Instinct

by Mattie Dunman

  My anger deflates and I sigh, wanting to be left alone. “Mom, wait. I didn’t mean it. I’m just tired.” She nods stiffly and gives me a peck on the cheek before she shuts the door behind her.

  I drop back down on my bed and pull the laptop to rest on my legs, looking over the article again while I consider what I learned from its more revealing first impression. There seemed to be some question about her death, but it could just be the difference between suicide and an accident. Or maybe the evidence suggests someone else was there, someone who pushed her off the bridge.

  “This is stupid,” I say out loud, trying to push the conjecture out of my head. But the mention of her ex stalking her resurfaces and I wonder who he is. Phillip was obviously the boyfriend referred to, and Nicole the best friend, but there is still no indication of who could be the ex. Maybe someone whose stalking could have pushed her to the brink.

  Or just pushed her.

  I force myself to shut down the computer and work on my homework. But as I am drifting to sleep later, the steady, shining fall of snow outside my window hypnotizing me into unconsciousness, Miranda’s face still fills my thoughts.

  I am standing on the bridge, the entire world outside of the iron skeleton and the swiftly moving water beneath it dark and bleak as a void. Sound is muffled, as though a glass jar has been dropped over my head, and a rushing fills my ears, accompanied by frantic drumming I recognize as my pulse. Soft laughter rasps behind me and I spin around, only to freeze in terror, my breath choked into a white cloud before my face. Cole stands before me, the same wicked grin stretching his face that I saw this afternoon. His eyes are glittering chips of emerald, swallowing the dark surrounding us like an empty vessel.

  “Jump, Miranda,” he whispers, the sound of his voice dragging across my skin with claws. I try to tell him I’m not Miranda, he’s made a mistake, but no air fills my lungs and the edges of my world are growing dim.

  “Jump, Miranda,” he whispers again, stepping forward until his face is a breath away from mine, the flash of green light in his eyes boring into my brain with indescribable pain. He opens his mouth, teeth white as a shark’s, and blows a kiss at me. The world drops from under me and I am falling, falling, and everything is cold and dark, and I see him above me, still smiling, his green eyes vivid against the black cloud that hovers like a dark halo above his head. A quiet gasp escapes me, but I feel it inside like a primal scream, the sound of my heart stopping.

  I jerk awake, my heart racing so fast I cannot breathe, the scream still caught in my throat. For a moment, my body is rigid with the terror of the dream, as though Cole is somewhere nearby, pouring panic into my veins. Gradually my pulse slows and my limbs loosen into rest. The muscles in my legs ache as though I’ve run a marathon.

  The clock reads four-fifteen. With a groan, I sit up and rub my eyes. Two nightmares featuring Cole in two nights. I am beginning to think that no matter how hot and charming he is, how much we have in common, he may not be good for my mental health.

  I get a glass of water and return to bed, telling myself I am overreacting because I’m worried about sharing my secret with Cole. I’m not very convincing. By the time I am calm enough to fall asleep something strikes me as odd about my nightmares. In both dreams, I distinctly remember Cole glaring at me with vivid green eyes.

  Cole doesn’t have green eyes.

  Chapter 6

  “Where were you yesterday?” I demand as soon as Nicole comes into view. I have been waiting for her outside the classroom since I got to school. She looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes and splotchy skin, limp brown hair hanging over her face like a ragged curtain.

  “I don’t want to live,” she whispers, pushing past me. Guilt burns in my throat as I follow her, realizing I have been thinking about how her absence affected me, not what was wrong with her.

  Hastily I take my seat next to her. “I’m sorry, Nicole. I wasn’t thinking. Are you okay?”

  She gives me a weak smile. “Don’t worry about it. Look, it’s probably better if you don’t hang out with me.”

  My chest tightens with unexpected disappointment. “I said I was sorry,” I mumble.

  Nicole frowns at me and finally allows a smile to soften her face. For a second, I glimpse the bright-eyed, carefree girl in the photo Phillip had on his phone yesterday, but she fades as quickly as she came.

