Hysteria

by Megan Miranda

  I held my palm to my face and saw the gash along my palm. Blood dripped from the wound down my wrist. Not too much, I’d be fine. But my heart sped up. I imagined my hands that night. Covered in Brian’s blood.

  I pounded my fist into the pavement, then flattened my hands to push myself up off the ground. And as I rose, I saw my handprint. A dark stain on the pavement. I couldn’t move. Because I remembered something else.

  Brian slid to the floor, barely making a sound. Like the way people say that life slips away. He just . . . slipped. And at first there was just a little blood on my hands, warm, but just a little. Like the knife had only scratched him, maybe. Except he was on the floor, and his mouth was gasping.

  I fell beside him and stared at the knife. His chest should have been moving, but it wasn’t. “Oh God,” I said. “Brian.” His eyes were open, but he wasn’t looking, or maybe he was. Maybe he was looking for something else. “Brian!” I screamed. But he still didn’t look at me.

  The spot on the front of his shirt was spreading. I put both hands on the knife and tugged. It came free, as effortlessly as it had gone in. And then the blood started, even more than before. Flowing, pouring out. “No!” I cried. “No, no, no.”

  Stop the blood, I thought. So I put both hands over the wound in his chest and pressed down, but the blood kept coming, covering my hands, sliding over them and down onto the floor. “Stop,” I said. But that didn’t help. So I put my whole weight behind it, pressing down on top of him with my hands, my chest, with all of my weight. But the blood kept coming. I could feel it soaking through. Soaking through him, to me, everywhere. I let out a sob and screamed, “Brian!” again.

  The phone was shattered in the hall. My cell was somewhere upstairs. The door was the closest thing. “Just hold on,” I whispered in his ear, though he made no indication that he’d heard me. “I’m sorry,” I said. Which were, quite possibly, the most inadequate words to ever leave a person’s mouth in the history of the world.

  And then I ran. Pushed through the back door, into the rain, into the night. Pushed through the swinging gate, leaving a trail of red behind me. I ran into the alley and screamed, “Help! Somebody help!” Then I ran into the neighbor’s gate and pounded on the back door, screaming for help. Then through the next gate. And the next. I painted the whole street red with his blood. People came out and I screamed, “Help!” But they looked at me like I was the one needing help.

  I pointed a single finger toward my backyard. “He’s bleeding!” I cried. And they started to run.

  But what I’d really meant to say was he’s dying.

  It hadn’t been enough. Not nearly. They couldn’t stop the blood either. Or else there was no blood left to stop by then. I never asked.

  I wiped my hands on my jeans and started running faster, toward Monroe.

  In the distance, the M rose from the horizon, like a dark sun, dripping ivy. Campus was dead. Everyone must’ve been at dinner. I felt exposed walking across campus, like there were eyes watching me from the dorm windows, secrets spreading like a virus.

  I pushed the door open to my old dorm, and the lounge was empty. Stiflingly empty. Then I remembered that Reid had said half of campus was deserted, anyway. I walked down the silent hall, toward my old room, still marked off with crime-scene tape. I wondered if Colleen had been there. Been here.

  A door slammed somewhere upstairs, and the echo carried all the way down the steps, through the hall, to me. I paused in front of Bree and Taryn’s door. Bree, at least, knew who Colleen was. Or, if not her name, at least she’d know who I was talking about. I knocked on her door.

  Bree opened the door quickly, and opened her mouth like she had been ready to say something, like she was expecting someone, but definitely not me. When our eyes met, she froze, her eyes wider than I thought humanly possible. She took a step back into her room, her arm preparing to swing the door closed on me.

  “Wait,” I said, diving toward her room. I wedged my foot between the door and the frame so she couldn’t shut me out. I had a grip on her sleeve, and she was staring at my hand, her nostrils flared. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she hissed. “Are you out of your freaking mind?”

  I removed my hand but took a step closer, my entire body now standing in her entryway. “I’m looking for my friend. Colleen. I think she was here, and she’s . . . missing.”

