In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

  My drawings were scattered, but I was too scared to pick them up. Instead, I crouched, watching my dad put the pills back in the bottle. Then he slumped against the dresser and looked at me. Really looked.

  “I hate it here,” he whispered. He squinted at the light over my shoulder, which came from the door I’d left cracked open. His pupils turned to slits, like a cat’s. “I really do.”

  “No,” I said, feeling my chest cleave.

  As he dropped his gaze from the light, his pupils dilated, the blackness pooling in each eye. I watched the change with horror.

  “Why do you insist on dragging me down?” he whispered.

  I scrambled back, head hitting the wall.

  “It’s supposed to be better than this.” His eyes were now twin black holes, pupils drowning the white. And I knew, with sudden clarity, that I didn’t hold the cure. I was the thing making him sick.

  My mother flung open the door, and light flooded the room. My father shrank back, and they stared at each other for one horrible, frozen moment. And then they started screaming.

  Hours later, I let my mother hug me, apologize, cry. She brought my drawings back, and I let her put them next to me in bed, waited until she left the room before I tore them to pieces and stuffed them in the trash. For days afterward, I told her I was okay. For a year, I stayed quiet, especially after we moved from Bedford to Norfolk, so my dad could transfer to a different branch of the steel company.

  I pushed the memory of his sickness, and its cause, so far down it formed a tiny rupture in the center of me, a small black hole of my very own. And no matter how many years passed, I never looked inside.

  Until senior year of college. Home for Christmas, when I woke from that nightmare gasping, still feeling the cold gun pressed against my forehead, still seeing the drowning pupils of the drug dealer, and the dream terror was replaced, by sinister sleight of hand, with the sudden rush of memory, unburied after fourteen years.

  Only hours later, we got the call: my father had been found in a motel room, arms splayed over the side of the bed, dead of an overdose.

  No one came to his funeral. When my grandparents arrived at the burial plot and saw it was just me, my mom, and the priest, my grandmother burst into sobs so violent my grandpa had to hold her to keep her from crumbling. Instead of hugging us, patting my shoulder like she did when I was young, my grandmother pointed a trembling finger.

  “It’s your fault,” she said, eyes blazing at my mother. “You trapped him with your pregnancy. You made him miserable. You killed him. And look!” She flung her arms at the empty grounds. “No one even cares he’s gone. He was supposed to be somebody.”

  My mother took two steps forward and slapped my grandmother hard across the cheek. She staggered back, mouth open, and my mother strode from the burial plot, out of the cemetery, never looking back.

  So in the end, it was just the three of us. My grandparents and I stood silent as the priest read the burial rites and my father’s coffin lowered into the ground. It was a freezing winter day, and I’d left my coat in the car, but the strange thing was, I could barely feel a thing. There was this snowy fuzz, a blanket of white noise, both inside my skin and out. As the dirt fell, shovelful after shovelful, two voices echoed in my head, on a loop timed with the soft patter of earth hitting the coffin. My father’s voice, pulled from the recovered memory: I’m supposed to be better than this. And my grandmother’s: No one even cares he’s gone.

  I did, of course. But perhaps I didn’t count.

  When the holiday break was over and I returned to Duquette, I avoided everyone, sleeping during the day, walking around campus at night, when Heather and Caro were asleep. Sometimes I had clipped conversations with my mom. Strangely, she’d started calling me, which she’d never done before.

  Then one night I got back to my dorm and Caro was waiting on my bed, tears in her eyes. Somehow, though I hadn’t told her, she knew what had happened. She wanted to hug and talk, to be my best friend, but I pushed her aside, told her I wasn’t ready. She’d just nodded and thrust a sheet of paper at me before leaving.

  I dropped to my bed, looking at the paper without interest. It was a poem by Mary Oliver. I scanned until I came to the last line, a question: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

  I sat up with a surge of anger. Why should I be satisfied with one wild and precious life? A vision of my father’s grave flashed, three small figures huddled around it. It wasn’t fair. People deserved more than that, more than a small, brief existence, only to fade away in the end.

