thirty minutes of waiting for them to realize their mistake, I made my way to the front office. There I sat, for the rest of the day, in an uncomfortable plastic chair. Trying—and failing—to keep myself from crying. For hours, my throat ached.

  Mrs. Rush finally appeared in the office near the end of the day. She walked straight to the receptionist and said, “I counted my kids and you’re right, I only have thirty-one. But I’ve racked my brain and can’t for the life of me think who I forgot.”

  The words cleaved me in half. Mrs. Rush, my favorite teacher—the one I felt surely saw me, recognized I was special—couldn’t remember I existed. The receptionist gave a small nod in my direction, whispering, “Jessica Miller has been waiting here for hours.” Mrs. Rush spun and pressed her hands to her face. “Of course—Jessica M. There are just so many Jessicas to keep track of. I’m very sorry.”

  I let her hug me, ruffle my hair, but I never forgot it. I never forgave her. Most of all, I never absolved myself of the sin of being so utterly forgettable.

  It was this tide-pool memory that haunted me on Freshman Move-In Day. Move-In was supposed to be thrilling, a Big Moment marking the transition from childhood to adult life. But all I could think about was that empty classroom, the excitement spiraling into disbelief, then pain. My stomach was a pit of butterflies—and underneath, a thread of something darker.

  What was I so afraid of?

  The four-and-a-half-hour drive from Norfolk to Winston-Salem felt like a week, thanks to my dad’s desire to turn off the radio and talk a mile a minute. First about college and then about anything and everything that popped into his head. This was something new I was still getting used to—a version of my dad who participated. Hell, who spoke. When I was younger, I would’ve given anything to have a conversation with him, have him take interest in me. But by now, through all our ups and downs, it just felt wrong, like an imposter living inside my dad’s skin. The energy with which he pointed out the window and twisted in his seat to ask me questions was too much. Unsustainable. There was no way this upswing could last.

  By the time we finally circled downtown Winston-Salem and made our way to the outskirts, where Duquette University sat tucked away like a secret, my mother’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel. She’d stopped trying to turn on the radio hours ago and instead drove silently, letting my dad talk and talk.

  We took a left, and finally, there it was: the larger-than-life stone arch marking the entrance to Duquette. Just like in the brochures. The butterflies beat their wings. I clutched my stomach in the back seat.

  “Well, that does impart a sense of grandeur, doesn’t it,” said my dad approvingly. Even my mom took her eyes off the road long enough to shoot me an impressed look.

  We glided under the arch and onto campus, driving slowly. Duquette was more than grand. Blackwell Tower, home to the chancellor’s office, was modeled after the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, single spire piercing the sky in a lethal spike, buttresses creeping out the sides like spindly spider legs. In the blazing glory of late August, rows of red crepe myrtles formed a sea of crimson everywhere, the ocean of color interrupted only by gnarled magnolia trees, twisted arms reaching out with scattered white blooms, clinging late into their season. Crimson and white. Blood and spirit, like the Duquette motto: Mutantur nos et vos, corpus et animam meam. We will change you, body and soul.

  I was ready to be changed.

  I shifted to see past the large crack in the windshield, left over from Dad’s incident. It had been months now, but we still didn’t have the money to replace the windshield, so we’d all learned to lean a little to the left.

  “There it is,” I breathed. “East House.”

  Although Blackwell Tower and the Dupont Observatory were the most iconic buildings on campus, I’d fallen hard and fast for East House. It was a modest-sized dormitory nearly covered, root to roof, with thick, green ivy. Though it was one of six halls reserved for freshmen, it was the only one that looked like a castle from a storybook, or a house out of The Secret Garden. Carved above the front door were the words “The sun rises in the east.”

  This beautiful building—this imposing campus—was my life now. I’d earned Duquette, been selected out of thousands competing to go to U.S. News & World Report’s sixteenth-best college in the country. It may not have been what I’d originally longed for, or what my father expected—it was no Harvard—but it could be the start of something good. A new life. I could be a different person, starting now.

  It wasn’t until my mom parked that I fully registered the circus of people around us. The dark thread of worry resurfaced.

  “Well,” said my dad, unbuckling, “guess this is it. Time to see how knockoff Crimson Campus stands up to the real deal.” He reached for the door.

  “Wait—” All I could think about was what he’d insisted on wearing: his Harvard alumni shirt. For the first time in my life, seeing it brought shame instead of desire. What would all these people—these Duquette students—think? Surely, they would understand the message my father was sen
ding, not just to me anymore, but to all of them.

  My mother gave me a sharp look, as always, finely attuned to conflict. “What’s wrong?”

  I looked back and forth between them. My parents. Both here, though neither wanted to be, for vastly different reasons. It would only take two days, and then they’d strap themselves back into this car and make the return pilgrimage to Norfolk, to do who knows what in their empty house. I could stand it.

  “Nothing,” I said, leaning back in my seat. “Let’s start with the trunk.”

  ***

  My parents ended up leaving earlier than expected, but not before my mother got choked up during a tour of campus—It was just so expensive; didn’t I realize what I was getting myself into?—and my dad declared the campus pretty, but nowhere near as impressive as Cambridge. And oh, here’s an idea, what if I waited a semester and applied again to Harvard as a transfer student? I would never have to tell anyone I’d spent a semester in North Carolina.

  After all that, and the hard work of cramming my stuff into the small, cinder-block dorm room, I thought I’d be relieved to see them go. But as soon as I was alone, I bawled like a baby. With a roommate—especially mine, Rachel, who was eerily silent and shot me anxious looks every time I breathed too loud—I had to lie under my comforter to hide my sobs.

  College was not what I’d expected. All the other freshmen seemed to become best friends instantly. They were having the time of their lives. In the afternoons I walked down the hall with my head ducked, listening to conversations in doorways about all-night frat parties and hangovers so bad they had to skip 8:00 a.m. classes. In a flash, I was nine years old again, walking into that classroom and finding no one. It was like being invisible. Nothing had changed.

  One night I woke at 3:00 a.m. and shuffled to the bathroom, catching two girls stumbling back to their room, actually crying with laughter. They were clearly drunk, but they were also glamorous, in miniskirts and bright lipstick. I’d noticed them before. They were both blond, and one was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Her hair was so glossy. Ever since I’d first spotted her, I’d spent nights wondering what shampoo she used, or if it was just genetics. It was a strange feeling to admire her so intensely from afar, like being half in love.