Hysteria

by Megan Miranda

  “What? No . . .” Reid’s eyes jumped from bare wall to bare wall. “I said I’d see you later. You said ‘later.’ But you weren’t there.”

  I started to smile. I couldn’t help myself. I stood up and pointed my finger at his chest. “You did. When I wasn’t there, you thought I got lost.”

  “I did not—”

  I tilted my head back and laughed. “You thought you were gonna get in trouble.”

  Reid threw his hands up. “Okay, fine. Fine. I wanted to make sure you got back okay. Happy?” But he was laughing too.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, look,” I said. “I’m here and I’m alive. Your reputation as a responsible tour guide remains intact.”

  I walked past Reid, pushed open the hall door, and heard the buzzing of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. And I paused because it reminded me of that feeling that was following me, waiting for me. Reid took a quick look toward the stairs on the other side of the lounge and then scanned the empty room. “Can I come in?”

  “Does that line usually work for you?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “That’s not what I . . .” I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it turning red during the pause that followed. “Do you remember my dad’s funeral?” he asked a moment later.

  I kept myself turned away from him because I did remember. I remembered everything about it. It was the first funeral I’d ever been to, and I’d felt oddly detached from reality. Like time was moving slower, or faster—like what happened there didn’t have any effect on the outside world. I had the feeling that if I’d wanted to run, I wouldn’t have been able to. Like a dream where your legs never really touch the ground.

  “Do you remember?” Reid asked. “You knocked on my door and said, ‘Can I come in?’ I said no. But you came in anyway.”

  And now I was too embarrassed by the whole thing to look him in the eye. “So you’re going to come in even if I say no?”

  “No,” he said. “That would be creepy.”

  I felt him coming closer, in the way the air got thicker, warmer. “You know, you were the only one who came in my room that day.” It felt like we were back there, two years earlier, exactly where we’d left off.

  I turned around. He was coming closer. Like the moment was unfinished, and he needed to finish it. “Because your uncle told everyone you wanted to be left alone.” I put my hands up, and he stopped walking. The whole thing was mortifying.

  “And you’re the only one who didn’t listen. God, you were so bold . . .” Reid stared past me, down the hall, like he was remembering this other version of me and not the me who was standing in front of him.

  I stepped into the hall, the door balancing against my hip. “Is that a yes?” he asked.

  I thought about my room, and the emptiness, and the thing, and Brian’s mom somewhere nearby. I thought about all the reasons I should say no, but all the reasons I wanted to say yes outweighed them. I turned back for a moment, and caught him looking at me like he did that day in his room. My stomach flipped, same as it did that day. “No,” I said, as the door slammed shut behind me.

  Because I remembered the next part too.

  After he told me not to come in, and after I went in anyway, I sat beside him on the floor, our backs resting against the side of his bed. He threw a rubber ball against his wall and caught the rebound. I reached my hand across and intercepted the next bounce. Then I threw it against his wall, back to him. We did that for minutes, or hours, with nothing but the rhythm of the ball hitting the wall, then the floor, then our palms, filling the room.

  Until Reid pulled his feet closer and flung the ball against the wall. He meant it to go nowhere. Anywhere. Straight through the wall, maybe. But it bounced back and smacked me in my upper cheek.

  “Oh, shit,” Reid said. He was on his knees in front of me, pulling my hand away from my face. It hurt, but the tears were from the surprise, and I swiped at them with the back of my other hand. “I didn’t mean—”

  I started to laugh, or I pretended to laugh, so he wouldn’t think I was crying. “Girl, fourteen,” I said in an official voice, “injured by rubber ball at funeral.”

  The side of Reid’s mouth quirked up, just a bit. “The accused asserts that the victim had slow reflexes. He said he’d never seen such pathetic reflexes in his life.” And then I laughed for real.

  “On the contrary, the victim had amazing reflexes. In fact, she dove in front of the accused to protect him. That’s how fast she is.”