  Her eyes grew wide again and she stuck her head out into the hall, peering out toward the stairs in the corner. “You better leave. They’ll come for you, you know.”

  “Who? Who’ll come for me? Krista? Taryn?”

  She shook her head. “Get out of here.”

  “I know you set me up, Bree. And I’m not leaving until I find Colleen.”

  “So stupid,” she mumbled. “She was taken,” she whispered, just as I heard footsteps echoing down the stairwell. “And you’ll get taken too.”

  Bree grabbed onto my arm and pushed us both into the hallway. I thought because she was scared or nervous or something.

  But then Krista rounded the corner out of the stairwell and raised her eyebrows. Bree dug her fingers into my arm even harder and said, “Look what I found.”

  “What—” I started, and then I realized who took Colleen, who Bree was talking about. She meant all of them. Including her.

  Krista jerked her head toward Bree’s open door, but I wedged my foot against the corner of the wall and wouldn’t budge. Krista didn’t smile, but I could’ve sworn she wanted to. “So much like that friend of yours.”

  I lunged for Krista, and her mouth dropped open in surprise. I had her pushed into the wall, Bree looking on in surprise. “Where is she? What did you do?”

  She swatted at my arms, which were pinning her to the wall, but something coursed through my veins, making me stronger than I thought I was.

  “Bree,” she said. “Do something.”

  “Yeah, Bree,” I said. “Like always. Do what Krista tells you to do.”

  Bree gripped me around the waist and started to pull, so I said, “Tell her why you killed Jason, Krista.”

  Bree’s arms went slack. Krista grimaced. “I didn’t kill Jason,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to argue, then saw her grin. She must’ve convinced Bree or Taryn to do it. Maybe she even watched. She definitely planned the whole thing. But I guess she took that English class lecture to heart: it’s nearly impossible to convict a mob. Where does the blame lie? With her? Or the ones that listened?

  “Bree,” I said, still holding Krista against the wall. “I heard Jason threaten Krista to keep you from telling what happened with him under the bleachers. What happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” Bree said, getting closer. “Thanks to Krista. She showed up . . . ?before. She helped me.”

  She tugged at my shoulders, trying to pull me off Krista, but her arms were so weak. I remembered Bree showing up in my room, terrified. Was Krista planning this all back then? Had she scared Bree off? She must have. Bree went back to her. But Bree was not solid, not like Taryn. She was the link that could be broken. She was the thread barely holding everything together.

  So I pulled.

  “And Krista convinced you not to tell anyone, right? You know it happened with Taryn too. Krista convinced her not to tell anyone. She wasn’t on your side, Bree. She was on Jason’s side. She did everything for Jason. She had to. Otherwise he’d tell about her.”

  “Tell what?” Bree asked.

  “Yes, Mallory,” Krista said. “Tell what?” She knew I didn’t know everything. But she didn’t know that I did know something.

  “She’s not his cousin, you know.”

  Krista tensed under my weight. But then she relaxed a little, and she laughed. “No, that’s right. He’s not my cousin.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “He was my brother.”

  I lost my grip on her from surprise, and she wiggled free. We stood across from each other, three points of a triangle, the whole hall tense, wait
ing to pop. Waiting for one of us to make a move. Waiting for Bree to pick a side.

  “Yeah, so that’s the truth. He’s my brother. Only nobody could know. Because my own father doesn’t want me. Nobody wants me, Bree. I had nobody until Taryn and you.” Bree looked between me and Krista, but Krista didn’t give her time to think. “The state took me from my mom, which definitely was not the worst thing in the world—but you know what is kind of shitty? Foster care. And you know what’s even shittier? Tracking down your dad and finding out he’s fucking rich. And you’ve been poor. Know what’s even worse? Finding out he already had a family, and nobody’s supposed to know about you. He’s not evil, though, and he wasn’t about to send me away. He just wanted me to keep it a secret. From Jason and his wife. If I kept it a secret, I got to stay. He’s not evil. He’s just an asshole. You know who was evil, though? Jason. And he overheard the whole damn thing.”