  Tears stung my eyes. I tore the poem and stuffed it in the trash. One life, full of mistakes, and not enough time—not enough chances—to do it right. It wasn’t enough. Who was this Mary Oliver, encouraging people to accept smallness, while in the meantime she was famous? While in the meantime, she knew her life would be infinite—her thoughts and words repeated for hundreds of years. I wanted that. I wanted to become big enough, important enough, to never really die. Then I would never get trapped in a hole in the ground like my dad, with no one around to care.

  I knew exactly what to do. I sat at my desk and booted up my computer, tapping impatiently as I waited for it to start. If my grandmother was right and my dad’s life had ground to a halt because of me, I had to show him I was worth it, make him proud, and live for both of us: Harvard for grad school, then Washington, with the important dealmakers. I’d go up, up, up, and I would take him with me. He wouldn’t have to end like this. I would give him one more wild and precious shot.

  ***

  I waited until the last student left the lecture hall before I approached him. Dr. John Garvey, Duquette’s campus celebrity, its shining star economist. Double Harvard: Harvard undergrad, Harvard PhD. Economic advisor to two presidents, and the school’s pride and joy. His classes were nearly impossible to get into unless you’d declared an econ major, with the exception of Heather, who had gotten into his class last semester even though she was an English major, because that was the kind of luck she had.

  Dr. Garvey was tall, with thick, dark hair that was starting to gray. He’d probably been handsome, in a professorial sort of way, when he was young. No student had ever seen him outside a well-pressed suit, bow tie knotted expertly around his neck.

  He was gathering his papers, picking up his briefcase, preparing to leave. It was now or never. I clutched the application so hard I nearly bent it. The Duquette Post-Graduate Fellowship, informally known as the Duquette Fulbright. The fellowship awarded one senior per year a full ride to the graduate school of their choosing. And it nearly guaranteed, with that honor on your résumé, that you’d be accepted anywhere you applied. Even to an Ivy League school.

  I wanted this more than I’d ever wanted anything. This was our last shot, my father’s and mine. I needed to wow the fellowship committee, and nothing would do that better than a recommendation letter from Dr. Garvey.

  “You’re hovering,” he said, stuffing his papers in his briefcase.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, Dr. Garvey, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “So? Spit it out.”

  Butterflies soared in my stomach. Timidly, I held out the application. “I’m applying for Duquette’s Post-Grad Fellowship, and I was hoping…since we’ve had four classes together and I’ve gotten A’s in all of them, and you wrote on my last paper that I had very sophisticated thinking… Well, I was hoping you would write me a recommendation letter.”

  There. It was out.

  He stopped packing his briefcase and looked up. Scanned me, head to toe. I forced myself to remain still, shoulders high.

  “Remind me of your name.”

  “Jessica Miller,” I managed to say, though my throat ached all of a sudden. “Jessica M.”

  Dr. Garvey stood looking at me in silence for so long that I began to grow deeply uncomfortable. Sweat
gathered at my neck. He was going to say no. Of course he was. It was humiliating. Crushing.

  “Have dinner with me,” Dr. Garvey said, and the fact that he’d finally spoken was enough of a shock that it took me a second to process what he’d said.

  “Dinner?” I repeated.

  “If you want a recommendation, I’d like to get to know you better.” Dr. Garvey snapped his briefcase shut. “I’ll take you to dinner Friday night, and we’ll talk.” He walked to the door and adjusted his bow tie. Then he turned to look at me over his shoulder.

  “Well, what do you say, Ms. Miller? How bad do you want it?”

  Chapter 27

  Now

  I’d wanted so badly to come home to Duquette, to feel the magic that was in the soil. But standing here, staring at the pieced-together photographs in Eric’s hands, felt more like returning to the scene of a crime. I inched toward the edge of the float. Eric’s eyes swung around the circle, looking for fissures in somebody’s mask.

  “It was one of Heather’s roommates,” he said. “That’s what makes the most sense.”

