Hysteria (34 page)

“What happened here?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Some history I don’t know about.”

“So that kid who wandered off
—
he’s dead?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I guess. There’s no body, but it happened a while ago.”

I led her to the path that narrowed as we walked, and I kept glancing behind me to
make sure I could still see the clearing.

Colleen said, “Don’t worry, nobody’s following us.”

“It’s easy to get lost,” I said.

I stooped down next to where the memorial should be and brushed the weeds aside. “See?”
I said, pointing to the letters on the front. Then I flipped it over for her to see
the other side.
forgotten but not gone
.

“The irony,” Colleen said, “is that somebody had to remember about this to write that
he was forgotten. You know? You can’t know you’ve forgotten something until you remember
it.” Then she scrunched up her mouth and said, “That was either really profound or
really dumb. I can’t decide which.”

“Profound, of course,” I said, which it was, actually. I hadn’t remembered that Dylan
was at my house
—
I hadn’t remembered Dylan’s role in Brian’s death. I hadn’t remembered the events
between the party and Brian coming in through the window. And I had been so focused
on the events I
did
know, I didn’t even know I was missing something.

I had been so preoccupied not remembering that the memory became something else. Something
more. I guess that’s why hysteria was called conversion disorder
—
it converts. Mind to body. Internal to external. The memory of someone touching my
shoulder to a handprint seared onto my skin.

“Maybe it’s him,” Colleen said.

“What?”

She ran her fingers through the grooved letters. “The killer. It’s this kid. Danvers
Jack.”

“Jack Danvers,” I said.

“Whichever.”

I shook my head, sick of thinking about ghosts. About what they could and could not
do. About what a memory could and could not do. I tried to play it lightly. “I don’t
think ghosts carry switchblades.”

“No. I mean, I bet it’s him. The real him. I bet he left because, hello, have you
seen this place? Who would want to stay here?”

“So, what, he’d rather hunt his food than be served in the cafeteria? That’s not the
rich-kid way.”

“Okay, so I’m not rich, I get that. But from what you’ve told me, I’d choose the forest.”

I stood up and she followed. “Your choice of boys would be severely limited,” I said.

“Ha,” she said. “Ha-ha.” She turned to head back down the path toward the old student
center, but there were voices carried in the breeze.

Colleen froze first, obviously taking to heart what my mother had told her. And what
I had told her about our encounter at the diner. She pushed me behind the nearest
tree and slouched behind the tree next to mine.

“What are we doing here, Taryn?” Oh God, it was Reid. With Taryn. In private. I looked
at Colleen and hoped she understood I didn’t actually want to hear this. Not even
a little. Colleen gave a tiny nod of her head, like she was reassuring me. Like she
had everything under control. Like she wasn’t about to let me get hurt again. She
had no idea how much this was going to hurt.

“Someone’s spreading lies about me,” Taryn said. “The kind of lies that could get
me in real trouble, you know?”

“Who’s spreading lies?”

“Your girlfriend,” she said. “Mallory. I don’t know what she said, exactly, but the
police came by to talk. My dad’s lawyer isn’t here yet, though, so they have to wait.”

But all Reid said was, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh. Okay, so maybe you can say I was in your room that night?”

“But you weren’t in my room that night. You want me to get detention so you can have
an alibi?”

“It’s not so far from the truth, really. I used to be in your room all the time. You
didn’t seem to have a problem with it then.”

“That was a long time ago. And then what? Krista decided I wasn’t good enough for
you?”

“It wasn’t like that, Reid. It’s just, you know, I was going through a lot of stuff
then. And she helped me see I should probably be alone then.”

“Krista doesn’t help people.”

“She does. She cares about me. A lot.”

“Then get
Krista
to vouch for you.”

“She can’t. She already told the cops that she and Bree were working in her room on
some history project. So stupid. She wasn’t thinking. She should’ve remembered me.”

“Taryn,” Reid said, so quiet and careful I had to strain to hear it. “If you didn’t
do it, you shouldn’t need an alibi.”

“Damn it, Reid. You know I didn’t do . . . that. I couldn’t have. But there’s my history
with Jason
—
it’s going to come out, I can feel it. I need someone to vouch for me, and I was alone
in my room. So please,” she said. “You know me.”

There was silence, followed by footsteps, and I imagined them walking arm-in-arm together.
But then I heard Taryn say, “Reid?”

And Reid sounded far away when he said, “No. Actually, I don’t know you at all.”

Colleen craned her neck around the tree trunk and shook her head. Taryn was still
there. We heard bricks scattering. A few smashing sounds. Taryn grunting. It sounded
like she was building a fort. Only when I heard her breath, laced with tears, did
I realize she must have been throwing bricks at the half-standing walls.

Watching everything crumble around her.

Chapter 20

W
e waited for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before we finally heard her footsteps stomp
back toward campus. Colleen stepped out of our hiding spot first.

