In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

  When she slammed the door, I picked up my laptop and threw it against the wall. It hit the floor hard, screen tearing free of the keyboard. Looking at it—the laptop I’d bought with a credit card I couldn’t afford—I sank to my knees and sobbed, each breath like dragging glass up my throat.

  Everything had been ripped away in a single moment. Heather had beaten me, and she’d barely even tried. Like always, she’d come out on top, and I was second-best. I needed to get rid of this pain—it was going to destroy me, burn me from the inside out.

  I scrambled through my desk drawer until I found the Adderall, opened the plastic bag, and shook the pills into my mouth. I chased them with the handle of whiskey Heather kept in her closet.

  It wasn’t enough. I needed to really escape.

  I tore through Heather’s dresser, looking for whatever else she had that could take these feelings away. In the bottom drawer, I found an orange bottle with Chinese writing that I recognized as Courtney’s diet pills. Heather was always stealing them from her, saying, we have to save her from herself. But it was pointless—Courtney’s mom just overnighted her more whenever they went missing. Evil woman, Heather would say. The depths some parents will sink to. But what did Heather know about bad parents, or the weight of expectations, or what it felt like to want more for someone, want to be more for someone? Heather’s parents did nothing but dote on her. What did she know about anything?

  I popped the top off and poured the little white pills into my palm, then froze, and thought of my father. The number of times I’d witnessed him doing exactly this. Where it had led him.

  Then I thought of Dr. Garvey and the life my father should have had. I swallowed the pills and chased them with whiskey.

  After time, my vision blurred, and I wobbled, catching myself on Heather’s desk chair. The cocktail was kicking in, doing what it was supposed to: carving away the sadness, the horror—but instead of soothing numbness, the hollow space in my chest filled with anger.

  Not anger. Rage.

  Dr. Garvey had used me. Taken advantage of how much the fellowship meant to me, flexed his power and authority, dangling the letter over my head, all to get what he wanted.

  My pulsed raced. And Heather. It had all worked out for her. Of course it had. She’d been approached by Dr. Garvey out of the blue, the kind of opportunity people like me only dreamed about. He’d treated her like he should have, like a student, using his power and authority to help, not hurt. The world had worked the way it was supposed to for Heather Shelby. Why her and not me?

  Four years of Heather getting everything. Chi Omega. A BMW on her birthday. Beautiful dresses. Heather was never afraid of the future, never afraid to speak up, never afraid she wasn’t worth listening to. Heather had two loving parents and a bright future. Heather had the fellowship. Heather had Harvard.

  A seething rage rose inside me, tall as a tidal wave. You were supposed to win if you were the best, but Heather somehow tricked the system, threw the scales out of whack. She was the one who deserved to have everything ripped from her. She was the one who deserved to be left with nothing. Not me.

  My thoughts blurred into a single desire: I wanted to claw it back from her. I wanted to punish her, erase everything unfair that had happened. All the way back to the first day, freshman year.

  I looked at the pictures pinned on the corkboard above Heather’s desk. The seven of us, smiling. Sophomore year, Myrtle Beach, waves behind us. Junior year, Coop’s and my hands clasped, our secret. Freshman year, seven round faces outside East House.

  In all of them, the light seemed to shine special on Heather. She was in the center of the group. The center of attention, with her high theatrics, breezy confidence.

  I tore the photos from the wall and stabbed a pen down hard into Heather’s face, scratching her out, erasing her, clawing back the spotlight she’d gotten unfairly. I scratched, X-ing her out, and it felt so good.

  I stabbed harder, the pen piercing the photograph, marring the desk underneath. Without Heather, I could’ve had so much—Chi Omega, Amber Van Swann, the fellowship, Harvard. Moving to DC, becoming an important person, the kind my father wanted to be himself.

  I hated her. It was the truth, pulled from my shadow life, a feeling that had been simmering underneath my conscious mind for four years, growing and growing.

