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.
I only saw Reid once during classes, and he didn’t see me. He walked into a science classroom down the hall from mine, laughing at something the girl next to him was saying, raising his hand in greeting as he passed his teacher. And that was all I saw of him. He was a senior, with senior classes and senior friends, and presumably a better lunch slot than me. Seriously. Who eats lunch at eleven in the morning?
And after school, with nothing better to do, I worked. Well, first I changed. Then I worked. I made a serious dent in the summer reading list even before study hall began. After Ms. Perkins made the rounds and checked that we were all in our rooms for the mandatory two-hour study-hall block, I sent a quick message off to Colleen: Day 1: success. And by “success” I mean “survived.” 78 days left. I ran through make-believe responses in my head: telling me how much her day sucked maybe, or sharing some piece of mindless gossip—real or imagined—about someone we both knew.
I picked up Lord of the Flies, waiting to hear a chime from my computer, but nothing came. So about halfway through study hall, I started writing another email, this time about Reid. Except I realized I’d never once mentioned him to her. And I wasn’t sure why.
There was a knock at my door, and I froze. Could the faculty sense when we weren’t studying during study hall? Someone jiggled the door handle, and I slammed my laptop shut. “Hey, it’s me,” a voice called. Like I should just know who it was. Which, okay, I did.
I opened the door and Reid wedged a triangle block underneath it, propping it open. Part (b) of visitation rules as stated in the Monroe Student Handbook.
“You carry those around?”
“Ms. Perkins hands them out at check-in,” Reid said. Right. Part (a).
“Oh.” Then I stood in the doorway, wondering what I was supposed to do. Reid brushed by me and sprawled out on this particularly unattractive orange shag carpet I’d found that afternoon in the closet of spare furniture beside the laundry room.