  Reid was smiling. Smiling and laughing. “The accused would like to point out, for the record, that he told her not to come into his room in the first place.”

  Reid’s hand was still on mine, from when he had pulled my arm away from my face. We seemed to notice it at the same time, because he looked at his hand. But he didn’t move it away.

  “Don’t blame her. The victim only wanted to make him smile.”

  And then he stopped smiling. And he took his other hand and brushed the hair away from my cheek. Ran his thumb across the spot where I’d been hit. Then moved his hand back to my hair, moved his face closer to mine, and I held my breath, thinking, He’s going to kiss me. I remembered Colleen telling me to close my eyes, so I did.

  “What the hell am I doing?” he said, and the air around me felt empty. I opened my eyes and Reid was backing away from me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He walked out of his room. I stayed there until my heart rate returned to normal, until my face wasn’t red from embarrassment. Then I walked down the stairs and waved to my parents.

  We left a half hour later, and that was the last I’d seen of Reid. Dad stopped going to events after that—like the absence of his closest childhood friend, his high school roommate, was too much to endure.

  Funny how two years can feel like nothing. How one moment can feel like eternity.

  Two years, like they never even existed.

  One moment, like there had never been anything else, would never be anything more.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  Someone was knocking. A dull thud, like someone was using the side of a closed fist instead of knuckles. I pictured Reid on the other side. Being bold, like I had been. “I told you no,” I said, but this stupid grin was spreading across my face.

  I opened the door to nothing. No, not nothing, no one. Because there was definitely something. Red and globbed and smeared across my door. Drops sliding downward, like tears. A small puddle on the linoleum floor, spreading like blood.

  Everything inside of me froze, until I felt the hallway fill up—felt it practically vibrate with his presence. My eyes darted around the empty hallway until it seemed to constrict. And the entire feeling contracted into the space behind me. A wave of chills started at my scalp and slid down my arms, my spine, my legs.

  My senses went on high alert—like I could see more clearly and hear more sharply—and I smelled something off, not quite right. Something chemical. I stepped closer to the door, bent down, and dipped my fingers in the puddle on the floor. Cold. Nothing like blood. I brought my red fingers to my face and breathed in through my nose. Paint. This was paint.

  There were voices in the distance—girls laughing and a guy talking too loud—probably on their way back. I ran to the bathroom, and as I pushed the door open, I got this flash in my mind. Red handprints. Everywhere.

  But I squeezed my eyes shut and thought No.

  I brought wet paper towels back to my room and saturated my door. I squeezed and squeezed until the puddle at my feet was thin and the paint streaked unevenly through the water. Then I wiped it all up and buried the evidence in the bottom of the trash in the restroom. I couldn’t see the red anymore, but there was still this dark spot. A water mark. A reminder. So I got more paper towels and started scrubbing harder.

  And the whole time, I felt that presence pressed up against my back, and I could imagine his mouth, breathing against my neck through his teeth.

  Like I could feel him smiling.

 
; I didn’t meet Brian that day on the boardwalk. We’d almost met. He smiled and stepped toward me, and I was wondering what to say. Sorry I was staring, I thought you were someone else? Sorry I’m still staring? I’m not sorry I’m staring because I still can’t look away?

  I tried to pull myself together because he was heading straight for me. Then this guy on a skateboard crashed into him. Came out of nowhere, music so loud I could hear it from his earbuds through the crowd. Brian stumbled backward and the skateboard slid out from under the other guy.

  And then Brian yanked the earbuds out of the guy’s ears and punched him in the face.

  Just like that.

  And, just like that, a circle formed around them as the skateboard guy, twice Brian’s width, took a swing back at him. Brian ducked, smiled, and attacked. And then there were fists flying and blood spurting and people yelling, and I still couldn’t look away.

