Hysteria (13 page)

I was surrounded by people who never worried, it seemed. Who never checked to see
where the closest exits were or what they could use for a weapon if they had to. People
who didn’t worry about killing or being killed.

I walked the perimeter of the roof, stepping over a few freshman along the way. I
peered over the edge every few steps. “Hey,” I said. “There’s a ladder.” A few people
rose to look over the edge with me. They leaned forward, ever so slightly, and peered
down the three stories below.

“It stops, see?” one guy said. He was right. It stopped right at the next floor, like
there used to be some sort of fire escape, but it had since been torn down. They all
went back to doing nothing, but I kept walking and peering over the edge. On the opposite
side of the roof, behind some chimney-looking thing, there was another ladder. This
one stopped as well, but it ended right beside a classroom window. We were three floors
up
—
not twelve or anything
—
so I carefully eased myself over the edge to investigate.

When I reached the bottom rung, I pushed on the window with my foot, and it creaked
open. No need for locks when the windows were so high. I pushed it farther, so it
sat at a ninety-degree angle, and then I swung one leg into the building, eased myself
from the bottom rung until I was safely straddling the sill, and then tilted my weight
so I fell inward.

I was in a math classroom. Inside. On the floor. And I couldn’t stop laughing. It
sounded hollow and unfamiliar in the empty room. I stood up, brushed my pants off,
and let out one last laugh. Then I listened to the silence buzzing in my ears.

The chairs, wedged up against each desk. Half a math problem on the white board. Unfinished.

Boom, boom, boom.
In the distance, coming closer. I should’ve stayed up on the roof with everyone else.

Mallory.
I should’ve stayed up there, with the things that were real.

Wait
, it whispered, sounding way too close. I felt something, just out of sight, hovering
behind me, and I didn’t wait. I ran out of the room, down the hall, down the staircase
to the lower level, where the door had been left ajar. I ran across the quad as fast
as I possibly could. Faster even than I thought I could. I didn’t stop.

I had been too pumped up to sleep by the time I crawled my way back through my dorm-room
window, and it had been too close to morning to take a sleeping pill. But now, three
minutes before English class was about to start, I couldn’t keep my head off the desk.

Just as I was starting to doze, Chloe dropped her notebook next to my head. “How did
you do it?” she said, leaning closer.

I sat up and rubbed at my face. “What?”

“You weren’t on the roof when they went back. Everyone was freaking out. I heard they
even checked the bushes.”

“They thought I fell?”

“Or . . . Well, let’s just say you gave everyone a freaking heart attack until Taryn
saw you getting ready this morning. So how did you
—
”

“Ms. Murphy.” Mr. Durham was standing over us. He placed my quiz, F, as expected,
face up on the table. “Less talking, more reading.”

Everyone stared at me for the rest of class. But this wasn’t the type of stare I’d
grown used to over the past two months. This was something else entirely.

Reid was waiting in the hall after class, and he looked angry. He gripped me by the
elbow, so unlike last night. I ripped my arm away from him. “You scared the
shit
out of me,” he said.

“You locked me on the goddamn
roof.
” We weren’t whispering. Actually, we were making a scene.

“We locked
everyone
on the goddamn roof,” he said, remembering to lower his voice. “And we came
back
for them a few hours before class. You weren’t there!”

To everyone else, it might not have been a big deal. But he didn’t get how much I
feared the very idea of being trapped. “Yeah, well, excuse me for not wanting to spend
the night freezing my ass off with a bunch of people I don’t know.”

“That’s the point of it, Mallory. To get to know everyone. It’s like a bonding thing.
It’s supposed to be
fun.
Or, at least, it was for us.”

“Who should I be bonding with? Let’s see, there’s the girl who moved out of our room
the first day I was here, a bunch of scared little freshmen, people who talk about
me behind my
—
”

Jason was suddenly between us. “Impressive, Mallory.” Then he turned to Reid. “See?
Told you she was fine.” He turned back toward me again. “He was convinced you fell
or something. So tell us. How’d you do it?”

