In My Dreams I Hold a Knife

by Ashley Winstead

  When I was done, I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my body, took another and scrubbed my hair, trying to squeeze out all the water. I opened the towel. The faintest red stains marked the white.

  In a flash, a vision: torn blond hair, sticky and red, matted against white sheets.

  No—where had that come from? It was painful—terrifying—and I shoved it away.

  Movement caught my eye. In the row of lockers, a tall, athletic girl laid her gym clothes on the bench and disappeared into a bathroom. I darted over, glanced around, and snatched her clothes, pulling on the too-large shirt and baggy shorts as fast as I could, smelling the mix of unfamiliar laundry detergent and deodorant. I shoved my bloody dress and towels to the bottom of the trash can, and then I fled, out the gym and down a block, trying not to think about the people staring. Finally, I forced myself to slow. It was a long walk across campus to Bishop Hall, and I couldn’t run the whole way, as much as I wanted to. It would look too strange. I had to act normal.

  I steadied my breathing. Everything was going to be okay. I was covered in cuts, so that was clearly how I’d come to be awash in blood. How I’d gotten those cuts, I had no idea, but I wouldn’t think about it now. I’d bury the night, and whatever bad choices I’d made. Everything was going to be okay. I said it to myself over and over, like a spell, true if repeated enough times.

  I’d get back to my suite, tell Heather and Caro I was going to sleep, and then I’d really do it, even if they whined about the Sweetheart Ball and all the gossip they wanted to dissect, or if Heather brought up the fellowship, wanting to talk more about where she’d go next year. I’d close the door to our room and hide under the covers and sleep until it all disappeared, no matter how long that took—a week, a month, ten years.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  Chapter 33

  Now

  I ran, streaking across campus, legs pumping hard and fast. All the crimson-clad people—students and alumni—stared in shock at the girl sprinting, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting somewhere safe, outpacing the angry mob that was surely only steps behind me.

  It was all so clear now, so terrifyingly obvious. I was the villain; I always had been. It explained everything—why I’d never gotten what I wanted, no matter how hard I’d tried. It wasn’t because life was unfair, or not working the way it should. I’d had it backwards my whole life: I wasn’t the princess, set upon by misfortune; I was the witch. And life had unfolded the way it was supposed to, giving me what I deserved.

  I ran with all my strength past the people and into the trees, the famous Duquette forest, carving a path where there wasn’t one.

  Did you kill my sister?

  The truth I’d resisted for ten years now rang through my head.

  I could have.

  It was possible. That night I’d hated Heather so fiercely, so violently. And, if I was finally being honest, I’d hated her long before then, since freshman year, when I first saw that everything came so easily to her, when she got Chi O and I had to watch her celebrate with Courtney in the gym.

  Branches whipped my cheeks, but I pressed faster, faster, looking for somewhere safe.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks, though they were too late. I’d tried so hard to be good, to use the love I had for her to stifle the hate I sometimes felt. But it had always simmered underneath. It had simmered until the night it boiled over, the night she stole the one thing that was most important, the one thing that should have been impossible for her to take.

  I’d probably killed her. That’s what the blackout was hiding. Blackout, black hole, two defense mechanisms. Like the memory of my father telling me he hated his life when I was eight that my mind kept safely tucked away for fourteen years—even if the poison had seeped out over time, slowly shaping me.

  It all made sense. The cuts and blood all over me the next morning. The strange certainty I’d done something unforgivable. Well, here it was, the truth finally exhumed out of the dark.

  I’d killed her.

  It became clear where I needed to go. I’d run through campus, desperate and blinded by tears, once before: Junior year, Parents’ Weekend, the day Heather got her BMW and I got my red envelope.

  Blackwell Tower rose before me, its black spire piercing the sky. I ran until I reached the massive double doors, swung them open, and found the winding staircase, climbing as fast as I could.

  Up, up, up. To the top of the tower. Like the villain, hiding from a pitchforked mob.

