I kept pacing that hall. People ignored me, on their way to dinner and back again. I needed to know that something was real. I needed to feel something real.
So I left. I sprinted down the hall and across the quad as dusk settled in like a long shadow, clinging to the fog. I raced to Danvers West and busted into the lounge, breathing heavily. Jason and a bunch of guys from the soccer team stared at me. Stared and smirked.
“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Jason asked.
I looked from couch to couch, looking for Reid’s face. I swallowed the thick air, along with my pride. “Can someone get Reid?”
Jason bared all his teeth when he smiled this time. “Get him yourself, Mallory.”
When I turned for the hall, someone whistled at me. The hallway was empty, and so was the stairwell. Then I wondered how Reid had snuck out of his room from the second floor the night before. Not through the door, that’s for sure. They’re alarmed at night. Through someone else’s room. Great. Another secret for distribution.
Music came from room 203. I knocked gently.
“Come in,” he called.
I opened the door and pulled it shut behind me, leaning against it. Reid had his back to me, his bare back actually, since he was half dressed, postshower.
“Oh,” I said. And then I looked away. At anywhere but at his bare back. At the walls, with the posters of bands I’d never heard of. At his desk, with books I’d never read. At his bed, with the black-and-gray stripes.
“Oh,” he said back. He pulled a gray T-shirt over his head. “How did you . . .”
“Jason,” I said. “I had to see you, but they wouldn’t get you, so I came up . . . Sorry you didn’t know it was me.”
“Yeah, because obviously I’d never want you to see me without a shirt. God forbid.”
I almost said you wish or something else coy or flirty or meaningless. That’s what I’d say if it was Dylan, or Brian—I’d say something not serious. Because I hadn’t been.
“Okay, so what’s up? You had to see me?”
But now, in his room, the whole thing felt ridiculous. To say that I saw something that couldn’t be real. That I saw it and heard it. To say I didn’t know what was real anymore.
To say that I wanted to feel something real.
“I was just thinking how different things would be if I’d come here freshman year.”
Say something real.
“If I was how you remembered me instead.” But the words I didn’t say felt stronger.
Am I even real anymore? Am I here, standing in front of you, or am I still under the boardwalk somewhere, covered in blood?
Reid looked like he didn’t know what to say. “You’re not exactly how I remembered you,” he said. And this buzzing filled my ears. “Mostly, you’re more than I remember. But in some ways, you’re the same. Like you still hold your breath when you’re nervous.” He grinned, and stepped closer. “You held your breath in your room this morning. And you’re holding your breath now. Why are you nervous, Mallory?”
Because this wasn’t in his car, where it seemed like we were finishing something we’d started two years earlier, like it was the only choice, like everything had been leading up to that moment. Because last night, when he asked to stay, he had held his breath too. Because I had come here, on my own, and now he was standing halfway across the room, daring me to close it. And I was closing it.
“I’m not nervous,” I said, except I was. Because it felt like we were starting right now. Then I was so close I could feel his breath, coming a little too fast. And my hands were on his chest, like I could push him away any minute, but I didn’t. I spread my palms flat and tried to feel his heartbeat.
It was racing.
And then there was knocking. “Open up. Now.”
Reid winced and I looked around the room for some place to hide. But Reid just shook his head and put a finger to my lips.
“Mr. Carlson. Open this door, or I’ll open it for you.”
He jabbed his finger at his desk chair, and he backed up toward his bed. I guess so it would look like we were having an innocent study session or something. And then Mr. Durham turned the handle and was in the room, trying to look disappointed, but he had looked at me, and now he only looked confused.
“Out,” he said.
I didn’t look at Reid as I left. And I didn’t look at Jason as I walked through the lounge. But I could feel him smiling.
I started taking sleeping pills again that night. Because it turned out the things I was most scared of didn’t really exist. It’s only real if you let it be, I thought as I drifted off to sleep to the boom, boom, boom coming closer.
But in the morning, there was something dried and stiff across my shoulder. Drops of blood, sticking my skin to my shirt. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I hissed and shivered. Because underneath the dried blood, a blister had formed and burst along one of the finger marks on my shoulder.
I ran my finger along my skin and brought a dark drop of blood close to my face.
Then I smeared it across the mirror, just to make sure it was real.
Chapter 12
I ran the faucet full blast, scooped up handfuls of water, and splashed them over my shoulder repeatedly, soaking my shirt, my arm, and the ends of my hair. I dabbed at the broken skin with paper towels and glanced in the mirror again.
There were eyes over my shoulder. Blue, and curious. Bree stood too close, staring at the handprint on my shoulder—at the blood. Then she slowly raised her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. I jerked the wet shirt back over my shoulder. “It was an accident,” I said, and the words echoed around the bathroom.
“Did she tell you to say that?” Bree whispered.
“Did who tell me to say that?” I asked, spinning to face her.
She shook her head quickly. “Never mind.”
“No, Bree,” I said, because she was squeezing her eyes shut, which is what I did when I was thinking of something I didn’t want to think about. “Who?”
She laughed quietly to herself. “Nobody. God, it’s this place, you know? I can’t sleep here. And now I’m losing my mind.” She laughed again. And then she seemed to realize she was alone. In the bathroom. With me. She cleared her throat and took a step back.
“I get it,” I said, to make her stop moving away. “I can’t sleep here either. Not without sleeping pills.”
Her cheeks tensed, like maybe she was trying to smile, but didn’t quite remember how. She left the room first. I followed as quickly as I could, but the door across the hall had already latched behind her.
I stepped on a pink paper just inside my room. I unfolded it and swore under my breath. A violation form for unauthorized visitation. A revocation of all visitation privileges for two weeks. At least I could still see Reid during study hall. I was more concerned with the carbon copy obviously missing below. I cringed, thinking about it making its way to my parents.
I had an e-mail from Reid, trying to find overlapping free time, since he also lost visitation and study hall privileges.
I wrote back: I didn’t lose study hall.
He responded: second violation.
I didn’t respond to that. I got a knot in my stomach, thinking of another girl in his room. Which I knew was ridiculous. But still. I wondered if it was Taryn. And what they were caught doing. It reminded me that there was all this history here that I didn’t know anything about.
I heard my name in the whispers throughout the classroom. Mr. Durham walked around the U-shaped tables, collecting our Lord of the Flies essays. He took my paper with the tips of his fingers, not even looking at me. But everyone else was looking, even more than usual. Like the new rumor circulating around school, making its way from wallet to wallet, was that I’d been caught in Reid’s room.
“Slut.” I heard from somewhere across the room, followed by a few snickers. Okay, apparently not. Apparently the rumor was that I’d been caught screwing Reid Carlson in his room. Good to know.