“The closet door. I left it closed.” And now it wasn’t. Now it was cracked, just enough to see a wedge of blackness. To feel that someone could be in, looking out. To know it could swing open or slam shut, just something, full of possibility. Undecided.
Reid ran his fingers through his hair, which was a little bit matted to his head from sweat. “All right, I’ll check.” Though I could tell from the way he walked across the room that he didn’t believe me. He pulled the door open and his knuckles turned white on the door frame.
“What? What is it?” I rushed across the floor and pushed past him and saw.
No one was there.
But someone had been.
Everything hanging in my closet, including all my scarlet shirts, had been slashed, leaving scraps of fabric hanging from each other by threads. Jagged edging. A mess of strips and string covering the dresser and the floor.
Not like a joke.
Like hate.
Chapter 9
What the fuck?” Reid asked. Then he whispered in my ear but I couldn’t hear him because there was a buzzing, white noise, my memories short-circuiting. Everything about him fell away.
All I saw was Brian’s mouth screaming “What the fuck?” and his mouth moving, shouting at me, not making any sense. And then I heard that buzzing again, where I couldn’t make sense of anything else. I reeled backward and I was completely disoriented, like I wasn’t sure whether it was then or now, or now or then, or whether it mattered at all.
And the next thing I knew I was in the lounge and Reid was pacing in front of me and the campus police came through the double doors.
“It was Jason Dorchester,” I heard him say. “He’s been bothering her. He harassed her at the game. Everyone saw it.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t Jason. He was still at the game. He didn’t have time to beat me back here, slice my clothes up, and leave again.
“Okay,” said a man with a blue button-down shirt. “Mallory, tell me what happened with Mr. Dorchester.”
“Nothing. I told him to leave me alone and then I came back here.”
“So you came straight back?”
“Yes.”
I could see him thinking. “Is there anyone else who may be upset with you?”
Oh, just the mother of the boy I killed. No big deal. That was a thing that was not fixable. Not with a restraining order, and not with an I’m sorry. This was a punishment that was forever.
I didn’t answer at first, even though the pseudo cop was still holding his pen over a pad of paper. Reid was pacing the lounge, running his hands through his hair, over and over and over again. Something settled in my stomach, some sort of resolution. Because I realized right then that Reid, with his way-too-concerned look, didn’t really understand what I had done.
I realized something else in that moment too: I didn’t want him to know. “You should go,” I said.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
I looked away. “Please.”
“I’m not leaving—”
The security guard held his hand up. “She asked you to leave. Now please do.”
I looked at the wood-paneled wall until I heard the lounge door slam shut.
The guard cleared his throat. “All right, let’s hear it. Cheating on the boyfriend? Or did you steal him from someone?”
My mouth fell open. “No . . . he’s not . . . I didn’t . . .”
“Okay, so what is it then?” And then I felt sick—that same hot and cold and then only hot that I felt at the funeral. I couldn’t force the words. Couldn’t even think them.
“My roommate moved out,” I said, even though I didn’t think she was involved. “She could still have a key.”
He stood up and closed his pad of paper. “We’ll see about getting your lock changed. But can I give you a piece of advice? Try keeping your enemies here to a minimum.”
I didn’t take a sleeping pill that night. Someone had a key. Someone was out there. Someone wanted me to fear, to regret, to know that they could get in. That they could hurt me. I took my desk chair and wedged it under the handle of the door, but that was kind of useless because the chair swiveled. At least it was a warning. It would wake me up, which was kind of ridiculous because it’s not like I could sleep.
So I heard it coming for me, clear as anything.
Boom, boom, boom.
And then it was here. My room was throbbing, but I tried to ignore it. I shook my head and kept my eyes on the ground and pushed through the door out into the hallway. I squinted from the sudden change to light, but it didn’t matter. The whole hallway was pulsating. Mallory, it whispered. I sucked in a deep breath and turned back to my door.
Wait.
I felt the hand on my shoulder, holding me in place, digging through my skin, directly to the bone.
I cried out, louder than I meant to, and a door opened down the hall. The hallway stopped throbbing. The hand was gone. Taryn rubbed at her eyes with her closed fists. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I scanned the hall and the room behind me and swallowed the lump in my throat. “Twisted my ankle,” I said as I backed into my room and shut the door.
Back in my room, I turned on the light and stretched my shirt down over my shoulder. “Shit,” I whispered. The marks were turning a deep purple, nearly black. And they hurt.
I paced back and forth across the room, and in my head I repeated it’s only real if you let it be, it’s only real if you let it be. I shook the thoughts from my head, deciding to clear my head of even that. I booted up my laptop. I wrote to Colleen. Nothing of consequence, nothing important. Just something real. Hey, you up? *pretend there’s something important here so you’ll write back.*
When I hit send, I had a message from Reid. Getting you out of here in the morning. 9?
Reid thought getting me out of here might help, but it wouldn’t. Colleen did that too. Thought distance could fix things. Hoped distance could fix things.
“Stand up,” she’d said, disentangling herself from me under the boardwalk. “Stand up,” she said again, with less authority, but with more urgency. “Mallory, we have to go.”
My hands skimmed the sandy bottom, under the water, pieces of shells and trash digging into my palms. I pushed myself onto my knees, and the water seemed to churn all around me. Colleen bent over and gripped my upper arm. “I have some money,” she said, rapid and nonsensically. What did money have to do with Brian bleeding on my kitchen floor? “At my house. But we have to hurry.”
I sunk back down. Because I realized, right then, that Brian was dead.
I looked up at Colleen, who was staring across the expanse of ocean, the rain slowing as it fell around us, around everything. The white moon reflected off the ripples. They looked so small in the distance. But we both knew, out there, the undertow could pull you under, claim you for the sea.
“We can do it,” she said to the sea. Her gaze went across the ocean and back again, like her laughter earlier that night. She crouched down next to me and whispered, “Please. We have to move. Now.”
My computer pinged again. Message from Colleen: Wallowing in self-pity. Cody Parker is a prick.
I smiled.
What happened?
Alicia Maloney happened.
He’s so not worth it. And, ew, you’re twenty times hotter than her.
I know, right? Boys blow. Thank God I have you.
Turned out that distance never really changed anything.
Reid tapped on my window a few minutes before nine. I pulled up the blinds and blinked at his smile. “Getting ready?” he asked, which sounded all muffled through the window.
I hadn’t responded to his message last night. Brian never would’ve done something like this. Of all the times I made excuses why I couldn’t hang out with him alone, he never called or showed up or anything. He never acted like he cared either way.
“Don’t I look ready?” I was in ratty sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, and I could only imagine what my hair looked like.
His eyes drifted to my hair, and he tried not to grin. “The diner has a rule about bringing animals inside.”