  I stared at the pictures, at Heather’s face, destroyed with vicious hex marks.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Everything was kicking in now. I could feel the dizziness circling, trying to tug me under. I stumbled into Caro’s room, running into the doorframe, then pulled myself straight. I grabbed for her desk drawer, missed, and tried again. Yanked it open, searched clumsily for her scissors.

  The silver pair, nearly large as my forearm, twin points as sharp as blades. For scrapbooking, of course, because it was Caro, who did that sort of thing.

  I made it back to my room and took the ruined photographs to Heather’s desk. I slid the scissors in and cut, again and again, carving Heather into pieces.

  I hated her.

  I wanted her gone.

  I wanted her to die.

  The dark thought twisted in my mind. If she was dead, the world would be balanced. I could finally have what I wanted. I could be best, first place, winner.

  I cut until she was nothing more than scraps littering her desk.

  But it still wasn’t enough.

  A new idea was dawning. One that could restore the balance, right the wrongs—take back what Heather had stolen from me. It was terrible, and cruel, but as the rage seethed inside me, I knew I’d do it. To punish her, and Dr. Garvey. Everyone.

  I dropped Caro’s scissors onto Heather’s desk and swept the scraps of photographs into her desk drawer.

  Then I walked out the door and into the night. And for the first time in a long time, I was in control.

  Chapter 31

  Now

  That’s where the record stopped, every time. Where it went utterly dark. That’s what Eric didn’t understand. Out the door, into the night, in control. Out the door, into the night, into the night. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor, sunshine streaming through the windows, my hands and dress covered in blood. Dried in iron-scented rivulets. A record of pain written across my body like a warning in some dark language I didn’t understand.

  What had I done?

  The answer was buried in the black hole. For ten years, I’d known I’d blacked out something important that night, destroyed my memories with whiskey and drugs, truly my father’s daughter. And for ten years, I’d refused to look, been desperate not to touch the wound, still as raw now as it was then.

  Except for once.

  A year after we graduated, right after Mint dumped me and I’d transformed into the worst version of myself in the middle of a restaurant, I’d wondered: What, exactly, was I capable of? Who was I, really, underneath all the layers, when no one was watching? Where were my limits?

  I went to a therapist. A fancy New York therapist, with the dark couch and the soothing, neutral-colored walls. Who was I, really? She said the answer was waiting in the dark spaces. She wanted to explore them, the moments when time fast-forwarded. I was a quilt made up of light and dark, she said. She told me to trust her.

  It was a mistake. I told her about the night Heather died, what I’d done to the photographs, what I’d wanted to happen. I could see her careful mask slipping as she listened, could see the suspicion, mixed with intrigue, as her pencil scratched the surface of her notepad. She told me my blackout was like the black hole, a way to repress. She wanted to know what was inside it. But I couldn’t remember, hard as I tried. The dark was impenetrable.

  So she hypnotized me. Like Orpheus bringing Eurydice out of the underworld, I followed the sound of her voice back to my dorm room on Valentine’s night. Saw the broken laptop, felt my pink
dress hugging my hips, burned and burned with rage. But still, the memories wouldn’t surface. Still, the picture ended at out the door, into the night, in control.

  We failed to uncover anything. I quit seeing her.

  Then a week after our last session, I woke from a dream and knew I’d gone back, that I’d remembered; but now, awake, I’d lost the thread. The only thing that remained was a single conviction, dredged out of the dark: I’d done something unforgivable. Something wicked, to Heather. Something my mind was desperate to keep locked away.

  So I did. Dedicated myself all over again, with renewed fervor, to being perfect Jessica Miller, a wild success, every surface calm and beautiful. A woman who was unassailable. I needed everyone at Homecoming, all my classmates, to reflect that truth back to me, their eyes and words like mirrors showing the right picture. It was the most important thing, more important than whatever happened with Mint or Coop or Caro. It was life or death.