  The dread was like an anchor, rooting my feet.

  The cheering was finally dying down. Eric’s voice cut through the remaining din, loud and recognizable. Frankie, still surrounded by a throng of football players, turned in our direction.

  But Eric only had eyes for Caro. “Was it you? Little Caroline Rodriguez? Always the good girl, the loyal friend. But how did it feel, being the odd one out? You tagged along for years with Mint and Jessica, Heather and Jack. Were you jealous? Heather was a Chi O. She was popular, the Phi Delt Sweetheart. She had a boyfriend and a plan for the future. What did you have? No boyfriend, no plans. I saw your file—a film major, and you barely scraped by with a 2.0. In the height of the recession, no less. You were unemployed for a year after graduation. An overqualified temp. The only one who didn’t soar.”

  Caro had never told me that. The surprise was enough to make me halt my slow retreat. Her cheeks flamed.

  “I didn’t—” she started.

  “And now you’re an elementary school teacher.” Eric’s voice was acid. “Life took a pretty hard turn, didn’t it?”

  “Teaching’s not what I originally planned.” Caro’s hands clenched into fists. “But it’s a noble profession.”

  “You know what I always wondered?” Eric circled her like a shark. “Why you were so obsessed with your friends. That’s why you never paid attention to your grades, right? It was always about the East House Seven.” Caro cast a furtive look at where Coop and Mint were standing. “Oh, I know all about it,” Eric added. “You used to memorize their schedules, sign up for their classes, call and text day and night, try to follow them home on breaks. You know what Heather used to say about you?”

  “Knock it off, man. Caro had nothing to do with this.” Coop’s voice was gruff.

  “She used to say you were her own personal stalker.” Eric thrust the cut-up photographs at Caro. “It’s like Courtney said—this looks like something a stalker would do. Did you? You stopped wearing your cross after Heather died. What made you lose your faith, Caroline? Did you do something that made you unworthy of wearing it?”

  Tears sprang to Caro’s eyes. Instinctively, she reached for her necklace, fingers skimming her collarbone.

  “Right before Heather died, you confronted her,” Eric accused. “She told me she was angry at you, that you’d threatened her. Why?”

  “Caro, threatening?” Mint’s voice was doubtful.

  I tried to avoid looking at the torn-up photographs. “Caro would never—”

  “She was going to get Frankie expelled,” she burst out, hands flying to her face. “She knew he was still cheating on his drug test, and she was actually going to tell his coach. I couldn’t let her.”

  “What the hell?” Courtney asked. “Did Heather tell everyone about Frankie’s drug scandal except for me?”

  “She didn’t tell me.” Caro’s voice cracked. “I knew because I was spying on her when she confronted Frankie and Jack. Okay? I’m sorry.”

  She was confessing? Oh no, Caro, bad idea—

  “What do you mean, spying?” Coop looked at Caro like he was seeing her for the first time.

  She winced, then took a deep breath and forced the words out. “I used to eavesdrop. On all of you. It was a bad habit.” She looked at Coop, pleading. “One I grew out of.”

  “Oh my god,” Courtney breathed. “You literally were Heather’s stalker.”

  “Did you stalk me?” Mint asked, horrified.

  “I didn’t stalk anyone!” Caro grabbed at her hair. “I just needed you all more than you needed me, and I was ashamed of it. Growing up, I was the freak kid, the one with super-religious parents. And then I came to college, and all of a sudden, I had you guys, and I was part of something. But no matter how hard I tried, you always left me out. I was always at the bottom. Just like Eric said. It drove me crazy.”

  “Caro,” I started. “You don’t have to say all this—”

  “No—I want to know.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Why not me?”

  No one said anything. I tried to remember times we’d left Caro out, or times she’d seemed unhappy, but I couldn’t. She’d just been…there. Reliable, dependable, good-natured Caro. Someone I took for granted.

  I was supposed to be her best friend.

  “You can’t even think of a reason, can you?” Caro looked around at us, dark eyes rimmed with red. “That’s how little you thought of me, when you were all I ever thought about.”