  I burst into the hidden storage room, where students used to smoke pot and have sex—all the forbidden things that once felt so wicked—and jerked to a stop. The room was filled, wall to wall, with leftover furniture, cardboard boxes, stacks of old newspapers. There were classroom chairs, desks stacked on their side, outdated couches from dorm lobbies. No longer a place for rebellion, but a dump. Nothing at Duquette was the same, not even this.

  I didn’t care. I scrambled through the maze, tumbling over a couch, until I landed on my hands and knees on the floor before the wall of windows.

  I was alone and safe, finally. With the thought, I started to shake, every muscle on fire from running. I pressed my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth, trying to soothe myself.

  I didn’t remember stabbing Heather, but I could have. I had to have done it, and I was just too terrified to let myself remember, to pull back the curtain and look at my true face.

  One of you is a monster, hiding behind a mask.

  I stopped rocking and stared out the window. I was so high up I could see most of campus. The parade was winding closer. That meant…

  I laughed out loud when I remembered: Blackwell Tower was where the parade route ended, where the chancellor gave his speech. All the eyes of the crowd—the photographers and the video cameras—would be pointed right here. At me.

  It was almost like I wanted to get caught.

  I watched the parade inch nearer and considered it. I’d thought I was obsessed with Homecoming because it was the perfect second act, and I wanted to be admired and envied for once in my life. But what if it was more than that? What if all along there’d been another plot, orchestrated by my shadow self, the subterranean Jessica Miller, who was capable of things I couldn’t imagine?

  The last thing my therapist said to me was a warning: “Listen to me, Jessica. The real you—whoever she is—will get what she wants in the end. Whether you realize it or not. It’s what the subconscious always does. Wouldn’t you rather know? Don’t you want to see it coming? You have to reconcile yourself.”

  She’d been right. Maybe this is what the real Jessica—the one who came out when I was too drunk, the one who existed in the moments I shoved away—wanted all along. To get caught. To be punished. And now, finally, we were reconciled, all her crimes my own.

  I couldn’t breathe. The air in the room was too thick, heavy with dust, and I couldn’t force it into my chest. I had to do something.

  I looked at the chairs stacked in the corner, then at the window, and lunged, hauling a chair to the window. With all my strength, I lifted it and smashed it into the glass.

  Nothing. I swung the chair again, almost doubling over with the lack of air. Again and again, I struck the window until my arms ached, and finally there was a crack, unspindling like a thread across the glass.

  I held the chair aloft and brought it down, hard, over the crack. The window splintered. I smashed the pieces of glass, fighting the strangest sense of déjà vu. It felt like every move was a move I’d made before.

  A chill wind whipped into the room. I took a deep breath, cold air filling my chest, inflating my lungs. There, that was better. Now I could breathe.

  I stepped to the edge of the window, glass crunching under my shoes, and looked down at Crimson Campus. My heart swelled, hair flying like a flag behind me—no longer the mouse-brown of college but bl
ond, like Mint’s and Courtney’s, Jack’s and Heather’s. I stretched out my arms. A strange calmness filled me that made me think of Eric. A calmness that came with having nothing left to lose.

  I’d loved this place so dearly. It had been an escape, an open world of possibilities. I’d screwed it all up, of course, but I wouldn’t think of that now. I would think only of how right it felt to be back where it began, where the magic of my old happiness still pulsed in the soil.

  I inched both feet onto the windowsill. The sky was so blue. I could swear I smelled the magnolias—heady and sweet—luring me toward them.

  I’d really loved it. I swear I’d loved them, my friends, even when I hadn’t. But I’d made every wrong decision, I knew that now. Since the day East House first loomed into view, and probably long before then. The wrong boy. The wrong major, wrong career, wrong obsessions, wrong allegiances. Valentine’s Day, I’d made the worst possible choice, done something there was no coming back from.

  I was so sorry. I hoped they’d know.

  “What the hell—”

  Chapter 34

  April, sophomore year

  “—are you kids doing?” The gas-station owner, a silver-haired man in coveralls, stepped out of the doorway, waving a red kerchief at us.