  And here, in my most important moment, I was faltering.

  “Jess.” Caro’s eyes were full of betrayal, suspicion—fear. “What did you do?”

  Behold Caroline Rodriguez, finally reading someone right. Finally willing to believe the worst, and of her best friend, to boot. What extraordinarily bad timing.

  Her voice was so loud that the football players stopped celebrating, turned, and stared. The crowd closest to us went quiet. We were suddenly, and inescapably, on display.

  Frankie wrestled away from the players and strode to the back of the float. “What are you guys doing? You’re making a scene.”

  “Jessica was about to explain how she’s a psycho freak who killed Heather,” Courtney said smugly. Oh, how the tables had turned.

  Frankie spun to me. “What’s she talking about?”

  “Did you cut up the pictures, Jessica, yes or no?” Eric watched me with a steady, unblinking gaze. Like everything he’d worked for had been leading to this moment.

  “Yes.”

  Caro sucked in a breath.

  “Stop,” Coop begged. “You don’t owe them anything.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mint turned to Coop with narrowed eyes. “What do you know about her that I don’t?”

  I couldn’t take this. I had to get out. I looked over the railing at the crowd, who stared back at me, watching the terrible scene unfold like so many voyeurs.

  “Did you apply for the Duquette fellowship?” Eric pressed.

  There was no point denying it. “Yes.”

  “Jess—” Coop hissed.

  “Did Professor John Garvey write you a recommendation letter, like Heather’s?”

  “Not like Heather’s.”

  “But a letter?”

  “A letter,” I agreed.

  This time Eric’s voice boomed, his question ringing out over the sea of red and white, no microphone needed. Everywhere, faces turned to us. What a spectacle, what a show, like all my fondest dreams. The star of Homecoming.

  “Did you kill my sister?”

  Except in real life, I was the villain, not the hero.

  The whole crowd tensed in anticipation.

  I met Coop’s eyes, begging me. Mint’s eyes, hard and cold. Caro’s, full of horror.

  It was buried in the black hole, spinning at the center of me, a darkness growing, eating the light: something unforgivable, something wicked.

  Did I kill Heather?

  I couldn’t look. And so I did the one thing my instincts had been screaming at me to do since the moment I’d spotted Eric at the party.

  I vaulted over the railing, landing hard on the street, and pushed into the crowd.

  People sprung back, as if my touch was poison.

  From far away, someone shouted “Stop her!”

  I ran for my life.

  Chapter 32

  February, senior year

  I woke to sunshine, warm and gentle. I could tell, even with my eyes closed, that the world was full of light. I felt it on my face, sensed the glow through my closed eyelids. The sunlight reached inside me, into my rib cage, and filled me with peace. It felt like waking up on a Saturday morning when I was a child, bedroom full of sunshine, no cares in the world, nothing to do but play. Sometimes I wished I could dial back time, be a child again, stay forever in the before.

  I opened my eyes.

  Tall windows looked back at me. Outside those windows, tree branches, leafless but lit by the sun. It looked almost like a summer day, and for a dizzying moment I thought I had traveled in time.

  But I knew those windows. And beneath them, the rows of easels. Worktables, and paint tubes, brushes half washed by lazy college students. This was the art studio, and I was lying on the floor. As soon as I recognized it, my muscles started aching.

  What was I doing here?

  I pressed my hands against the floor to push myself up and froze. My hands. They were covered with something dry, something sticking ever so slightly to the wood. I held them in front of my face and choked on a scream.

  They were covered in blood, like I’d dipped them in paint, the red drying as it snaked down to my elbows, leaving track marks. My palms and fingers stung with pain.

  I looked down at my dress—pink, for Sweetheart. Blood everywhere. I looked at my thighs, my knees. Covered in thick, dried blood. Wherever I looked, the pain started—burning, stinging pain.

  What the hell had I done last night?