  Until two cops came and pulled them apart and started leading them down the boardwalk. But Brian turned and scanned the crowd for me and he smiled. After all that, he was still looking for me. He yelled out, “Meet me here tomorrow,” like he was so sure this whole cop thing was no big deal. Like it happened all the time.

  And like I should know what time he meant.

  So that next day, even though I told myself I wasn’t looking for him, I showed up early, before lunch. Just in case. And that’s when I fell for him. Because he was already there too. He had a cut over his right eye, and there was a dark bruise underneath it, but he was there. Waiting for me.

  Like he was still here now. Waiting. And smiling.

  I heard voices in the lobby. The slow, monotone authority of Krista’s voice. And the rise and fall of Bree’s words coming straight from her brain out her mouth. I slipped into my room and shut the door behind me.

  “Is it weird, though? Since he’s your cousin?”

  A pause. “Not at all,” she said. The words were clipped, pronounced perfectly. Almost rehearsed.

  “Because you could tell me, you know. If it gets weird, I mean. Or if it’s weird for me to talk about him.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “He asked you to hang out after class, not have his babies.”

  “Ha,” Bree said. “It does bother you.”

  “Bree,” Krista said, in this way that suddenly made me understand what it meant to speak carefully. “I doubt anything you do will bother me.”

  Bree laughed and started talking faster, like she was excited, but the way Krista said it didn’t make it sound like a good thing. It sounded like Bree was inconsequential. Like she didn’t matter enough to her at all.

  And then a third voice, quieter, said, “He doesn’t have the best reputation.” Taryn, I guessed.

  There was this beat of silence before I heard Bree laugh again. “Yeah, well, neither do I.”

  The door shut behind them and I was left with the silence again. With nothing but Bree’s words lingering in my head. Because Bree didn’t have a reputation yet. So I guess what she was really saying was neither will I. Like that was the whole purpose.

  Which was the type of thing someone said who had never truly had a bad reputation before.

  This is what the people with the bad reputation do: they take a sleeping pill and hope that their ghosts won’t come for them each night.

  But all the hoping in the world doesn’t change what happens.

  The ghosts always come.

  It starts in the distance.

  Boom, boom, boom.

  CHAPTER 6

  Something wasn’t right. I could sense that even though I was nearly asleep. I shouldn’t have taken the sleeping pill. Someone was out there. Someone had thrown red paint on my door, playing a joke on me. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke. Maybe it was Brian’s mom. And here I was, sleeping. Almost sleeping.

  The heartbeat filling the room paused, the room still buzzing with energy, and then there was a harsh whisper. “Mallory,” it said, sounding far, far away.

  Something grazed my shoulder. Just barely. Like I might’ve imagined it. And then fingers tightened around my shoulder and I felt warm breath on my ear. A whisper. Wait.

  My eyes shot open.

  Morning. The alarm was blaring beside me. I fumbled until I found the snooze button, then rubbed at my left ear, where I still felt the warmth. I jolted upright and moved my arm in a giant circle, stretching my shoulder. But when I stood up, I could still feel it. The spot where four fingers had pressed down on the front of my shoulder. The feel of a thumb on my back.

  Something lingered in my room. Like the dust hovering in the slant of light beside my bed. Like the air before a thunderstorm. The threat of something coming.

  I ran to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, the neck of my shirt jerked down past my shoulder. I stretched the skin and squinted at the mirror. I thought I could just barely make out four pink marks.

  Taryn barreled through the bathroom door, half awake. She glanced at me, quickly looked away, and went to a shower stall on autopilot.

  The mirror fogged up as I bent close to the sink, straining to see. I pulled at the skin of my shoulder repeatedly and wiped at the condensation on the mirror, but everything was muted. Filtered. Like viewing the world through white curtains.

  Another girl came into the bathroom, pointed to the other shower stall, and said, “Are you using that?”

  I took a step away from the mirror. And then another.

  “Hey, I asked if you were using that shower.”

  “Huh? Yeah. Um, I need to get my stuff,” I said, stumbling by her.