But I was looking past him, at Reid, at his expression. Because I suddenly remembered
how his father had died. A freak accident
—
he was chipping the ice off the roof because there’d been a leak underneath, and he
slipped. Broke his neck. Not a fall that should kill you, but it did.

Of course he’d be thinking of that when I went missing. I guess he saw the realization
on my face, because he turned around and left.

“I clicked my heels together three times,” I told Jason, “and said, ‘There’s no place
like home.’ ”

Home. I should’ve stayed home.

I shouldn’t have gone to Brian’s party. Shouldn’t have left my house. As soon as I
walked in, I felt the urge to leave. To click my heels together three times and magically
transport myself home. We’d been late
—
so late
—
and things had already slid past the point of controlled or predictable.

Brian’s house didn’t look white or open or airy at night, filled with people and music
and sweat. Colleen stood in the foyer and scanned the room. Cody was standing in the
hallway, very tall and very dark and very worth sneaking out of the house for. His
head was back against the wall, and Colleen walked straight for him.

She tossed a look over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised at me, before she reached
him. I nodded. I didn’t need a babysitter.

Brian’s voice echoed down the hallway, like the blender that day with his mom, churning
away above all the rest of the sound. I looked down the hall toward the kitchen and
saw him pass across the doorway a few times. He was doing some routine, some reenactment,
and everyone was laughing at him.

“Don’t.”

I spun around to find Dylan sprawled on the couch in the room beside the foyer. He
had a red plastic cup in his hands and his feet were propped on the table, littered
with discarded cups. Someone was unconscious on the couch across from him. And Dylan
was looking at me with these alcohol-dazed eyes.

“I broke up with Danielle,” he said.

“I know.” I looked back down the hall and bit my lower lip.

“Please don’t go down there.”

I wanted him to understand. Because I understood. “You didn’t dump her for me.”

“I did.”

“No,” I said, more sure of myself. “No. You would’ve done it before. A long time before
I was . . . with Brian.”

Dylan chugged whatever was left in his cup and tossed it onto the coffee table. “Come
on, Mallory. Brian isn’t
with
people. He’s not
with
you. You’re just
today.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.”

If he was trying to hurt me, to hurt me like I had hurt him, he was doing a damn good
job of it. Because inside, I had this inkling, this tiny feeling that he was right.
That that’s what had been holding me back, keeping me at a distance.

I looked at Dylan on the couch. He liked me and I liked him and, God, if he would
just say the right thing, I’d change my mind right then. But he was making it so hard.
He was being such an ass. And he wasn’t saying the right thing. Probably because he
didn’t mean the right thing. And Brian was in the kitchen, larger than life
—
like Colleen
—
pulling me along in orbit. I could just let go, and I’d be swept along.

Neither was the right reason. “I kissed you,” I said.

“I know. It’s just that . . . we were together a long time. I was confused, you know?”

“It’s not that complicated,” I said. I held my breath and thought,
Tell me you like me, tell me you liked me, tell me it was a mistake, that you should’ve
picked me, that you want to take it all back.

“Today’s my birthday,” Dylan said. What did
that
mean? Like I owed him something? Like I shouldn’t be with his brother because it was
his birthday? Definitely not the right thing to say. I felt pathetic, sick, and I
realized there was a third option.

I backed down the hall, let myself out the front door, maneuvered around the partially
conscious bodies on the front steps, and left.

I folded my arms across my chest and kept my head down as I walked back toward the
dark alley. The air was thick with the possibility of a storm. The night, about to
break open.

Colleen picked up half a ring before the answering machine would have. I’d cashed
in all my singles to get change for the hall pay phone and called during the hour
between Colleen getting home from school and her mom getting back from work. She didn’t
sound out of breath, though. Not like she’d been racing to the phone. More like she’d
been sitting there next to it the entire time. Debating.