  “I think about you,” Coop said softly.

  Caro glared at him. “Not then.”

  “You’re very good at playing the victim, I’ll give you that.” Eric stepped forward, clutching the photographs. “Poor, pitiful Caro. None of her friends loved her enough. Why don’t you get to the part where you threatened my sister a week before she died?”

  Caro darted glances at the rest of us, waiting for something—to be defended, maybe. For protests that Caro couldn’t possibly. But when none came, she swallowed hard. “I found out Heather scheduled a meeting with Frankie’s coach.” Her eyes flicked away, ashamed, and we all knew then how she’d uncovered it. “So I confronted her. I said if she did, I’d tell everyone she leaked Amber Van Swann’s sex tape sophomore year because she was jealous Amber was getting all the attention.”

  Oh god. What had we done to Caro in the space of two years to turn her from the girl who’d refused to leak Amber’s tape to the one who used it for blackmail?

  “Heather leaked it?” Courtney screeched. “She leaked the tape of my Amber, the girl who was supposed to be my little sis?”

  Caro closed her eyes. “No. But I told her I had access to the original file, and I could make it look like she did. It was a bluff. A halfway bluff. But she believed me. I told her if she went to Frankie’s coach and ruined his life, I’d ruin hers back.”

  “Damn,” Mint breathed. “Ice cold.”

  Caro opened her eyes and found mine, her hand drifting to her bare neck. But what was missing was bigger than a necklace. It was the laughing girl I’d met when we were eighteen, in the East House quad. It was the girl the rest of us had killed slowly, over the course of years.

  “So it was you,” Eric said, growing calm again, now that he had Caro in his crosshairs. “Heather must’ve stepped out of line, and you were following up on your threat.” He shook the photographs at her. “Was this supposed to be a message?”

  “No!” she shouted. I could see heads in the crowd turn to look at us, a strange tableau: the crying woman on the football float, a group of people gathered around her in a tense circle.

  “I didn’t touch those pictures,” Caro insisted. “I never would’ve cut up our memories. I just wanted to scare her with the threat. And it worked. She never told. I had no reason to hurt her.”

&nbs
p; “It wasn’t Caro,” Coop said, his menacing voice back. “She’s not perfect—none of us are—but it wasn’t her.”

  “Well, in that case”—Eric jerked his head in my direction and grinned, like everything was going exactly according to plan—“we have one other possibility.”

  My back hit the railing and I gripped it, tight.

  Eric held up the photographs. His eyes glinted. “Tell me, Jessica. What did Heather do to make you want to kill her?”

  Chapter 28

  January, senior year

  Dr. Garvey didn’t take me out of town. He didn’t try to hide it. We sat in the middle of a crowded restaurant across the street from campus—the nice steakhouse, the one Mint’s parents took him to every Parents’ Weekend. I wondered if Dr. Garvey knew somehow that no one would catch us—like he’d struck a deal with the restaurant—or if he simply didn’t care.

  The professor insisted I call him John. He tipped the wine bottle and filled my glass, over and over, speaking at length about the new book he was writing, which was sure to make a splash, earn him yet another offer from the White House. He never once asked me a question. Didn’t inquire about the fellowship, why I wanted it, or where I would go if I won. I knew within five minutes of sitting down that Dr. Garvey didn’t care about getting to know me.

  But I was glad he didn’t stop talking, because I couldn’t have managed a word. I was an automaton, moving in the ways I was supposed to, doing things I could see other people doing in my peripheral vision: unfolding my white napkin, laying it across my lap. Taking sips of water. Allowing the waiter to scoot my chair close to the table, cage me. I ordered fish by pointing blindly at the menu, then ate two bites.

  What was I doing? I wanted to be somewhere safe. I thought of Coop’s apartment on instinct, before remembering the two men shattering the glass, the hand untwisting the lock. Maybe there was nowhere safe. Still, every instinct screamed at me to leave as fast as I could.