  “Oh shit,” Frankie said. “Hurry up, guys. I can’t get in trouble—”

  “I’m on the football team,” we all finished, nailing his inflection.

  “You know, Frankie,” Heather said, carving her last letter, “I’m really starting to get over this whole football thing. Constant practice, never allowed to have fun. You should really find a hobby that suits my lifestyle better.”

  “Your lifestyle of petty vandalism?”

  Heather kissed the blade of her pocketknife, then blew the kiss at Frankie.

  “Why does the gas-station owner look like an extra in a 1950s gangster movie?” Caro asked. “Did we slip through a wormhole and travel back in time?”

  “One more Star Trek reference,” I warned her, “and I’m going to start calling you Eustice.”

  “But Tiny’s right.” Mint slid his sunglasses over his eyes in full movie-star mode. “We should get out of here, daddy-os. Go burn some rubber before the fuzz shows up.”

  “Nerds.” Jack waved a hand at us. “And everyone at school thinks you’re so cool.”

  “Give me—one more… Okay, done!” Coop rose from the picnic bench and snapped his pocketknife closed. “You asked for immortality? Well, here it is. Feast your eyes.”

  The seven of us gazed at the tabletop, where Coop had carved a message—with a little help from Heather, who couldn’t stand being out of the spotlight. EH7 was here.

  “It’s beautiful,” Heather said. “I commend myself.”

  “Classic,” Jack said. “Concise.”

  “Good craftsmanship,” Mint agreed. “I know we’re all so surprised Coop knows how to wield a knife.”

  “Did anyone else realize we just signed our names to a crime?” I asked.

  “Uh, guys?” Caro looked over her shoulder. “The owner’s coming.”

  “Oh fuck,” Coop said, scrambling. “Run.”

  Heather squealed, and we took off across the rest stop to where the cars were parked, the boys piling into Mint’s Range Rover, the girls into Heather’s convertible.

  Heather revved her engine and tossed the gas-station owner a kiss.

  “You kids are delinquents!” he yelled, waving his kerchief after us.

  “We’re so sorry!” Caro said as Heather reversed and then roared forward, trailing Mint.

  “No, we’re not,” Heather yelled with a backwards wave. “We improved it!”

  We slid onto the highway, which in Myrtle Beach was a two-lane road running parallel to the coast. The sun was setting, casting a softer, golden light. With every break between the houses, I could see the ocean, waves tumbling. The salty wind whipped our hair.

  In front of us, Jack leaned out the window of Mint’s car and whooped in victory. Heather whooped back.

  “You’re insane,” I told her, spitting hair out of my mouth, where the wind had kicked it.

  “It’s spring break. You know I love you dearly, Miss Straight-A’s-or-Hara-Kiri, but try loosening up for once in your life.”

  Caro snorted at Heather’s words, turning in the passenger seat to grin at me. Her dark hair flew over her shoulders, streaming into the back seat.

  “I’m not uptight,” I said. “I’m very loose.”

  “Ha! That’s not what Mint told me.”

  I glared at the back of Heather’s head.

  “That’s it!” Caro squealed, pointing at the mansion on the corner.

  “No way,” I breathed. “It’s huge.”

  Heather whistled. “Well, thank you, Momma Minter.” She turned in her seat and winked at me. “Whatever you do, hold on to that one.”

  Mint’s car slid smoothly into the driveway. Heather followed, sighing dramatically as she hand-cranked her convertible top. “God help me with this car. I need a new one, desperately.”

  “It’s an Audi,” I said, popping my door open.

  “Yeah, and like, four years old.”

  I caught Caro’s eye. We both started laughing.

  “What?” Heather asked. “What’s funny?”

  Coop raced over to us. “Jess, you’re going to love this. There’s a deck in the back that looks right over the ocean.”

  Frankie popped Mint’s trunk. “Why Jess and not me? I enjoy decks.”

  “For sunsets,” Coop said, as if Frankie was an idiot. “So she can draw then.”