  “Somebody needs some coffee,” she mumbled as I passed.

  Shower. Khaki pants. Brown shoes, not broken in yet. Scarlet shirt. I grabbed breakfast in the cafeteria on the way to first period and saw Reid in the student center with a group of guys, including Jason.

  Reid patted someone on the shoulder and excused himself, and I walked a little faster. I felt Jason’s eyes following me.

  “Mallory,” Reid called. “Wait.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I backed into an alcove behind a column. The whole hallway seemed to throb like my room at night, when I wasn’t fully awake.

  Reid jogged over to me. “Hey,” he said.

  But before he had a chance to say anything else, I said, “Did you see anyone last night?”

  “Huh?”

  “In the dorm. Around the dorm. Last night.” Because there was red paint on my door. Because something grabbed onto my shoulder.

  “Not that I noticed. What happened? You don’t look so good.”

  What happened? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure if I was seeing clearly. I yanked at the collar of my shirt, pulling it down over my shoulder. “Do you see something?” I asked.

  Reid smiled, then tried not to smile, then smiled again. “Um.” I followed his gaze to the black-and-silver bra strap. Damn Colleen and her proclamation that the only thing more boring than a white bra was a sports bra. I released the neck of the shirt and shrugged it back up over my shoulder.

  “I meant like marks or something. On my shoulder,” I said, looking at the people rushing past, but not really focusing on them.

  His forehead creased and he leaned closer. “Did someone hurt you?”

  I shook my head. Maybe. No. I don’t know. “Never mind.” I looked at his hands, which were kind of hovering between us, like they were undecided.

  There was a chime from the speakers. “Warning bell.” Reid started backing away in the opposite direction. “I have soccer later,” he said, like I had wondered. “But I’ll see you.” Like I had asked. Then he turned and fell into stride with a sea of red shirts and khaki pants.

  He disappeared.

  Colleen said I disappeared when I was with Brian. Which at first I didn’t get—because I was louder and more sarcastic and I laughed more whenever I was near him.

  I was always on my toes, deflecting his friends’ half flirts, half jabs. Reminding Joe that Sammy was the hot
twin, without the busted nose. Making sure Brian saw me doing cartwheels at the waterline. I was me, and then some. I was me times ten. So I rolled my eyes the first time she said it. But then I realized she meant that, even then, I still paled in comparison to Brian’s forceful personality. The way he demanded attention, demanded respect, demanded me.

  “Mallory, come on,” he’d said, while we sat with Colleen, Cody, and Sammy on the beach. “Show me your place.”

  I waited for Colleen to come up with an excuse for me, like she always did, because she could usually sense, without asking, that I wanted one. But she stayed silent, staring off at the horizon.

  “Colleen,” I’d said. “Don’t we have plans this afternoon?”

  “Yeah,” she said, keeping her eyes on the distance. “We do.” Then she turned to me and kept her face hard. “Sorry, I didn’t notice you were here.”

  Bree was hard not to notice in English class. She was demanding attention too, laughing a little too loudly. Making sure everyone overheard her telling some story to Krista about some guy over the summer. I rolled my eyes, but I kind of understood why she was doing it. Krista sat directly across the room from me, on the other side of the U of tables, wedged between Bree, who wouldn’t shut up, and Taryn, who was drawing in her notebook. There was this berth around them, almost like they were exclusive, except I got the feeling that nobody else wanted to touch them.

  Chloe sat beside me. “Word to the wise,” she whispered. “Mr. Durham can make your life easy, or he can make your life hell. Choose wisely.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Also, we’re about to have a pop quiz on the summer reading. Happens every year.”

  “I didn’t get the summer reading list.”

  “Not good.” Chloe tore a paper from her notebook and started scribbling titles and names and half sentences. Quick plot summaries. Then Mr. Durham walked in the room and she quickly balled up the paper and stuffed it in her bag.

  I was definitely going to fail.