  I sat up, clutching my head, vision swimming. All of a sudden, the sunlight through the windows wasn’t peaceful but oppressive. It came back like a punch to the gut: Heather had won the fellowship. She’d gotten a letter from Dr. Garvey. I would never go to Harvard.

  Oh god. I remembered taking the Adderall, and the diet pills, chasing both with whiskey. What was I thinking? I felt a flash of panic—I’d cut up those photographs. I had to go back, clean up the pieces, before Heather opened her drawer and found what I’d done.

  But what exactly had I done? I’d blacked out after leaving the dorm, no doubt because of the pill-and-whiskey cocktail. I couldn’t remember anything. I looked down at myself. Why did I look like I’d survived a serial killer? And why was I in the art studio—had I been too angry at Heather to sleep in the same room? Had I even made it to the Sweetheart Ball? My stomach clenched thinking about what I could have said, while blacked out, to Mint and Frankie, to Heather and Jack. I was holding on to too many secrets to get this drunk. It was like playing Russian roulette with everyone’s lives.

  Something caught my eye—a manila folder on the ground, covered in red fingerprints. A terrible suspicion dawned. I reached for it, ripping it open.

  Inside was my application to the Duquette Post-Grad Fellowship. Alongside it, the committee’s ranking of candidates, on official Duquette letterhead. In case the winner declined, or something happened to her, god forbid, they’d chosen students for second and third place. I stared at the three names. I could see where I’d traced my fingers over the letters, brushing them with blood.

  First place: Ms. Heather Shelby. Second place: Mr. George Simmons. Third place: Ms. Katelyn Cornwall.

  Like déjà vu, the jolt of discovery.

  I wasn’t even on the list. Heather hadn’t edged me out. I’d never been close, not even with Dr. Garvey’s letter and my impeccable grades, not with all the years of working so hard. No matter what I did, it never changed. I wasn’t good enough.

  I sat numbly while time passed, letting my powerlessness wash through me—the smallness of my life, all the times I’d tried in vain. For some reason, the rage I’d felt toward Heather—the anger that had driven me to stab and cut her pictures—had mysteriously vanished. Maybe it was because now I knew she hadn’t stolen my dream right out of my hands. In reality, it had never been within reach.

  This was what it felt like to fail utterly.

  My spine straightened, su
rvival instincts flooding back. I was covered in blood in the middle of the art studio. Holding my fellowship application and the committee’s confidential papers, which I clearly wasn’t supposed to have, and I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten them. If anyone walked in—if anyone caught me—I would be in a world of trouble.

  I’d done something wrong last night. I knew it, felt the conviction simmering inside. I had to get out of here, had to get rid of these bloodstained clothes.

  I tore the papers and manila folder into the smallest pieces I could manage, then opened the kiln and placed the scraps in the far corner, where no one would notice before firing. I snuck, heart hammering, out of the art studio and into the sunlight.

  It was far too warm for February. The weather felt like a mockery of everything that had happened to me, a reminder that the world would keep turning, no matter how ruined my life was. I snuck quickly, arms covering my dress, jumping every time I heard a noise, desperate to avoid running into anyone. What could I do? It was a sunny Sunday, which meant everyone would be outside. I was all the way on the other side of campus from my dorm.

  It came to me in a flash of inspiration: the gym. It was right next door.

  I walked inside as quickly as I could, eyes locked on the floor, beelining for the girls’ locker room. Just one person, changing in the corner. I darted to the showers and peeled the blood-splattered dress off, turning the water to scalding. Red water spiraled down the drain. The water burned everywhere it touched.

  Ripping open the plastic shell around one of those flimsy bars of complimentary soap, I scrubbed my hands, my face, my knees and thighs. Red bubbles slid across the tiles. With the blood gone, I could see the cuts across my palms and thighs.

  What in the world?

  It didn’t matter. I just had to fix this, and then I would never think about last night again. I’d never do anything wrong for as long as I lived, to make up for all the things I couldn’t remember.