  Mint swung his bag over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “You draw?”

  “I don’t… It’s just a hobby,” I said.

  Caro practically tripped over her own feet. “Remember she drew our entire float last year? The castle? It was so much work.”

  “Gross—no one’s working on spring break,” Heather said. “Even hobbies.”

  “I call dibs on the master.” Jack ran for the front door, then turned back with an impish grin. “Suck it, Mint. Rule of first possession!”

  Mint’s face paled. “Oh no you do not.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes. “For sure Jack became a history major so he can cite obscure old laws to get what he wants.”

  “You can take turns in the master,” said Caro, the peace broker.

  “Jack,” Heather admonished. “You know Mint and Jess need privacy. They’re sensitive flowers. Let them have it.”

  My cheeks flamed. Sensitive, uptight Jessica Miller.

  I looked at the ocean, vast and tumbling behind the house. “You know what? I’m going skinny-dipping.”

  “You’re what?” Jack stopped his mad dash for the front door and turned, wide-eyed.

  I yanked off my shirt and tossed it on the ground. “Naked. In the ocean.”

  Around me, nothing but a circle of shocked faces.

  “With the sharks?” Caro blurted.

  “With the sharks and the whales and the fish.” I sprinted past the house toward the beach. There was no one around but us, so it wasn’t the most daring trick in the world, but still, I felt invincible as I ran. Not uptight—strong and brave and unstoppable. The early evening sun was magnificent over the water, creating a shining path that stretched over the waves, all the way to the horizon. I was half-convinced I could walk it, like a bridge.

  I tore off my shorts, grinning over my shoulder. “You guys coming?”

  Frankie whooped and charged forward. “Way to steal my move, Miller.”

  “Last one in buys drinks tonight!” Heather yelled, ripping off her top and unhooking her bra.

  “Ahhh!” I shrieked, covering my eyes as she ripped off her shorts. As usual, she had to be the most. Now, the most naked.

  “I know this is
an elaborate plan to see me naked again,” Frankie said, kicking off his shoes so they flew in opposite directions. “Even though you’re probably braced for it, I want to remind you: there is not, in fact, a whale in my pants. It’s just me.”

  “Gross, Frankie!” Caro squealed, tugging on her necklace. She hadn’t taken off a stitch of clothing.

  “Birthday suit, Rodriguez!” Heather took a running leap into the waves, now one hundred and ten percent naked.

  “It’s okay—I’m going to skinny-dip in my clothes.” To her credit, Caro bounded after Heather into the waves.

  Frankie, as naked as Heather, turned to face us with a huge, devilish grin—pausing for a second to wink—then jumped into the ocean back-first, landing with an audible smack.

  My mouth dropped open. Frankie.

  “He wasn’t lying!” Jack yelled, jumping in after him. “It’s a whale of a tale!”

  Still clutching my bare chest, I doubled over, breathless with laughter. And then Coop was beside me at the shoreline, his eyes cast out over the ocean. He turned to me, smiling. There it was, the look that shut out the world. This time, I didn’t look away, and something shifted between us. The short distance from his body to mine—the small bit of air and sand—was no longer inert but alive. I was aware of his body, so close to mine, within touching distance. His gaze felt like a physical thing, a finger stroking my arm, raising the fine hairs there.

  Coop’s bare shoulders sloped with muscle. His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the cut-diamond lines of his jaw. His dark hair lifted in the wind. I reached out to touch it, smooth it on instinct, and he sucked in a breath.

  I drew my hand back. “What?”

  His eyes, so serious. “I’m memorizing your face in this light.”

  As I opened my mouth to speak, Mint barreled toward us out of nowhere, scooping me in his arms and lifting me high over his shoulder. I screamed with surprise, heart pumping adrenaline as he rushed to the ocean. The last thing I saw was Coop standing alone on the shore, lit with soft, golden dusk, all sharp eyes and enigmatic smile. The perfect figure drawing.

  And then we plunged into the sea.