  “No, that’s not it. Look, you’ve probably heard about how…unpopular I am by now.” She looks at me expectantly and I nod, knowing there is no point in denying it.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

  “Not your fault. Anyway, looks like the campaign to make me miserable is starting up again,” she says, her voice breaking slightly. “If you hang around me, you’ll just get caught up in it too.”

  There is such defeat in her tone that I want to take Tasha’s neck and throttle it. Nicole has done nothing to deserve such treatment. She lost her best friend and instead of being embraced in sympathy by the world around her, she is outcast, tormented by the very people she once called friends. I remember how dismissive everyone was at the lunch table yesterday. Even though Phillip and Ruth said it was mean, they still looked at the posting and didn’t try to set the record straight.

  The bags under Nicole’s eyes are so dark she could be bruised, and I think deep down she is. I wonder if the injury that has been done to her can ever be healed.

  “Screw them, Nicole. I’m your friend now, and I don’t care what anybody says. The truth is all that matters to me,” I whisper fervently and then Ms. Sullivan calls the class to attention.

  Nicole stares at me blankly for a moment and then an unguarded smile creases her face, tears shining in her eyes. I hold her gaze for a moment more and she nods, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. Her eyes shift behind me and something hard enters her expression before she turns to face the front of the class. I glance around and see Phillip watching Nicole with a thoughtful expression, his moss-green eyes narrowed. There is something so cold, so detached in the way he looks at her that a chill settles around my shoulders. After a moment he senses my scrutiny and turns to me, mouth stretching in its trademark blinding smile. My lips twitch in response and I face forward, my skin humming almost painfully.

  Class cannot move quickly enough for me, and I am out of my chair before the tone sounds, turning to Nicole eagerly. Before I can say anything, Phillip takes my arm, his fingers pressing on the bruises Jake left yesterday. I flinch and his grip tightens slightly before he releases me.

  “Can I walk you to class?” he asks, completely ignoring Nicole as she watches us with a concerned expression.

  “Oh, thanks, but I need to catch up with Nicole. I’ll see you later.” I smile at him and grab my bag, feeling his eyes on me as I gather my things. He is still standing there when I glance up again, his lips pulled tight, pupils constricted to a pinprick.

  “Yeah, Phil,” Nicole adds, a sharp edge to her voice. “Not trying to steal away another of my friends, are you?”

  He jerks his head to spear her with a stare so quickly I’m surprised I don’t hear his neck crack. Nicole pales under his glare, but holds his eyes, exchanging some silent conversation that doesn’t look new.

  With a smile that doesn’t extend to his eyes, Phillip turns back to me. “Nicole still thinks Miranda stopped hanging out with her because of me. Is it my fault that we were so crazy about each other?” His face sobers and he looks down at his hands. “I miss her too, Nicole.”

  Nicole’s cheeks redden but she doesn’t reply. My skin is buzzing so hard it hurts, like I’ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Everything about Phillip is screaming ‘liar’ at me, but I have yet to get any sense of the truth from him the way I would with anyone else. I am more unsettled than I’d like to admit.

  When neither of us responds, he sighs heavily and slings his bag over his shoulder. “Well, see you later Derry. I’ll look for you at lunch.”

  I smile at him noncommittally. He has been nothing b
ut pleasant and thoughtful to me, but I am having trouble ignoring my instincts about him, however misplaced they might be. I begin to hope he forgets about asking me out again, because in the pit of my stomach something revolts at the thought of him touching me.

  He disappears through the door and I turn to say something to Nicole. She is trembling and ashen, as though she was holding off some intense reaction while Phillip was there and only now succumbed.

  “Nicole? Are you okay?” I reach out to touch her arm. Her skin is clammy and covered in goose bumps.

  “Yes I’m fine,” she lies. I hesitate and then dive right in.

  “No you’re not. C’mon. Let’s go find somewhere to talk.” She resists for a moment and then nods, following me submissively as we merge into the foot traffic of the hallway. “Is there anywhere we can go?”