  Krista took a step toward me, blocking me in. She looked to Bree, but Bree stayed against the wall. “You know what Jason would’ve done to you? Did you want to end up like Taryn? She’s drugged and sleeping upstairs until her daddy shows up. You want to be like her? Everything I’ve done is because I care about you guys. Jason was a predator. He’s a fucking psychopath. You know that, right? I hated him, it’s true. I had to do what he said—always. You can imagine what that was like. But I did it for you guys.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t do it,” I said.

  She cut her eyes to Bree and said, “I didn’t do it alone.”

  Bree let out a moan and Krista stretched an arm toward her, but she couldn’t reach. So she said, “Listen to me, Bree. We’re going to be fine. Again. But you have to listen to me.”

  But Bree wasn’t listening. I knew Krista was losing her, and Krista could sense it too.

  “Bree,” she said again. “I love you.” And Bree lifted her head up.

  But I thought of the things Krista was doing for Bree and Taryn, and I thought of the things Colleen had done for me, and I knew it wasn’t even close to the same.

  “No, Bree,” I said. “If she cared about you at all, she would’ve warned you about him. She would’ve kept you away from Jason to begin with. She hates you. She hates you all.”

  Then I took a risk. I ran for Bree, grabbed her around the waist, and dragged us both into her room. I slammed the door and locked it.

  Bree stared at the locked door and started to shake. “She has a master key,” she whispered.

  Of course she did. Jason must have too. Easy to get when his father was the dean of students. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. Someone had to break into my room to take the sleeping pills. Someone had to break into my room to kill him there.

  So I walked to her dresser, bent over, and put my weight behind it. “Help me,” I said, and Bree pushed against the side with me until it was in front of the door.

  “Where’s Colleen, Bree? What happened?”

  She shook her head and her face went even more pale than normal. She moaned and started pacing the room. “Oh God,” she said.

  Bree crumpled to the floor and put her head in her hands. Then she looked up, higher than where I was and choked out, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I almost cut her off, told her it was too late for that. That those words meant nothing. That there was no going back now. That she’d made her choices and now she had to live with them. But instead I crouched down in front of her and said, “I know you are.” Then I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “You can help. This doesn’t have to be all of you, you know?”

  She broke in my arms, as the realization of everything crashed down on her. And I held her. Until we heard the lock turn and the door push against the furniture. The dresser held, but I wanted to shake Bree. Make her talk. I guess she sensed my urgency because she gritted her teeth and then the words came tumbling out. “She was looking for me, I guess. Because she found me on the way to breakfast. We walked toward that old student center, I guess for privacy, I don’t know. But she just kept heading that way. She didn’t know that Krista and Taryn were watching. Following. And she kept talking. It was so obvious she knew something. So Krista . . .” She stopped talking. Krista was pounding on the door, calling Bree’s name, and Bree was staring at the dresser, like the whole situation was just some curious thing happening to some other person.

  “Krista what?” I said louder.

  Bree looked anywhere but at me. “Hit her with a brick.” Then she dropped her voice even lower. “She had to hit her twice.” Everything inside of me went dark. I felt like that day in the lifeguard shed when Danielle called Colleen a slut and I wanted to hurt her. Only this was a thousand times stronger. And the only one in the room was Bree.

  I made myself back up toward the window. “Where is she?”

  “We took her down the path past the old student center. There’s a dropoff. It’s pretty far, though.”

  No, I thought.

  “Like a ravine really.” No, I thought again. “We—” Bree took a big breath and said, “She’s at the bottom of the ravine. So it would look like an accident.”

  No.

  I pushed her window open just as Krista wedged the door open a few inches. “Bree,” I said. “I’m going to find her. Get help. Now.”

  She glanced at the door, then went to her desk and pulled out her pink lighter. Then she climbed on top of the desk, flicked the top, and held the flame directly under the smoke detector.

  I opened the window and straddled the sill. And before I dropped out into the night, I said, “Remember that you did this too.”

  And then I ran.