“You were right,” she said. “We should’ve stayed in the car.” She stared down the
path, narrowing her eyes, like she was making sure the coast was clear. “On the plus
side, the cops must know she was involved.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “They’ve got nothing on her. No prints. Nothing. They’ve
got a hell of a lot more on me. And she’s about to get her rich-girl lawyer. Bet they
won’t even let her open her mouth. I know mine didn’t.”

“That was different.”

“Not really.”

She spun around in the path until she was facing me. “Yes it was, Mallory. It was
different. You didn’t drug him and slit his wrists and leave him to die.” She threw
her hands up and said, “Argh,” like she was so irritated with me, and then she kept
walking.

I followed her, but kept my distance, because she was wrong. I did leave Brian to
die. That’s
exactly
what I did.

“Why did you go to the funeral?” I asked, and every muscle in her body appeared to
go rigid.

She spun around and pointed her finger at me. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Reid?
Why didn’t you tell me you were
leaving
for this place? You didn’t think about me. You just . . . left. I snuck out to see
you and you were just 
gone.
”

I didn’t know. I didn’t know why there were things I kept from her, that I thought
belonged to me and nobody else. Or why I didn’t call her before I left for Monroe
or why I kept Reid to myself back then. “I asked you first.”

“I can’t do this, I can’t. I’m going to be sick, Mallory.” And for a second I thought
she
was
actually going to be sick. Her face turned pale, and she had her hand on her stomach.
And then she started marching down the path, swiping at the low-hanging leaves in
her path. I had to jog to keep up.

But she was right. We kept things from each other. The fragile things. The intangible
things. We always kept them to ourselves. I caught up to Colleen, fell into stride
right behind her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her
—
it’s just that I didn’t know how.

We drove around some more after that but didn’t really speak.

“I’m coming back home after this is over,” I said. “If it’s ever over.”

Colleen nodded. “You should see Marci Schafer. She went all goth.”

“Marci? But she’s too . . . light. And pretty.”

“And now she’s dark. And hot.”

“What about you, Coll?” Because it had always been just me and her.

She shrugged. “I’m in a few classes with The Ls.” The Ls being Lindsey, Laura, and
Lainey. The type of girls that giggled and whispered and seemed to share one brain.
The type of girls we used to make fun of.

“Coll, really? The Ls?”

“Really, Mallory? You’re not there.”

She pressed her lips together, which is what she always did to keep from crying. It
was the only thing she ever tried to hold in. She never bit her tongue, and she never
held back a smile. And I realized that when I left home, I left her too.

“I don’t know who I’m supposed to be now that you’re gone,” she said. But I always
thought it was the other way around. Funny how you can be so tied up in another person
and not even know it until she’s gone. I wanted to say something to her
—
tell her something true. But I still didn’t really know how. The words were lodged
inside, so instead I said something that I hoped would make her understand.

“I want to go home,” I whispered. But she didn’t understand what I meant. She swung
a U-turn in the middle of the street and pulled back into the hotel parking lot a
few minutes later. I couldn’t find the words to tell her that this wasn’t what I meant
by home.

Colleen was helping Mom clean up the boxes of leftover Chinese food. She was tying
up a giant garbage bag to bring outside, but I was frozen on the couch, which is where
we’d all eaten.

“Do you want me to make up the sofa bed, Colleen? Or will you be bunking with Mallory
tonight?”

Colleen mouthed the word “
bunking
” to me, and smiled like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “I choose bunking,”
she said, all chipper. “Are there bunk beds? I call top.”

“Ha-ha. It’s a queen bed. I call right side.”

“Get a good rest,” Mom said. “You need to get on the road early.”

Colleen groaned and Mom took the trash bag from her to bring out to the Dumpster.

We watched a few shows with Mom while the sky turned dark, but I’m pretty sure none
of us were paying attention. Just passing the time until night.

Colleen stood and stretched and said, “I’m ready to get my bunk on.”

After I finished getting ready in the bathroom, I found her on my side of the bed.
“I know you called right and all, but I’m the guest.” And I guess this was her way
of saying we were done with the previous discussion, done with the accusations.

“Hope you don’t have to get up to pee in the middle of the night.” I slid under the
sheets on the left side and turned out the light. The outside street lamp cut through
the blinds, leaving a streak across the center of our bed.

“Okay,” Colleen said. “What’s the rest?”

“What?”

“The
later
stuff. It’s later. I’m leaving tomorrow. So let’s hear it.”

I took a deep breath. “Dylan was here yesterday.”

Colleen bolted upright in bed. “Dylan?
Your
Dylan?”

Not my Dylan. But I sat up and nodded anyway.

“Crap, I didn’t know. I mean, he moved. You knew that, right? His mom, she’s . . .
sick. And he lives with his dad. I don’t know where. I was going to tell you . . .
eventually. I didn’t know he was up here.”

Really, it wasn’t her job to know. It seemed ridiculous that she would know. But I
told her the rest, about how he blamed me, how he hated me. And then I told her the
truth, the one I’d just discovered. “He came home with me that night, Colleen.”

“What?”

“After the party. He came home with me. We were . . . well, Brian found out. And that’s
why he broke in. Dylan left. He ran away. And Brian broke in. And I . . .”