  She rouses and glances around. “Yeah. The library.”

  She doesn’t elaborate so I simply force my way through the crowd, maneuvering through the maze of hallways until we reach the door that leads to the media lab and library. As we enter, I am overwhelmed by the smell of bleach, the inside of my nose tingling and bringing tears to my eyes.

  “What the hell is that?” I whisper, looking around for some kind of puddle of the noxious stuff, but am greeted by gleaming countertops and the neatest library I’ve ever been in.

  There’s something about a place that houses books that needs a little comfortable chaos, the sense you could turn the corner and find the story you’ve been looking for waiting for you on the arm of a sunken armchair. There is a scent to books that is almost tangible, the flavor of all the hands that have touched them, the minds that have devoured their words; and no library should be without the solid sense that someone has been here before, has dropped their coat and gotten lost for a while.

  This library is sterile and cold. The temperature is too low here, especially for the dead of winter. The rest of the building is comfortable, maybe even a little on the toasty side, but this cavernous room has sucked all the warmth from the air and I shiver involuntarily, wishing I hadn’t left my coat in my locker. There is no sign of even a single book being off the shelf, no papers lying loose on the counter, and the fluorescent lights are bright enough to cause a glare off the white concrete walls.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s the librarian. She’s OCD.” Nicole shrugs, but she’s looking a little less frail. “There’s a reading room in the back. No one is ever there.” She leads me through the stacks, while I marvel at how even the spines of the books are. Not a one is out of place. I wonder if anyone is actually allowed to check any out, or if the entire library is illusion, like the fake food and TVs that furniture stores always put out to make their layouts seem real. Everything is ‘look, but don’t touch.’

  We turn into a small enclosure at the back of the room where several stiff-looking armchairs and a couch are scattered around conversationally. Still unnerved by the surreal atmosphere, I sit down cautiously, half expecting the chair to be made of cardboard.

  Nicole slumps down in the chair opposite me, dropping her bag to the floor and burying her head in her hands. I am unsure of what to do, whether I should say something or pat her shoulder in comfort, but she looks up at me before I can do anything.

  “Has Phillip asked you out?” she asks abruptly. I blink in surprise and then nod slowly, frowning. “I thought he might have. Don’t do it. Don’t go out with him,” she orders, her tone uncompromising.

  I bristle slightly. I don’t like being told what to do, even by someone as damaged as Nicole. “I wasn’t really planning on it, but that’s my decision,” I reply frostily.

  “No, look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but…” She pauses and frowns, looking at the floor as though it will answer for her. Finally, she gives a resigned sigh and looks at me with renewed purpose in her eyes.

  “I’m going to tell you some stuff, but you’ve got to promise to keep it quiet.”

  “Sure,” I promise, leaning forward in avid curiosity.

  She studies me for a moment, gauging my sincerity and then nods. “Ok. I think…no, I know Miranda didn’t kill herself. I think it was Phillip.”

  I stare at her for a moment, more surprised at my lack of shock than her theory. “That’s a pretty serious accusation. Why do you think that?” I ask cautiously, wanting to know but still skeptical.

  Reassured by my interest, Nicole leans forward and speaks in a whisper, even though I haven’t heard anything to indicate we’re not alone in this strange, sanitized room.

  “Miranda and I were friends since fifth grade. We told each other everything, did everything together. We were like sisters. A few weeks after she started dating Phillip, she stopped talking to me.”

  “At all?”

  Nicole shakes her head, memory etched into her face. “Not completely, but she wouldn’t say anything about Phillip, kept me away from him. It wasn’t like her. When she was dating Jake, she told me stuff all the time…”

  “Wait,” I interjected, a piece of the puzzle falling into place. “Miranda and Jake were a couple?”

  “Oh yeah. Since freshman year. Then…something happened between them last summer. He shoved her into a pool.”

  “Shoved her as in play, or shoved her as in trying to hurt her?” I ask, desperately interested in her answer.

  “As in he was pissed off and shoved her so hard she had bruises on her chest.”