  God, how I ran.

  CHAPTER 22

  I was vaguely aware of the tree, of the half-standing walls, now just dark shapes, as I sprinted by the old student center. A few bricks dislodged and scattered under my steps, and I almost tripped twice, but I caught my footing and found the path. I ran until the path narrowed and I couldn’t tell where to move next. I froze.

  “Colleen!” I shouted, expecting to hear an echo. But the noise fell flat. Swallowed up by the trees or the dirt or the heavy air. “Colleen!” I screamed even louder, and then I listened to the sounds of the forest for any trace of her.

  Bree had said there was a dropoff past here—some sort of ravine—but I couldn’t see far enough ahead of me. The ground sloped upward, since Monroe was situated in a valley, so I figured I’d keep heading up until I hit it. I kept moving. Every once in a while I felt the ground shift, like I was heading down again, and I readjusted until I was moving up. Not exactly a precise navigation system, but it was better than doing nothing.

  “Colleen!” I kept calling, hearing nothing in reply.

  Then I tripped over a root and face-planted. I heard the rocks I’d kicked up echoing somewhere below. I crawled forward to the edge and saw blackness. The ravine. A gaping splice through the hillside. Problem was, it stretched side to side in front of me as far as I could see. “Colleen?” Only my voice echoed back to me, and the panic I’d been avoiding crept up into my stomach. Too late. I was too late.

  I crawled along the edge until I found a lower spot with a gentler slope, and I half walked, half skidded my way into the ravine. Which was pitch-black. Looking up, the sky looked unnaturally light compared to where I was. I put my left hand on the side of the ravine, and I started walking. It rose and dipped, the sky getting nearer and farther. And I kept saying her name. At first in a whisper, because everything felt so enclosed here. And then, with a panicked ferocity, with tears and anger, with rage. My hand tore at the side of the ravine as I ran.

  I almost didn’t hear it at first, over the sound of my panicked breathing.

  But I thought I heard my name.

  I listened again. A gasp of air from somewhere ahead. And then a hoarse word. “Mallory.”

  I ran forward and nearly tripped over the dark shape on the floor of the ravine. I was laughing because I found her, but then I pulled her into my lap and I stopped laughing. He
r hair was damp with a thick liquid. Blood. I knew that feeling. And she barely had a voice. But I held onto her and I started laughing again.

  “I found you,” I said.

  And she said, “My fucking legs.”

  I looked down, trying to see in the darkness, and immediately recoiled from the way her right leg twisted out at an unnatural angle. Then I took a breath and looked again. Her left looked okay to me, but obviously it wasn’t since she said legs. Plural.

  “I can’t get out,” she said. “I tried. But I can’t.”

  “I can. It’s not too steep.” I crouched beside her and said, “Okay. Ready?”

  She pushed herself onto her elbows, then a sob escaped her from the shift of weight. “Ready for what?”

  “It’s probably going to hurt. When I pick you up.”

  Colleen collapsed back onto the ravine floor. “You can’t. I’m too heavy. And you’re—you can’t. Go get help and come back.”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t know how to go get help, or how to come back after. She had no idea how far into the woods we were, and how much of a miracle it was that I’d found her in the first place. But all I told her was, “I won’t leave you.”

  “Mallory. You can’t.”

  I leaned forward and felt the words before I said them, needing to believe they’d become true. “I can.” I took her arms and wrapped them around my neck, and I put an arm under her horribly twisted limbs, and another around her back.

  And I stood up.

  She cried out, and my legs were shaky, and my back was pulling, and my grip was unnatural and awkward. But I stood up. I told myself to start walking. And I did.

  “Hey,” she said, her face pressed up against my shoulder. “Remember that time you kicked Danielle’s ass?” Maybe she noticed I was shaking and was trying to distract me. Or maybe she didn’t notice anything at all. I didn’t respond—couldn’t really. I was concentrating on each step. “God, that was so awesome.” I found another slope farther up the ravine that weaved into the side of the hill, a little less steep, like a creek used to run down it, and I took it.