I found a place in the quad to work so I wouldn’t have to go back to my room. So I wouldn’t have to think about the feeling that was fighting to get out. I had to pass the time until noon when the school store was open anyway. I sat under the giant oak where I’d first seen Reid, opened my laptop, and stared at the blank document for my Lord of the Flies essay again.
I couldn’t figure out how to write what was so obvious to me. How you can look at little pieces of someone’s life and tell the type of person he is. In flashes. Only you don’t know what you’re looking for until much later—like when the news crews show up to interview you and you say, “Yeah, there was always something not right about him . . .”
I wondered if people said that about me.
Like anything, there are always signs.
The summer before I met Brian, before sophomore year, we had a bonfire on the shore. It was just me and Colleen and our friends and our sort-of friends. Cheap cans of beer, people from our class, Dylan, before I knew him all that well, and Danielle, his girlfriend. We were supposed to camp out there, only Danielle started complaining about the cold. And she was right. The sand got cold, and it was kind of gross to lie in. And there weren’t enough blankets to go around.
So Dylan led us down the beach to the shed where the lifeguards kept their gear and the chairs and umbrellas for rent. Dylan pulled a Swiss Army knife from his back pocket and fiddled with it inside the padlock until it clicked open. We’d marched in single file behind him.
Colleen swayed across the room and swung her arm over Dylan. “My hero,” she’d said.
And then Danielle pushed her in the back.
“What the hell?” Colleen asked.
“Hands off my boyfriend,” Danielle said.
“Him? Don’t worry. Not my type. Too skinny.”
“I’m not too skinny,” Dylan said. Even though back then he was.
And Danielle said, “Right. Is there anyone in this room besides him that you haven’t been with?” Colleen’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out. Danielle smirked and said, “Like you have a type, you fucking slut.”
And I felt this thing start to rise. It started in my gut and moved up through my chest, and it clenched my fists and shot through my legs. I ran at Danielle and pushed her into the back wall.
She scratched at my arm with her sharp, manicured nails. I pushed her again and heard her head thump against the wood, and it felt good. Someone screamed, “Girl fight!” But then someone pulled me off, pulled me outside, and Colleen had her arms around me. She turned me around and looked at my arm. “Crazy bitch cut you.”
I touched my right hand to the scratch on my left arm, raised my fingers up, and looked at the blood. Then Colleen and I started laughing. Uncontrollable laughter. We stumbled back down the beach and found a place to camp out, behind a dune.
We lay shivering from the cold sand beneath us. And Colleen said, “You know, I didn’t really have a comeback for that.”
And I’d said, “Yeah, well, you’re my fucking slut.”
She rolled onto her side and curled her body around mine, trying to keep us both warm, and then she started laughing again. She whispered into my ear, “Those boys don’t know what they’re missing right now.”
The prosecutors didn’t know about that night on the beach. I was sure of it. Because if they did, it probably would’ve canceled out what they knew about Brian. Brian liked to fight. He went looking for it. That guy on the skateboard wasn’t an isolated incident. Even Joe’s crooked nose was because of Brian. But I had a history too.
And now I was wondering why Dylan didn’t tell the cops about that night when I shoved his girlfriend into the wall so hard the sound from her head hitting wood echoed through the shed. He didn’t tell. Otherwise, Brian’s history of violence would’ve meant less.
So I wrote that Lord of the Flies essay about everything we didn’t see. About the boys at their boarding school. About who they were beforehand. About how they were always those people, if only William Golding would’ve showed us their history. It wouldn’t have been so shocking.
At noon I went to the school store and used the account Dad had set up to replenish my supply of Monroe polo shirts. I changed in the bathroom and went to the rest of my afternoon classes. By the time classes were over, a fog had settled, low and heavy, over campus. People kept jumping out at each other, I guessed, because there was lots of squealing and laughter. Like it was funny not knowing what was two feet behind you.
I left my books in my room, but I couldn’t stay there. Everything in it felt like limbo. The cracked closet door. The shades on the window, halfway up. The unmade bed. The knife in the bottom drawer.
The great thing about the fog is that it works two ways. I couldn’t see if someone was lurking behind me, but nobody could see me through the fog either. I saw muted red moving in the distance, students walking across campus, but I couldn’t tell who they were. Which meant they couldn’t tell who I was either.
It felt safe.
I walked off campus, toward the old student center, where nobody would be. Just me and forgotten buildings and a sign for a forgotten boy. But at the road I heard an engine. A low rumble, slipping through the fog. I stepped into the street, and a green shape came into focus. All soft around the edges, muted by the white, like a dream.
I stopped breathing. Underneath the fog, the car drifted in and out of focus, like a memory I was trying to grasp onto. Like something I was forgetting, just beyond my reach. The engine turned off. A door clicked open. A step. Two steps. A door slamming shut. I backed up, silently, until I couldn’t see the green anymore, letting the fog hide me as well. Then I turned around and ran back toward campus. I stared at the two feet in front of me, which was all I could really see, until I tripped over the front steps of my dorm. But I didn’t even pause before pushing myself back up and racing down the hall.
My fingers shook as I dialed the 800 number for home.
“Mallory?” Dad answered the phone. Which was odd. Since it was Monday, and only late afternoon.
“What are you doing home?” I asked.
“I took off. There were a few things I needed to help out with around here.”
My stomach flipped. “Is Mom okay?”
“Of course,” he said, like he was annoyed I’d even suggested she might not be. “But she’s resting right now, so maybe if you call back tomorrow you can catch her—”
“Dad. It’s Brian’s mom,” I said. “She’s here.” My voice broke and I cupped my hand over my mouth.
And then there was silence. I could hear him breathing and, beyond that, I could hear the swish of fabric as he moved to another room.
“No, Mallory, she’s not.”
“I saw—”
“Mallory. Brian’s mother. She was admitted to the hospital yesterday. She’s not in New Hampshire. She’s here. At a hospital. She’s not going anywhere.”
“What happened?” I asked. But underneath that I thought of the vision in the fog, drifting in and out of focus.
“She had a breakdown. She was here,” he said, hushed. “At the back door. Looking for Brian.”
“Like—?”
“Yes,” he said, probably remembering the same thing.
“Gotta go,” I said, just a whisper, picturing her screaming for her son as she stood in the doorway to my kitchen.
I paced the hall with my hands resting on top of my head, like I used to do after the required mile run in gym class, trying to catch my breath. I stared at the entrance to my room, but I didn’t go in.
I was scared of what else I might see. Like when I was seven and I’d wake up and still see the people from my dream, moving like a fragmented video. At the door. Blink. At the foot of my bed. Blink. At my side.
Here and not here.
And then they’d fade away as the fog lifted and the dream remained a dream and the real remained real. As I got older, the boundary grew stronger, and the things that weren’t real remained on one side, and the things that were remained on the other.
Until now.