  A clear picture of Jake sinking to his chair, pale and shocked after I had accused him of killing Miranda, floats through my head like a stray photograph.

  “So she broke up with him?”

  “Yeah. It was pretty bad for a while. He called all the time and would show up outside her house, dropped flowers off and stuff. He always seemed to be around, wherever we went, begging her to take him back, saying how sorry he was. But Miranda said that if he hurt her once, he’d do it again. And I agreed with her.”

  So Jake was the mysterious stalker-ex mentioned in the true version of the article I read. I had no doubt that he did shove Miranda; he had amply demonstrated his capacity for violence and strangely obsessive behavior already. The dark purple smudges on my arm could attest to that.

  “So what does this have to do with Phillip?” I ask, trying to get back on track.

  “He asked Miranda out on the first day of school, as soon as word got around that she and Jake weren’t together anymore. I think she was too surprised to say no.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, Phillip hadn’t ever dated anyone from school. Or anyone that I ever heard. No one thought he was gay or anything; he just never seemed interested. He told Miranda that he’d been waiting for her. She thought it was so romantic.”

  Nicole leans back against the chair, the slick vinyl fabric squeaking dissonantly.

  “She just stopped after that. For a few weeks she was all giddy, telling me about the attention he lavished on her, the presents, the dates, and then one day she just…dried up. She started sitting with him and his friends at lunch, and suddenly I wasn’t allowed. He stole her from me. She was never the same after they started dating. And she lost weight. She looked tired all the time. She was skittish, always looking over her shoulder and flinching when you touched her. She was afraid, and she wouldn’t tell me why.”

  Nicole’s voice is so quiet I can barely hear her, and slender tracks of tears wind down her face as she remembers her dead friend. Unable to stop myself, I reach out and put my hand on hers. She glances up suspiciously and then gives me a troubled smile, patting my hand before pulling away.

  “I’m okay. It’s just hard to think about, you know? I got mad at her for how she was acting, and she didn’t come to me for help.” She closes her eyes, drifting for a moment, and then straightens, eyes piercing me with a fierce intensity.

  “She didn’t kill herself. I don’t care how depressed she was, or what was going on, Miranda would never have killed herself. She wasn’t like that. She would have fought back eventual
ly. And Phillip knew it. He couldn’t let it happen. So he pushed her off that bridge.”

  Nicole sounds so certain, and I believe that she is telling me what she thinks is true, but a light hum under my skin contradicts her. I think about earlier when she unknowingly confessed that she didn’t want to live. Wasn’t it possible that Miranda had felt that way too? Even just briefly enough to make a terrible mistake?

  “But why are you so sure it was Phillip? Jake sounds like a more likely candidate.”

  She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Jake wouldn’t have done it. He might have hurt her in the heat of the moment, once, but he wouldn’t have killed her. He was crazy about Miranda.”

  “But he shoved her into a pool. Maybe he was on the bridge with her. It could have been an accident,” I say thoughtfully. Although Phillip puts me on edge, Jake’s violent nature makes him a far more conceivable murderer.

  “She called the night she died. She was hysterical, said she had to tell me about Phillip. They found her body the next morning.”

  For a moment I am shocked into silence, thinking how of all the experiences I had expected to have at high school, knowing a potential murderer hadn’t even been on the list.

  “Well, what was it? Didn’t she tell you?”

  Nicole shakes her head, regret clear on her pinched features. “It was a message on my voicemail. I saw that she was calling, but I was so pissed at her for shutting me out that I ignored her call. She was dead by morning, Derry. He must have found out and killed her. And I could have stopped it, if I had just answered the damn phone.”

  Nicole’s tenuous hold on her emotions shatters completely and she sags, shoulders trembling as deep, wrenching sobs rack her body. I jump off my chair and put my arms around her, murmuring soothing nonsense, and she slumps into me, her whole being shaking with misery. It is several minutes before she winds down, and by the time she pulls away to wipe her face, I am worried she might act on that unwitting confession from earlier. The guilt she has been carrying around is too heavy a burden for anyone to bear alone.